“Derwent,” said Mr. Wemyss, “is one of those fanatics who do more harm, from their position and education, than any leader of the proletariat. But all women rave about him; for women are all hero-worshippers.”
“Mrs. Gower has asked him to go on the coaching party,” said Arthur, secretly flattered at being thought by Wemyss worthy of hearing that gentleman’s opinion. He made no reply to this, but frowned obviously. Pretty soon the others came out and joined them, and they had cognac and coffee; the ladies, too, were out on the terrace, at its other end, attracted by the beauty of the night; and gradually the two groups came together and intermingled. But it was the man’s hour; and they made bold to keep their cigars, even when, as soon happened, each one joined his fair one and took to walking with her. Wemyss walked with Mrs. Gower, Birmingham with Miss Farnum, Van Kull with Mrs. Hay, Charlie Townley with Miss Duval, and Mrs. Malgam with Si Starbuck.
Arthur found himself with Miss Lenoir. She was a pretty girl, with fine black hair and gray eyes, and an ivory-like complexion; and her dress was the perfection of style and enlightened civilization. It was the most glorious night; a night made for the imaginative and idle, for those who have read the world’s literature and looked at paintings, and whose women are fair ladies, bravely dressed. The great pathway of the river lay open to the dark sky, walled by ebon mountain-masses; to the east the azure shaded into blue, where the stars were sown less freely, tremulous, luminous with the rising moon. The moon’s light was pleasant, too, on the figure of the pretty girl beside him; and the others, as they passed and repassed, seemed like the gay ladies of Boccaccio’s garden, and looked, each pair, as if they had been lovers.
Down in the factory village, too, the night was fine; perhaps a few old men, smoking, enjoyed it, dumbly, as such people do. For these do not comment, in diaries or print, upon such things, nor analyze the moods they bring. But most of the women who were stirring made only a convenience of the moonlight, lighting the uncertain hazards of the dirty street; and the young men, smoking and drinking, were quite unconscious of it, for tobacco and whiskey had more direct action upon their consciousness, besides having a money cost, which the beauty of the night had not. But here, too, were some few young men wandering afield with young women, and perhaps upon these the moonlight had its unconscious effect. Up at Mrs. Gower’s the love-making, though not inartistically done, was rather like a play; here it was more earnest. Yet, as it seemed to Lionel Derwent, there was not so much difference between these two places, laying aside mere dress and manner, as there should have been.
But to Arthur, the softness and good taste and beauty of framing seemed inspiration fit for any poet. If the evening was not one of true happiness, it was an excellent worldly counterfeit. After Miss Lenoir went in, he stayed out alone, watching the river. The other guests, successively, sought the drawing-room; and soon he heard Mrs. Hay’s voice, singing a simple Scotch ballad, and singing it very well. Now, any cultivated foreman’s daughter, in the factory village, would have sung in bad Italian, and not sung well.
As Arthur stood leaning over the balustrade in the terrace, he heard low voices; and looking down, he recognized, in the moonlight, Mr. Caryl Wemyss and his hostess. Their talk seemed to have come to an end; for as she rose, he seized her white hand and imprinted (as the dime novels say), with studied grace, a kiss upon it.
CHAPTER XIX.
A COACH AND FOUR COUPLES.
SEVERAL days passed by in much the same way; and truly a pleasant way enough it was. Arthur went now and then to town; but it was easy to get vacations in Townley & Tamms’s office, and the inmates were mutually conceding upon this point, particularly when the absence was known to be connected with people likely to be valuable, as clients, to the firm. And perhaps Arthur had a secret notion that his visit at Mrs. Levison Gower’s was an advancement more speedy and notable than anything that was likely to come to him in the office while he was away. For, after all, in her society he was getting the ultimate result of all labors and seeing what it was that people realized when they were successful here on earth.
Townley urged Arthur strongly to avail himself of Mrs. Gower’s hospitality to its utmost limit. It was a principle of his philosophy of life that it was the part of a clever man to take things directly rather than attain to them gradually; to grasp the fruits, and not cultivate the tree. “Any country bumpkin, any ordinary mechanic, can do that,” he would say. “But we in New York, in Wall Street, sit at the counter on which is poured the net earnings, the savings, the symbols of title to all the creations of a mighty nation. Ten thousand men may work to build a railroad, for instance, and ten thousand more to run it; and the clean result of all their toil and trouble, free of all dross and surplusage, is turned into our hands, portable and convenient, in the shape of a few engraved certificates of stock, or bonds, or banknotes. Presto! change! and some of them are in my pocket, and some in yours, and perhaps a new bit of paper, issued by us for the balance.” Arthur found Charlie a much more intellectual fellow than he had thought at first.