“Oh, my pride,” Margaret answered, “does not lie in that direction.”
“And to do her justice, I don't think Miss Eschelle's does, either. She appears to be more interested now in New York than in London.”
He laughed as he said this, and Margaret laughed also, and then stopped suddenly, thinking of the roses that came that morning. Could she be comparing the Londoner with the handsome American who sat by her side at the opera last night? She was half annoyed with herself at the thought.
“And are not you also interested in New York, Mr. Lyon?” my wife asked.
“Yes, moderately so, if you will permit me to say it.” It was an effort on his part to keep up the conversation, Margaret was so wholly unresponsive; and afterwards, knowing how affairs stood with them, I could understand his well-bred misery. The hardest thing in the world is to suffer decorously and make no sign in the midst of a society which insists on stoicism, no matter how badly one is hurt. The Society for First Aid to the Injured hardens its heart in these cases. “I have never seen another place,” he continued, “where the women are so busy in improving themselves. Societies, clubs, parlor lectures, readings, recitations, musicales, classes—it fatigues one to keep in sight of them. Every afternoon, every evening, something. I doubt if men are capable of such incessant energy, Mrs. Fairchild.”
“And you find they have no time to be agreeable?”
“Quite the contrary. There is nothing they are not interesting in, nothing about which they cannot talk, and talk intensely. They absorb everything, and have the gift of acquiring intelligence without, as one of them told me, having to waste time in reading. Yes, it is a most interesting city.”
The coming in of Mr. Morgan gave another turn to the talk. He had been to see a rural American play, an exhibition of country life and character, constructed in absolute disregard of any traditions of the stage.
“I don't suppose,” Mr. Morgan said, “a foreigner would understand it; it would be impossible in Paris, incomprehensible in London.”
“Yes, I saw it,” said Mr. Lyon, thus appealed to. “It was very odd, and seemed to amuse the audience immensely. I suppose one must be familiar with American farm life to see the points of it. I confess that while I sat there, in an audience so keenly in sympathy with the play—almost a part of it, one might say—I doubted if I understood your people as well as I thought I did when I had been here a week only. Perhaps this is the beginning of an American drama.”