“The busy men are nobler, I hope,” said I.
“You shall see. I will give you the entrée to the other worlds, — the business world, the literary world, the religious world, all of them. Possibly you may not have quite outlived your illusions. Possibly you may have fancied that men are to be trusted on a new continent. Possibly you may believe in the success of a society and polity based on the assumption that man-kind is not an ass when he is not a villain, and vice versa.”
“I had some such fancy.”
“Better be disenchanted now, than disappointed by and by. Apropos, don’t suppose I often degrade myself to the level of that swinish multitude of scandal-mongers. But when I saw them so greedy, I could not forbear giving them diet, according to their stomachs.”
“What an infernal humbug you are, Densdeth!” said Raleigh, marking a five-shot; “you love to spoil those boys, and keep the men spoilt. If you were out of the world, they would all reform, and go, to sucking honey, instead of poison.”
“We are all humbugs,” rejoined Densdeth; “I want to put Byng on his guard against me and the rest. He might get some unhappy notion, that in America men are brave and women are pure.”
I kept my protest to myself, willing to study Densdeth further.
Densdeth led the conversation, as indeed he never failed to do. He was a keen, hard analyzer of men, utterly sceptical to good motives. There is always just such a proportion of selfishness in every man’s every act; there must be, because there is a man in it. It may be the larger half, the lesser half, a fraction, the mere dust of an atom, that makes the scale descend. Densdeth always discovered the selfish purpose, put it in focus, held up a lens of his own before it. At once it grew, and spread, and seemed the whole.
Densdeth was the Apostle of Disenchantment. No paradisiacal innocence where he entered. He revealed evil everywhere. That was at the core, according to him, however smooth the surface showed. Power over others consisted in finding that out. And that power was the only thing, except sensuality, worth having.
Thus I condense my impressions of him. I did not know him, in and in, out and out, after this first morning at the club, nor after many such meetings. I learnt him slowly.
Yet I think I divined him from the first. I did not state to my own mind, then, why he captivated me, — why he sometimes terrified me, — why I had a hateful love for his society. In fact, the power of deeply analyzing character comes with a maturity that I had not attained. I was to pay price for my knowledge. Densdeth’s shadow was to fall upon me. My danger with evil personified, in such a man as Densdeth, was to sear into me a profound and saving horror of evil. One does not read the moral, until the tale is told.
We played our billiards. One o’clock struck. We left Raleigh to be bored with the world and sick of himself, to knock the balls about, and wish he had been born a blacksmith or a hod-carrier.
Densdeth and I walked to the Denmans.
“You will see a very captivating young lady,” he said, with a sharp and rapid glance at me.
I was aware of a conscious look. He caught it also.
“Aha, Byng! a little tenderness for the old playmate! Well, perhaps she has been waiting for you. She has looked coldly on scores of lovers.”
There was a familiarity in his tone which offended me. It seemed to sneer away the delicacy I felt towards one with whom I had childish passages of admiration ten years ago. I was angry at his disposing of my destiny and hers at once. In turn, I looked sharply at him, and said, in the same careless tone, “How does Miss Denman compare with her sister?”
Not a spark of emotion in his impassive face. There might have been a slight smile, as if to say, “This boy fancies that he is able to probe me, and learn why I courted the less beautiful sister, and what I did to drive her mad and to death.” But the smile vanished, and he said, quietly: “We will not speak of the dead, if you please. Among the living, Miss Denman stands alone. A great prize, Byng! People that pretend to know say that Mr. Denman is a millionnaire. See what a grand house he lives in!”
“Grand houses sometimes make millionnaires paupers,” I remarked, thinking of what Churm had told me.
“I am quite sure no pauper owns this,” Densdeth said, measuring it with a look, as we walked up the steps.
I remembered what Churm had said, and fancied I saw at least mortgagee, if not proprietor, in my companion’s eye. Was he inspecting to see if his house needed a trowelful of mortar, or a gutter repaired?
Emma Denman
Densdeth rang. We were admitted at once. The footman introduced us into a parlor fronting on the avenue. The interior of the house was worthy of its stately architecture. I do not describe. People, not things, passions, not objects, are my topics.
Presently, in a mirror at the end of the long suite of rooms, I was aware of the imaged figure of a young lady approaching. Semblance before substance, instead of preparing me for the interview, it almost startled me. I half fancied that shadowy reflection to be the spirit of the dead sister watching. The living sister was coming in the body; the presence of the sister dead tarried in the background, curious to see what would grow from the germ of a childish friendship revived.
In a moment the lady herself stepped forward.
No thought of shadows any more!
She, the substance, took a stand among the foremost figures in my drama.
The effect of the room where I sat was rich and festal, almost to the verge of gorgeousness. Had sorrow dared to intrude among such courtly splendors? Carpets thick with the sunburnt flowers of late summer, — had these felt the trailing step that carries grief on to another moment of grief? Heavy crimson curtains, — must these have uttered muffled echoes when a sigh, outward bound, drifted against their folds? And deep-toned pictures, full of victory and jubilee, — could they not outface the pale countenance of mourning in that luxurious room? It made the power of sorrow and the bitterness of death seem far more giant in their strength, that they had crowded in hither, and hung a dim film of funereal black before all this magnificence.
Crimson was the chief color in carpet, curtains, and walls. This deep, rich background magically heightened the effect of the pale, elegant figure in deep mourning who was approaching.
Emma Denman passed in front of the mirror, erasing her own reflection there. She came forward, and offered her hand to me with shy cordiality. The shyness remembered the old familiar playmate of the days of “little husband and little wife”; the cordiality was for the unforgotten friend.
I found no change, only development, in Emma Denman. Still the same fitful fascination that had been her charm as a child. It seized me at once. I lost my power of quiet discrimination. I can hardly analyze her power even now. These subtle influences refuse to be subject to my chemical methods and my formulas.
It was not the power of beauty, alone. Physical beauty she had, but something higher also. Nor spiritual beauty alone, but something other. The mere flesh-and-blood charms, lilies and roses, the commonplace traits of commonplace women, whose inventory describes the woman, she could afford to disdain. It was a face that forbade all formal criticism. No passport face. Other women one names beautiful for a feature, a smile, or a dimple, — that link between a feature and a smile. Hers was a face suffused with the fine essence of beauty. It seemed to wrong the whole, if one let eyes or mind make any part distinct.
Grace she had, — exquisite grace. Grace is perhaps a more subtle charm than beauty. Beauty is passive; grace is active. Beauty reveals the nature; grace interprets it. Beauty wins; grace woos.
Emma Denman’s coloring did not classify her. Her hair was in