A Little Journey in the World Part 20

"Yes, that's so; it is pleasant. Where most everybody wants something, they are bound to be accommodating. That's my idea. I reckon you don't find Jerry Hollowell trying to pull a cat by its tail," he added, dropping into his native manner.

"Well, I must go and hunt up the old man. Glad to have made your acquaintance, Mrs. Henderson." And then, with a sly look, "If I knew you better, ma'am, I should take the liberty of congratulating you that Henderson has come round so handsomely."

"Come round?" asked Margaret, in amused wonder.

"Well, I took the liberty of giving him a hint that he wasn't cut-out for a single man. I showed him that," and he lugged out his photograph-case from a ma.s.s of papers in his breast-pocket and handed it to her.

"Ah, I see," said Margaret, studying the photographs with a peculiar smile.

"Oh, Henderson knows a good thing when he sees it," said Hollowell, complacently.

It was not easy to be offended with Hollowell's kind-hearted boorishness, and after he had gone, Margaret sat a long time reflecting upon this new specimen of man in her experience. She was getting many new ideas in these days, the moral lines were not as clearly drawn as she had thought; it was impossible to ticket men off into good and bad.

In Hollowell she had a glimpse of a world low-toned and vulgar; she had heard that he was absolutely unscrupulous, and she had supposed that he would appear to be a very wicked man. But he seemed to be good-hearted and tolerant and friendly. How fond he was of his family, and how charitable about Congress! And she wondered if the world was generally on Hollowell's level. She met many men more cultivated than he, gentlemen in manner and in the first social position, who took, after all, about his tone in regard to the world, very agreeable people usually, easy to get on with, not exacting, or professing much faith in anybody, and mildly cynical--only bitterly cynical when they failed to get what they wanted, and felt the good things of life slipping away from them. It was to take her some time to learn that some of the most agreeable people are those who have succeeded by the most questionable means; and when she came to this knowledge, what would be her power of judgment as to these means?

"Mr. Hollowell has been here," she said, when Henderson returned.

"Old Jerry? He is a character."

"Do you trust him?"

"It never occurred to me. Yes, I suppose so, as far as his interests go.

He isn't a bad sort of fellow--very long-headed."

"Dear," said Margaret, with hesitation, "I wish you didn't have anything to do with such men."

"Why, dearest?"

"Oh, I don't know. You needn't laugh. It rather lets one down; and it isn't like you."

Henderson laughed aloud now. "But you needn't a.s.sociate with Hollowell.

We men cannot pick our companions in business and politics. It needs all sorts to keep the world going."

"Then I'd rather let it stop," Margaret said.

"And sell out at auction?" he cried, with a look of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"But aren't Mr. Morgan and Mr. Fairchild business men?"

"Yes--of the old-fas.h.i.+oned sort. The fact--is, Margaret, you've got a sort of preserve up in Brandon, and you fancy that the world is divided into sheep and goats. It's a great mistake. There is no such division.

Every man almost is both a sheep and a goat."

"I don't believe it, Rodney. You are neither." She came close to him, and taking the collar of his coat in each hand, gave him a little shake, and looking up into his face with quizzical affection, asked, "What is your business here?"

Henderson stooped down and kissed her forehead, and tenderly lifted the locks of her brown hair. "You wouldn't understand, sweet, if I told you."

"You might try."

"Well, there's a man here from Fort Worth who wants us to buy a piece of railroad, and extend it, and join it with Hollowell's system, and open up a lot of new country."

"And isn't it a good piece of road?"

"Yes; that's the trouble. The owners want to keep it to themselves, and prevent the general development. But we shall get it."

"It isn't anything like wrecking, is it, dear?"

"Do you think we would want to wreck our own property?"

"But what has Congress to do with it?"

"Oh, there's a land grant. But some of the members who were not in the Congress that voted it say that it is forfeited."

In this fas.h.i.+on the explanation went on. Margaret loved to hear her husband talk, and to watch the changing expression of his face, and he explained about this business until she thought he was the sweetest fellow in the world.

The Morgans had arrived at the same hotel, and Margaret went about with them in the daytime, while Henderson was occupied. It was like a breath of home to be with them, and their presence, reviving that old life, gave a new zest to the society spectacle, to the innocent round of entertainments, which more and more absorbed her. Besides, it was very interesting to have Mr. Morgan's point of view of Was.h.i.+ngton, and to see the s.h.i.+fting panorama through his experience. He had been very much in the city in former years, but he came less and less now, not because it was less beautiful or attractive in a way, but because it had lost for him a certain charm it once had.

"I am not sure," he said, as they were driving one day, "that it is not now the handsomest capital in the world; at any rate, it is on its way to be that. No other has public buildings more imposing, or streets and avenues so attractive in their interrupted regularity, so many stately vistas ending in objects refres.h.i.+ng to the eye--a bit of park, banks of flowers, a statue or a monument that is decorative, at least in the distance. As the years go on we shall have finer historical groups, triumphal arches and columns that will give it more and more an air of distinction, the sort of splendor with which the Roman Empire celebrated itself, and, added to this, the libraries and museums and galleries that are the chief attractions of European cities. Oh, we have only just begun--the city is so accessible in all directions, and lends itself to all sorts of magnificence and beauty."

"I declare," said Mrs. Morgan to Margaret, "I didn't know that he could be so eloquent. Page, you ought to be in Congress."

"In order to snuff myself out? Congress is not so important a feature as it used to be. Was.h.i.+ngton is getting to have a character of its own; it seems as if it wouldn't be much without its official life, yet the process is going on here that is so marked all over the country--the divorce of social and political life. I used to think, fifteen years ago, that Was.h.i.+ngton was a standing contradiction to the old aphorism that a democracy cannot make society--there was no more agreeable society in the world than that in Was.h.i.+ngton even ten years ago: society selected itself somehow without any marked cla.s.s distinction, and it was delightfully simple and accessible."

"And what has changed it?" Margaret asked.

"Money, which changes everything and everybody. The whole scale has altered. There is so much more display and expense. I remember when a private carriage in Was.h.i.+ngton was a rare object. The possession of money didn't help one much socially. What made a person desired in any company was the talent of being agreeable, talent of some sort, not the ability to give a costly dinner or a big ball."

"But there are more literary and scientific people here, everybody says," said Margaret, who was becoming a partisan of the city.

"Yes, and they keep more to themselves--withdraw into their studies, or hive in their clubs. They tell me that the delightful informality and freedom of the old life is gone. Ask the old Was.h.i.+ngton residents whether the coming in of rich people with leisure hasn't demoralized society, or stiffened it, and made it impossible after the old sort. It is as easy here now as anywhere else to get together a very heavy dinner party--all very grand, but it isn't amusing. It is more and more like New York."

"But we have been to delightful dinners," Margaret insisted.

"No doubt. There are still houses of the old sort, where wit and good-humor and free hospitality are more conspicuous than expense; but when money selects, there is usually an incongruous lot about the board.

An oracular scientist at the club the other night put it rather neatly when he said that a society that exists mainly to pay its debts gets stupid."

"That's as clever," Margaret retorted, "as the remark of an under-secretary at a cabinet reception the other night, that it is one thing to entertain and another to be entertaining. I won't have you slander Was.h.i.+ngton. I should like to spend all my winters here."

"Dear me!" said Morgan, "I've been praising Was.h.i.+ngton. I should like to live here also, if I had the millions of Jerry Hollowell. Jerry is going to build a palace out on the Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue extension bigger than the White House."

"I don't want to hear anything about Hollowell."

"But he is the coming man. He represents the democratic plutocracy that we are coming to."

All Morgan's banter couldn't shake Margaret's enjoyment of the cheerful city. "You like it as well as anybody," she told him. And in truth he and Mrs. Morgan dipped into every gayety that was going. "Of course I do," he said, "for a couple of weeks. I shouldn't like to be obliged to follow it as a steady business. Was.h.i.+ngton is a good place to take a plunge occasionally. And then you can go home and read King Solomon with appreciation."

Margaret had thought when she came to Was.h.i.+ngton that she should spend a good deal of time at the Capitol, listening to the eloquence of the Senators and Representatives, and that she should study the collections and the Patent-office and explore all the public buildings, in which she had such intense historical interest as a teacher in Brandon. But there was little time for these pleasures, which weighed upon her like duties.

She did go to the Capitol once, and tired herself out tramping up and down, and was very proud of it all, and wondered how any legislation was ever accomplished, and was confused by the hustling about, the swinging of doors, the swarms in the lobbies, and the racing of messengers, and concluded unjustly that it was a big hive of whispered conference, and bargaining, and private interviewing. Morgan asked her if she expected that the business of sixty millions of people was going to be done with the order and decorum of a lyceum debating society. In one of the committee-rooms she saw Hollowell, looking at ease, and apparently an indispensable part of the government machine. Her own husband, who had accompanied the party, she lost presently, whisked away somewhere. He was sought in vain afterwards, and at last Margaret came away dazed and stunned by the noise of the wheels of the great republic in motion. She did not try it again, and very little strolling about the departments satisfied her. The west end claimed her--the rolling equipages, the drawing-rooms, the dress, the vistas of evening lamps, the gay chatter in a hundred s.h.i.+ning houses, the exquisite dinners, the crush of the a.s.semblies, the full flow of the tide of fas.h.i.+on and of enjoyment--what is there so good in life? To be young, to be rich, to be pretty, to be loved, to be admired, to compliment and be complimented--every Sunday at morning service, kneeling in a fluttering row of the sweetly devout, whose fresh toilets made it good to be there, and who might humbly hope to be forgiven for the things they have left undone, Margaret thanked Heaven for its gifts.

And it went well with Henderson meantime. Surely he was born under a lucky star--if it is good-luck for a man to have absolute prosperity and the gratification of all his desires. One reason why Hollowell sought his cooperation was a belief in this luck, and besides Henderson was, he knew, more presentable, and had social access in quarters where influence was desirable, although Hollowell was discovering that with most men delicacy in presenting anything that is for their interest is thrown away. He found no difficulty in getting recruits for his little dinners at Champolion's--dinners that were not always given in his name, and where he appeared as a guest, though he footed the bills. Bungling grossness has disappeared from all really able and large transactions, and genius is mainly exercised in the supply of motives for a line of conduct. The public good is one of the motives that looks best in Was.h.i.+ngton.