If Mrs.Scherer was a surprise to us,her husband was a still greater one;and I had difficulty in recognizing the Adolf Scherer who came to our dinner party as the personage of the business world before whom lesser men were wont to cringe.He seemed rather mysteriously to have shed that personality;become an awkward,ingratiating,rather too exuberant,ordinary man with a marked German accent.From time to time Ifound myself speculating uneasily on this phenomenon as I glanced down the table at his great torso,white waist-coated for the occasion.He was plainly "making up"to Nancy,and to Mrs.Ogilvy,who sat opposite him.On the whole,the atmosphere of our entertainment was rather electric."Hilda"was chiefly responsible for this;her frankness was of the breath-taking kind.Far from attempting to hide or ignore the struggle by which she and her husband had attained their present position,she referred with the utmost naivete to incidents in her career,while the whole table paused to listen.
"Before we had a carriage,yes,it was hard for me to get about.I had to be helped by the conductors into the streetcars.I broke my hip when we lived in Steelville,and the doctor was a numbskull.He should be put in prison,is what I tell Adolf.I was standing on a clothes-horse,when it fell.I had much washing to do in those days.""And--can nothing be done,Mrs.Scherer?"asked Leonard Dickinson,sympathetically.
"For an old woman?I am fifty-five.I have had many doctors.I would put them all in prison.How much was it you paid Dr.Stickney,in New York,Adolf?Five thousand dollars?And he did nothing--nothing.I'd rather be poor again,and work.But it is well to make the best of it."...
"Your grandfather was a fine man,Mr.Durrett,"she informed Hambleton.
"It is a pity for you,I think,that you do not have to work."Ham,who sat on her other side,was amused.
"My grandfather did enough work for both of us,"he said.
"If I had been your grandfather,I would have started you in puddling,"she observed,as she eyed with disapproval the filling of his third glass of champagne."I think there is too much gay life,too much games for rich young men nowadays.You will forgive me for saying what I think to young men?""I'll forgive you for not being my grandfather,at any rate,"replied Ham,with unaccustomed wit.
She gazed at him with grim humour.
"It is bad for you I am not,"she declared.
There was no gainsaying her.What can be done with a lady who will not recognize that morality is not discussed,and that personalities are tabooed save between intimates.Hilda was a personage as well as a Tartar.Laws,conventions,usages--to all these she would conform when it pleased her.She would have made an admirable inquisitorial judge,and quite as admirable a sick nurse.A rare criminal lawyer,likewise,was wasted in her.She was one of those individuals,I perceived,whose loyalties dominate them;and who,in behalf of those loyalties,carry chips on their shoulders.
"It is a long time that I have been wanting to meet you,"she informed me."You are smart."I smiled,yet I was inclined to resent her use of the word,though I was by no means sure of the shade of meaning she meant to put into it.Ihad,indeed,an uneasy sense of the scantiness of my fund of humour to meet and turn such a situation;for I was experiencing,now,with her,the same queer feeling I had known in my youth in the presence of Cousin Robert Breck--the suspicion that this extraordinary person saw through me.It was as though she held up a mirror and compelled me to look at my soul features.I tried to assure myself that the mirror was distorted.
I lost,nevertheless,the sureness of touch that comes from the conviction of being all of a piece.She contrived to resolve me again into conflicting elements.I was,for the moment,no longer the self-confident and triumphant young attorney accustomed to carry all before him,to command respect and admiration,but a complicated being whose unity had suddenly been split.I glanced around the table at Ogilvy,at Dickinson,at Ralph Hambleton.These men were functioning truly.But was I?If I were not,might not this be the reason for the lack of synthesis--of which I was abruptly though vaguely aware between my professional life,my domestic relationships,and my relationships with friends.The loyalty of the woman beside me struck me forcibly as a supreme trait.Where she had given,she did not withdraw.She had conferred it instantly on Maude.Did I feel that loyalty towards a single human being?towards Maude herself--my wife?or even towards Nancy?I pulled myself together,and resolved to give her credit for using the word "smart"in its unobjectionable sense.After all;Dickens had so used it.
"A lawyer must needs know something of what he is about,Mrs.Scherer,if he is to be employed by such a man as your husband,"I replied.
Her black eyes snapped with pleasure.
"Ah,I suppose that is so,"she agreed."I knew he was a great man when I married him,and that was before Mr.Nathaniel Durrett found it out.""But surely you did not think,in those days,that he would be as big as he has become?That he would not only be president of the Boyne Iron Works,but of a Boyne Iron Works that has exceeded Mr.Durrett's wildest dreams."She shook her head complacently.
"Do you know what I told him when he married me?I said,'Adolf,it is a pity you are born in Germany.'And when he asked me why,I told him that some day he might have been President of the United States.""Well,that won't be a great deprivation to him,"I remarked."Mr.
