What may we read? a conversation story

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

Chapter I

IT was in the summer of 1892 on the White Star Steam packet Majestic, one of the finest specimens of naval architecture then saiHng the high seas.

The ship had Hngered for some time awaiting the mail in Queenstown harbour. The town and its hills were smiling a cheery God-speed at them in the sunlight, with a hospitable Irish twinkle, which seemed to say: "Sorry to lose you; come back soon and we'll have a joke and a laugh together," Then there was busy running to and fro along the gangway; sailors carrying huge mailbags on their bent backs. — "What do all those people find to write about ? What mass of tragedy and comedy, of tenderness, hatred and greed may those thousands of letters contain?" — The huge bags were piled up even on the paddle-box and were weighing down the tender. When these had

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been stowed away, there was the sharp tinkle of a bell, a few short orders, a slight crunching noise, a business-like greeting between the officers, and the huge hull, freed from its obtrusive little parasite which sheered off, steamed slowly out into the open sea, leaving the fair shores of the green island on its lee.

It was a heavenly August afternoon. The sea, like a sheet of glass, was twinkling in the sunshine, the light breeze was probably only awakened by the speed of the steamer forging rapidly ahead.

There were not many passengers on board, so there was ample room for all on deck. Some were walking about restlessly, looking back in their thoughts or ahead, engrossed in their own inner moods; some were chatting together in groups, or were pointing to the shore, where they identified the various bays and towns. There were families, old friends, newly made acquaintances; scenes of recognition, more or less demonstrative, were interrupting or enlivening the continuous swaying to and fro of the stream of promenaders; some were eagerly looking at all the other passengers, spying for acquaintances, or anxious to make new ones as soon as possible ; while others were strolling listlessly or demurely, with blank expressions

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on their faces, determined to manifest no special interest in the others and no anxiety, or even desire, to increase the number of their acquaintances. But most were comfortably seated in their steamer chairs and were either looking over the sea dreamily or watching the receding shore. Others were reading.

Among those thus seated was a young lady, Ruth Ward of Boston, and a youngish man of about thirty, George L. Van Zant of New York. They did not know each other. Their chairs nearly joined, hers somewhat sheltered behind the projection of a deck-cabin, his further forward and obliquely to hers, so that she could observe him, while he had to turn slightly to the right to see her.

The girl had every now and then cast an interested glance at the man, who was reading what was evidently a French novel. Its yellow paper cover alone stamped it as the production of one of the firms, Calmann-Levy, Charpentier, Firmin Didot or some such Paris publisher.

It was not only the intentness with which he read the book that attracted her attention and aroused her curiosity; for he was not an overdemonstrative reader. On the contrary, his knit brow remained unchanged as he followed the story

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he was reading and there was a look of disgust, rather than one of fascinated interest, in his face. But her curiosity was further stimulated by the fact that she could not succeed in reading the title of the book. She wondered whether it was intentional that, from the moment he appeared with the book under his arm, she had not been able to get a good look at the title page. For when he came walking up to his chair with the book under his arm, the title-page was pressed to his side, while the back with the announcement of other books in smaller type, illegible from where she sat, was the only part of the book he presented to view. Even when it lay on his lap, after he had sat down, the back was uppermost, and the moment he began to read, after finishing the first page, he at once turned the page with the title round the back, continuing carefully to hold the book, not spread open, but as if it was a single page.

Was this an intentional act of concealment on his part, or was it quite accidental ? She could not make this out. Nor could the young man reading have answered her. Perhaps a desire to hide the title was latent and emanated from an instinctive or half-conscious impulse.

With a feeling of impatience and disappointment she had given up her attempt to read the

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title, and resolved to cast the stupid matter out of her mind, as, after all, quite unimportant, and she began to look over the sea with her fresh young face bent forward, dreaming. But a somewhat saddened and yet eager look that came into her eyes as she gazed, a slight twitching about the mouth, a touch of drawnness about the cheek counteracted the first impression of freshness ; and the eagerness of the eyes disturbed the repose. They were sunk too deeply to convey peace and calm happiness or serenity, though their lightness was thereby warmed to a more spiritual glow.

Her thoughts or dreams were not continuous as she gazed over the sea ; for now and again she would direct her attention to one of the promenaders or would examine some object on the deck ; while her fingers would intertwine in restless play, though she sat quite still; and then she would fold her hands quietly in her lap again. Most frequently she would turn and examine the man reading, almost against her will.

She evidently tried not to look towards him and her glances in his direction became more and more infrequent, when suddenly her attention was fixed on him by a change in the hitherto immovable countenance. Had she not before familiarised herself with the face and its expression, the change

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would hardly have been noticed ; but she now saw how the knit brow contracted into a decided frown, how the lips were tightly pressed together, the corners of the mouth drawn down in a manifest burst of indignation and disgust.

With a sudden thrust or jerk of his whole body he rose to his feet from his reclining position and stood erect. There was something violent in this movement which might have been accompanied by some expletive. But this sudden outburst was at once checked. He paused, then walked slowly to the rails, and calmly threw the book into the sea. He did not stop to watch it ; but with composed face he turned round, took his cigarette-case from his pocket, lit a cigarette and strolled quietly away.

For one moment his eye had caught those of the girl watching him with fixed intentness, and his colour seemed to rise. He was evidently displeased with being watched and, still more, with having ostentatiously given way to a rapid impulse in the sight of strangers.

"Just what I should have expected of him," she muttered to herself between her teeth, as she looked after his receding form. "Bourgeois! Financier! — a bad mixture!"

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Chapter II

RUTH had noticed George Van Zant with artistic interest the moment she had left London for Liverpool. They had travelled together in the same carriage on the London and Northwestern Railway. She had liked his face; but, above all, it had fascinated her as an artist. It was clean-shaven, with finely cut features, somewhat sallowed and worn, perhaps hardened by a passionate life. The firm mouth had a remote suggestion of sensuality in the fuller lower lip with its softer curves; but this was at once dispelled by the more decided lines of the thinner upper lip, accentuated in its outline by the light-coloured border between the red of the lip and the dark grey-blue where the moustache had been shaven. With people who shave constantly this peculiar accentuation in the outline of the upper lip often lends an exaggerated impression of hardness to the mouth. She then noticed the strong, slightly protruding, though not pointed chin, and the flat jaws and cheeks, all too angular to suit the "classicists," but pleasing to her in their simple massiveness. A few strokes of the brush would fix their

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character on the canvas. But the eyes, of an undefined colour, sunk deep beneath the brow, presented delightful masses of light and shade, and lent to the face a dreamy, nay, a soft expression, which contrasted markedly with the decision suggested by mouth and chin. The feature which interested her least was the nose. It was too "classical," too exasperatingly "perfect" ; and "perfection" always suggested want of character to her. It was rather long than short, thin than thick, though the upper part of the bridge was broad, the sides rather flat and straight as they joined the cheeks. The nostrils were delicately curved and suited the work of a gem engraver rather than that of a painter. "Too much line-work, not enough planes and masses for colour and brush," she thought, as she turned from examining the face, fearing that he might have noticed her stare.

She had studied it all as an artist and imagined herself drawing the face. She longed to have him before her easel. "It would be difficult not to make the face and its expression too hard or else to lose all character" — she summarised her subjective criticism as a painter.

She was further puzzled in determining his nationality and what might be his occupation.

When he entered the railway carriage his dress

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and bearing made her think him an EngHshman ; but the way he instinctively raised his hat indefinitely to all the occupants led her to put him down as a Frenchman. On the whole, though, the general cast of the face, with mouth, chin and jaw, marked a type with which she was familiar in some severe American statesmen, a refined Yankee type. But she always remembered it in old men with grey hair. If only he would take off his hat so that she could see the top of his head ! She was sure the hair was strikingly thick and smooth. Yet this was a young man.

Was he a man of affairs or profession ? No. He did not fit into any one of their categories as known to her, and a suggestion in him from the one was at once contradicted by something in his dress, manner or bearing, belonging to the other. An artist ? Perhaps. But for this he appeared too calm; nor had the sedate elegance of his dress, with a touch of the sportsman about it, anything of the originality which always shows itself somewhere in an artist's clothes. He was probably an ordinary man of leisure. A gentleman, a man of refinement, he certainly was.

He had helped her with her hand-luggage as they left the train for the hotel ; and she had then lost sight of him until the disagreeable moment

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when she found herself packed together with a couple of hundred other travellers on the tender which was to take them to the Majestic.

While all the passengers were suffering from the inconvenience of being hustled, hand-luggage and all, in the insufficient space allotted to them on one small tender, and were grumblingly waiting in irritated disgust till the huge mass of larger luggage was transported from the dock to their boat, an empty tender of the same build and dimensions was lying along side with several large trunks and boxes and some elegant hand-bags on its deck — an insignificant mass compared to the bulk which was continually increasing on their own. Presently aboard this boat there came in cool leisureliness, chatting pleasantly with one another, a group of six or seven people : two older couples, a smart young woman or two, and the travelling companion whose face had interested her so much on the way from Lx)ndon.

When this party, cool and unruffled, smiling and laughing, and looking down in compassionate wonder at the mass of perspiring and grumbling travellers packed like sheep on the boat beside them, had settled themselves on the quarter-deck, the captain gave his signal, and off they steamed calmly towards the Majestic, leaving the other tender with Its load to wait for another half hour until the stray "sheep" and the stray luggage had all been collected. They would, no doubt, arrive on board the Majestic long before the others, would have the whole ship and all the stewards to themselves, would be comfortably and quietly settled in their cabins, with their steamer-luggage unpacked, before the rushing mob arrived, raging about to find their cabins, shouting for stewards, collecting their trunks and bags, clamouring for those that had been mislaid, crowded and hampered at every step, and sitting down wearily in exhaustion, giving it all up, their nerves unstrung with the nausea of excitement before the steamer had even begun to move.

Ruth, in the obscurity of her cramped position, holding her small dressing bag with her few valuables tightly in her hand, pressed and almost submerged by the mass of people about her, watched the luxurious party on the deck of the neighbouring tender. She followed every movement of her London travelling companion, who had busied himself in attending to one of the ladies and was now conversing with a portly and ruddy man of about sixty, whose assured air of self-importance marked him as the chief organiser and leader of the party — a real boss. She

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overheard the remarks and comments of the people about her, who were all looking at the same scene. For a moment the mere fact that she had been travelling in the same carriage with the young man, who formed part of this objectionable company, whose face she had studied with such interest and every line of which she seemed to know intimately, — for a moment she felt an impulse like loyalty to friends, as if she must stand up for him in the face of such flaunting vulgarity and shoddyism. She watched him as he moved about; and every movement, the calm, almost retiring, manner in which he never showed himself fully to the assembled crowd, and the almost studious attempt not to look at them, made her feel that he was not of the party, that he really was a different kind of man.

At this moment he was standing with his back to them, leaning against the railings, impassive and immovable, while the two young ladies of the party, smartly dressed and exuberant in their lively chatter, were talking to him and were directly facing the crowd below. They seemed to be enjoying the very contrast of their comfort. Ruth felt sure that they were making remarks, meant to be comic, on the bedraggled, excited or wearied looks of the travellers below ; and she be-

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gan to resent the higher opinion she had formed of him before. How could he stand that? How could he be associated with such people at all ?

"Why, don't you know who he is?" she heard a heavy-moustached, showily dressed man in a light suit and a new top hat, evidently a "drummer," say to his lean, dyspeptic-looking Western colleague in a round hat and new frock coat, "Why that is Sam Beek, the J. Y. O. railway king. He's a 'plunger!' He could buy up half the kings in Europe if he liked."

He imparted this information in a loud voice with gusto, and evidently felt that his familiarity with such a notable reflected distinction upon himself. He continued to give details of the wealth of the railway king, of the big deals of this — the "smartest man west of the Rockies" ; and took pains to mention the names of all the parties concerned, carefully adding the abbreviated Christian names as he rolled them off.

"And who is that tall old man with the grey whiskers and the white cravat?" the round-hatted man continued to ask. "He must be a parson. Perhaps he's the parson and the young fellow the doctor. The one smooths the road to heaven, while the other blocks it up with medicine chests, and both of them stoop down and pick up the gold

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which he drops on the rails as he steams along on the J. Y. O. express."

A tall stout man in a black coat and ostentatious white tie, — accompanied by a thin, worn, plaintive looking woman in a bonnet, and a tall, burly, red-faced girl in a white linen suit with crimson ribbons, the image of the round-faced man, — turned, twisting his fat neck, and stared with frowning eyes at the Western "drummer." The young lady in white spoke at her father rather than to him, and her words were clearly meant for her neighbours.

"Mr. Sandeman is not only a Christian, but even a gentleman. If all the people one met were like him, it would be a pleasure to travel, wouldn't it, father?" There had evidently been some travelling altercation between the "drummers" and the clergyman before.

"Yes, daughter," said the clergyman in a drawling voice, singing and nasal ; "Mr. Sandeman might well be a clergyman. I have often found him more familiar with some portions of theologic lore than myself. I should think that a man of such unbounded Christian charity as the founder of the Home for Strayed Revellers worthy of respect, even from heathens. I have seen no nobler or more practically efficacious in-

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stitution in the whole of my European wanderings, — excepting perhaps the Golgotha Asylum of Life in the Holy Land, and ..."

Here the voice of the top-hatted "drummer" drowned that of the clergyman. He had been puzzled before as to the identity of the whitewhiskered man on the other tender. Now he bawled out.

"Bill Sandeman is one of the biggest philanthropists in New York. He knows more about running an Asylum, or a Home for Inebriates, or a penitentiary, museum or college, than any man in the country. He is the real head of the solidest commission house in New York. H it wasn't for him, Brewster, Sandeman and Lucas would have bust up in the '73 panic. Old Charlie Brewster and Sam Lucas lost their heads. They are nowhere for cool sharpness. ..."

And then Ruth listened to the family in front of her. The meek and worn old lady was saying in a moaning yet penetrating voice to her husband :

"He is in very truth a very good and noble man — and considerate. You know, Abraham, that his was the first name to that letter from your parishioners urging you to take a year's trip to the Holy Land to restore your nervous debility. What a pity you did not see him on shore, and we might

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have been spared all this annoyance." And she looked longingly up at the deck of the millionaire's chartered vessel.

"I shook hands with Mr. Sandeman in the vestibule of the hotel," the husband continued pompously. "He was very busy with his party. He is . . ."

And here the drawl of the Western drummer again caught her ear.

"I suppose that young fellow is an English lord. Our rich men must always have a lord hanging about them, that's part of the show. I suppose he is fooling round one of those girls and their oof. That's what's ruining our country, the unpatriotic foolery of our rich men ! As if some of our young fellows out West wasn't as good and ten times better. ..."

And she listened no more.

Chapter III

MEANWHILE, poor George Van Zant was quite innocent, and was in no way to blame for the ostentatious surroundings which elicited all this comment. It had all come about very simply and he had drifted into the party without intention or forethought.

On the morning of sailing he had found himself face to face with Mr. Sandeman in the hall of the hotel at Liverpool. The luggage arranged in masses about the hall, the porters and travellers running about — all betokened the departure of one of the great Atlantic liners. Van Zant had a physical shrinking from such bustle and confusion ; it was almost acute pain to him ; it paralysed his will and put him into a kind of hypnotic trance. Instead of bracing up his energies and arranging for his own departure, he was lolling about the hall, watching the activity and confusion about him with distant eyes, as if he were witnessing a play. His meeting with Mr. Sandeman recalled him to reality and made him at once conscious of the task before him and the part he had set himself to play in a new life, contrastng so markedly with his

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ten years of study and calm contemplation free from responsibilities.

He had deliberately and firmly resolved to take up a new career in America, to forego contemplation, fastidious reserve, the search for, and the enjoyment of, life's refinements, with the careful avoidance of all conditions that were vulgar or commonplace and ungainly. Above all he meant to seek for what was best in the people he met, and to show them the appreciativeness and affability which the good in them deserved.

Though he had not seen Mr. Sandeman since he was a schoolboy, he recalled the fact that he was his father's friend, a truly honourable man, and one possessed of intellectual and moral qualities beyond those which made him a successful business man and a prominent philanthropist. And herein he was right. For Mr. Sandeman had not only read a great deal (with perhaps a too narrow exclusiveness as regards the literature he dogmatically undertook to class as superior and elevating), but had travelled much. Above all, he possessed dignity of character and manner, the result of this very self-reliance and dogmatic atone-ness with his main views of life. There was no vacillation and uncertainty of touch about him, which often detract from the dignity of people

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more just and refined in feeling than Mr, Sandeman, and who perceive and consider the moral atmosphere in which they find themselves and adapt themselves to it.

Mr. Sandeman's greeting of his old friend's son was cordial ; and when he heard the younger man's dread of the embarkation, he at once said :

"Oh, you must join our party. Mr, Beek and I have chartered a tender and we expect an omnibus in a quarter of an hour. My wife is rather delicate and I am glad to spare her this trial. There she is. Do you remember her? Come, let me introduce you to the other members of our party."

And so he was presented to Mrs. Sandeman and the others.

Mrs. Sandeman was a refined and matronly woman, essentially quiet and mild, and yet with a suspicion of firmness and decision lurking somewhere well concealed from view. She had beautiful white hair, and soft blue eyes — a truly lovable face such as many American mothers have. It must be that in them the refinement of the world and of an active social life is thoroughly blended with a domestic tone of warm comfort and family ajffection, net loudly obtrusive and clamorous as is the case in France and Germany, and still not as off-hand and suppressed as in England. Her large

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family of boys and girls was scattered about the world, all following, without constant interference or claims of filial devotion, their several vocations and interests, and yet manifesting childlike submission and tenderness in their frequent visits to the parental home. Mrs. Sandeman at once suggested the woman of the world, who knew and appreciated all the niceties of social manners. One could imagine her dressed brilliantly and in excellent taste with rare jewels — though she now wore a travelling dress of extreme simplicity — dispensing a graceful hospitality, and quietly encouraging the shy and subduing the exuberant unknown to them. At the same time, and above all, one felt in her the mother who had sat by the bedside of her children when they were ill, had mourned deeply over the death of a little one, had played with them, quietly reprimanded them, gently but firmly ; had mended her girls' dolls and sewn their dresses, had listened with unfeigned earnestness to the impressive account of her boys' games and the internal affairs of their school life, had welcomed and treated as young friends her children's friends, when they spent weeks with them at their country home during the holidays. One knew that she was familiar with every department of her great household, that she kept

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careful account of the large expenditure it entailed, and that she entered as well into all the complicated financial transactions which her husband confided to her sympathetic judgment, when he returned harassed from business, and often got help and clear-sighted advice from her. One felt convinced that she kept in gentle control the restive Irish and other foreign servants in her large household, and was a friend and adviser to many a "Lizzy" and "Mary" among them when they were in trouble, even long after they had left her service. And thus, having well begun her charity at home, one felt sure that there was enough cordial vitality left in her to go far afield and abroad and dispense her gentle kindness to poor and sick, as well as to rich and sane in the wide world, far away from her own domestic circle.

Van Zant was so much and so pleasantly engrossed in Mrs. Sandeman, who at once spoke of his own parents and of bygone days, that he hardly noticed the stout, red-faced man who shook him cordially by the hand with a "glad to make your acquaintance, sir." Beside him were two showily dressed, lively girls, who seemed full of good spirits and an elderly lady, evidently their mother.

He had completely recovered from his troubled 33

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and dazed fear of the embarkation ; and when he was told that all he need do was to point out his own luggage, and then found himself in the omnibus with his new friends, driving to the landing stage, he blessed the kind star that had brought such good fortune to him.

But the moment he stepped on the deck of the tender and witnessed the scene beside them, he felt an uneasiness and a sadness of heart which made him regret the more physical discomfort of the embarkation in mass. Not only did the direct and immediate impression of this flaunting contrast, with its shock to his social feeling and taste, produce a sickening revolt and protest ; but it flew in the face of all his settled convictions, which he had thought out and lived through these many years, until they had become part of his emotional nature, a mental habit and instinct.

After much reading, thought and experience of life, he had come to the conclusion that positive socialism was an ideal unattainable in the immediate future, and, therefore, undesirable as a practical guide to individual action in the present. He did not think it necessary, nor desirable, that the standards of refined living should be lowered. The advancement of comfort and even luxury, which a highly developed civilisation had painfully evolved

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after ages of struggle with barbarism, he felt convinced ought to be jealously guarded. For savagery was never wholly extinct in human communities, nay it was always in full offensive armour, to throw down and annihilate what man's intellect and taste had snatched from the struggle of material existence.

Wherever individual wealth could create and produce such conditions of refinement — even though they could not be extended to all — it was right that they should be confirmed and enjoyed. There was nothing wrong in that his party should use every legitimate means of avoiding the tortures of the ordinary embarkation, and should charter a steamer, if their means allowed them to do this, — especially in view of the delicate health of an elderly lady. Yet, though there was no need of secrecy, it should have been done quietly and privately. But Van Zant felt that thus to flaunt the exceptional good fortune, which wealth enabled one to enjoy, in the face of so many people less favourably placed — even suffering the pain which one had succeeded in avoiding — was unsocial, besides being in bad taste.

As he stood on the deck of the tender talking to the two Miss Beeks, he felt impatient, even angry, with them for their insensibility to all these facts ;

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and when they pointed to the crowd and remarked upon their bedraggled looks, he feared that he would betray his irritation, and so he left them as the tender moved off, and sat beside Mrs. Sandeman.

She noticed his altered mood and at once discerned the cause. She had similar feelings herself, and was offended in her taste. But when they talked it over, compassion for their fellow-travellers, especially the women and children, was uppermost in her ; while he dwelt more upon the general social aspect of the question.