The Greater Inclination

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_Isabel_. It would be odious if you were eloquent.

_Oberville_. What do you mean?

_Isabel_. That's a question you never used to ask me.

_Oberville_. Be merciful. Remember how little practise I've had lately.

_Isabel_. In what?

_Oberville_. Never mind! (_He rises and walks away; then comes back and
stands in front of her_.) What a fool I was to give you up!

_Isabel_. Oh, don't say that! I've lived on it!

_Oberville_. On my letting you go?

_Isabel_. On your letting everything go--but the right.

_Oberville_. Oh, hang the right! What is truth? We had the right to be
happy!

_Isabel (with rising emotion)_. I used to think so sometimes.

_Oberville_. Did you? Triple fool that I was!

_Isabel_. But you showed me--

_Oberville_. Why, good God, we belonged to each other--and I let you go!
It's fabulous. I've fought for things since that weren't worth a crooked
sixpence; fought as well as other men. And you--you--I lost you because I
couldn't face a scene! Hang it, suppose there'd been a dozen scenes--I
might have survived them. Men have been known to. They're not necessarily
fatal.

_Isabel_. A scene?

_Oberville_. It's a form of fear that women don't understand. How you must
have despised me!

_Isabel_. You were--afraid--of a scene?

_Oberville_. I was a damned coward, Isabel. That's about the size of it.

_Isabel_. Ah--I had thought it so much larger!

_Oberville_. What did you say?

_Isabel. I said that you have forgotten to drink your tea. It must be
quite cold.

_Oberville_. Ah--

_Isabel_. Let me give you another cup.

_Oberville (collecting himself)_. No--no. This is perfect.

_Isabel_. You haven't tasted it.

_Oberville (falling into her mood) _. You always made it to perfection.
Only you never gave me enough sugar.

_Isabel_. I know better now. (_She puts another lump in his cup_.)

_Oberville (drinks his tea, and then says, with an air of reproach)_.
Isn't all this chaff rather a waste of time between two old friends who
haven't met for so many years?

_Isabel (lightly)_. Oh, it's only a _hors d'oeuvre_--the tuning of the
instruments. I'm out of practise too.

_Oberville_. Let us come to the grand air, then. (_Sits down near her_.)
Tell me about yourself. What are you doing?

_Isabel_. At this moment? You'll never guess. I'm trying to remember you.

_Oberville_. To remember me?

_Isabel_. Until you came into the room just now my recollection of you was
so vivid; you were a living whole in my thoughts. Now I am engaged in
gathering up the fragments--in laboriously reconstructing you....

_Oberville_. I have changed so much, then?

_Isabel_. No, I don't believe that you've changed. It's only that I see
you differently. Don't you know how hard it is to convince elderly people
that the type of the evening paper is no smaller than when they were
young?

_Oberville_. I've shrunk then?

_Isabel_. You couldn't have grown bigger. Oh, I'm serious now; you needn't
prepare a smile. For years you were the tallest object on my horizon. I
used to climb to the thought of you, as people who live in a flat country
mount the church steeple for a view. It's wonderful how much I used to see
from there! And the air was so strong and pure!

_Oberville_. And now?

_Isabel_. Now I can fancy how delightful it must be to sit next to you at
dinner.

_Oberville_. You're unmerciful. Have I said anything to offend you?

_Isabel_. Of course not. How absurd!

_Oberville_. I lost my head a little--I forgot how long it is since we
have met. When I saw you I forgot everything except what you had once been
to me. (_She is silent_.) I thought you too generous to resent that.
Perhaps I have overtaxed your generosity. (_A pause_.) Shall I confess it?
When I first saw you I thought for a moment that you had remembered--as I
had. You see I can only excuse myself by saying something inexcusable.

_Isabel (deliberately)_. Not inexcusable.

_Oberville_. Not--?

_Isabel_. I had remembered.

_Oberville_. Isabel!

_Isabel_. But now--

_Oberville_. Ah, give me a moment before you unsay it!

_Isabel_. I don't mean to unsay it. There's no use in repealing an
obsolete law. That's the pity of it! You say you lost me ten years ago.
(_A pause_.) I never lost you till now.

_Oberville_. Now?

_Isabel_. Only this morning you were my supreme court of justice; there
was no appeal from your verdict. Not an hour ago you decided a case for
me--against myself! And now--. And the worst of it is that it's not
because you've changed. How do I know if you've changed? You haven't said
a hundred words to me. You haven't been an hour in the room. And the years
must have enriched you--I daresay you've doubled your capital. You've been
in the thick of life, and the metal you're made of brightens with use.
Success on some men looks like a borrowed coat; it sits on you as though
it had been made to order. I see all this; I know it; but I don't _feel_
it. I don't feel anything... anywhere... I'm numb. (_A pause_.) Don't
laugh, but I really don't think I should know now if you came into the
room--unless I actually saw you. (_They are both silent_.)

_Oberville (at length)_. Then, to put the most merciful interpretation
upon your epigrams, your feeling for me was made out of poorer stuff than
mine for you.

_Isabel_. Perhaps it has had harder wear.

_Oberville_. Or been less cared for?

_Isabel_. If one has only one cloak one must wear it in all weathers.

_Oberville_. Unless it is so beautiful and precious that one prefers to go
cold and keep it under lock and key.

_Isabel_. In the cedar-chest of indifference--the key of which is usually
lost.

_Oberville_. Ah, Isabel, you're too pat! How much I preferred your
hesitations.

_Isabel_. My hesitations? That reminds me how much your coming has
simplified things. I feel as if I'd had an auction sale of fallacies.

_Oberville_. You speak in enigmas, and I have a notion that your riddles
are the reverse of the sphinx's--more dangerous to guess than to give up.
And yet I used to find your thoughts such good reading.

_Isabel_. One cares so little for the style in which one's praises are
written.

_Oberville_. You've been praising me for the last ten minutes and I find
your style detestable. I would rather have you find fault with me like a
friend than approve me like a _dilettante_.

_Isabel_. A _dilettante_! The very word I wanted!

_Oberville_. I am proud to have enriched so full a vocabulary. But I am
still waiting for the word _I_ want. (_He grows serious_.) Isabel, look in
your heart--give me the first word you find there. You've no idea how much
a beggar can buy with a penny!

_Isabel_. It's empty, my poor friend, it's empty.

_Oberville_. Beggars never say that to each other.

_Isabel_. No; never, unless it's true.

_Oberville (after another silence)_. Why do you look at me so curiously?

_Isabel_. I'm--what was it you said? Approving you as a _dilettante_.
Don't be alarmed; you can bear examination; I don't see a crack anywhere.
After all, it's a satisfaction to find that one's idol makes a handsome
_bibelot_.

_Oberville (with an attempt at lightness)_. I was right then--you're a
collector?

_Isabel (modestly)_. One must make a beginning. I think I shall begin with
you. (_She smiles at him_.) Positively, I must have you on my mantel-
shelf! (_She rises and looks at the clock_.) But it's time to dress for
dinner. (_She holds out her hand to him and he kisses it. They look at
each other, and it is clear that he does not quite understand, but is
watching eagerly for his cue_.)

_Warland (coming in)_. Hullo, Isabel--you're here after all?

_Isabel_. And so is Mr. Oberville. (_She looks straight at Warland_.) I
stayed in on purpose to meet him. My husband--(_The two men bow_.)

_Warland (effusively)_. So glad to meet you. My wife talks of you so
often. She's been looking forward tremendously to your visit.

_Oberville_. It's a long time since I've had the pleasure of seeing Mrs.
Warland.

_Isabel_. But now we are going to make up for lost time. (_As he goes to
the door_.) I claim you to-morrow for the whole day.

_Oberville bows and goes out_.

_Isabel_. Lucius... I think you'd better go to Washington, after all.
(_Musing_.) Narragansett might do for the others, though.... Couldn't you
get Fred Langham to ask all the rest of the party to go over there with
him to-morrow morning? I shall have a headache and stay at home. (_He
looks at her doubtfully_.) Mr. Oberville is a bad sailor.

_Warland advances demonstratively_.

_Isabel (drawing back)_. It's time to go and dress. I think you said the
black gown with spangles?

A CUP OF COLD WATER

It was three o'clock in the morning, and the cotillion was at its height,
when Woburn left the over-heated splendor of the Gildermere ballroom, and
after a delay caused by the determination of the drowsy footman to give
him a ready-made overcoat with an imitation astrachan collar in place of
his own unimpeachable Poole garment, found himself breasting the icy
solitude of the Fifth Avenue. He was still smiling, as he emerged from the
awning, at his insistence in claiming his own overcoat: it illustrated,
humorously enough, the invincible force of habit. As he faced the wind,
however, he discerned a providence in his persistency, for his coat was
fur-lined, and he had a cold voyage before him on the morrow.

It had rained hard during the earlier part of the night, and the carriages
waiting in triple line before the Gildermeres' door were still domed by
shining umbrellas, while the electric lamps extending down the avenue
blinked Narcissus-like at their watery images in the hollows of the
sidewalk. A dry blast had come out of the north, with pledge of frost
before daylight, and to Woburn's shivering fancy the pools in the pavement
seemed already stiffening into ice. He turned up his coat-collar and
stepped out rapidly, his hands deep in his coat-pockets.

As he walked he glanced curiously up at the ladder-like door-steps which
may well suggest to the future archaeologist that all the streets of New
York were once canals; at the spectral tracery of the trees about St.
Luke's, the fretted mass of the Cathedral, and the mean vista of the long
side-streets. The knowledge that he was perhaps looking at it all for the
last time caused every detail to start out like a challenge to memory, and
lit the brown-stone house-fronts with the glamor of sword-barred Edens.

It was an odd impulse that had led him that night to the Gildermere ball;
but the same change in his condition which made him stare wonderingly at
the houses in the Fifth Avenue gave the thrill of an exploit to the tame
business of ball-going. Who would have imagined, Woburn mused, that such a
situation as his would possess the priceless quality of sharpening the
blunt edge of habit?

It was certainly curious to reflect, as he leaned against the doorway of
Mrs. Gildermere's ball-room, enveloped in the warm atmosphere of the
accustomed, that twenty-four hours later the people brushing by him with
looks of friendly recognition would start at the thought of having seen
him and slur over the recollection of having taken his hand!

And the girl he had gone there to see: what would she think of him? He
knew well enough that her trenchant classifications of life admitted no
overlapping of good and evil, made no allowance for that incalculable
interplay of motives that justifies the subtlest casuistry of compassion.
Miss Talcott was too young to distinguish the intermediate tints of the
moral spectrum; and her judgments were further simplified by a peculiar
concreteness of mind. Her bringing-up had fostered this tendency and she
was surrounded by people who focussed life in the same way. To the girls
in Miss Talcott's set, the attentions of a clever man who had to work for
his living had the zest of a forbidden pleasure; but to marry such a man
would be as unpardonable as to have one's carriage seen at the door of a
cheap dress-maker. Poverty might make a man fascinating; but a settled
income was the best evidence of stability of character. If there were
anything in heredity, how could a nice girl trust a man whose parents had
been careless enough to leave him unprovided for?

Neither Miss Talcott nor any of her friends could be charged with
formulating these views; but they were implicit in the slope of every
white shoulder and in the ripple of every yard of imported tulle dappling
the foreground of Mrs. Gildermere's ball-room. The advantages of line and
colour in veiling the crudities of a creed are obvious to emotional minds;
and besides, Woburn was conscious that it was to the cheerful materialism
of their parents that the young girls he admired owed that fine
distinction of outline in which their skilfully-rippled hair and
skilfully-hung draperies cooeperated with the slimness and erectness that
came of participating in the most expensive sports, eating the most
expensive food and breathing the most expensive air. Since the process
which had produced them was so costly, how could they help being costly
themselves? Woburn was too logical to expect to give no more for a piece
of old Sevres than for a bit of kitchen crockery; he had no faith in
wonderful bargains, and believed that one got in life just what one was
willing to pay for. He had no mind to dispute the taste of those who
preferred the rustic simplicity of the earthen crock; but his own fancy
inclined to the piece of _pate tendre_ which must be kept in a glass case
and handled as delicately as a flower.

It was not merely by the external grace of these drawing-room ornaments
that Woburn's sensibilities were charmed. His imagination was touched by
the curious exoticism of view resulting from such conditions; He had
always enjoyed listening to Miss Talcott even more than looking at her.
Her ideas had the brilliant bloom and audacious irrelevance of those
tropical orchids which strike root in air. Miss Talcott's opinions had no
connection with the actual; her very materialism had the grace of
artificiality. Woburn had been enchanted once by seeing her helpless
before a smoking lamp: she had been obliged to ring for a servant because
she did not know how to put it out.

Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes of taking it for granted
that people are born with carriages and country-places: it never occurred
to her that such congenital attributes could be matter for self-
consciousness, and she had none of the _nouveau riche_ prudery which
classes poverty with the nude in art and is not sure how to behave in the
presence of either.

The conditions of Woburn's own life had made him peculiarly susceptible to
those forms of elegance which are the flower of ease. His father had lost
a comfortable property through sheer inability to go over his agent's
accounts; and this disaster, coming at the outset of Woburn's school-days,
had given a new bent to the family temperament. The father
characteristically died when the effort of living might have made it
possible to retrieve his fortunes; and Woburn's mother and sister,
embittered by this final evasion, settled down to a vindictive war with
circumstances. They were the kind of women who think that it lightens the
burden of life to throw over the amenities, as a reduced housekeeper puts
away her knick-knacks to make the dusting easier. They fought mean
conditions meanly; but Woburn, in his resentment of their attitude, did
not allow for the suffering which had brought it about: his own tendency
was to overcome difficulties by conciliation rather than by conflict. Such
surroundings threw into vivid relief the charming figure of Miss Talcott.
Woburn instinctively associated poverty with bad food, ugly furniture,
complaints and recriminations: it was natural that he should be drawn
toward the luminous atmosphere where life was a series of peaceful and
good-humored acts, unimpeded by petty obstacles. To spend one's time in
such society gave one the illusion of unlimited credit; and also,
unhappily, created the need for it.

It was here in fact that Woburn's difficulties began. To marry Miss
Talcott it was necessary to be a rich man: even to dine out in her set
involved certain minor extravagances. Woburn had determined to marry her
sooner or later; and in the meanwhile to be with her as much as possible.

As he stood leaning in the doorway of the Gildermere ball-room, watching
her pass him in the waltz, he tried to remember how it had begun. First
there had been the tailor's bill; the fur-lined overcoat with cuffs and
collar of Alaska sable had alone cost more than he had spent on his
clothes for two or three years previously. Then there were theatre-
tickets; cab-fares; florist's bills; tips to servants at the country-
houses where he went because he knew that she was invited; the _Omar
Khayyam_ bound by Sullivan that he sent her at Christmas; the
contributions to her pet charities; the reckless purchases at fairs where
she had a stall. His whole way of life had imperceptibly changed and his
year's salary was gone before the second quarter was due.

He had invested the few thousand dollars which had been his portion of his
father's shrunken estate: when his debts began to pile up, he took a flyer
in stocks and after a few months of varying luck his little patrimony
disappeared. Meanwhile his courtship was proceeding at an inverse ratio to
his financial ventures. Miss Talcott was growing tender and he began to
feel that the game was in his hands. The nearness of the goal exasperated
him. She was not the girl to wait and he knew that it must be now or
never. A friend lent him five thousand dollars on his personal note and he
bought railway stocks on margin. They went up and he held them for a
higher rise: they fluctuated, dragged, dropped below the level at which he
had bought, and slowly continued their uninterrupted descent. His broker
called for more margin; he could not respond and was sold out.

What followed came about quite naturally. For several years he had been
cashier in a well-known banking-house. When the note he had given his
friend became due it was obviously necessary to pay it and he used the
firm's money for the purpose. To repay the money thus taken, he increased
his debt to his employers and bought more stocks; and on these operations
he made a profit of ten thousand dollars. Miss Talcott rode in the Park,
and he bought a smart hack for seven hundred, paid off his tradesmen, and
went on speculating with the remainder of his profits. He made a little
more, but failed to take advantage of the market and lost all that he had
staked, including the amount taken from the firm. He increased his over-
draft by another ten thousand and lost that; he over-drew a farther sum
and lost again. Suddenly he woke to the fact that he owed his employers
fifty thousand dollars and that the partners were to make their semi-
annual inspection in two days. He realized then that within forty-eight
hours what he had called borrowing would become theft.

There was no time to be lost: he must clear out and start life over again
somewhere else. The day that he reached this decision he was to have met
Miss Talcott at dinner. He went to the dinner, but she did not appear: she
had a headache, his hostess explained. Well, he was not to have a last
look at her, after all; better so, perhaps. He took leave early and on his
way home stopped at a florist's and sent her a bunch of violets. The next
morning he got a little note from her: the violets had done her head so
much good--she would tell him all about it that evening at the Gildermere
ball. Woburn laughed and tossed the note into the fire. That evening he
would be on board ship: the examination of the books was to take place the
following morning at ten.

Woburn went down to the bank as usual; he did not want to do anything that
might excite suspicion as to his plans, and from one or two questions
which one of the partners had lately put to him he divined that he was
being observed. At the bank the day passed uneventfully. He discharged his
business with his accustomed care and went uptown at the usual hour.

In the first flush of his successful speculations he had set up bachelor
lodgings, moved by the temptation to get away from the dismal atmosphere
of home, from his mother's struggles with the cook and his sister's
curiosity about his letters. He had been influenced also by the wish for
surroundings more adapted to his tastes. He wanted to be able to give
little teas, to which Miss Talcott might come with a married friend. She
came once or twice and pronounced it all delightful: she thought it _so_
nice to have only a few Whistler etchings on the walls and the simplest
crushed levant for all one's books.

To these rooms Woburn returned on leaving the bank. His plans had taken
definite shape. He had engaged passage on a steamer sailing for Halifax
early the next morning; and there was nothing for him to do before going
on board but to pack his clothes and tear up a few letters. He threw his
clothes into a couple of portmanteaux, and when these had been called for
by an expressman he emptied his pockets and counted up his ready money. He
found that he possessed just fifty dollars and seventy-five cents; but his
passage to Halifax was paid, and once there he could pawn his watch and
rings. This calculation completed, he unlocked his writing-table drawer
and took out a handful of letters. They were notes from Miss Talcott. He
read them over and threw them into the fire. On his table stood her
photograph. He slipped it out of its frame and tossed it on top of the
blazing letters. Having performed this rite, he got into his dress-clothes
and went to a small French restaurant to dine.

He had meant to go on board the steamer immediately after dinner; but a
sudden vision of introspective hours in a silent cabin made him call for
the evening paper and run his eye over the list of theatres. It would be
as easy to go on board at midnight as now.

He selected a new vaudeville and listened to it with surprising freshness
of interest; but toward eleven o'clock he again began to dread the
approaching necessity of going down to the steamer. There was something
peculiarly unnerving in the idea of spending the rest of the night in a
stifling cabin jammed against the side of a wharf.

He left the theatre and strolled across to the Fifth Avenue. It was now
nearly midnight and a stream of carriages poured up town from the opera
and the theatres. As he stood on the corner watching the familiar
spectacle it occurred to him that many of the people driving by him in
smart broughams and C-spring landaus were on their way to the Gildermere
ball. He remembered Miss Talcott's note of the morning and wondered if she
were in one of the passing carriages; she had spoken so confidently of
meeting him at the ball. What if he should go and take a last look at her?
There was really nothing to prevent it. He was not likely to run across
any member of the firm: in Miss Talcott's set his social standing was good
for another ten hours at least. He smiled in anticipation of her surprise
at seeing him, and then reflected with a start that she would not be
surprised at all.

His meditations were cut short by a fall of sleety rain, and hailing a
hansom he gave the driver Mrs. Gildermere's address.

As he drove up the avenue he looked about him like a traveller in a
strange city. The buildings which had been so unobtrusively familiar stood
out with sudden distinctness: he noticed a hundred details which had
escaped his observation. The people on the sidewalks looked like
strangers: he wondered where they were going and tried to picture the
lives they led; but his own relation to life had been so suddenly reversed
that he found it impossible to recover his mental perspective.

At one corner he saw a shabby man lurking in the shadow of the side
street; as the hansom passed, a policeman ordered him to move on. Farther
on, Woburn noticed a woman crouching on the door-step of a handsome house.
She had drawn a shawl over her head and was sunk in the apathy of despair
or drink. A well-dressed couple paused to look at her. The electric globe
at the corner lit up their faces, and Woburn saw the lady, who was young
and pretty, turn away with a little grimace, drawing her companion after
her.

The desire to see Miss Talcott had driven Woburn to the Gildermeres'; but
once in the ball-room he made no effort to find her. The people about him
seemed more like strangers than those he had passed in the street. He
stood in the doorway, studying the petty manoeuvres of the women and the
resigned amenities of their partners. Was it possible that these were his
friends? These mincing women, all paint and dye and whalebone, these
apathetic men who looked as much alike as the figures that children cut
out of a folded sheet of paper? Was it to live among such puppets that he
had sold his soul? What had any of these people done that was noble,
exceptional, distinguished? Who knew them by name even, except their
tradesmen and the society reporters? Who were they, that they should sit
in judgment on him?

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