A New Aristocracy

by Alice E. Bartlett

While Margaret, Lizzette, Gilbert, and Herbert were discussing the new books, Elsie slipped away, too perturbed to do anything but throw herself on the bed and cry. Just why she cried it would have been difficult for her to tell. But she did not try to tell; she only knew, like all volcanic natures, that safety and reason lay in a copious burst of tears. Half an hour later she presented herself in the sitting-room, her old, calm, smiling self.

“Now that the ice is broken I shall hope I may come often,” said Herbert as he bade them good-night. And saucy Elsie had no retort ready.

The summer wore into early autumn with busy days and brightening prospects for our little circle. Antoine was making slow but evidently sure progress at the hospital, and was hopeful and happy at the Sunday receptions of the friends who clustered around him. Lizzette beamed with joy and gratitude and seemed to have thrown discretion to the winds in the praises of Herbert which she constantly chanted in Elsie’s ears. The treaty of peace to which Elsie had so unwillingly committed herself had, after all, been a very simple affair. Herbert had been generous, as he promised, and beyond occasional evenings together over violin and organ, at which Elsie was learning to acquit herself with greater credit than on their first venture, they did not often meet. Contrary to her usual custom, Helen Mason had not closed her city home for the summer. Herbert, much to her chagrin, refused to seek the seashore, and with wise forethought, as she fancied, she filled her house with gay company. Among the guests was a certain Miss Alice Houghton, who, an orphan and the sole possessor of great wealth, lived, together with a duenna aunt, at one of the great family hotels in the city. She was a tall, fine-looking, well-bred girl of twenty-three or twenty-four. Her distinguishing characteristic was an air of pronounced weariness, that reminded one vividly of Young’s “Languid Lady.” It was a difficult matter to interest her in anything, yet her attention once caught, her face would light up with unusual intelligence and animation. Herbert at first regarded her simply as an exponent of the system of purposeless education which is bestowed upon the average society girl; but after several weeks of acquaintance he became convinced that a secret grief was preying upon her. He was consequently not greatly surprised when he found her one morning in late summer in the drawing-room, with a ghastly look of horror on her face as she clutched a newspaper and read the head-lines concerning a sensational suicide of a fast young man about town in one of the gambling hells of the city.

“My husband!” she gasped, pointing to the head-lines and then lapsed into insensibility.

Elsie was on her way to her morning conference with her mistress when she encountered Herbert, pale and distracted, with the limp burden in his arms, calling wildly for Helen. There was no time for explanations as Helen Mason ran quickly down the stairs, and Elsie returned to her work with a clouded face and defiant air that did not escape Herbert’s notice. The story of Alice Houghton’s life was soon told to the two sympathetic friends. A marriage, secret at first from mere caprice, but afterward guarded because of shame, to a handsome but dissipated and entirely characterless man of fashion, who, having spent his own and a considerable portion of his wife’s fortune at the gambling table, had deliberately shot himself rather than face the consequences of his evil deeds. The story never became known beyond the three or four sympathizers within the Mason household, and the death of a relative furnished ample excuse for the deep mourning and grief-stricken air with which the young widow again faced the world. Herbert was very kind and attentive to her in the early days of her grief, and in consequence his sister drew some exceedingly flattering pictures as to his future.

With Margaret the summer had been productive of much good. The little leaven of her kindly nature and generous deeds had permeated the whole tenement-house and extended even beyond it in sundry additions to her Busy Fingers Club. She was idolized by the children of the neighborhood, who hailed her as the patron saint of all their little schemes and ambitions. Under her fostering care and that of the physician which Herbert had ordered, the invalid, Mrs. Carson, was slowly gaining her health and some slight encouragement in her literary ventures. There was a cloud, however, hovering in Margaret’s sky. Gilbert, who had already reached a man’s stature, had acquired as well a man’s independence, and had taken to absenting himself from home evenings, much to the annoyance of both sisters. It had been his custom during the spring and summer to go for Elsie and bring her home for the night, and there had been a substantial progress made in their studies in consequence. Of late, however, Elsie had found herself dependent for escort upon the good-natured William, who had shown himself only too happy to be of use to her, and had grown alarmingly confidential as a result. This state of William’s mind being duly imparted to Margaret, she had resolved to forestall trouble by insisting upon Gilbert’s usual attendance on his sister. But the lad was sullen and unresponsive when she broached the subject, and when night came he put on his hat and went away without a word. Margaret brooded for some time over Gilbert’s changed demeanor, and with a feeling of impending trouble which it is so often impossible to resist, she dressed herself for the street and went out, resolved to discover the places he frequented most. Fortune favored her, for at Mrs. Carson’s door she learned that Gilbert and Mr. Carson had held a discussion about a meeting of some kind which they were to attend that evening at Harmonie Hall. The nature of the meeting the invalid did not know, but she imagined it was semi-political in character, as she had found that her husband had become interested of late in municipal politics. There had been strange mutterings in the air for some time among the inmates of the tenement-house, and Margaret’s heart instantly took the alarm. What had Gilbert, a minor, to do with municipal politics and this spirit of discontent that she could but notice among the laborers with whom she lived? The great strife between labor and capital had never come actively home to Margaret. Indeed, so simple had seemed its solution to her upon the broad basis of brotherly love and active Christianity, that she had worked on quietly, hopefully, in the firm faith that she was only one of millions of like factors in once more establishing the kingdom of Christ. Like one who watches the battle from the hill-top, she believed the contending forces were only seeking their way up to the clear sunshine. It was, therefore, with something like consternation that she found herself among the disorderly crowd in the hall. Here and there little groups of men and women were noisily discussing various topics and paying only occasional attention to the speaker, a swarthy, wild-eyed woman, who was shouting in a shrill, rasping voice the most astounding ideas that had ever greeted Margaret’s ears. Drawn by curiosity as well as interest, she quietly worked her way up to a position near the platform and sank into a seat to listen.

“Talk about freedom,” yelled the speaker, waving her long thin arms like a revolving windmill. “I tell you we are slaves—handcuffed, manacled, abject slaves.” This assertion brought a round of applause. “Talk about the great American eagle—it is only a superannuated old crow that lets its blind followers go where the witches dance on the point of a needle.” This witticism provoked a loud guffaw of approval from the crowd. “I tell you, men, what we want is to preach the gospel of discontent. We want every one of you, all thinking people, to be anarchists. We don’t believe in statutory law; we don’t want any law but natural law.”

“Hear! Hear!” came in shrill calls from various parts of the room.

“But you say,” resumed the speaker, “that anarchy is disreputable. That is just what we want it to be. We want to find the gospel of discontent in the gutters. We don’t want to be reputable, and I thank God that I am absolutely disreputable. We leave respectability for the Christian capitalist, the slave-driver, the monopolist. Why, a man cannot be a Christian anarchist, because anarchy is only of the earth. The only class of people who can regulate this dismal condition of society, at which so many are just now trying their hands, are the anarchists. Think of it: the telegraphs in this country are owned by one man, the railroads by sixty families, and into the hands of the few is fast being gathered the country’s wealth. Impracticable dreamers propose to remedy this evil by making the state or nation responsible, but the anarchist says no, he doesn’t want any interference, for he has had too much of it. The state resorts to armed force. If we want liberty, there is no other way to get it but to do as the state does and resort to armed force.”

The speaker sat down amid a great wave of applause, and Margaret shrank back in her seat with her cheeks burning and eyes flashing with indignation. A man with long black hair and ragged beard next occupied the platform, and held forth on the cruelty of the bloated capitalists and a monopolistic press.