Under the Skylights | Page 8

in a rushing stream."
"Not at all!" cried Clytie, now in the full heat of controversy. "If you
were used to a big growing city, with all its sudden shifts and changes,

you would understand. Even the new neighbourhoods get spoiled
before they are half put together--builders treat one another so unfairly;
while, as for the old ones--why, my poor dear father is coming to have
row after row that he can't find tenants for at all, unless he were to let
them to--to objectionable characters."
Clytie threw this out with all boldness. The matter was purely
economic, sociological; they were talking quite as man to man. Abner
brought every woman to this point sooner or later.
As for the troubles of landlords, he had no sympathy with them. And to
him the most objectionable of all "objectionable characters" was the
man who had a strong box stuffed with farm mortgages--town-dwellers,
the great bulk of them. "Oh, the cities, the cities!" he groaned. Then,
more cheerfully: "But never mind: they are passing."
"Passing? I like that! Do you know that eighteen and two-thirds per
cent of the population of the United States lives in towns of one
hundred thousand inhabitants and above, and that the number is
increasing at the rate of----"
"They are disintegrating," pursued Abner stolidly. "By their own
bulk--like a big snowball. And by their own badness. People are rolling
back to the country--the country they came from. Improved
transportation will do it." The troubles of the town were ephemeral--he
waved them aside. But his face was set in a frown--doubtless at the
thought of the perdurable afflictions of the country.
"Don't worry over these passing difficulties that arise from a mere
temporary congestion of population. They will take care of themselves.
Meanwhile, don't sport with them; don't encourage your young friends
to make them a vehicle of their own selfish pleasures; don't----"
Clytie caught her breath. So she was a mere frivolous, inconsequential
butterfly, after all. Why try longer to lend the Helping Hand--why not
cut things short and be satisfied with the Social Triumph and let it go at
that? "I was meaning to ask you to dine with me some evening next
week at a settlement I know, but now...."

"I never 'dine,'" said Abner.

VII
"I should be so glad to have you call." Mrs. Pence was peering about
among the lanterns and tapestries and the stirring throng with the idea
of picking up Clytie and taking leave. "My niece is staying with me just
now, and I'm sure she would be glad to see you again too."
Abner looked about to help her find her charge. Clytie had gone over to
the tea-table, where she was snapping vindictively at the half of a
ginger-wafer somebody else had left and was gesticulating in the face
of Medora Giles.
"I never met such a man in my life!" she was declaring. "I'll never
speak to him again as long as I live! He's a bear; he's a brute!"
Little O'Grady, bringing forward another sliced lemon, shook in his
shoes. "He'll have everybody scared away before long!" the poor fellow
thought.
Medora smiled on Clytie. "Oh, not so bad as that, I hope," she said
serenely. "Stephen, now, is beginning to have quite a liking for him. So
earnest; so well-intentioned...."
"And you yourself?" asked Clytie.
"I haven't met him yet. I'm only on probation. He has looked me
over--from afar, but has his doubts. I may get the benefit of them, or I
may not."
"What doubts?"
"Why, I'm a renegade, a European. I'm effete, contaminate, taboo."
"Has he said so?"

"Said so? Do I need to have things 'said'?"
"Well, if you really are all this, you'll find it out soon enough."
"He's a touchstone, then?"
"Yes. And I'm a nonentity, lightly concerning myself about light
nothings. He won't mince matters."
"Don't worry about me," said Medora confidently. "I shall know how to
handle him."
Mrs. Pence kept on peering. Dusk was upon the place, and the few dim
lights were more ineffectual than ever. "There she is," said Abner, with
a bob of the head.
"Good-bye, then," said Eudoxia, grasping his hand effusively, as she
took her first step toward Clytie. "Now, you will come and see us,
won't you?"
"Thank you; but----"
Abner paused for the evocation of an instantaneous vision of the
household thus thrown open to him. Such opportunities for falsity,
artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and
indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent
servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best
were questionable! Could he accept such hospitality as this?
"Thank you. I might come, possibly, if I can find the time. But I warn
you I am very busy."
"Make time,"