I fancied that the neighborhood had not changed, but the coming of Margaret showed me that this was a delusion. No one can keep in the same place in life simply by standing still, and the events of the past two years had wrought a subtle change in our quiet. Nothing had been changed to the eye, yet something had been taken away, or something had been added, a door had been opened into the world. Margaret had come home, yet I fancied it was not the home to her that she had been thinking about. Had she changed?
She was more beautiful. She had the air—I should hesitate to call it that of the fine lady—of assured position, something the manner of that greater world in which the possession of wealth has supreme importance, but it was scarcely a change of manner so much as of ideas about life and of the things valuable in it gradually showing itself. Her delight at being again with her old friends was perfectly genuine, and she had never appeared more unselfish or more affectionate. If there was a subtle difference, it might very well be in us, though I found it impossible to conceive of her in her former role of teacher and simple maiden, with her heart in the little concerns of our daily life. And why should she be expected to go back to that stage? Must we not all live our lives? Miss Forsythe's solicitude about Margaret was mingled with a curious deference, as to one who had a larger experience of life than her own. The girl of a year ago was now the married woman, and was invested with something of the dignity that Miss Forsythe in her pure imagination attached to that position. Without yielding any of her opinions, this idea somehow changed her relations to Margaret; a little, I thought, to the amusement of Mrs. Fletcher and the other ladies, to whom marriage took on a less mysterious aspect. It arose doubtless from a renewed sense of the incompleteness of her single life, long as it had been, and enriched as it was by observation.
In that June there were vexatious strikes in various parts of the country, formidable combinations of laboring-men, demonstrations of trades-unions, and the exhibition of a spirit that sharply called attention to the unequal distribution of wealth. The discontent was attributed in some quarters to the exhibition of extreme luxury and reckless living by those who had been fortunate. It was even said that the strikes, unreasonable and futile as they were, and most injurious to those who indulged in them, were indirectly caused by the railway manipulation, in the attempt not only to crush out competition, but to exact excessive revenues on fictitious values. Resistance to this could be shown to be blind, and the strikers technically in the wrong, yet the impression gained ground that there was something monstrously wrong in the way great fortunes were accumulated, in total disregard of individual rights, and in a materialistic spirit that did not take into account ordinary humanity. For it was not alone the laboring class that was discontented, but all over the country those who lived upon small invested savings, widows and minors, found their income imperiled by the trickery of rival operators and speculators in railways and securities, who treated the little private accumulations as mere counters in the games they were playing. The loss of dividends to them was poorly compensated by reflections upon the development of the country, and the advantage to trade of great consolidations, which inured to the benefit of half a dozen insolent men.
In discussing these things in our little parliament we were not altogether unprejudiced, it must be confessed. For, to say nothing of interests of Mr. Morgan and my own, which seemed in some danger of disappearing for the “public good,” Mrs. Fletcher's little fortune was nearly all invested in that sound “rock-bed” railway in the Southwest that Mr. Jerry Hollowell had recently taken under his paternal care. She was assured, indeed, that dividends were only reserved pending some sort of reorganization, which would ultimately be of great benefit to all the parties concerned; but this was much like telling a hungry man that if he would possess his appetite in patience, he would very likely have a splendid dinner next year. Women are not constituted to understand this sort of reasoning. It is needless to say that in our general talks on the situation these personalities were not referred to, for although Margaret was silent, it was plain to see that she was uneasy.
Morgan liked to raise questions of casuistry, such as that whether money dishonestly come by could be accepted for good purposes.
“I had this question referred to me the other day,” he said. “A gambler—not a petty cheater in cards, but a man who has a splendid establishment in which he has amassed a fortune, a man known for his liberality and good-fellowship and his interest in politics—offered the president of a leading college a hundred thousand dollars to endow a professorship. Ought the president to take the money, knowing how it was made?”
“Wouldn't the money do good—as much good as any other hundred thousand dollars?” asked Margaret.
“Perhaps. But the professorship was to bear his name, and what would be the moral effect of that?”
“Did you recommend the president to take the money, if he could get it without using the gambler's name?”
“I am not saying yet what I advised. I am trying to get your views on a general principle.”