Books: An Open Eyed Conspiracy An Idyl of Saratoga
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William Dean Howells >> An Open Eyed Conspiracy An Idyl of Saratoga
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"And is it like what you thought?"
"No. The first week we didn't do anything. Then we got acquainted
with Mr. and Mrs. March, and I began to really see something. But I
supposed it was all balls and gaiety."
"We must get up a few if you're so fond of them," Kendricks
playfully suggested.
"Oh, I don't know as I am. I never went much at home. Papa didn't
care to have me."
"Ah, do you think it was right for him to keep you all to himself?"
The girl did not answer, and they had both halted so abruptly that I
almost ran into them. "I don't quite make out where we are."
Kendricks seemed to be peering about. I plunged across the street
lest he should ask me. I heard him add, "Oh yes; I know now," and
then they pressed forward.
We were quite near our hotel, but I thought it best to walk round
the square and let them arrive first. On the way I amused myself
thinking how different the girl had shown herself to him from what
she had ever shown herself to my wife or me. She had really, this
plain-minded goddess, a vein of poetic feeling, some inner beauty of
soul answering to the outer beauty of body. She had a romantic
attachment to her father, and this shed a sort of light on both of
them, though I knew that it was not always a revelation of
character.
CHAPTER XIII
When I reached the hotel I found Miss Gage at the door, and
Kendricks coming out of the office toward her.
"Oh, here he is!" she called to him at sight of me.
"Where in the world have you been?" he demanded. "I had just found
out from the clerk that you hadn't come in yet, and I was going back
for you with a searchlight."
"Oh, I wasn't so badly lost as all that," I returned. "I missed you
in the crowd at the door, but I knew you'd get home somehow, and so
I came on without you. But my aged steps are not so quick as
yours."
The words, mechanically uttered, suggested something, and I thought
that if they were in for weirdness I would give them as much
weirdness as they could ask for. "When you get along toward fifty
you'll find that the foot you've still got out of the grave doesn't
work so lively as it used. Besides, I was interested in the night
effect. It's so gloriously dark; and I had a fine sense of
isolation as I came along, as if I were altogether out of my epoch
and my environment. I felt as if the earth was a sort of Flying
Dutchman, and I was the only passenger. It was about the weirdest
sensation I ever had. It reminded me, I don't know how, exactly of
the feeling I had when I was young, and I saw the sunset one evening
through the woods after a sleet-storm."
They stared at each other as I went on, and I could see Kendricks's
fine eyes kindle with an imaginative appreciation of the literary
quality of the coincidence. But when I added, "Did you ever read a
poem about the end of the world by that City of Dreadful Night man?"
Miss Gage impulsively caught me by the coat lapel and shook me.
"Ah, it was you all the time! I knew there was somebody following
us, and I might have KNOWN who it was!"
We all gave way in a gale of laughter, and sat down on the verandah
and had our joke out in full recognition of the fact. When
Kendricks rose to go at last, I said, "We won't say anything about
this little incident to Mrs. March, hey?" And then they laughed
again as if it were the finest wit in the world, and Miss Gage bade
me a joyful good-night at the head of the stairs as she went off to
her room and I to mine.
I found Mrs. March waiting up with a book; and as soon as I shut
myself in with her she said, awfully, "What WERE you laughing so
about?"
"Laughing? Did you hear me laughing?"
"The whole house heard you, I'm afraid. You certainly ought to have
known better, Basil. It was very inconsiderate of you." And as I
saw she was going on with more of that sort of thing, to divert her
thoughts from my crime I told her the whole story. It had quite the
effect I intended up to a certain point. She even smiled a little,
as much as a woman could be expected to smile who was not originally
in the joke.
"And they had got to comparing weird experiences?" she asked.
"Yes; the staleness of the thing almost made me sick. Do you
remember when we first compared our weird experiences? But I
suppose they will go on doing it to the end of time, and it will
have as great a charm for the last man and woman as it had for Adam
and Eve when they compared THEIR weird experiences."
"And was that what you were laughing at?"
"We were laughing at the wonderful case of telepathy I put up on
them."
Mrs. March faced her open book down on the table before her, and
looked at me with profound solemnity. "Well, then, I can tell you,
my dear, it is no laughing matter. If they have got to the weird it
is very serious; and her talking to him about her family, and his
wanting to know about her father, that's serious too--far more
serious than either of them can understand. I don't like it, Basil;
we have got a terrible affair on our hands."
"Terrible?"
"Yes, terrible. As long as he was interested in her simply from a
literary point of view, though I didn't like that either, I could
put up with it; but now that he's got to telling her about himself,
and exchanging weird experiences with her, it's another thing
altogether. Oh, I never wanted Kendricks brought into the affair at
all."
"Come now, Isabel! Stick to the facts, please."
"No matter! It was you that discovered the girl, and then something
had to be done. I was perfectly shocked when you told me that Mr.
Kendricks was in town, because I saw at once that he would have to
be got in for it; and now we have to think what we shall do."
"Couldn't we think better in the morning?"
"No; we must think at once. I shall not sleep to-night anyhow. My
peace is gone. I shall have to watch them every instant."
"Beginning at this instant. Why not wait till you can see them?"
"Oh, you can't joke it away, my dear. If I find they are really
interested in each other I shall have to speak. I am responsible."
"The young lady," I said, more to gain time than anything else,
"seems quite capable of taking care of herself."
"That makes it all the worse. Do you think I care for her only?
It's Kendricks too that I care for. I don't know that I care for
her at all."
"Oh, then I think we may fairly leave Kendricks to his own devices;
and I'm not alarmed for Miss Gage either, though I do care for her a
great deal."
"I don't understand how you can be so heartless about it, Basil,"
said Mrs. March, plaintively. "She is a young girl, and she has
never seen anything of the world, and of course if he keeps on
paying her attention in this way she can't help thinking that he is
interested in her. Men never can see such things as women do. They
think that, until a man has actually asked a girl to marry him, he
hasn't done anything to warrant her in supposing that he is in love
with her, or that she has any right to be in love with him."
"That is true; we can't imagine that she would be so indelicate."
"I see that you're determined to tease, my dear," said Mrs. March,
and she took up her book with an air of offence and dismissal. "If
you won't talk seriously, I hope you will think seriously, and try
to realise what we've got in for. Such a girl couldn't imagine that
we had simply got Mr Kendricks to go about with her from a romantic
wish to make her have a good time, and that he was doing it to
oblige us, and wasn't at all interested in her."
"It does look a little preposterous, even to the outsider," I
admitted.
"I am glad you are beginning to see it in that light, my dear, and
if you can think of anything to do by morning I shall be humbly
thankful. _I_ don't expect to."
"Perhaps I shall dream of something," I said more lightly than I
felt. "How would it do for you to have a little talk with her--a
little motherly talk--and hint round, and warn her not to let her
feelings run away with her in Kendricks's direction?" Mrs. March
faced her book down in her lap, and listened as if there might be
some reason in the nonsense I was talking. "You might say that he
was a society man, and was in great request, and then intimate that
there was a prior attachment, or that he was the kind of man who
would never marry, but was really cold-hearted with all his
sweetness, and merely had a passion for studying character."
"Do you think that would do, Basil?" she asked.
"Well, I thought perhaps you might think so."
"I'm afraid it wouldn't," she sighed.
"All that we can do now is to watch them, and act promptly, if we
see that they are really in love, either of them."
"I don't believe," I said, "that I should know that they were in
love even if I saw it. I have forgotten the outward signs, if I
ever knew them. Should he give her flowers? He's done it from the
start; he's brought her boxes of Huyler candy, and lent her books;
but I dare say he's been merely complying with our wishes in doing
it. I doubt if lovers sigh nowadays. I didn't sigh myself, even in
my time; and I don't believe any passion could make Kendricks
neglect his dress. He keeps his eyes on her all the time, but that
may be merely an effort to divine her character. I don't believe I
should know, indeed I don't."
"I shall," said Mrs. March.
CHAPTER XIV
We were to go the next day to the races, and I woke with more
anxiety about the weather than about the lovers, or potential
lovers. But after realising that the day was beautiful, on that
large scale of loveliness which seems characteristic of the summer
days at Saratoga, where they have them almost the size of the summer
days I knew when I was a boy, I was sensible of a secondary worry in
my mind, which presently related itself to Kendricks and Miss Gage.
It was a haze of trouble merely, however, such as burns off, like a
morning fog, when the sun gets higher, and it was chiefly on my
wife's account.
I suppose that the great difference between her conscience and one
originating outside of New England (if any conscience can originate
outside of New England) is that it cannot leave the moral government
of the universe in the hands of divine Providence. I was willing to
leave so many things which I could not control to the Deity, who
probably could that she accused me of fatalism, and I was held to be
little better than one of the wicked because I would not forecast
the effects of what I did in the lives of others. I insisted that
others were also probably in the hands of the somma sapienza e il
primo amore, and that I was so little aware of the influence of
other lives upon my own, even where there had been a direct and
strenuous effort to affect me, that I could not readily believe
others had swerved from the line of their destiny because of me.
Especially I protested that I could not hold myself guilty of
misfortunes I had not intended, even though my faulty conduct had
caused them. As to this business of Kendricks and Miss Gage, I
denied in the dispute I now began tacitly to hold with Mrs. March's
conscience that my conduct had been faulty. I said that there was
no earthly harm in my having been interested by the girl's
forlornness when I first saw her; that I did not do wrong to
interest Mrs. March in her; that she did not sin in going shopping
with Miss Gage and Mrs. Deering; that we had not sinned, either of
us, in rejoicing that Kendricks had come to Saratoga, or in letting
Mrs. Deering go home to her sick husband and leave Miss Gage on our
hands; that we were not wicked in permitting the young fellow to
help us make her have a good time. In this colloquy I did all the
reasoning, and Mrs. March's conscience was completely silenced; but
it rose triumphant in my miserable soul when I met Miss Gage at
breakfast, looking radiantly happy, and disposed to fellowship me in
an unusual confidence because, as I clearly perceived, of our last
night's adventure. I said to myself bitterly that happiness did not
become her style, and I hoped that she would get away with her
confounded rapture before Mrs. March came down. I resolved not to
tell Mrs. March if it fell out so, but at the same time, as a sort
of atonement, I decided to begin keeping the sharpest kind of watch
upon Miss Gage for the outward signs and tokens of love.
She said, "When you began to talk that way last night, Mr. March, it
almost took my breath, and if you hadn't gone so far, and mentioned
about the sunset through the sleety trees, I never should have
suspected you."
"Ah, that's the trouble with men, Miss Gage." And when I said "men"
I fancied she flushed a little. "We never know when to stop; we
always overdo it; if it were not for that we should be as perfect as
women. Perhaps you'll give me another chance, though."
"No; we shall be on our guard after this." She corrected herself
and said, "I shall always be looking out for you now," and she
certainly showed herself conscious in the bridling glance that met
my keen gaze.
"Good heavens!" I thought. "Has it really gone so far?" and more
than ever I resolved not to tell Mrs. March.
I went out to engage a carriage to take us to the races, and to
agree with the driver that he should wait for us at a certain corner
some blocks distant from our hotel, where we were to walk and find
him. We always did this, because there were a number of clergymen
in our house, and Mrs. March could not make it seem right to start
for the races direct from the door, though she held that it was
perfectly right for us to go. For the same reason she made the
driver stop short of our destination on our return, and walked home
the rest of the way. Almost the first time we practised this
deception I was met at the door by the sweetest and dearest of these
old divines, who said, "Have you ever seen the races here? I'm told
the spectacle is something very fine," and I was obliged to own that
I had once had a glimpse of them. But it was in vain that I pleaded
this fact with Mrs. March; she insisted that the appearance of not
going to the races was something that we owed the cloth, and no
connivance on their part could dispense us from it.
As I now went looking up and down the street for the driver who was
usually on the watch for me about eleven o'clock on a fair day of
the races, I turned over in my mind the several accidents which are
employed in novels to bring young people to a realising sense of
their feelings toward each other, and wondered which of them I might
most safely invoke. I was not anxious to have Kendricks and Miss
Gage lovers; it would be altogether simpler for us if they were not;
but if they were, the sooner they knew it and we knew it the better.
I thought of a carriage accident, in which he should seize her and
leap with her from the flying vehicle, while the horses plunged
madly on, but I did not know what in this case would become of Mrs.
March and me. Besides, I could think of nothing that would frighten
our driver's horses, and I dismissed the fleeting notion of getting
any others because Mrs. March liked their being so safe, and she
had, besides, interested herself particularly in the driver, who had
a family and counted upon our custom. The poor fellow came in sight
presently, and smilingly made the usual arrangement with me, and an
hour later he delivered us all sound in wind and limb at the
racecourse.
I watched in vain for signs of uncommon tenderness in the two young
people. If anything they were rather stiff and distant with each
other, and I asked myself whether this might not be from an access
of consciousness. Kendricks was particularly devoted to Mrs. March,
who, in the airy detachment with which she responded to his
attentions, gave me the impression that she had absolutely dismissed
her suspicions of the night before, or else had heartlessly
abandoned the affair to me altogether. If she had really done this,
then I saw no way out of it for me but by an accident which should
reveal them to each other. Perhaps some one might insult Miss Gage-
-some ruffian--and Kendricks might strike the fellow; but this
seemed too squalid. There might be a terrible jam, and he interpose
his person between her and the danger of her being crushed to death;
or the floor of the grand stand might give way, and everybody be
precipitated into the space beneath, and he fight his way, with her
senseless form on his arm, over the bodies of the mangled and dying.
Any of these things would have availed in a novel, and something of
the kind would have happened, too. But, to tell the truth, nothing
whatever happened, and if it had not been for that anxiety on my
mind I should have thought it much pleasanter so.
Even as it was I felt a measure of the hilarity which commonly fills
me at a running race, and I began to lose in the charm of the gay
scene the sense of my responsibility, and little by little to abate
the vigilance apparently left all to me. The day was beautiful; the
long heat had burned itself out, and there was a clear sparkle in
the sunshine, which seemed blown across the wide space within the
loop of the track by the delicate breeze. A vague, remote smell of
horses haunted the air, with now and then a breath of the pines from
the grove shutting the race-ground from the highway. We got
excellent places, as one always may, the grand stand is so vast, and
the young people disposed themselves on the bench in front of us,
but so near that we were not tempted to talk them over. The
newsboys came round with papers, and the boys who sold programmes of
the races; from the bar below there appeared from time to time
shining negroes in white linen jackets, with trays bearing tall
glasses of lemonade, and straws tilted in the glasses. Bookmakers
from the pool-rooms took the bets of the ladies, who formed by far
the greater part of the spectators on the grand stand, and
contributed, with their summer hats and gowns, to the gaiety of the
ensemble. They were of all types, city and country both, and of the
Southern dark as well as the Northern fair complexion, with so thick
a sprinkling of South Americans that the Spanish gutturals made
themselves almost as much heard as the Yankee nasals. Among them
moved two nuns of some mendicant order, receiving charity from the
fair gamblers, who gave for luck without distinction of race or
religion.
I leaned forward and called Kendricks's attention to the nuns, and
to the admirable literary quality of the whole situation. He was
talking to Miss Gage, and he said as impatiently as he ever suffered
himself to speak, "Yes, yes; tremendously picturesque."
"You ought to get something out of it, my dear fellow. Don't you
feel copy in it?"
"Oh, splendid, of course; but it's your ground, Mr. March. I
shouldn't feel it right to do anything with Saratoga after you had
discovered it," and he turned eagerly again to Miss Gage.
My wife put her hand on my sleeve and frowned, and I had so far lost
myself in my appreciation of the scene that I was going to ask her
what the matter was, when a general sensation about me made me look
at the track, where the horses for the first race had already
appeared, with their jockeys in vivid silk jackets of various dyes.
They began to form for the start with the usual tricks and feints,
till I became very indignant with them, though I had no bets
pending, and did not care in the least which horse won. What I
wanted was to see the race, the flight, and all this miserable
manoeuvring was retarding it. Now and then a jockey rode his horse
far off on the track and came back between the false starts; now and
then one kept stubbornly behind the rest and would not start with
them. How their several schemes and ambitions were finally
reconciled I never could tell, but at last the starter's flag swept
down and they were really off. Everybody could have seen perfectly
well as they sat, but everybody rose and watched the swift swoop of
the horses, bunched together in the distance, and scarcely
distinguishable by the colours of their riders. The supreme moment
came for me when they were exactly opposite the grand stand, full
half a mile away--the moment that I remembered from year to year as
one of exquisite illusion--for then the horses seemed to lift from
the earth as with wings, and to skim over the track like a covey of
low-flying birds. The finish was tame to this. Mrs. March and I
had our wonted difference of opinion as to which horse had won, and
we were rather uncommonly controversial because we had both decided
upon the same horse, as we found, only she was talking of the
jockey's colours, and I was talking of the horse's. We appealed to
Kendricks, who said that another horse altogether had won the race,
and this compromise pacified us.
We were all on foot, and he suggested, "We could see better,
couldn't we, if we went farther down in front?" And Mrs. March
answered -
"No, we prefer to stay here; but you two can go." And when they had
promptly availed themselves of her leave, she said to me, "This is
killing me dead, Basil, and if it keeps up much longer I don't
believe I can live through it. I don't care now, and I believe I
shall throw them together all I can from this out. The quicker they
decide whether they're in love or not the better. _I_ have some
rights too."
Her whirling words expressed the feeling in my own mind. I had the
same sense of being trifled with by these young people, who would
not behave so conclusively toward each other as to justify our
interference on the ground that they were in love, nor yet treat
each other so indifferently as to relieve us of the strain of
apprehension. I had lost all faith in accident by this time, and I
was quite willing to leave them to their own devices; I was so
desperate that I said I hoped they would get lost from us, as they
had from me the night before, and never come back, but just keep on
wandering round for ever. All sorts of vengeful thoughts went
through my mind as I saw them leaning toward each other to say
something, and then drawing apart to laugh in what seemed an
indefinite comradery instead of an irrepressible passion. Did they
think we were going to let this sort of thing go on? What did they
suppose our nerves were made of? Had they no mercy, no
consideration? It was quite like the selfishness of youth to wish
to continue in that fool's paradise, but they would find out that
middle age had its rights too. I felt capable of asking them
bluntly what they meant by it. But when they docilely rejoined us
at the end of the races, hurrying up with some joke about not
letting me get lost this time, and Miss Gage put herself at my
wife's side and Kendricks dropped into step with me, all I had been
thinking seemed absurd. They were just two young people who were
enjoying a holiday-time together, and we were in no wise culpable
concerning them.
I suggested this to Mrs. March when we got home, and, in the need of
some relief from the tension she had been in, she was fain to accept
the theory provisionally, though I knew that her later rejection of
it would be all the more violent for this respite.
CHAPTER XV
There was to be a hop at the Grand Union that night, and I had got
tickets for it in virtue of my relation to Every Other Week. I must
say the clerk who gave them me was very civil about it; he said they
were really only for the hotel guests, but he was glad to give them
to outsiders who applied with proper credentials; and he even
offered me more tickets than I asked for.
Miss Gage was getting a dress for the hop, and it was to be finished
that day. I think women really like the scare of thinking their
dresses will not be done for a given occasion, and so arrange to
have them at the last moment. Mrs. March went with the girl early
in the afternoon to have it tried on for the last time, and they
came home reporting that it was a poem. My wife confided to me that
it was not half done--merely begun, in fact--and would never be
finished in time in the world. She also assured Miss Gage that she
need not be the least uneasy; that there was not an hour's work on
the dress; and that the dress-maker's reputation was at stake, and
she would not dare to fail her. I knew she was perfectly sincere in
both these declarations, which were, indeed, merely the expression
of two mental attitudes, and had no relation to the facts.
She added to me that she was completely worn out with anxiety and
worry, and I must not think of her going to the hop. I would have
to do the chaperoning for her, and she did hope that I would not
forget what I was sent for, or get talking with somebody, and leave
Miss Gage altogether to Kendricks. She said that quite likely there
might be friends or acquaintances of his at the hop--such a large
affair--whom he would want to show some attention, and I must take
charge of Miss Gage myself, and try to find her other partners. She
drilled me in the duties of my position until I believed that I was
letter-perfect, and then she said that she supposed I would commit
some terrible blunder that would ruin everything.
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