The Odor of Affluence

THE Hardens, with some guests who had driven over for luncheon, sat in their great loggia which overlooked an Italian garden of wide dimensions and meagre growth. It was Sunday afternoon, and the bells of the village church, tolling vespers to the Catholic poor, whose homes clustered near it, repeated with incongruous significance the historical note of an older world. The sound, in Long Island, seemed despairingly to repeat old lessons, to hymn, in thinner tones, old weary warnings. Miss Ainger had a confused sense of being still in Italy. But the company were profoundly untroubled by any ideas of historical sequence in their surroundings. They were intent on a mimicry of English country life, and they sipped their coffee as unconscious of the contrasts they evoked as they were of comical effect in the goodwill of the garden to achieve antique charm at the mandate of the check-book. Yet the haze across the valley lent a veil of enchantment to the tame levels of the scene, and the hard glint of the sea beyond gave it an accent of completeness.

Miss Ainger felt that she could, perhaps, adjust herself quickly enough to the outward greatness and crudeness of her country; it was the inner correspondence that was unexpected. She got up to put her cup on the table, and Allie Harden, who sat nearest, quietly watched her as he leaned, an elbow on each arm of his chair, listening to a man who was telling him of a recent purchase in the neighborhood. A flush stayed like a rose in each cheek; and she turned away and strolled indoors, —a figure with an indescribable air of leisure and grace, trailing its transparent mourning over the bright bricks.

As she disappeared, Holworthy, in the group at the farther end, answered a murmured question about her. She had always lived in Italy. Her father had a post over there, secretary to the legation or something; but Colonel Ainger died some years ago, and the mother, after a long illness, had died last month. Miss Ainger had come home a fortnight ago, to find herself alone in the world, with five hundred a year from some tiny real estate, “ and not a blamed cent besides ” — the trustees had managed to get rid of the rest.

At the inevitable comment why a beautiful woman of thirty had not married, Holworthy referred them, laughing, to a youth with huge shoulders and a mop of auburn hair, who came up at that moment from the garage. He followed Edith Ainger, since her recent appearance on his horizon, like a battleship in the wake of a yacht, and he answered now promptly: —

“She’s got the tip all right if she wants to marry. Allie got me out to chauf for him this morning; his car has a weird carbureter — and he was grumpy at the maker and at Miss Ainger by turns, because he has to fish her a job somewhere. She’s a school pal of Mrs. Allie. He handed it out to me all the way. He ’d rather his Uncle William took her off his hands.”

At which there was anticipatory laughter, for Mr. William Harden was a disconcerting combination of twenty million dollars and a gravity as unbending as a physical law.

“ Well, uncle came down in the motor with them,” went on the youth soberly, “ and towards the end of the trip he had to give up his coat to her, and he caught love and a cold in one breath.”

Holworthy, who was authority for all the intricacies of interest in his set, murmured, —

“He better be quick about it. Herbert Hamilton knew her on the other side; and at the Errols’ last night I don’t think he was trying to persuade her to be anybody’s governess.”

“ Hamilton has no money — ”

But the athlete had gone to find his divinity,

In the long, dim drawing-room, the slender figure drooped at the piano like a muse of mourning. She was softly and abstractedly playing a nocturne, and the boy went wistfully out; the desolation of her face was as poignant as it was unconscious.

Yet she was rather savoring her impressions than brooding over her bereavement : the sense of aloofness in the easy good-fellowship of her friend, as they had rolled up through half a mile of fleckless driveway to the house, on the evening of her arrival, through young trees, small shrubbery, thin turf — emphatically a new world. Half an hour later, their party of four had drifted in the twilight across the vast hall, with soft rugs bridging the spaces on the marble floor, to the great wainscoted diningroom. A fire crackled on the hearth, and left the room, with the shaded candles on the table set at the farther end, in chiaroscuro. The effect was too pictorially dim to be modern, too luxurious to be ancient. Everywhere through the house was the evidence of an immense cash expenditure, a sort of bewildering mixture of loot: Flemish tapestries depended from the carved oak balustrade; an Italian mantelpiece, a sixteenth-century marble of priceless value, finished the drawing-room; mutilated Greek statues, quattrocento originals, and French cabinets, — a heterogeneous abundance unconnected by any hint of personality or preference.

Her wardrobe had been inadequate to this scale of things, and for the tennis meet, next day, Helen had insisted on loaning her guest a filmy embroidered shirt. “ And I ’ve got a little French hat of white chip with black iris — I’ve never worn it. You have fresh gloves? And white shoes ? Then you ’ll do.” She appeared greatly relieved. “ You ’re a dear not to mind. But we ’ll meet every one there, you see.”

Miss Ainger had been presented at most of the courts of Europe. She knew very well the splendor and grace of elaborate clothes; but for the afternoon at the Country Club she had had no misgivings. And she wore her borrowed plumage with an ironical sense of conferring more distinction on it than Mrs. Harden did on her own chiffon splendor.

A boy, who was captain of something athletic, singled her out with approval. “ Who’s the elegant one with the plain wash togs? Ginger! The way she flops those long lashes and then drags ’em up again.” She had turned, with much amusement, and answered that all enchantment was a matter of distance. If he would come nearer he would find it quite safe. He had ducked and blushed, abashed for the first time, apparently, in his robust life, and followed then like a lamb after flowers. It was later, through the open windows at bottle-pool, that she had heard a murmured “ Allie says she’s poorer than his cook.” And the boy’s loyal, “ Allie’s a skunk of a host if he did.” There had been the portentous uncle of Allie, — and Herbert Hamilton —

The slow notes ceased abruptly; she rose to escape the conflict of emotions that crowded on her with that name; and her face settled into new lines of strength as she walked across the hall to the nearest window-seat, picking up a book from the table on her way.

It chanced to be a collection of short stories by a master hand. She read one rapidly through, then turned the pages more casually, glancing at a phrase here, a, paragraph there. “ . . . A life the very interest of which is exactly that it is complicated . . . complicated,” the sentence continued, “ with the idea of acquired knowledge, and with that of imbibed modesty, of imposed deference upon differences of condition and character, of occasion and value.” Imposed deference on differences of condition — of occasion — She put down the book and closed her eyes. A great wave of nostalgia swept over her, for the people, the surroundings, the point of view which were forever as lost to her as the tragedy and beauty of that divine impoverished Italy which had so long been her home.

“But I don’t see why you should,” a high insistent voice exclaimed above the murmur of conversation outside the window.

“ She expects me to; she wrote the precise state of the case in her letter of acceptance.”

The women were chatting apart, while the men discussed the prices of the markets of the earth ; and the last voice, lower and more earnest, had been Helen’s.

“ Well, but you said she turned down Mr. William Harden last night ? ”

“ I don’t know. He was tremendously taken with her; she had the evening alone with him, and he left suddenly for the West this morning.”

“ What is she thinking of!” ejaculated a third. “ An offer like that, in her predicament! ”

The lady of the predicament felt her forehead burn.

“ I simply should n’t do anything, Helen. She ’s not a relative. What does she want ? ”

“ Oh! she wants me to arrange for her to be somebody’s secretary; or Allie to put himself under obligations to some man he hardly knows, to get her a place in an office. We ’re always being asked to do things like that.”

Edith got up and went to her room, the roses in her cheeks blazing like whiplashes. She looked blindly about at bay — how could she get out of this ? And her eyes fell on a time-table in a pigeon-hole of the elaborately equipped desk. There proved to be no train possible until 7.53 in the morning. And in the revulsion of her helplessness the whole scene of the evening before presented itself before her bruised vision. The careful arrangement of the motor yesterday, with the billionaire bachelor and herself on the back seat, and Helen’s premature congratulations after dinner as she had left her guest to an evening alone with him.

People loved money desperately in Europe, it was never omitted from any calculation; but here was the same grossness unredeemed by the suave elegance that makes magnificent barbarism splendid.

God help the Anglo-Saxon when he doffs religion; it is the only refinement he truly understands! She wondered from what source she plagiarized the irrelevant reflection, and caught sight of her wide eyes and contemptuous lips in the mirror. She flung a smile at the tragic mask; and being of the stuff that stiffens in the face of disaster, went down at once to join the company again.

At the foot of the stairs she discovered the small son of the household being brought in from his walk by his nurse. She took him in her arms as a great touring ear swung around the front; and turning at the sound, she found herself confronted with the magnate, who, like the sun, was the source of all this reduplicated prosperity.

I wonder if King Midas has ass’s ears, she thought, for it was impossible to mistake who he was. He had, at any rate, not stupid eyes, since he perceived that she was not the new governess of his grandson, and he greeted her with a deference that took in at a glance her personal distinction. On the loggia he made her sit by him.

“I wish you’d undertake his education, Miss Ainger. I never saw him so well behaved.”

She felt the exchange of intelligence in the eyes of the women as she answered, smiling, —

“I ’ll apply for the position, if you like.”

At which Helen gasped, “Miss Ainger has much better use for her time, father! ”

Edith continued to smile without speaking, and the old man turned to her, “ taken,” as his brother had been, by her repose. Even after a party of callers joined the group, there remained the impression of his approbation. He seldom spoke; he preferred to watch and listen; and when he did break silence, it was always with some concrete statement of fact or preference. Nevertheless, he was betrayed into a generalization in the course of the talk.

“I honor success wherever I find it, and I don’t want people around me who have n’t something to show; if they have made good, if they’ve succeeded, I ’ll help them.”

There was a respectful silence, and Edith, looking dreamily across the shimmering valley, murmured, —

“But there ’s such an imposing row of the unsuccessful! ”

He turned his hawk eyes on her, and she glanced tranquilly back under her tender lashes. “ Of poor immortals who died unsuccessful, and disgraced.” There was an uneasy pause. Was she going to instruct the great mind at her elbow? “ Socrates and Phidias, Abelard and Dante — all the way down the line, don’t you know, all the poor sages and poets and the priests of art,” she deprecated. Her smile of sympathetic amusement implied that her host was, of course, extravagantly drawing her on.

Mr. Harden’s face became a sort of pale plum-color. He had not heard names like that since he had had to listen to high-school essays. The boy, her adorer, struggled unsuccessfully with a chuckle, and Helen flung herself with terror on the silence.

“Father means small people, of course, Edith, not geniuses.”

“ But geniuses are indistinguishable from small people until posterity judges,” protested Edith with horrible unconsciousness. She lifted her brows incredulously. “ Tribute to success is — tribute to the merely obvious, is n’t it? ”

She was quite malicious of course, but she did not honestly know that with these people conversation of any genuine kind was the deadliest form of boredom. They avoided serious thinking as they did disease germs. The boy at her feet took up the word that was falling, without sound, in an abyss of icy distrust.

“ That ’s it, Mr. Harden, only I would n’t have known how to put it.”

Alexander Harden looked at the ingenuous, freckled face contemptuously. He seemed to give back the great man his poise.

“ Life, I think you ’ll find, young man, has got to be made to yield returns, and pretty practical ones.”

“ And blatantly visible,” added the boy sullenly.

“ Oh! come, Ted,” said Allie Harden, “ you ’re not strong on the know. Better leave that to Miss Ainger.”

She smiled across at him, amusement and irony between her lashes, “ Mille fois merci ! ”

One of the older women rattled open a fan. “ What in the world are you people all talking about ? ”

In the morning, her host had the felicitous idea of motoring in with his father, and the carriage drew up before the door to take the guest to the station. The husband stood by with the smile that seemed to him to serve all the courtesies of the occasion, and the wife kissed her friend with unabashed insincerity.

“ It’s been delightful to have you. You have such an air of the old world, Edith. You’ve got it in the very tones of your voice.” She began to shower compliments on her, and Edith, wondering why, reflected that they cost nothing.

“ I ’m ready,” she said impatiently to the groom, bowing her graceful good-bys.

“ We shall miss you so,” called Helen after her.

The two day-coaches were crowded with commuters, and she walked half through the car before she perceived a man lifting his hat and signaling to her. It was Herbert Hamilton.

“ I thought you would have stayed longer,” he said, after he had settled her near the window. “ Well, did they hx you ? ” he asked in a lower tone.

“ Fix me ? ” She was still in the grip of shuddering repulsion.

“ Yes. You let them know, did n’t you? You said you would take officework or anything. I hope I ’m not impertinent,” he added as she continued not to answer.

“ We did n’t mention it,” she murmured absently. She seemed to come to what he was saying from an immense distance.

“ But you said — I thought that was the point of your visit, that you were to talk things over. They could set you on the track; they’ve all no end of money — and — and governesses — ” he stammered helplessly before her continued abstraction.

“ That was in my letter of acceptance. We did n’t mention it,” she repeated.

He gasped, and as she continued to smile, By the Lord! ” he breathed.

She turned and looked out of the window, and he repeated, “ By the Lord! ”

“ Please don’t,” she protested, “ because I am almost physically nauseated myself.”

He looked down at her, all his heart in his eyes. It was his chance; he had waited five years for it, yet it had come brutally enough at last. He hesitated, and took the plunge.

“ Edith — I’d be devoted to you. I wish you would — could think of it — ” the words stuck in his throat.

She swallowed hard and blinked, but the reaction was too great. He looked away, blinking himself. She had n’t a relative in the world, the distinguished, graceful thing; and whatever paying work she did would be sure to make her conspicuous anyway.

But the gust of desolation swept down her fine self-possession only for a moment. She lifted her head, and looked at him with whimsical irony through her blurred eyes.

“ There’s a phrase in The Lives of the Saints that the old sacristan at Ranieri used to recite for us, do you remember ? ‘ and he died in the odor of sanctity.’ I’ve been living in the odor of affluence, and I am still upset from it, a sort of moral mal-de-mer.”

She was proudly ignoring her unfallen tears. But Hamilton waited, heartsick, for his answer.

“ The Marquis di Ranieri had the right of way, yet you did n’t marry him. And your dot would have been big enough then, — I mean, the sheer necessities of the case would have been covered. He cared desperately, and he was a decent chap,”

His voice rose and fell with his unspoken hope.

“ The poor Marchese would marry me still, without wisdom or prudence, Bertie.”

She let her gray eyes rest in his, with deliberate sweetness, and he drank in their lambent beauty thirstily, for a long moment.

“ Then we — might have — five years ago — ”

“ Three,” she corrected, and the lowered lids shook down crystal drops.

“ After I saved the boat that time? ” he questioned in bewildered delight.

“ After you went away and the light went out,” she answered, the wet lashes veiling her confession.

“ Oh,” he groaned, and groped for her hand.

She pushed his softly away and looked steadily ahead. If he thought that she was going to let him spoil their perfect moment by any awkward anticipations! Her eyes swept down the car. No one was observing them, and she glanced back at him with quick, wild sympathy, as she took up the other subject, tremulously, with a rueful summarizing, as if the voice of Love had been but an irrelevant parenthesis.

“ All the same, I never thought to find myself ranged against the aristocracy, any aristocracy. I simply believe in the best, you know, all along the line.”

He was much amused.

“ My dear lady, aristocracy over here — between democracy and plutocracy it has the deuce of a time. But joy, Edith, and peace, they’ve always been able to get along without — affluence.”

” Don’t speak that word,” she said. “ It’s outside the kingdom of Heaven.”