31
“That,” said he, taking up the pulpy gray object, “is the brain of my erstwhile friend and collaborator, Doctor Bolton. He willed it to the University.”
“Alas, poor Yorick!” murmured Carmen, a facetious twinkle coming into her eyes as she looked at it. “And why are you cutting it up?”
“In the interests of science,” returned the man, studying her. “That we may increase our knowledge of this marvelous mechanism of thought, and the laws by which it operates in mental processes.”
“Then you still blindly seek the living among the dead, don’t you?” she murmured. “You think that this poor thing held life, and you search now among its ashes for the living principle. But, God is life; and ‘Canst thou by searching find out God?’”
The man regarded her intently without replying. She bent for a while over the half-dissected brain in deep thought. Then she looked up.
“Doctor,” she said, “life is not structural. God is life; and to know Him is to reflect life. Reflecting Him, we are immortal. Doctor, don’t you think it is about time to do away with this business of dying?”
The man of science started visibly, and his eyes opened wider. The abrupt question quite swept him off his feet.
“You didn’t really expect to find anything in this brain, did you?” she went on. “The brain is composed of––what?”
“Why, mostly water, with a few commonplace salts,” he answered, wondering what the next question would be.
“And can a compound of water and a few commonplace saltsthink?” she asked, looking intently at him.
“N––no,” he answered tentatively.
“The brain is not the cause of thought, then, but an effect, is it not?” she pursued.
“Why, really, my dear Miss Carmen, we don’t know. We call it the organ of thought, because in some way thought seems to be associated with it, rather than with––well, with the liver, or muscles, for example. And we learn that certain classes of mental disturbances are intimately associated with lesions or clots in the brain. That’s about all.”
The girl reflected for a few moments. Then:
“Doctor, you wouldn’t cut up a machine to discover the motive power, would you? But that is just what you are doing there with that brain. You are hoping by dissecting it to find the power that made it go, aren’t you? And the power that made it go was mind––life.”
“But the life is not in the brain now,” hazarded the doctor.
32
“And never was,” returned Carmen promptly. “You see,” she went on, “if the brain was ever alive, it could never cease to be so. If it ever lived, it could never die. That brain never manifested real life. It manifested only a false sense of life. And that false sense died. Who or what says that the man who owned that brain is dead? Why, the human mind––human belief. It is the human mind, expressing its belief in death, and in a real opposite to life, or God. Don’t you see?”
“H’m!” The doctor regarded the girl queerly. She returned his look with a confident smile.
“You believe in evolution, don’t you?” she at length continued.
“Oh, surely,” he replied unhesitatingly. “There is overwhelming evidence of it.”
“Well, then, in the process of evolution, which was evolved first, the brain, or the mind which operates it and through it?” she asked.
“Why,” he replied meditatively, “it is quite likely that they evolved simultaneously, the brain being the mind’s organ of expression.”
“But don’t you see, Doctor, that you are now making the mind really come first? For that which expresses a thing is always secondary to the thing expressed.”
“Well, perhaps so,” he said. “At any rate, it is quite immaterial to a practical knowledge of how to meet the brain’s ills. I am a practical man, you know.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said simply. “Practical men are so stupid and ignorant.”
“Well, I declare!” he exclaimed, putting his hands on his hips and staring down at the smiling face.
“And you are so nice and friendly, I wouldn’t want to think you stupid and ignorant,” she went on blandly.
“H’m! Well, that kind o’ takes the edge off your former classification of me,” he said, greatly amused, yet wondering just what appraisal to place upon this frank girl.
“And evolution,” she continued, “is an unfolding, isn’t it? You see, the great fact of creation is the creator, infinite mind. Well, that mind expresses itself in its ideas. And these it is unfolding all the time. Now a fact always gives rise to a suppositional opposite. The opposite of a fact is an error. And that is why error has been called ‘negative truth.’ Of course, there isn’t any such thing as negative truth! And so all error is simply falsity, supposition, without real existence. Do you see?”
He did not reply. But she went on unperturbed. “Now, the human, or carnal, mind is the negative truth of the real mind,33God. It is infinite mind’s suppositional opposite. And it imitates the infinite mind, but in a very stupid, blundering way. And so the whole physical universe manifests evolution, too––an unfolding, or revealing, of material types, or mental concepts. And all these manifest the human mind’s sense of life, and its equally strong sense of death. The universe, animals, men, are all human types, evolved, or unfolded, or revealed, in the human mind. And all are the human mind’s interpretations of infinite mind’s real and eternal and perfect ideas. You see that, don’t you?
“You know,” she laughed, “speaking of ‘negative truth’, the first chapter of Genesis sets forth positive truth, and the second chapter sets forth its opposite, negative truth. It is very odd, isn’t it? But there it is for everybody to read. And the human mind, of course, true to its beliefs, clings to the second chapter as the reality. Isn’t it strange?”
Meantime, Carmen’s attention had been attracted to a large microscope that stood on the table near her. Going to it, she peeped curiously down into the tube. “Well, what have you here?” she inquired.
“Germs,” he said mechanically.
“Germs! What funny, twisted things! Well,” she suddenly asked, “have you got the fear germ here?”
He broke into a laugh. But when the girl looked up, her face was quite serious.
“You do not know it, Doctor, for you are a practical man, but you haven’t anything but fear germs under this glass,” she said in a low voice.
“Why, those are germs of typhoid and tuberculosis!” he exclaimed.
“And manifestations, externalizations, of the fear germ itself, which is mental,” she added. “These things don’t cause disease,” she went on, pointing to the slide. “But the thoughts which they manifest do. Do you scientists know why people die, Doctor?”
“No,” he admitted seriously. “We really do not know why people die.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” she said. “It’s because they don’t know enough to live.This poor Doctor Bolton died because he didn’t know that God was life. He committed sickness, and then paid the penalty, death. He sinned by believing that there were other powers than God, by believing that life and thought were in matter. And so he paid the wages of sin, death. He simply missed the mark, that’s all.”
She turned and perched herself upon the table. “You haven’t asked me to sit down,” she commented brightly. “But, if you don’t mind, I will.”34
“I––I beg your pardon!” the doctor exclaimed, coloring, and hastily setting out a chair. “I really was so interested in what you were saying that I forgot my manners.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head as she declined the proffered chair, “I’ll sit here, so’s I can look straight into your eyes. You go ahead and cut up poor Yorick, and I’ll talk.”
The doctor laughed again. “You are much more interesting,” he returned, “than poor Bolton, dead or alive. In fact, he really was quite a bore. But you are like a sparkling mountain rill, even if you do give me a severe classification.”
“Well,” she replied, “then you are honestly more interested in life than in death, are you?”
“Why, most assuredly!” he said.
“So am I, much! Death issucha mistake; and I haven’t a bit of use for it,” she continued. “It’s like making mistakes in music, or mathematics. Now when we make mistakes in those, we never stop to discuss them. We correct them. But, dear me! The world has nearly talked its poor old head off about the mistakes of sickness and death. It never seems to occur to the world that Jesus always associated sickness with sin. You know, the Rabbis of his day seem to have hit upon a great truth, although they didn’t make it really practical. They maintained that a sick man could not be healed of his diseases until all his sins had been forgiven. And so they attempted to forgive sins and make men clean by their elaborate ceremonies. But they missed the mark, too. And nobody got to the root of the difficulty until Jesus came. He forgave sin by destroying it completely. And that cured the disease that was the manifestation of sin. Now I ask, why do you, nearly two thousand years after his time, still do as the old Rabbis did, and continue to treat the body––the effect––instead of the mental cause? But,” looking down in meditation, “I suppose if you did that the people would cry, ‘He hath a devil!’ They thought I was a witch in Simití.”
“H’m!” returned the doctor. “Then you do not believe that disease is caused by microbes, I take it?”
“Disease caused by microbes? Yes, so it is. And the microbe? It is a manifestation of the human mind again. And, as with typhoid fever, diphtheria, and other diseases, the human mind applies its own cherished, ignorant beliefs in certain methods, and then renders innocuous its own manifestations, microbes. The human mind makes its own diseases, and then in some cases removes the disease, but still by human, material methods. Its reliefs are only temporary. At last it yields itself to its false beliefs, and then goes out in what it calls death. It is all a mental process––all human thought and its various35manifestations. Now why not get beyond microbes and reach the cause, even of them, the human mind itself? Jesus did. Paul did. Others have done so. Why do not you men of science do likewise?”
Doctor Morton himself took the chair which he had set out for the girl. “What you say,” he replied slowly, “is not new to me. But I can only answer that the world is not ready yet for the great change which you suggest.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “What cant! What mesmerism you are laboring under! Was the world ready for Jesus?”
“No. He came too soon. Events show that.”
“Well, then, would he be accepted to-day, if he had not come before?”
“I can not say. But––I think he would not.”
“And I quite agree with you,” she said firmly. “Now the world has doctored for more than four thousand years, despite the fact that health is not sold in bottle or pill form. Doctor, what does the history of all these centuries of drugging show you?”
He hesitated. Carmen waited a moment; then continued:
“Don’t they demonstrate the absolute inability of medicines to cure disease?” she asked. “Any more than putting men in prison cures crime?” she added as an afterthought.
“They at least prove that medication has notpermanentlyremoved disease,” he ventured, not wishing to go too far.
“Doctor,” she said earnestly, “that man Jesus, who, according to you, came too soon, said: ‘Without me ye can do nothing.’ Well, didn’t he come very, very close to the truth when he made that statement? He did not say that without drugs or material remedies we could do nothing, but that without the Christ-principle mankind would continue, as before, to miss the mark. He showed that disease and discord result from sin. Sin is lack of righteousness, lack of right-thinking about things. It is wrong belief, false thought. Sin is mental. Its effect, disease, is mental––a state of discordant consciousness. Can you with drugs change a state of mind?”
“Certainly,” he replied quickly. “Whiskey and opium cause changes in one’s state of mind.”
“No,” she answered. “But the human belief of power inherent in whiskey and opium, or of the human body’s reaction to them, causes a change in the human thought-activity that is called consciousness. The state of human consciousness changes with the belief, but not the real state of mind. Can you not see that? And Doctor Bolton––”
“Bolton was not sick. He died of natural causes, old age, and general breakdown,” was the doctor’s refuge.
36
Carmen laughed and sprang down from the table. “What an obstinately obdurate lot you scientific men are!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you know that you doctors are only a development of the old ‘medicine-man’? Now in the first place, Mr. Bolton isn’t dead; and, in the second, there are nonaturalcauses of death. Old age? Why, that’s gone out of fashion, long since.”
“You deny senile changes––?”
“I deny every human error!” she interrupted.
“Then,” with a note of banter in his voice, “I take it that you do not expect to die.”
“I do not!” she replied emphatically. “I expect good, nothing but good, ever! Don’t you know that physiologists themselves admit that the human body is composed of eighty-five per cent water and fifteen per cent ordinary salts? Can such a combination have intelligence and sensation? Do you still believe that life is dependent upon lungs, stomach, or liver? Why, the so-called ‘unit cell’ breathes, digests, and manifests life-functions, and yet it has no lungs, no mouth, no stomach, no organs. It is the human mind, assuming knowledge and power which it doesnotpossess, that says the sense of life shall depend upon such organs in the one case and not in the other. And the human mind could be utterly refuted if men would only learn to use the Christ-principle. Jesus and Paul used it, and proved material laws to be only false beliefs.”
“Well,” he replied meditatively, “if you are correct, then the preachers are way off the track. And I have long since come to the conclusion that––Well,” changing abruptly back to the previous topic, “so you refute the microbe theory, eh?”
“I said I did and did not,” she laughed. “Listen: fear, worry, hatred, malice, murder, all of which are mental things in themselves, manifest to the human mind as microbes. These are the hurtful microbes, and they produce toxins, which poison the system. What is the cure? Antitoxins? No, indeed! Jesus gave the real and permanent cure. It is the Christ-principle. Now you can learn that principle, and how to apply it. But if you don’t care to, why, then you must go on with your material microbes and poisons, and with your diseases and death, until you are ready to leave them and turn to that which is real. For all human-mind activity and manifestation, whether in microbes, death, or life, is mental, and is but the counterfeit of the real activity of divine mind, God.
“Do you know,” she pursued earnestly, “I heard a lecture the other day in which it was said that life is a sort of fermentation in the body. Well, as regards human life, I guess that is so. For the human body is only a manifestation of the human37mind; and the human mind surely is in a continuous state of ferment!”
She paused and laughed. “The lecturer,” she continued, “said that the range of life was from ultra-microbe to man, and that Shakespeare began as a single cell. Think of it! The mundane concept of Shakespeare’s body may have unfolded from a cell-concept; but Shakespeare was a manifestation of mind! And that mind was an interpretation, though very imperfect, of the mind that is God. Why can’t you materialists raise your eyes above the dust? Why, you would choke the very avenues of the spirit with mud!”
“H’m! Well, your education seems to be––”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “my education is beyond the vagaries that are so generally taught in the name of knowledge. Intellectual education is a farce. It does nothing for mankind, except to give them a false culture. Were the so-called great men of the past really educated? Here is an extract which I copied this afternoon from Hawthorne.” She opened her note book and read:
“‘Ah, but there is a half-acknowledged melancholy like to this when we stand in the perfected vigor of our life and feel that Time has now given us all his flowers, and that the next work of his never-idle fingers must be to steal them one by one away.’
“‘Ah, but there is a half-acknowledged melancholy like to this when we stand in the perfected vigor of our life and feel that Time has now given us all his flowers, and that the next work of his never-idle fingers must be to steal them one by one away.’
“Now,” she asked, “was that man really educated? In current theology, yes. But that theologycould not solve his least earthly problem, nor meet his slightest need! Oh, what inexpressibly sad lives so many of your greatest men have lived! Your Hawthorne, your Longfellow, they yearned for the rest which they were taught was to follow death. They were the victims of false theology. They were mesmerized. If they believed in the Christ––and they thought they did––why, then, did they not rise up and do as he bade them do, put death out? He taught no such resignation to human beliefs as they practiced! He showed men how to overcome the world. Why do we not try to overcome it? Has the time not come? Is the world not sufficiently weary of dying?”
He looked at her intently for some moments. She seemed, as she stood there before him, like a thing of gossamer and sunshine that had drifted into his laboratory, despite the closed door.
“Say,” he suddenly exclaimed, as a new thought struck him, “I’d like to have you talk with my friend, Reverend Patterson Moore! Pat and I have barked at each other for many years now, and I’m getting tired. I’d like to shift him to a younger and more vigorous opponent. I believe you’ve been providentially sent to relieve me.”
38
“Well,” she acquiesced. “You can tell Professor Hitt, and––”
“Hitt, eh? You know him?”
“Yes, indeed! He comes often to our house. He is very much interested in these things that you and I have been talking about to-day. We have regular meetings, with Father Waite, and Mr. Haynerd, and––”
“Well, no wonder you can argue! You’ve had practice, it seems. But––suppose I have Hitt bring me to one of your meetings, eh?”
“Do!” cried the girl. “And bring your Reverend Pat.”
The genial doctor laughed long and incontinently. “I imagine Reverend Pat wouldn’t thank you for referring to him that way,” he said. “He is a very high Anglican, and his dignity is marvelous––to say nothing of his self-esteem. Well, we’ll see, we’ll see. But, don’t go yet! We’re just getting acquainted.”
“I must,” replied the girl. “I didn’t really mean to come in here, you know. But I guess I was led, don’t you?”
And when the door had closed upon her, the doctor sat silently beside the pulseless brain of his deceased comrade and pondered long.
When Carmen entered the house, late that afternoon, she found the Beaubien in conversation with Professor Williams, of the University School of Music. That gentleman had learned through Hitt of the girl’s unusual voice, and had dropped in on his way home to ask that he might hear and test it. With only a smile for reply, Carmen tossed her books and hat upon the sofa and went directly to the piano, where she launched into the weird Indian lament which had produced such an astounding effect upon her chance visitors at the Elwin school that day long gone, and which had been running in her thought and seeking expression ever since her conversation with Doctor Morton a short while before.
For a full half hour she sang, lost in the harmony that poured from her soul. Father Waite entered, and quietly took a seat. She did not see him. Song after song, most of them the characteristic soft melodies of her people, and many her own simple improvisations, issued from the absorbed girl’s lips. The Beaubien rose and stole softly from the room. Father Waite sat with his head resting on his hand, striving to interpret the message which welled from the depths of his own being, where hidden, unused chords were vibrating in unison with those of this young girl.
Then, abruptly, the singing stopped, and Carmen turned and39faced her auditors. “There,” she said, with a happy sigh, “that justhadto come out!”
Professor Williams rose and took her hand. “Who, may I ask, was your teacher?” he said, in a voice husky with emotion.
Carmen smiled up at him. “No human teacher,” she said gently.
A look of astonishment came into the man’s face. He turned to Father Waite inquiringly. The latter nodded his confirmation of the girl’s words.
“Well!” exclaimed the professor. “I wonder if you realize what you have got, Miss Carmen?”
“Yes,” she replied simply. “It’s a beautiful gift, isn’t it?”
“But––I had thought of asking you to let me train you––but––I––I dare not undertake to handle such a voice as yours. May I––may I send Maitre Rossanni to you, the great Italian? Will you sing for him?”
“Oh, yes,” returned the girl; “I’ll sing for anybody. The gift isn’t mine, you know. It is for all. I’m only the channel.”
When the professor had taken his reluctant departure, the Beaubien returned and handed Carmen a letter. With a cry of joy the girl seized it and tore it open. It was from Colombia, the second one that her beloved Rosendo had succeeded in getting down the river to the distant coast. It had been written three months prior, and it bore many stains and evidences of the vicissitudes through which it had emerged. Yes, Rosendo and his family were well, though still at Maria Rosa, far up the Boque, with Don Nicolás. The war raged below them, but they were safe.
“And not a word from Padre Josè, or about him,” murmured the girl, sinking into a chair and clasping the soiled letter to her breast.
Father Waite thought of the little newsboy of Cartagena, and his possible share in the cause of Josè’s silence. But he made no comment.
CHAPTER 4
Carmen’s first serious test of her knowledge of English composition was made early in the semester, in an essay on town life in Colombia; and so meritorious did her instructor consider it that he advised her to send it to a prominent literary magazine. The result was that the essay was accepted, and a request made for further contributions.
The girl bubbled with new-found happiness. Then she wrote another, and still another article on the life and customs40of her people. Both were given publication; and with the money which she received for them she bought a silk dress for Jude, much to that adoring woman’s surprise and vehement protest. Carmen might have saved the money toward a piano––but, no; that would have been thinking of herself, and was inadmissible. Nor did the Beaubien offer any objection. “Indeed,” commented that fond shepherd of this lone lamb, “she would have poured the money out into somebody’s open hand anyway, and it might as well be Jude’s.”
Then she choked back the tears as she added: “The girl comes home every night with an empty purse, no matter how full it may have been in the morning. What does she do with the money? Follow her some day and see.”
Carmen’s slight success in the field of letters still further aroused Haynerd’s interest. The peacefully somnolent Social Era, he thought, might awaken to new things under the stimulus of such fresh writing as hers. Perhaps life did hold something of real value after all. Would she furnish him with a column or two on the peculiar social aspect of the metropolis?
She would, and did. And the result was that the staid conservative sheet was given a smart shaking; and several prominent society people sat up and blinked. The article was in no way malicious. It was not even condemnatory. It but threw a clear light from a somewhat unusual angle upon certain phases of New York’s social life, and uncovered a few of the more subtly hidden springs of its peculiar activity.
Among those who read her essay in the Social Era was J. Wilton Ames. He first lay back in his chair and laughed uproariously. And then, when his agents discovered for him the identity of the author, he glowered. The Beaubien was still standing between him and this budding genius. And though he might, and would, ultimately ruin the Beaubien financially, yet this girl, despite her social ostracism, bade fair to earn with her facile pen enough to maintain them both in luxury. So he bent anew to his vengeful schemes, for he would make them come to him. As Trustee, he would learn what courses the girl was pursuing in the University––for he had long known that she was in attendance there. Then he would learn who her associates were; what suggestions and advice her instructors gave her; and her plans for the future. And he would trace her sources of income and apply pressure at the most vital point. He had never in his life been successfully balked. Much less by a woman.
Then Haynerd came to congratulate Carmen again, and to request that she attend with him the formal opening of the new Ames mansion, the great Fifth Avenue palace, for he41wanted her vivid, first-hand impressions for his account of the brilliant affair in the Social Era. As reporters, he explained, they would of necessity remain in seclusion, and the girl might disguise to such an extent as to prevent recognition, if she chose. It was business for him, and an opportunity for rich experience for her. And the fearless girl went, because it would help Haynerd, though the Beaubien inwardly trembled.
Invitations to the number of three hundred had been issued to theéliteof New York, announcing the formal opening of the newly finished, magnificent Ames dwelling. These invitations were wrought in enamel on cards of pure gold. Each had cost thirty dollars. The mansion itself, twelve millions. A month prior to the opening, the newspapers had printed carefully-worded announcements of the return of Mrs. J. Wilton Ames and her daughter, after a protracted stay at various foreign baths and rest-cures in the hope of restoring the former’s impaired health. But Mrs. Ames now felt that she could no longer deprive society of her needed activities, and so had returned to conduct it through what promised to be a season of unusual brilliancy. The papers did not, however, state that J. Wilton had himself recalled her, after quietly destroying his bill of divorce, because he recognized the necessity of maintaining the social side of his complicated existence on a par with his vast business affairs.
As Carmen and Haynerd approached the huge, white marble structure, cupolaed, gabled, buttressed, and pinnacled, an overwhelming sense of what it stood for suddenly came upon the girl, and she saw revealed in a flash that side of its owner’s life which for so many months she had been pondering. The great shadows that seemed to issue from the massive exterior of the building swept out and engulfed her; and she turned and clasped Haynerd’s arm with the feeling that she would suffocate were she to remain longer in them.
“Perk up, little one,” said Haynerd, taking her hand. “We’ll go round to the rear entrance, and I will present my business card there. Ames’s secretary telephoned me instructions, and I said I was going to bring a lady reporter with me.”
Carmen caught her breath as she passed through the tall, exquisitely wrought iron gateway and along the marble walk which led to the rear. Up the winding steps to the front entrance, where swung the marvelous bronze doors which had stirred the imaginations of two continents, streamed the favored of the fashionable world. Among them Carmen saw many whom she recognized. The buffoon, Larry Beers, was there, swinging jauntily along with the bejeweled wife of Samson, the multimillionaire packer. Kane and his wife, and42Weston followed. Outside the gates there was incessant chugging of automobiles, mingled with the shouted orders of the three policemen detailed to direct the traffic. A pinched, ragged urchin and his tattered little sister crept up and peered wildly through the iron pickets of the fence; but a sharp rap from a policeman’s club sent them scattering. Carmen stood for a moment in the shadows and watched the swarm mount the marble steps and enter through those wonderful doors. There were congressmen and senators, magnates and jurists, distillers and preachers. Each one owed his tithe of allegiance to Ames. Some were chained to him hard and fast, nor would break their bonds this side of the grave. Some he owned outright. There were those who grew white under his most casual glance. There were others who knew that his calloused hand was closing about them, and that when it opened again they would fall to the ground, dry as dust. Others, like moths, not yet singed, were hovering ever closer to the bright, cruel flame. Reverend Darius Borwell, bowing and smiling, alighted from his parochial car and tripped blithely up the glistening marble steps. Each and all, wrapping the skeleton of grief, greed, shame, or fear beneath swart broadcloth and shimmering silk, floated up those ghostly steps as if drawn by a tremendous magnet incarnate in the person of J. Wilton Ames.
Carmen shuddered and turned away. Did the pale wraith of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles sigh in the wake of that gilded assembly? Did the moans of poor, grief-stricken Mrs. Gannette, sitting in her poverty and sorrow, die into silence against those bronze doors? Was he, the being who dwelt in that marble palace, the hydra-headed embodiment of the carnal, Scriptural, age-old power that opposes God? And could he stand forever?
Two detectives met them at the rear door. How many others there were scattered through the house itself, Haynerd could only guess. But he passed inspection and was admitted with the girl. A butler took immediate charge of them, and led them quickly through a short passage and to an elevator, by which they mounted to another floor, where, opening a paneled oak door, the dignified functionary preceded them into a small reception hall, with lavatories at either end. Here he bade them remove their wraps and await his return.
“Well,” commented Haynerd, with a light, nervous laugh, “we’ve crossed the Rubicon! Now don’t miss a thing!”
A moment later the butler returned with a sharp-eyed young woman, Mrs. Ames’s social secretary.
“You will be very careful in your report,” the latter began at once in a business-like manner. “And you will submit the43same to me for approval before it is published in your magazine. Mr. Ames deems that imperative, since your recent publication of an essay on modern society in this city. I have a list here of the guests, their business and social standing, and other data. You will run that in full. You will say that this is the most brilliant assemblage ever gathered under one roof in New York. The wealth represented here to-night will total not less than three billion dollars. The jewels alone displayed will foot up not less than twenty millions. Now, let me see,” again consulting her notes.
Haynerd stole a covert glance at Carmen and winked.
“The chef,” the secretary resumed, “was brought over from Paris by Mrs. Ames on her recent return. His name, Pierre Lotard, descendant of the famous chef of the Emperor Napoleon First. He considers that his menu to-night surpasses anything he ever before achieved.”
“May I ask,” interrupted Haynerd, “the probable cost of the supper?”
“Yes, perhaps you had better mention that item. It will be in the neighborhood of three hundred dollars a plate. House and table decorations, about eight thousand dollars. Here is a copy of the menu. Run it in full. The menu cards were hand-illuminated by Parisian artists, and each bears a sketch illustrative or suggestive of the guest to whom it is given.”
“Cost?” queried Haynerd off-handedly.
“Three thousand, if I correctly recall it,” was the nonchalant reply. “As to the viands, you will mention that they have been gathered from every part of the world. Now come with me, and I will give you a hasty sketch of the house, while the guests are assembling in the grand salon. Then you will remain in the balcony, where you will make what notes you wish on the dress displayed. Refreshments will be served to you later in this waiting room. I need not remind you that you are not expected to mingle with the guests, nor to address any one. Keep to the balcony, and quite out of view.”
Opening a door opposite the one through which she had entered, the young woman led her charges directly out upon the great marble balcony overlooking the grand salon below. A rush of brilliant light engulfed them, and a potpourri of chatter and laughter, mingled with soft music from a distant organ, and the less distinct notes of the orchestra in the still more distant ballroom, rose about them in confused babel, as they tiptoed to the exquisitely carved marble railing and peered down upon the gorgeous pageant. The ceiling rose far above them, delicately tinted like a soft Italian sky. The lofty walls dropped, like gold-gray veils, to the richly carved paneled44wainscoting beneath, which had once lined the halls of a mediaeval castle on the Rhine. The great windows were hidden behind rare Venetian lace curtains, over which fell hangings of brocade, repeating the soft tints of the wall and the brocade-covered chairs and divans ranged close about the sides of the splendid room. On the floor lay a massive, priceless Persian carpet, dating from the fifteenth century.
Haynerd drew a long breath, and whistled softly. From the end of the salon he could mark the short flight of steps which led to the mezzanine, with its walls heavily tapestried, and broken by rich oak doors opening into lavatories and lounging rooms, itself widening at the far end into the grand billiard and smoking parlors, done off in Circassian walnut, with tables and furniture to harmonize. From the mezzanine he saw the grand stairway falling away in great, sweeping curves, all in blended marble from the world’s greatest quarries, and delicately chased and carved into classic designs. Two tapestries, centuries old, hung from the walls on either side. Far above, the oak ceiling, for which theSchwarzwaldhad been ranged, was overlaid with pure gold leaf. The whole was suffused with the glow of myriad hidden and inverted lights, reflected in a thousand angles from burnished gold and marble and rarest gems.
Haynerd turned to the waiting secretary. He groped in the chambers of his imagery for some superlative adjective to express his emotion before this colossal display of wealth. But his ample vocabulary had faded quite. He could only shake his head and give vent to the inept remark, “Swell––by George!”
The secretary, without replying, motioned them to follow. Passing noiselessly around the balcony to the opposite side, she indicated a door below, leading off to the right from the grand salon.
“That room beyond,” she said, “is the petit salon. The decorative effects are by French artists. Beyond that is the morning room. It is in panels from French chateaux, covered with Gobelin tapestry. Now from here you can see a bit of the music room. The grand organ cost, installed, about two hundred thousand dollars. It is electrically controlled, with its pipes running all around the room, so as to give the effect of music coming from every corner.”
Haynerd again softly whistled.
“There are three art galleries beyond, two for paintings, and one for sculpture. Mr. Ames has without doubt the finest art collection in America. It includes several Titians, Veroneses, da Vincis, Turners, three Rubens, and two Raphaels. By the way, it may interest you to know that his negotiations for the45Murillo Madonna were completed to-day, and the picture will be sent to him immediately.”
“Might I ask what he paid for it?” Haynerd inquired casually.
“You may say that he paid something over three hundred thousand dollars for it,” she replied, in a quite matter of fact tone. “Now,” she continued, “you will go back to your first position, near the door of the waiting room, and remain there until I return. I may have an opportunity later to show you the library. It is very unique. Great carved stone fireplace, taken from a Scotch castle. Hundreds of rare volumes and first editions. Now, if any one approaches, you can step behind the screen and remain out of view. You have chairs and a table there for your writing. Do not in any event leave this balcony.”
With this final injunction she turned and disappeared into the little waiting room from which they had emerged.
For some moments Carmen and Haynerd stood looking alternately at each other and about them at their magnificent environment. Both had seen much of the gilded life, and the girl had dwelt some months in its alien atmosphere. But neither had ever witnessed such a stupendous display of material wealth as was here unfolded before their astonished gaze. At the head of the grand stairway stood the Ames trio, to receive their resplendent guests. The women were magnificently gowned. But Ames’s massive form in its simple black and chaste linen was the cynosure of all eyes. Even Haynerd could not suppress a note of admiration as he gazed at the splendid figure.
“And yet,” he murmured, “a victim, like the rest, of the great delusion.”
Carmen laid down the opera glasses through which she had been studying the man. “He is an expression,” she said, “of the American ideal––the ideal of practical material life. It is toward his plane of life that this country’s youth are struggling, at, oh, what a cost! Think, think, what his immense, misused revenue could do, if unselfishly used! Why, the cost of this single night’s show would put two hundred men like Father Waite through a four-year course in the University, and train them to do life’s work! And what, what will Mr. Ames get out of it?”
“Oh, further opportunities to increase his pile, I suppose,” returned Haynerd, shrugging his shoulders.
“But, will he get real happiness? Peace? Joy? And does he need further opportunities to accumulate money? Does he not rather need some one to show him the meaning of life, how to really live?”
46
“He does, indeed! And it may be your mission, Carmen, to do just that. But if you don’t, then I sincerely hope the man may die before he discovers that all that he has achieved, his wealth, his prestige, his power, have not been worth striving for!”
“He hasn’t the slightest idea of the meaning of life,” she murmured, looking down upon the glittering throng. “Nor have any of them.”
“No,” he replied. “They put me in mind of Carlyle’s famous remark, as he stood looking out across the London Strand: ‘There are in this city some four million people, mostly fools.’ How mean, narrow and hard their lives are! These are the high priests of vested privilege, of mediaevalism, of old institutions whose perpetual maintenance, even in a generation that has progressed far beyond them, is a fungus blight upon us. Ah, there’s little Willie Van Wot, all dolled out! He’s glorifying his Creator now by devoting his foolish little existence to coaching trips along the New England shore. He reminds me of the Fleet street poet who wrote a century ago of the similar occupation of a young dandy of that day––
What can little T. O. do?Why, drive a Phaeton and Two!!!Can little T. O. do no more?Yes, drive a Phaeton and Four!!!!
“He’s an interesting outgrowth of our unique social system, eh?”
“We must follow Emerson and treat them all as we do pictures, look at them in the best light,” murmured Carmen.
“Aye, hang them in the best light!” returned Haynerd. “But make sure they’re well hung! There goes the pseudo-princess, member of the royal house of England. She carries the royal taint, too. I tell you, under the splash and glitter you can see the feet of clay, eh?”
“Yes,” smiled Carmen, “resting upon the high heel.”
“Huh!” muttered Haynerd, with a gesture of disgust. “The women of fashion seem to feel that the Creator didn’t do a good job when He designed the feminine sex––that He should have put a hump where the heel is, so’s to slant the foot and make comfortable walking impossible, as well as to insure a plentiful crop of foot-troubles and deformities. The Chinese women used to manifest a similarly insane thought. Good heavens! High heel, low brain! The human mind is a cave of black ignorance!”
Carmen did not reply, but bent her attention again to the throng below.
“Look there,” said Haynerd, indicating a stout, full-toiletted woman, resplendent with diamonds. “That’s our47eminent French guest, Madam Carot. She severed herself from her tiresome consort last year by means of a bichloride tablet deftly immersed in his coffee, and then, leaving a sigh of regret hovering over his unhandsome remains, hastened to our friendly shores, to grace thebeau mondewith her gowns and jewels.”
Carmen turned to him with a remonstrance of incredulity.
“Fact,” he stubbornly insisted. “The Social Era got the whole spicy story. And there beside her is our indispensable Mrs. T. Oliver Pennymon. See, she’s drifted up to young Watson! Coquetting for a husband still, the old buzzard!”
“Mr. Haynerd!”
“Well, it’s fact, anyway,” persisted the society monitor. “And there beyond her is fat little Mrs. Stuffenheimer, with her two unlovely, red-faced daughters. Ah, the despairing mamma is still vainly angling for mates for her two chubby Venuses! If they’re not married off properly and into good social positions soon, it’s mamma for the scrap heap! By George! it’s positively tragic to see these anxious mothers at Newport and Atlantic City and other fashionable places, rushing madly hither and yon with their marriageable daughters, dragging them from one function to another in the wild hope that they may ultimately land a man. Worry and pain dig deep furrows into poor mamma’s face if she sees her daughters fading into the has-been class. It requires heroism, I say, to travel in society! But I guess you know, eh? Well,” taking up his notebook, “we must get busy now. By the way, how’s your shorthand progressing?”
“Oh, splendidly,” replied the girl, her eyes still upon the massive figure of Ames. Then, recovering from her abstraction, “I can write as fast in it now as in longhand.”
“Good!” said Haynerd. “You’ll need it later.”
For more than an hour the two sat in the seclusion of the splendid balcony, looking down upon the scene of magnificence below. Through the mind of the young girl ran a ceaseless paean of thanksgiving for her timely deliverance from the trammels which she so well knew enshackled these glittering birds of paradise. With it mingled a great, consuming desire, a soul-longing to pour into the vacuity of high society the leaven of her own pure thought. In particular did her boundless love now go out to that gigantic figure whose ideals of life this sumptuous display of material wealth and power expressed. Why was he doing this? What ulterior motive had he? Was it only a vainglorious exhibition of his own human prowess? Was it an announcement, magnificent beyond compare, that he, J. Wilton Ames, had attained the supreme48heights of gratified world ambition? That the world at last lay at his feet? And that over it brooded the giant’s lament that there remained nothing more to conquer? But, if so, the girl at least knew that the man’s herculean efforts to subdue the material world were as nothing. The real conquest lay still before him, the conquest of self. And when that were faced and achieved, well she knew that no such garish display as this would announce the victory to a breathless world.
The bustling little social secretary again appeared, and briefly announced the production of an opera in the auditorium, to which she had come to conduct them. Passing through the little waiting room and to the elevator, they quickly mounted to the unoccupied gallery of the theater above. The parquet, which would seat nearly a thousand spectators, was rapidly filling with an eager, curious throng. The Ames trio and some of the more distinguished guests were already occupying the gorgeously decorated boxes at the sides. An orchestra of fifty pieces was visible in the hollow below the stage. Caroni, the famous grand opera leader, stood ready to conduct. The opera itself was the much discussed music drama, Salome.
“Now,” commented Haynerd to his fair, wondering companion, who was lost in contemplation of the magnificent mural decorations of the little theater, “we will see something rare, for this opera has been called the most artistic piece of indecency known to the stage. Good heavens! Ames has got Marie Deschamps for the title rôle. She’ll cost him not less than five thousand dollars for this one night. And––see here,” drawing Carmen’s attention to the bill, “Marcou and Corvalle besides! The man must be made of money! These stars get three thousand dollars a night during the regular season.”
Every phase of sophistication was manifested in that glittering audience when the curtain rose and the sensational theme was introduced. But to none came thoughts like those which clamored for admittance at the portals of Carmen’s mentality. In the bold challenge of the insanely sensual portrayal of a carnal mind the girl saw the age-old defiance of the spirit by the flesh. In the rolls of the wondrous music, in its shrieks, its pleadings, and its dying echoes, she heard voiced again the soul-lament of a weary world searching vainly in the mazes of human thought for truth. As the wonderful Deschamps danced weirdly before her in the ghastly light and fell gloating over her gory trophy, Carmen saw but the frantic struggles of a diseased soul, portrayed as the skilled surgeon lays bare the malignant growth that is eating the quivering tissues of a human frame. The immodesty of dress, the sensual49suggestiveness of the dance, the brutal flouting of every element of refinement and delicacy, blazoned in frenzied tone and movement the bloody orgy and dance of death which goes on incessantly upon the stage of human life, and ends in the mad whirl and confusion and insane gibbering over the lifeless trophies for which mankind sell their very souls.
“About the limit of tolerance, eh?” commented Haynerd, when the final curtain dropped. “Yes, even to a vitiated taste. The passionate thirst for the sensational has led to this sickening display of salacity––”
“Splendid, wasn’t it?” came in tones of admiration from the social secretary, who had returned to conduct her charges back to the balcony before the guests emerged from the theater. “You will run the program in full, and comment at some length on the expense attached,” she went on. “You have just witnessed the private production of a full opera, unabridged, and with the regular operatic cast. Supper will follow in a half hour. Meantime, you will remain in the balcony where you were before.”
Returning to their former position, Carmen sank into a chair at the little table behind the screen, and strove to orient her thought. Haynerd sat down beside her to arrange his voluminous notes. Presently footsteps were heard, and the sound of voices. Haynerd glanced through the hinge of the screen. “Ha!” he whispered, “here comes Ames and––who’s with him? Ah, Representative Wales. Showing him about, I suppose.”
Carmen gazed at the approaching men with fascinated eyes, although she saw but one, the towering magician who had reared this fairy palace. She saw Ames lead his companion to the door of the little waiting room at their right, and heard the congressman protest against entering.
“But we can talk undisturbed in here,” urged Ames, his hand on the door.
“Better remain out here on the balcony,” replied the congressman nervously, as he moved toward the railing.
Ames laughed and shrugged his enormous shoulders. He understood the man’s repugnance fully. But he humored him.
“You know, Wales,” he said easily, going to the railing and peering over at the brilliant assemblage below, “if I could get the heathen Chinee to add an extra half-inch to his shirt length, I’d make a hundred millions. And then, perhaps, I wouldn’t need to struggle with your Ways and Means Committee as I do. By the way, the cotton schedule will be reported out unchanged, I presume.” He turned and looked quizzically at his companion as he said this.
Wales trembled slightly when he replied to the question he had been awaiting. “I think not, Mr. Ames.”