“Some people say so.  Really, I don’t know how any one can tell.  If he let go his hand from his affairs, I don’t know what a panic would do.”

Carmen looked thoughtful.  “He said to me once that he wasn’t afraid of the Street any more.  I told him this morning that I didn’t want to begin this if it was going to incommode him.”

“What did he say?”

“He was just going out.  He looked at me a moment with that speculative sort of look-no, it isn’t cynical, as you say; I know it so well—­and then said:  ’Oh, go ahead.  I guess it will be all right.  If anything happens, you can turn it into a boardinghouse.  It will be an excellent sanitarium.’  That was all.  Anyway, it’s something to do.  Come, let’s go and see the place.”  And she started up and touched the bell for the carriage.  It was more than something to do.  In those days before her marriage, when her mother was living, and when they wandered about Europe, dangerously near to the reputation of adventuresses, the girl had her dream of chateaux and castles and splendor.  Her chance did not come in Europe, but, as she would have said, Providence is good to those who wait.

The next day Jack went to Long Island, and the farm was bought, and the deed brought to Edith, who, with much formality, presented it to the boy, and that young gentleman showed his appreciation of it by trying to eat it.  It would have seemed a pretty incident to Jack, if he had not been absorbed in more important things.

But he was very much absorbed, and apparently more idle than ever.  As the days went on, and the weeks, he was less and less at home, and in a worse humor—­that is, at home.  Carmen did not find him ill-humored, nor was there any change towards the fellows at the Union, except that it was noticed that he had his cross days.  There was nothing specially to distinguish him from a dozen others, who led the same life of vacuity, of mild dissipation, of enforced pleasure.  A wager now and then on an “event”; a fictitious interest in elections; lively partisanship in society scandals:  Not much else.  The theatres were stale, and only endurable on account of the little suppers afterwards; and really there wasn’t much in life except the women who made it agreeable.

Major Fairfax was not a model; there had not much survived out of his checkered chances and experiences, except a certain instinct of being a gentleman, sir; the close of his life was not exactly a desirable goal; but even the Major shook his head over Jack.

XIX

The one fact in which men universally agree is that we come into the world alone and we go out of the world alone; and although we travel in company, make our pilgrimage to Canterbury or to Vanity Fair in a great show of fellowship, and of bearing one another’s burdens, we carry our deepest troubles alone.  When we think of it, it is an awful lonesomeness in this animated and moving crowd.  Each one either must or will carry his own burden, which he commonly cannot, or by pride or shame will not, ask help in carrying.