The Faith Doctor. Eggleston Edward
In society no man asks another, "How did you get here?" or congratulates him on moving among better people than he did ten years ago. Theoretically society is stationary. Even while breathless from climbing, the newcomer affects to have been always atop.
Warren Hilbrough's family had risen with his bettered circumstances from a two-story brick in Degraw street, Brooklyn, by the usual stages to a brownstone "mansion" above the reservoir in New York. When he came to be vice-president of the Bank of Manhadoes, Hilbrough had in a measure reached the goal of his ambition. He felt that he could slacken the strenuousness of his exertions and let his fortune expand naturally under prudent management. But Mrs. Hilbrough was ten years younger than her husband, and her ambition was far from spent. She found herself only on the threshold of her career. In Brooklyn increasing prosperity had made her a leader in church fairs and entertainments. The "Church Social" had often assembled at her house, and she had given a reception in honor of the minister when he came back from the Holy Land—a party which the society reporter of the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle" had pronounced "a brilliant affair." This last stroke had put her at the head of her little world. But now that Hilbrough was vice-president of the Bank of Manhadoes, the new business relations brought her invitations from beyond the little planetary system that revolved around the Reverend Dr. North. It became a question of making her way in the general society of Brooklyn, which had long drawn its members from the genteel quarters of the Heights, the Hill, and the remoter South Brooklyn, and, in later days, also from Prospect Park Slope. But at the houses of the officers of the bank she had caught somewhat bewildering vistas of those involved and undefined circles of people that make up in one way and another metropolitan society on the New York side of East River. Three years before Hilbrough entered the bank his family had removed into a new house in South Oxford street, and lately they had contemplated building a finer dwelling on the Slope. But Mrs. Hilbrough in a moment of inspiration decided to omit Brooklyn and to persuade her husband to remove to New York. There would be many advantages in this course. In New York her smaller social campaigns were unknown, and by removal she would be able to readjust with less difficulty her relations with old friends in Dr. North's congregation. When one goes up one must always leave somebody behind; but crossing the river would give her a clean slate, and make it easy to be rid of old scores when she pleased. So it came about that on the first of May following Hilbrough's accession to the bank the family in a carriage, and all their belongings on trucks, were trundled over Fulton Ferry to begin life anew, with painted walls, more expensive carpets, and twice as many servants. A carriage with a coachman in livery took the place of the top-buggy in which, by twos, and sometimes by threes, the Hilbroughs had been wont to enjoy Prospect Park. The Hilbrough children did not relish this part of the change. The boys could not see the fun of sitting with folded hands on a carriage seat while they rumbled slowly through Fifth Avenue and Central Park, even when the Riverside Park was thrown in. An augmentation of family dignity was small compensation for the loss of the long drive between the quadruple lines of maples that shade the Ocean Parkway in full view of the fast trotting horses which made a whirling maze as they flew past them in either direction.
"There was some fun in a long Saturday's drive to Coney Island, and round by Fort Hamilton and the Narrows," muttered Jack, as the horses toiled up a steep in Central Park; "this here is about as amusing as riding in a black maria would be."
Ah, Jack! You are too young to comprehend the necessity that rests upon us of swelling our dignity into some proportion to a growing stock balance. It is irksome this living on stilts, but an unfortunate inability to match our fortune by increasing our bulk leaves us no alternative but to augment our belongings so as to preserve the fitness of things at any cost. There is as yet no Society for the Emancipation of Princes, and the Association for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Children of the Rich has no place in the list of New York philanthropies.
Mrs. Hilbrough prudently spent her first winter on Manhattan Island in looking about her. She ventured a dinner company two or three times, but went no further. She received calls from the wives of those who had, and those who wished to have, business relations with her husband, and she returned them, making such observations as she could on the domestic economy, or rather the domestic extravagance, of those she visited. The first result of this was that she changed her door-boy. The fine-looking mulatto she had installed in imitation of some of her richer Brooklyn acquaintances had to be discharged. The Anglomania of the early eighties cruelly abolished the handsome darky hall-boy, that most artistic living bronze, with all his suggestion of barbaric magnificence, and all his Oriental obsequiousness. His one fault was that he was not English. Fashion forbade the rich to avail themselves of one of the finest products of the country. The lackey who took his place had the English superciliousness, and marked the advance of American civilization by adding a new discomfort and deformity to the life of people of fashion.
The minister of the church in which the Hilbroughs had taken pews sent his wife to call on Mrs. Hilbrough, and two of the church officers, knowing the value of such an acquisition to the church, showed their Christian feeling in the same way. Many of her old Degraw street and South Oxford street friends called at the new house, their affection being quickened by a desire "to see what sort of style the Hilbroughs are putting on now." Some of her Brooklyn calls she returned out of a positive liking for good old friends, some because the callers were those who could introduce her to people she desired to know in New York. She excused herself from calling on the most of her trans-East-River acquaintances by urging that it is so much farther from New York to Brooklyn than it is from Brooklyn to New York, you know. She attended several large evening receptions in New York, and drank five o'clock tea at six in the evening at a good many places. She thus made acquaintances, while with a clever woman's tact she kept her wits about her and began to "get the hang of the thing," as she expressed it to one of her confidential friends. Meantime she was as constant in her attendance at the opera as she had been at the prayer-meeting in former days.
It was at the beginning of her second winter in New York that she served notice on Hilbrough that she meant to give a reception; or, as she put it, "We must give a reception." The children had gone to school, the butler was otherwise engaged, and there was nobody but a waitress present.
Hilbrough's face was of that sunny, sanguine sort which always seems to indicate that things are booming, to borrow a phrase from our modern argot. His plump, cheery countenance, and the buoyant spontaneity of his laugh, inspired a confidence which had floated his craft over more than one financial shoal. But when Mrs. Hilbrough proposed a reception, just as he finished his coffee, he became meditative, leaned his two large arms on the table, and made a careful inspection of the china cup: his wife—Brooklyn woman that she was—had lately made a journey across the new bridge to buy the set at Ovington's.
"You don't mean one of those stupid crushes," he began, "where all the people outside are trying to butt their way in, and all those inside are wishing to heaven that they were well out again—like so many June bugs and millers on a summer night bumping against both sides of a window with a candle in it?" Hilbrough finished with a humorous little chuckle at his own comparison.
"Well," rejoined Mrs. Hilbrough, firmly, "a reception is the thing to give. We owe it to our social position."
"Social position be hanged!" said Hilbrough, half in vexation, but still laughing, while his wife tried by frowning to remind him that the use of such words in the presence of a servant was very improper.
"It seems as though I never could get square with that thing you call social position. I pay all my other debts and take receipts in full, but the more money we have the more we owe to social position. I have a great mind to suspend payment for a while and let social position go to smash. I detest a reception. I don't mind a nice little gathering of good friendly folks such as we used to have in Degraw street at the church socials—"
"Church socials!"
His wife's interruption took Hilbrough's breath. She muttered rather than spoke these few words, but with a contemptuousness of inflection that was most expressive. Hilbrough was left in some doubt as to whether all the contempt was intended for the church socials in Degraw street, or whether a part of it might not be meant for a husband whose mind had not kept pace with his fortune.
"I am sure there was real enjoyment in a church social," he said,