' Charge It ': Keeping Up With Harry Part 8

"I saw that the Deacon was mad. New New England had imprudently b.u.mped into old New England, and it was too soon to estimate the damage."

The Honorable Socrates Potter laughed as he filled his pipe, and resumed with an att.i.tude of ease and comfort;

"I'm a bit of a Puritan myself, although I understood Harry better than did the Deacon. The young people have been captured by the frankness of the Latin races. They call it emanc.i.p.ation. Travel and the higher education have opened the storage vats of foreign degeneracy and piped them into our land. Certain young men who have been 'finished' abroad, where they filled their souls with Latin lewdness, have turned it into fiction and a source of profit. Women buy their books and rush through them, and only touch the low places.

There they lie entranced, thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa. Like the women in the sack of Ismail, they sit them down and watch for the adultery to begin.

"The imagination of the old world seems to have gone wild--Oscar Wilde! How the Oscars have thriven there since the first of them went to jail!--a degenerate dynasty!--hiding the stench of spiritual rot with the perfume of faultless rhetoric, speaking the unspeakable with the tongues of angels and of prophets! And mostly, my boy, they have thriven on the dollars of American women under the leaders.h.i.+p of modern culture. And, you know, the maiden follows mama. She is an apologist of sublime lewdness, of emanc.i.p.ated human caninity. Now I am no prude. I can stand a fairly strong touch of human nature. I can even put up with a good deal of the frankness of the cat and dog. But the frankness of some modern authors makes me sorry that Adam was a common ancestor of theirs and mine. It's a disgrace to Adam and the whole human brotherhood. We sons of the Puritans ought to get busy in the old cause. Noah had the good sense to keep the animals and the people apart, and that's what we've always stood for."

VIII

IN WHICH SOCRATES ATTACKS THE HELMET AND THE BATTLE-AX

"Marie came to see us at our home next morning and began to cry as soon as she had sat down in the library. The thing I had looked for had come to pa.s.s. Her grandfather had dropped Harry from his list, and warned him to keep off the rag-carpet. There was to be no more prancing around in the 'toot-coach' and the 'Harry-cart,' as he called them, for Marie. In his view it was the surest means of getting to perdition. Harry was an idler, and he had always found that an idle brain was the devil's workshop. Marie might be polite to the young man, but she must keep her side of the road and see that there was always plenty of room between them.

"'He's so hateful,' Marie said of her grandfather. 'He made such a fuss about our getting a crest that we've a perfect right to! Mama had to give it up.'

"'What! Do you mean to tell me that you have no crest!' I inquired, anxiously.

"'We have one, but we cannot use it; our hands are tied,' was her sorrowful answer.

"'I'm astonished. Why, everybody is going to have a crest in Pointview.

"'The other day I suggested to Bridget Maloney, our pretty chambermaid, that she ought to have the Maloney crest on her letter-heads.

"'"What's that?" says Bridget.

"'"What's that!" I said, with a look of pity.

"'Then I showed her a letter from Mrs. Van Alstyne, with a lion and a griffin cuffing each other black and blue at the top of the sheet.

"'"It's grand!" said she.

"'"It's the Van Alstyne crest," I said. "It's a proof of respectability.

Aren't you as good as they are?"

"'"Every bit!" said she.

"'"That's what I thought. Don't you often feel as if you were better than a good many people you know?"

"'"Sure I do."

"'"Well, that's a sign that you're blue-blooded," said I. "Probably you've got a king in your family somewhere. A crest shows that you suspect your ancestors--nothing more than that. It isn't proof, so there's no reason why you shouldn't have it. You ought not to be going around without a crest, as if you were a common servant-girl. Why, every kitchen-maid will be thinking she's as good as you are. You want to be in style. You have money in the bank, and not half the people who have crests are as well able to afford 'em."

"'"How much do they cost?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'IT'S THE VAN ALSTYNE CREST,' I SAID. 'IT'S A PROOF OF RESPECTABILITY.'"]

"'"Nothing--at least, yours'll cost nothing, Bridget. I shall be glad to buy one for you."

"'The simple girl thanked me, and I found the Maloney crest for her, and had the plate made and neatly engraved on a hundred sheets of paper.

"'Next week the Pointview _Advocate_ will print this item: "Miss Bridget Maloney, the genial chambermaid of Mrs. Socrates Potter, uses the Maloney crest on her letter-heads. She is said to be a lineal descendant of his Grace Bryan Maloney, one of the early dukes of Ireland."

"'Bridget is haughty, well-mannered, and a neat dresser. She's a pace-maker in her set. Even the high-headed servants of Warburton House imitate her hats and gowns.

"'Yesterday Katie O'Neil, one of Mrs. Warburton's maids, came to me for information as to the heraldry of her house. I found a crest for Katie; and then came Mary Maginness; and Bertha Schimpfelheim, the daughter of a real German count; and one August Bernheimer, a young barber of baronial blood; and Pietro Cantaveri, our prosperous bootblack, who was the grandson of an Italian countess; and so it goes, and soon all the high-born servers of Pointview will be supplied with armorial bearings.

"'These claims to distinction shall be soberly chronicled in the _Advocate_. Not one is to be overlooked or treated with any lack of respect. On the contrary, the whole thing will be exploited with a proper sense of awe.'

"Marie laughed.

"'Wait till I tell mama,' she said. 'It's lucky you told me. It's saved us. I guess grandfather was right about that.'

"'And he's right about Harry, too,' I said. 'But don't despair; I'm trying to put a new mainspring in the boy. If I succeed, your grandfather may have to change his mind.'

"She went away comforted, but not happy.

"Well, I went on with the crest campaign. Bertha, Pietro, and the others got their crests and saw their names in the paper.

"The supply of crests was soon perfectly adequate, and among our best people the demand for them began to diminish, and suddenly ceased. The beast rampant and couchant, the helmet and the battle-ax, a.s.sociated only with mixed tenses and misplaced capitals according to their ancient habit. This chambermaid grammar was referred to by my friend, Dr. Guph, as the 'battle-ax brand'--a designation of some merit.

Expensive stationery fell into the fireplaces of Pointview, and armorial plates were found in the garbage. The family trees of the village were deserted. Not a bird twittered in their branches. The subject of genealogy was buried in deep silence, save when the irreverent referred to some late addition to our new aristocracy.

"Now I want to make it clear that we have no disrespect for the customs of any foreign land. If I were living in a foreign land and needed evidence of my respectability, I'd have a crest, if it was likely to prove my case. But America was founded by the sons of the yeomen, and the yeomen established their respectability with other evidence. Their brains were so often touched by the battle-ax that some of us have an hereditary shyness about the head, and we dodge at every baronial relic."

IX

IN WHICH SOCRATES INCREASES THE SUPPLY OF SPLENDOR

"In due time the Society of Useful Women met at our house, and I was invited to make a few remarks, and said in effect:

"'We are trying to correct the evil of extravagant display in America, and first I ask you to consider the cause of it. We find it in the ancient law of supply and demand. The reason that women love to array themselves in silk and laces and jewels and picture-hats and plumes of culture and sunbursts of genealogy lies in the fact that the supply of these things has generally been limited. Their cost is so high, therefore, that few can afford them, and those who wear them are distinguished from the common herd. This matter of buying distinction is the cause of our trouble. Now I propose that we increase the supply of jewels, silks, laces, picture-hats, and ancestors in Pointview--that we bring them within the reach of all, and aim a death-blow at the distinction to be obtained by displaying them. There isn't a servant-girl in this community who doesn't pant for luxuries. Why shouldn't she? I move that we have a committee to consider this inadequate supply of luxuries, with the power to increase the same at its own expense.'

"I was appointed chairman of that committee, and went to work, with Betsey and Mrs. Warburton as coadjutors.

"We stocked a store with clever imitations of silks, satins, and old lace, and the best a.s.sortment of Brummagem jewelry that could be raked together. We had a great show-case full of glittering paste--bracelets, tiaras, coronets, sunbursts, dog-collars, rings, necklaces--all extremely modish and so handsome that they would have deceived any but trained eyes. Our pearls and sapphires were especially attractive. We hired a skilled dressmaker, familiar with the latest modes, and a milliner who could imitate the most stunning hats on Fifth Avenue at reasonable prices. Every servant in good standing in our community was permitted to come and see and buy and say 'Charge it.'

"Mrs. Warburton's ball for the servants of Pointview, to be given in the Town Hall, was coming near. It happened that the committee of arrangements included Marie and the young Reverend Robert Knowles.

Their intimacy began in the work of that committee. For days they rode about in the minister's motor-car getting ready for the ball and for the greater intimacy that followed it.

"Our ball sent its radiance over land and sea. Sunbursts shone like stars in the Milky Way. A fine orchestra furnished music. Reporters from New York and other cities were present.