An Open-Eyed Conspiracy. William Dean Howells
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Spanish men, listening as if to important things, and paying her that respectful attention which always amuses and puzzles me. In view of what we think their low estimate of women, I cannot make out whether it is a personal tribute to some specific woman whom they regard differently from all the rest of her sex, or whether they choose to know in her for the nouce the abstract woman who is better than woman in the concrete. I am sure I have never seen men of any other race abandon themselves to such a luxury of respect as these black and grey bearded Spaniards of leaden complexion showed this dumpy personification of womanhood, with their prominent eyes bent in homage upon her, and their hands trembling with readiness to seize their hats off in reverence. It appeared presently that the matter they were all canvassing so devoutly was the question of where she should sit. It seemed to be decided that she could not do better than sit just at that point. When she actually took a chair the stately convocation ended, and its members, with low obeisances, dispersed themselves in different directions. They had probably all been sitting with her the whole afternoon on the verandah of the Everett House, where their race chiefly resorts in Saratoga, and they were availing themselves of this occasion to appear to be meeting her, after a long interval, in society.
I said to myself that of course they believed Saratoga was still that centre of American fashion which it once was, and that they came and went every summer, probably in the belief that they saw a great deal of social gaiety there. This made me think, by a natural series of transitions, of the persons of my American idyl, and I looked about the pavilion everywhere for them without discovering, till the last, that they were just behind me.
I found the fact touching. They had not wished to be in any wise beholden to me, and had even tried to reject my friendly readiness to know them better; but they had probably sought my vicinity in a sense of their loneliness and helplessness, which they hoped I would not divine, but which I divined instantly. Still, I thought it best not to show any consciousness of them, and we sat through the first part of the concert without taking notice of one another. Then the man leaned forward and touched me on the shoulder.
“Will you let me take your programme a minute?”
“Why, certainly,” said I.
He took it, and after a vague glance at it he passed it to his wife, who gave it in turn to the young girl. She studied it very briefly, and then, after a questioning look, offered it back to me.
“Won’t you keep it?” I entreated. “I’ve quite done with it.”
“Oh, thank you,” she answered in her tender voice, and she and the wife looked hard at the man, whom they seemed to unite in pushing forward by that means.
He hemmed, and asked, “Have you been in Saratoga much?”
“Why, yes,” I said; “rather a good deal. My wife and I have been here three or four summers.”
At the confession of my married state, which this statement implicated, the women exchanged a glance, I fancied, of triumph, as if they had been talking about me, and I had now confirmed the ground they had taken concerning me. Then they joined in goading the man on again with their eyes.
“Which hotel,” he asked, “should you say had the most going on?”
The young girl and the wife transferred their gaze to me, with an intensified appeal in it. The man looked away with a certain shame—the shame of a man who feels that his wife has made him make an ass of himself. I tried to treat his question, by the quantity and quality of my answer, as one of the most natural things in the world; and I probably deceived them all by this effort, though I am sure that I was most truthful and just concerning the claims of the different hotels to be the centre of excitement. I thought I had earned the right to ask at the end, “Are you stopping at the Grand Union?”
“No,” he said; and he mentioned one of the smaller hotels, which depend upon the great houses for the entertainment of their guests. “Are you there?” he asked, meaning the Grand Union.
“Oh no,” I said; “we couldn’t do that sort of thing, even if we wanted.” And in my turn I named the modest hotel where we were, and said that I thought it by all odds the pleasantest place in Saratoga. “But I can’t say,” I added, “that there is a great deal going on there, either. If you want that sort of thing you will have to go to some of the great hotels. We have our little amusements, but they’re all rather mild.” I kept talking to the man, but really addressing myself to the women. “There’s something nearly every evening: prestidigitating, or elocutioning, or a little concert, or charades, or impromptu theatricals, or something of that sort. I can’t say there’s dancing, though really, I suppose, if any one wanted to dance there would be dancing.”
I was aware that the women listened intelligently, even if the man did not. The wife drew a long breath, and said, “It must be very pleasant.”
The girl said—rather more hungrily, I fancied—“Yes, indeed.”
I don’t know why their interest should have prompted me to go on and paint the lily a little, but I certainly did so. I did not stop till the music began again, and I had to stop. By the time the piece was finished I had begun to have my misgivings, and I profited by the brief interval of silence to say to the young girl, “I wouldn’t have you think we are a whirl of gaiety exactly.”
“Oh no,” she answered pathetically, as if she were quite past expecting that or anything like it.
We were silent again. At the end of the next piece they all rose, and the wife said timidly to me, “Well, good-evening,” as if she might be venturing too far; and her husband came to her rescue with “Well, good-evening, sir.” The young girl merely bowed.
I did not stay much longer, for I was eager to get home and tell my wife about my adventure, which seemed to me of a very rare and thrilling kind. I believed that if I could present it to her duly, it would interest her as much as it had interested me. But somehow, as I went on with it in the lamplight of her room, it seemed to lose colour and specific character.
“You are always making up these romances about young girls being off and disappointed of a good time ever since we saw that poor little Kitty Ellison with her cousins at Niagara,” said Mrs. March. “You seem to have it on the brain.”
“Because it’s the most tragical thing in the world, and the commonest in our transition state,” I retorted. I was somewhat exasperated to have my romance treated as so stale a situation, though I was conscious now that it did want perfect novelty. “It’s precisely for that reason that I like to break my heart over it. I see it every summer, and it keeps me in a passion of pity. Something ought to be done about it.”
“Well, don’t you try to do anything, Basil, unless you write to the newspapers.”
“I suppose,” I said, “that if the newspapers could be got to take hold of it, perhaps something might be done.” The notion amused me; I went on to play with it, and imagined Saratoga, by a joint effort of the leading journals, recolonised with the social life that once made it the paradise of young people.
“I have been writing to the children,” said my wife, “and telling them to stay on at York Harbour if the Herricks want them so much. They would hate it here. You say the girl looked cross. I can’t exactly imagine a cross goddess.”
“There were lots of cross goddesses,” I said rather crossly myself; for I saw that, after having trodden my romance in the dust, she was willing I should pick it up again and shake it off, and I wished to show her that I was not to be so lightly appeased.
“Perhaps I was thinking of angels,” she murmured.
“I distinctly didn’t say she was an angel,” I returned.
“Now, come, Basil; I see you’re keeping something back. What did you try to do for those people? Did you tell them where you were stopping?”
“Yes, I did. They asked me, and I told them.”
“Did you brag the place up?”
“On the contrary, I understated its merits.”