IVHe began adroitly enough by complimenting her on the success with which she had made Janet alive to the galvanic interests of contemporary life. It was a miracle of education, he assured her, and he begged her not to spoil the achievement by converting Janet to her favorite theory of free love. He hoped she would rather warn her friend of the folly of contracting a free union under existing social sanctions."Like the majority of men, you believe love and sex emotion to be one and the same thing," she retorted, cuttingly. "That's why you have no understanding of what freedom in love means.""Now, Cornelia, I won't be drawn into a controversy on the merits of free love.""Then don't sneer at it.""I don't. In fact, like every healthy young human being, I am by nature something of a varietist myself. But, as a civilized member of society, I'm bound to take the institutions of my country and generation as I find them. I believe Janet will be better off, if she does so too. Let her set out to alter or revolutionize our institutions, but not to defy them.""My poor Cato! Don't you know that numbers of the young women of today are quietly doing what numbers of the young men have always done?""Living in illicit relations, you mean?""That is what a ridiculous man-made custom calls it.""But, Cornelia, although many of the Lorillard girls have admittedly flung a glove in the face of social conventions—""I'm not talking of Lorillard girls, Robert. I'm talking of teachers, lawyers, stenographers—the 'respectable' girls who remain in their schools and offices without any loss of self-respect or public esteem, and who merely do what the 'respectable' men do, that is, pay a mock tribute to outward appearances, and go scot free.""Exactly, Cornelia," said Robert, triumphantly. "They pay a tribute to appearances. They quietly disobey existing conventions. But they don't defy them, much less try to alter them. They are frequently their staunchest supporters.""Just like the men.""Just like the men. But you are wrong when you say they go scot free. You are wrong again when you say that the tribute they pay is a mock tribute. It is anything but that. It is an endless payment by installments, a payment in degrading stealth and harassing secrecy.""What are you driving at?""Janet is not the girl to pay a tribute of this kind," he said, with emphasis. "If she champions the cause of free love, she won't do so merely to experience the ups and downs of an underground existence. She will do so, believing it to be a wise or progressive departure. And she will defend her championship in the teeth of the whole world, regardless of its effect on her future."Cornelia received this speech unmoved."Well, why shouldn't she?" she said. "Others have endured much more for their beliefs. To be candid, I really don't see how Janet's behavior concerns you, any way.""You forget, Cornelia, that I, too, talked modernism in a blue streak to her before she broke with her people. And so I feel that I share with you the responsibility for her present course.""Oh, do you?""Yes. There's a lot of moonshine in Kips Bay that passes for modernity. I think the least we can do is to show Janet that modernity is not simply a new watchword for moonshine. We ought to prevent her from being taken in by the illusion which the Outlaws produce of easy, satisfying intimacies between the sexes."A stream of silvery laughter escaped Cornelia. Then, in a studied tone of superiority, she replied:"My dear boy, the love relation between two individuals is strictly their own private affair. It is nobody else's business whatever. I have no right to interfere in Janet's intimacies, and neither have you. Anyhow, I believe she is quite competent to stand on her own feet.""I'm not so sure, Cornelia. Janet is utterly different from the Lorillard Outlaw girl, or the Greenwich Village Bohemian girl. The effect of Greenwich Villageism is to make irregularity (what regularity so often is) a bore. The purpose of Lorillardism is to make irregularity pay. But Janet is not likely to adopt a radical creed merely as a pose or with an eye to its profit. She will adopt it in a spirit of sheer blind self-sacrifice. And every advantage will be taken of her, precisely because she's not a sex profiteer.""Cato, the beginning of wisdom is self-knowledge. Have you ever heard of any gain in self-knowledge without some loss of happiness? No. It is a law of life which neither you, nor I, nor Janet can escape.""But," he urged, "you must admit that Janet's case is a special one. She has just left a home where purely private gratifications dictate which conventions shall bekept; and she has entered this model tenement life where, again, purely private gratifications dictate which conventions shall bebroken. She may not grasp this difference all at once. Are we to let her inexperience cause her unnecessary suffering?""I, too, have suffered for my convictions, Robert!" she said, with a conclusive gesture of impatience.Robert felt like telling her that, at this moment, she reminded him forcibly of the fox that had its tail cut off. But he didn't quite dare.Naturally, under the circumstances, the visit to the Grand Central Palace was a complete failure. Cornelia, loathing the exhibition, seized the first available excuse for asking to be taken home.The resentment she harbored was too strong to be hidden beneath the ordinary civilities of polite intercourse. Her affection for Robert, which had long been hanging by a slender thread, was now sharply snapped through the complete revulsion of feeling she experienced towards him.From her point of view, the fault was entirely his. She had always hated what she termed his moralistic nature. But never before had he shown such a callous want of sympathy with her past misfortunes or such a frank hostility to her present outlook on life. What she did not acknowledge to herself was that his concern for Janet had given heramour proprea mortal wound for which she could never forgive him.On their return to the Lorillard tenements, she promptly called Harry Kelly into Number Fifteen. The Harlem Gorilla (renicknamed Hercules as a mark of favor) was highly flattered and only too willing to be a listener and a comforter."Robert is getting to be quite impossible!" she exclaimed, with a lurid Belasco intonation. "I can't imagine what has come over him, or why he continues to honor the Outlaws with his presence, seeing that he is now an enemy of freedom and not a friend of it. Hercules, will you believe it, he cannot hear the word Lorillard so much as mentioned without showing the cloven hoof."CHAPTER THIRTEENIWhile Robert and Cornelia were going to and from the Grand Central Palace, Claude's car was carrying its occupants through pleasant stretches of Long Island country to the Mineola aerodrome. The day, the air, the landscape, and the man conspired to make the occasion an intoxicating one for Janet.Claude's gayety and personal charm were fully matched by his perfect ease. This was the quality that magnetized her, it was so new in her experience of American men. The men she had known in Brooklyn, struggling professional and business men, wore their manners as they did their Sunday clothes, with a painful effect of unfamiliarity. Their behavior was as different from Claude's as a sputtering torch is from an arc light.In the company of women, these men were nearly always ill at ease. Sometimes they acted obtrusively protective or aggressively possessive, more frequently they were apprehensive, timid or even pitiably afraid. Whatever they did, they did with constraint. And they never seemed able to forget the towering fact that their manhood had an economic value. They were as painfully conscious of this asset as an elderly maiden is of her chastity—and they guarded it with the same zeal.Janet was inexpressibly thankful that Claude had never treated her as if she belonged to an unknown or unclassified species, and that he was not constantly filled with a nervous dread that she might at any moment begin picking his soul, if not his pocket.They talked of everything under the sun; she of her childhood, her school days, her aspirations; he of social or artistic doings in and about New York, with the more notable and distinctive of which he had a first-hand familiarity. But no matter how sober or philosophic the topic chosen, it was sure, in some mysterious way, to be sidetracked into the catechism of love.Janet had all she could do to keep matters from taking too amorous a turn. It was delicious to be made love to as audaciously as only Claude could. It was great fun to tremble on the quicksilvery margin between how much he dared and how little she permitted. And it was her native mother wit rather than her instinct that set a limit to his impetuous wooing.As soon as they reached the aerodrome, Claude became a more conventionally courteous cavalier again. And Janet got a glimpse of a section of his life to which she had hardly given any thought.IIThe Trans-Continental Air Race had been widely advertised, and the gigantic aerodrome was jammed with excited crowds. Claude at once plunged his companion into the thick of things. Anybody and everybody appeared to know him, and he knew everybody who was anybody. In swift succession Janet was introduced to the superintendent of the grounds, the president of the Aero Club, the chief contestants of the day, several foreign aviators of renown, the naval officer who commanded the first "blimp" across the Atlantic, and to so many other notabilities that her head began to whirl.Once or twice Claude left her to pay special homage to some lady, frequently an elderly one and a personage of uncommon account. In these intervals, while standing a little away from the throbbing, bewildering spectacle around her, she attempted to give some perspective to her impressions.It was gradually clear to her that the spectators resolved themselves into two classes: first, thehoi polloiwhose teeming throngs pushed along the common passageways and packed the benches in the stands to the point of suffocation; and then a small, compact group of men and women whose breeding, dress and carriage would have differentiated them from the other spectators even if the weather-beaten air of superiority with which they promenaded within the fenced-off and sacrosanct places, had not sufficiently done so.Superficially, the attitude of these chosen ones towards the gallery was the attitude of actors towards an audience: they affected to be oblivious of its existence, and yet it was patent that they were greedily conscious of the snobbish admiration and flattering envy which the crowd radiated collectively and in its component parts.Janet watched these bankers and railroad directors and senators with their wives and daughters urbanely encircling the placid airplanes, the restive airmen and the little extra demonstrations for the elect. And it seemed to her that they appropriated the special privileges inseparable from the governors of a democracy with an affably paternal air which was as much as to say: "What a very democratic ruling-class it is that runs this very democratic nation."Of course she knew that they were not really thinking this. Seeing that they were the ruling class, they ought to have weighty, superior problems of finance, transportation or statesmanship at the back of their minds. Had they? Or were they merely thinking that unless they were on thequi vivethey might be caught in an awkward pose by one of the brigade of camera men who were photographing celebrities for the Sunday pictorial supplements and the cinema current topics.Janet perceived also that the faces of the ladies and gentlemen of the plutocracy, though set in hard lines and wreathed in hard smiles, were, on the whole, much less hard than the faces of the poorer middle-class people among whom she lived and moved and had her being. Their complexions were far better, too. And they were healthier and robuster and decidedly cleaner and politer.Politer, but not better mannered. Temporarily, Janet might have been deceived by the surface courtesy with which the men approached one another and the ceaseless vehemence with which the women talked and smiled, or rather, exhibited the whole of a fine set of front teeth from the top of the upper row to the tip of the nether gum. But when she had mingled with them at Claude's side, these same ladies that paraded their toothful smiles so amiably for the photographer's benefit, had politely but uncannily looked her through and through in the most literal sense of the words. To put it bluntly, they had instantly sized her up as an intruder from a sphere they had no personal contact with. True, they murmured the necessary courteous phrases, but they did so to a creature whose common humanity with themselves their glances insolently and emphatically denied.Had Claude sensed this, and left her alone to spare her (and perhaps himself) embarrassment? The question made her feel uneasy and disconcerted. It also made her wish him back, in the hope that his presence would restore her confidence. What was keeping him so long this time? By way of finding an answer, her eyes searched him out among the machines.She saw him, not very far away, in the midst of a group of three other people: a couple in the prime of life, who were obviously the parents of a young lady of about Janet's own age. The attention of the daughter was fixed detainingly on Claude; that of the parents was fastened proudly on their daughter.Thanks to a fine eyesight, Janet was enabled to get an excellent view of the young lady's appearance.She was a tall, light brunette, and her frock, her sulky discontented mouth and her affectation of stateliness were all highly fashionable. So was her face, which had a tolerably clear skin and otherwise neither a noticeable blemish nor a spark of fire. It was the kind of standard feminine face just common enough in America to fit the popular conception of beauty and just enough above the common to be in constant request by illustrators as a model for the covers of monthly magazines.It struck Janet that she was making some demand upon Claude which was taxing his charm and diplomacy to the utmost. Eventually, as he took leave of the group, she abruptly turned away from him, the back of her shoulders expressing the most intense vexation.IIISoon thereafter he was at Janet's side again, looking somewhat harassed."Those were the Armstrongs and their daughter, Marjorie," he said, in answer to her look of curiosity."Who are the Armstrongs?"Claude was taken aback by this question. In his world, where everybody knew everybody else, the bare name of Armstrong had a very definite and compact meaning."Dear little ignoramus! The Dupont Armstrongs, of course."This addition meant very little more to Janet, although it rekindled a vague memory that she had seen the name somewhere in the newspapers. Politely concealing his wonderment, Claude explained more at length.He said that Colonel Dupont Armstrong came of an old Southern family, and was the active head of the great firm of Harmon, Armstrong & Co., the international bankers whose financial power had built golden bridges between continents. His wife had a passion for collecting exquisite jewels; he had a mania for hoarding Chinese vases. But the operation of his esthetic taste being unreliable, he had struck up an intimacy with Claude's father soon after he discovered this gentleman to be a thoroughly dependable guide. In time, he became a regular patron of the Fontaine galleries and his purchases of diamonds, necklaces and porcelains had contributed appreciably to Mr. Fontaine's fortune.Janet's curiosity in respect of worldly matters was much more quickly satisfied than her curiosity in respect of people."Is Mr. Armstrong's daughter as charming as she looks?" she asked Claude at the end of his explanation."Well, most men think so," said Claude, smiling. "Marjorie is undoubtedly very beautiful and fully conscious of the fact. You may have seen her portrait by Ben Ali Haggin in the last Academy exhibition? It was a tone poem in russet brown, quite the stir of the season.""Oh, I'm sorry I missed it. I've never been to an Academy exhibition, Claude.""How amazing! Not even to one?""Not even to one. Imagine how hopelessly ignorant I am of art!""Art! People don't go to the Academy in quest of art, you dear innocent. It would be a waste of effort. They go as a compliment to their friends whose portraits have been painted, not as a tribute to the men who painted them."But Janet was not to be deflected from her purpose."I played the spy whilst your back was turned," she said, "and watched your pretty friend closely. She was evidently displeased with you. What had you done?""Absolutely nothing. That's just Marjorie's way when she can't have all she wants—which seldom happens.""Then she wantedyou?""Yes, for some party or other. But I'm not going to leave you merely to gratify a passing whim of hers. Anyhow, it isn't so much a case of wanting me to be with her, as of wanting me not to be with anybody else.""Rather dog-in-the-mangerish, isn't it?""Oh, all the tyrants of the earth are like that, especially the fascinating feminine tyrants," replied Claude, in an attempt to recapture his good spirits.But it was plain that his mood had radically changed. For the remainder of their stay he was preoccupied and his gayety was forced.The cloud that this cast over their outing was not fully lifted that day. Outwardly Claude recovered his equipoise and, on the way home, tried to make up for his earlier abstraction by a deepened tenderness towards his companion. But something was manifestly weighing on his mind. Janet herself was in a pensive mood. She had been quick to discern that in Claude's manner towards Marjorie Armstrong and the other young women of his own set there was an inexpressible something which was absent from his manner towards her.This troubled and dissatisfied her. True, Claude no longer ventured to treat her as flippantly as he treated Mazie Ross. But neither did he treat her as finely as he treated Marjorie Armstrong. Why was this? Did Claude still misinterpret her considered expression of disbelief in marriage? She had a passionate longing to give love and to receive love on a plane worlds above material considerations. Could no masculine mind grasp the reality of this simple passion in a modern girl's heart? Was it possible that her freedom from the vulgar commercial associations of love was precisely what cheapened her to such as Claude?The thought was ironic, it was maddening, it burrowed into one's soul. But it did not rob Janet of her self-approval. She set a high value on her integrity, and she was secretly resolved that by no mere man should this value lightly be set aside.CHAPTER FOURTEENIThe Fontaine galleries occupied a conspicuous building on Fifth Avenue above the Forties. It was one of the show places in New York's principal show street, and it received a daily stream of visitors as much for the sumptuousness of its interior appointments as for the worth of its stock and its exhibitions.Mr. Rene Fontaine had inherited the business from his father, who had left France in his boyhood and had begun in a small way as a jeweler on lower Sixth Avenue. The founder of the house had built up a fashionable trade in pearls and precious stones and, having a strong private fancy for certain kinds of ceramic ware, had been led into adding a department of rare porcelains.After the death of the founder, the business was incorporated. Mr. Rene, as president of the firm, continued his father's twofold policy with such success that, when the uptown trend of high-class trade necessitated a change of quarters, Fontaine and Company transferred their establishment to one of the choicest corners of Fifth Avenue. Here the ceramic and other works of art were displayed in galleries on the second floor. And the patronage of these galleries was so profitable that Claude had persuaded his father to open a gallery for paintings on the third floor and let him conduct the new department.Mr. Fontaine was a fastidious man and a stickler for appearances, particularly British appearances. The fashionable set in New York aped English manners, and consequently, the door attendant at Fontaine's was an English youth and the salesmen in the art departments were Englishmen with consciously superior airs fortified by British university educations, Oxford accents and modish London clothes.A humble art lover on a visit to the galleries might easily have been frightened off by the sumptuous appointments, or overawed by seven or eight swagger young gentlemen who would eloquently ignore him as he crossed their several posts. They might have been so many heirs to dukedoms engaged in a feeble game of passing themselves off as prosaic American commoners. Yet they could pay a very flattering attention to multimillionaires, especially of the feminine gender; and these, as their astute employer knew, they attracted in considerable numbers.Moving in and out among his father's young men, Claude might readily have passed for one of them. He was like them in the ingratiating, physical appearance that comes from a systematic cultivation of the body, and his accent, if not of an Oxford, was of a Harvard flavor. The only real difference was that he was several degrees less arrogant—not that humility was one of his specialties, by any means.IIAbout ten days after the Mineola outing he was seated at his desk, opening the morning's mail. Two letters caught his eye. One, from Marjorie Armstrong, supplemented Mr. Armstrong's invitation to the two Fontaines to attend a week-end party in the Armstrong's Long Island home. The other was a note from Cornelia, reading:"Lothario, remember your appointment with us this evening. We shall supal frescoin the Japanese pagoda on the Lorillard roof—Araminta, Hercules and you will be the guests of honor. Only the chosen few are invited: Lydia, Charlotte, Robert and the invisible Pryor. A special attraction has been provided after supper—if indeed you need an attraction other than the piteous spectacle of Araminta pining away for you.Cornelia.This operatic reminder was much more welcome to Claude than Marjorie's frigid message. Cornelia's latest party—parties trod on one another's heels in the model tenements—was in celebration of Janet's admission to the society of the Outlaws. Everybody counted on Claude to be the bright particular meteor of the occasion. Yet how was he to follow his natural inclination without offending his father, to say nothing of Colonel Armstrong and Marjorie?He turned over a volume of Muther'sHistory of Paintingand, while staring vacantly into its pages, raked his mind for a diplomatic escape from attendance at the Armstrongs' party. He was still far from successful, when his father approached to transact a little business. This settled, Claude referred to a Van Gogh he had lately bought for $5,000. Mr. Fontaine's face puckered quizzically."You are worse than the prodigal son," he said. "That young man squandered his patrimony on real extravagances, while you fritter yours away on unreal mockeries.""Did you look at it, father?""Bless my soul, no. Its mere presence in the house is enough to upset me. As soon as I learned of its arrival, I looked at a copy of Ruisdael's "Mill" for ten minutes to steady my nerves. Whenever I hear of one of your modern pictures, I steal comfort from an ancient one.""But you can't judge a picture without seeing it," remonstrated Claude."My boy, you once induced me to spend ten minutes at a Matisse exhibition in Stieglitz's Little Secession Gallery. What I saw there was one horrible libel on humanity after another. That will last me a lifetime, thank you."Claude laughed. He and his father got along admirably by rarely pursuing an argument beyond its illogical conclusion."What have you done with my particular 'libel'?""I had it sent upstairs, to join your other atrocities in the Chamber of Indecencies."This was a nickname Mr. Rene Fontaine applied to a little room on the top floor where Claude had hung various "finds" in the later Impressionist, Cubist and Futurist styles."Tomb, not chamber," said Claude. "Everything there is practically buried.""Not at all. Your friends are forever trotting upstairs. I even send people there myself. Only yesterday I invited J. Tuyler Harmon to go up. He said he enjoyed himself hugely.""What brought the old rogue in here again?""His mistress. She's one of the chief patronesses of the Religion and Forward movement. She had to attend a committee meeting downtown. He escorted her from her apartments in the Plaza and waited here for her until the committee adjourned. Out of that waiting I made several handsome sales—but not of your pictures.""Thus religion and art," said Claude, "are reconciled by the Mammon of Unrighteousness."IIIThis reflection was lost on Mr. Fontaine, whose thoughts had switched to another line. He reminded Claude of the party they were to attend on the Armstrong estate in Huntington, Long Island."Can't you lunch with me at one, Claude?" he asked in an excellent humor. "Then we'll take the train together.""I'm sorry, father, but I have another engagement this afternoon."He elaborated the urgency of the matter with an anxiety that Mr. Fontaine was quick to detect."An invitation from Armstrong Hall, Claude, is like an invitation from Windsor Castle," he said, smiling. "It cancels all previous matters except matters of life and death.""I never felt less like breaking my word," countered the younger man obstinately.Mr. Fontaine did not press the point. His easy life and lucrative business had enabled him to cultivate certain expensive reticences. It pained him to drive anyone into a corner. As regards the three stages of paternal activity—the interrogative, the declarative and the imperative—he held that a competent father need rarely go beyond the first two. Besides, he had found by experience that, if he took a determined stand, his son frequently yielded to the mere pressure of silent expectation.Mr. Fontaine, who had been a widower for ten years, habitually gave great latitude to Claude, his only son, of whom he was genuinely fond. He frankly made "keeping up appearances" the basis of all conduct. Apart from that, he had a naive Rousselian theory of education, to the effect that, if you let a young man indulge all his whims and passions to the top of his bent, he will settle down at thirty or thereabouts to a sane and steady career.As refined tastes and good physical habits came natural to Claude, the operation of this theory had done him no bodily harm; but it had trained him to an exaggerated concern for his own desires and an enormous ignorance of other people's. Opposition to his stronger wishes was so rare that, when it occurred, he was tempted to regard it as wicked, and hence to crush it with a close approach to a feeling of self-righteousness. To put it shortly, he had the makings of a first-class tyrant, and he would have become a vicious one if his will had been as pronounced as his desires."You haven't had a tiff with Marjorie?" asked the father, with a casual air."No," said Claude. "We haven't quarrelled in three months.""But you haven't seen her more than once or twice in that time.""That's why, father!""Well, I'm glad you're not on bad terms with her, anyhow," repeated Mr. Fontaine, a deep interest beneath his affected unconcern."Oh, no. On as good terms as she'll allow. I don't know whether you've observed it, father, but it isn't easy to break through Marjorie's reserve.""You don't mean she's a cold nature!""Only when Lord Dunbar is around."The trace of petulance in this reply was the scar of an old wound. Claude, always first among his rivals on the battlefield of love, had once been obliged to yield the supremacy. This had happened about a year before, when the young Earl of Dunbar came to Newport in Marjorie's train. With two fine strings to her bow, Marjorie actually made Claude her second string. This sensation had been the talk of the smart set from Bar Harbor to Palm Beach. And Claude had never quite forgiven the very serious blow to his pride.Mr. Rene Fontaine had no fault to find with Marjorie's supercilious airs and snobbish predelictions. He liked and admired her unreservedly and thought it quite natural that, in choosing a husband, she should prefer a titled Englishman to a Yankee commoner. Why not? That London was the real capital of American fashionable society was, after all, a fact no socially ambitious American girl could be expected to ignore."I don't think she ever cared for Dunbar," ventured Mr. Fontaine. "At all events, he's gone.""Gone!""He sailed for England yesterday. I've just heard it from Mr. Armstrong.""Good Lord!" exclaimed Claude, walking up and down in marked agitation."My dear boy!" cried Mr. Fontaine, uncertain as to the cause of his son's emotions, "she didn't take him after all.""No. Probably she couldn't. I dare say she means to take me, now.""Why, Claude, everybody supposed you two were as good as engaged long before this Englishman came over.""So we were—before he came.""Well?""Well—he came.""Really, Claude—""I mean, she preferred him to me. I don't blame her. He had more to offer.""What had that to do with it?""Everything. He's a British nobleman. I'm only an ordinary American. He's got the entree of the best London circles. I've only the entree of the best New York.""That's a very unkind thing to say of Marjorie. I've known her since she was a baby. She has her faults. But heartless calculation is not one of them."Mr. Fontaine's indignation did not sound convincing. Like Claude, he knew that Marjorie would not hesitate to sacrifice her feelings to her social ambitions."I don't say it's a fault," protested Claude. "She had the right to change her mind. For women, the business side of marriage is the most important side, since marriage establishes them in life positions. I find it perfectly natural, therefore, that they should knock themselves down to the highest bidder."This was a sentiment he had adopted, with his own modifications, from Robert Lloyd."Don't be cynical, my boy," said Mr. Fontaine. "Business is business, but family life is quite another thing.""I agree with you, father," said Claude, pacifically. "As I said before, I don't blame Marjorie. And I'm not too proud to be her second choice.""That's the way to talk. Second choice, like second thought, is often the sounder.""Only, it happens that whenshechanged her sentiments,Ichanged mine, too.""You mean there's some other girl?""In a way—yes," replied Claude, awkwardly.Then, on the impulse of the moment, he plunged into an account of Janet Barr.IVMr. Fontaine was distinctly uneasy. But he concealed his emotion as well as he could."You haven't any wild plan of marrying this young woman?" he said, adopting the air of a judicious outsider."I like her better than any girl I ever met.""My boy, is that a good reason for marrying her? Take the word of an elderly man: It isn't worth while to marrysolelyfor love, because you are bound to fall in love with somebody else as soon as the honeymoon is over.""If not for love, what is one to marry for?""Why, for compatability, position, money—these are the considerations that wise men weigh."Both were silent for a while, Claude thinking sardonically of his father's charge that his view of family life was too materialistic. Then Mr. Fontaine resumed his objections."How do you intend to support the young lady?""Surely my interest in the firm is enough.""You never made a bigger mistake, Claude. Perhaps the fault is mine, though. For I have never driven home to you the relative value of an income of twelve thousand a year. That is what you've been spending.""Good Heavens, father! You exaggerate, surely.""Not in the least. I am in the habit of keeping very careful accounts, a habit it would do you no harm to acquire. Let me remind you that your new car cost five thousand dollars. That puts your weekly outgo roughly at a hundred and fifty, of which your chauffeur alone gets fifty.""I'll cut down my extravagances! Besides, two can live more economically than one.""Can they? Well, just try it, my boy! I fear you've picked up that idea in some novel. But don't forget that all novels are written by middle-class people and reflect middle-class notions of economy. Possibly a middle-class couple can save if they double up in one sordid flat, sleep in one bed, limit their amusements to the few which please both, compromise on the one or two friends whom neither dislikes too much, and generally lead the spiritual life of the Siamese twins. But this can't be done in our class! With us, the diverse activities and needs of husband and wife make expenses for two run four times as high as expenses for one."Mr. Fontaine returned significantly to the assertion that he was in no position to play the benevolent father. He would not deny that the firm was doing business on a magnificent scale. But magnificence was costly, on the debit side as well as on the credit side. There were ferocities of competition that were slicing off the safe margins of profits, besides pressing the management into transactions involving a peculiar risk."Risk!" exclaimed Claude, greatly surprised.Ha begged his father to remember the huge dividends recently declared on Fontaine & Company's stock."I didn't say financial risk. There's a tremendous legal risk."Mr. Fontaine felt that the time had come for Claude to learn more of the technique of a big business in jewelry and the fine arts. He pointed out that the war had caused a substantial reduction in the demand for luxuries accompanied by a substantial increase in the tax upon them. And he asked his son if he had never wondered why, in the face of this handicap, the firm's post-war profits had exceeded the records of pre-war years."Yes, it did puzzle me," admitted Claude. "But there's so much wizardry in your management of the business—""No wizardry at all. One or two of the biggest firms land their prizes without the Customs House being a penny the wiser."Claude made a wild movement to rise, but fell back in his chair again."Then that blackguard was right," he cried, his face ashen."What on earth do you mean? What blackguard?""Hutchins Burley! He called me a diamond smuggler right out before everybody at the Outlaws' Ball."In the greatest agitation Mr. Fontaine pressed Claude for particulars. When the whole story had been told, he breathed a sigh of relief."Nothing to worry over, thank goodness!" he said, reassuring his son. "Nobody will pay the slightest attention to what a tipsy man blurts out against the Fontaines.""No?" Claude's tone was decidedly skeptical."No, they won't dare to.""Anyhow, we're actuallyinthis smuggling game—" Claude went on gloomily."Our competitors call it slight-of-hand organized."The ghost of a smile flitted over Claude's face."And what do they call being at the mercy of a drunken cur's venom?""Don't rub it in, Claude. I blame myself severely for your embarrassment. I ought to have forewarned you earlier. But it won't happen again. Depend upon it, I shall lock that fellow's tongue, good and tight.""Is it really necessary for us Fontaines to have truck with such degraded scoundrels?""Well, my boy, it isn't exactly easy to get certificated gentlemen for the work," said Mr. Fontaine, stung into irony. "But don't let's go into that now, Claude. You must have confidence in me. One of these days I shall give you the history of the whole matter from A to Z.""But look here, father. Suppose we were caught!"Mr. Fontaine sat down in an armchair opposite his son and lighted a cigar with leisurely grace."It's a possibility," he said, "a slim possibility. But we have excellent friends.""Government officials?""H'm—yes. More especially—there's Colonel Armstrong.""Mr. Armstrong! You don't mean to say he dickers with backstairs political grafters?""'Dickers' is hardly the word. Colonel Armstrong stands above, about and underneath the political machines—both of them.""Mr. Armstrong in the boodle game! I can scarcely believe it.""Boodle game! Don't talk like a grocer or a reporter, Claude. Mr. Armstrong is a lover of fine art who, like all sensible people, thinks it monstrous to tax foreign works of art destined to do an educational service here. By virtue of his influence at Washington, he has been able to use his good offices to our advantage. The result is that the Customs House officials are wise enough not to go behind our list of import declarations.""Does he get much out of it?" inquired Claude."What a brutal question, Claude! Armstrong is so rich that he has nothing to live for except the luxury of being disinterested."Mr. Fontaine added that there had never been any outright verbal understanding between himself and his protector. Mr. Armstrong might be said to have slid into the protectorate insidiously. He was chiefly interested in the exquisite vases and textiles handled by Fontaine, and he was probably ignorant of the fact that it was not these articles but the precious stones that comprised the larger and more profitable fraction of the smuggled goods."For the rest," said Mr. Fontaine, "he is, as you know, a steady purchaser here. He buys whatever suits his fancy at cost price. We needn't begrudge him the bargain.""I wish our relations with the Armstrongs were not complicated in this way," said Claude, with an ominous feeling that he, too, might be knocked down at a bargain if the influential banker should fancy him as a bridegroom for Marjorie.Claude had always taken special pride in the irreproachable origin of the Fontaine riches. He had looked up to his father as a convincing example of the possibility of making trade both clean and aristocratic. Mr. Fontaine's disclosures now robbed his son of this illusion, besides confronting him with the sordid hazards of reality.One of these sordid hazards was barely a week old. A new customs inspector, in a fit of unsophisticated fervor, had stumbled upon an act of smuggling in which the complicity of the Fontaines appeared in the course of investigation. Only the lucky fact of Mr. Armstrong's nephew being the Collector of the Port of New York had saved Fontaine & Company from scandal, public exposure and humiliation."By Heaven!" said Claude. "We're indebted to Mr. Armstrong for being out of prison!""Quite so," replied the father. "An American business man who desires to keep out of prison must take one of two hygienic precautions. One is to form a friendship with a leading financier or a political boss; the other is to avoid being caught. I have done both."Mr. Fontaine looked significantly at his son."Those plans of yours," he said, "about the William Morris art center and all that—there can't be anything in that line if you marry a poor girl, you know."Claude was silent for a while. His father, watching him keenly and sympathetically, supposed him to be in the throes of a fierce emotional contest between his sense of duty and his love for Janet. Claude was under the same delusion. In reality, the willful force that swayed him was not so much inclining him to marry Janet as pushing him not to marry Marjorie. For the moment, the easiest course to pursue was to yield on the minor issue and gain time on the major one. He would give up the evening with Janet and go to Huntington, but he would refrain from committing himself definitely as regards Marjorie and marriage."I'll be in Huntington for dinner, father," he said briefly.Mr. Fontaine, greatly relieved, patted his son's back affectionately and walked away with a satisfied smile.
IV
He began adroitly enough by complimenting her on the success with which she had made Janet alive to the galvanic interests of contemporary life. It was a miracle of education, he assured her, and he begged her not to spoil the achievement by converting Janet to her favorite theory of free love. He hoped she would rather warn her friend of the folly of contracting a free union under existing social sanctions.
"Like the majority of men, you believe love and sex emotion to be one and the same thing," she retorted, cuttingly. "That's why you have no understanding of what freedom in love means."
"Now, Cornelia, I won't be drawn into a controversy on the merits of free love."
"Then don't sneer at it."
"I don't. In fact, like every healthy young human being, I am by nature something of a varietist myself. But, as a civilized member of society, I'm bound to take the institutions of my country and generation as I find them. I believe Janet will be better off, if she does so too. Let her set out to alter or revolutionize our institutions, but not to defy them."
"My poor Cato! Don't you know that numbers of the young women of today are quietly doing what numbers of the young men have always done?"
"Living in illicit relations, you mean?"
"That is what a ridiculous man-made custom calls it."
"But, Cornelia, although many of the Lorillard girls have admittedly flung a glove in the face of social conventions—"
"I'm not talking of Lorillard girls, Robert. I'm talking of teachers, lawyers, stenographers—the 'respectable' girls who remain in their schools and offices without any loss of self-respect or public esteem, and who merely do what the 'respectable' men do, that is, pay a mock tribute to outward appearances, and go scot free."
"Exactly, Cornelia," said Robert, triumphantly. "They pay a tribute to appearances. They quietly disobey existing conventions. But they don't defy them, much less try to alter them. They are frequently their staunchest supporters."
"Just like the men."
"Just like the men. But you are wrong when you say they go scot free. You are wrong again when you say that the tribute they pay is a mock tribute. It is anything but that. It is an endless payment by installments, a payment in degrading stealth and harassing secrecy."
"What are you driving at?"
"Janet is not the girl to pay a tribute of this kind," he said, with emphasis. "If she champions the cause of free love, she won't do so merely to experience the ups and downs of an underground existence. She will do so, believing it to be a wise or progressive departure. And she will defend her championship in the teeth of the whole world, regardless of its effect on her future."
Cornelia received this speech unmoved.
"Well, why shouldn't she?" she said. "Others have endured much more for their beliefs. To be candid, I really don't see how Janet's behavior concerns you, any way."
"You forget, Cornelia, that I, too, talked modernism in a blue streak to her before she broke with her people. And so I feel that I share with you the responsibility for her present course."
"Oh, do you?"
"Yes. There's a lot of moonshine in Kips Bay that passes for modernity. I think the least we can do is to show Janet that modernity is not simply a new watchword for moonshine. We ought to prevent her from being taken in by the illusion which the Outlaws produce of easy, satisfying intimacies between the sexes."
A stream of silvery laughter escaped Cornelia. Then, in a studied tone of superiority, she replied:
"My dear boy, the love relation between two individuals is strictly their own private affair. It is nobody else's business whatever. I have no right to interfere in Janet's intimacies, and neither have you. Anyhow, I believe she is quite competent to stand on her own feet."
"I'm not so sure, Cornelia. Janet is utterly different from the Lorillard Outlaw girl, or the Greenwich Village Bohemian girl. The effect of Greenwich Villageism is to make irregularity (what regularity so often is) a bore. The purpose of Lorillardism is to make irregularity pay. But Janet is not likely to adopt a radical creed merely as a pose or with an eye to its profit. She will adopt it in a spirit of sheer blind self-sacrifice. And every advantage will be taken of her, precisely because she's not a sex profiteer."
"Cato, the beginning of wisdom is self-knowledge. Have you ever heard of any gain in self-knowledge without some loss of happiness? No. It is a law of life which neither you, nor I, nor Janet can escape."
"But," he urged, "you must admit that Janet's case is a special one. She has just left a home where purely private gratifications dictate which conventions shall bekept; and she has entered this model tenement life where, again, purely private gratifications dictate which conventions shall bebroken. She may not grasp this difference all at once. Are we to let her inexperience cause her unnecessary suffering?"
"I, too, have suffered for my convictions, Robert!" she said, with a conclusive gesture of impatience.
Robert felt like telling her that, at this moment, she reminded him forcibly of the fox that had its tail cut off. But he didn't quite dare.
Naturally, under the circumstances, the visit to the Grand Central Palace was a complete failure. Cornelia, loathing the exhibition, seized the first available excuse for asking to be taken home.
The resentment she harbored was too strong to be hidden beneath the ordinary civilities of polite intercourse. Her affection for Robert, which had long been hanging by a slender thread, was now sharply snapped through the complete revulsion of feeling she experienced towards him.
From her point of view, the fault was entirely his. She had always hated what she termed his moralistic nature. But never before had he shown such a callous want of sympathy with her past misfortunes or such a frank hostility to her present outlook on life. What she did not acknowledge to herself was that his concern for Janet had given heramour proprea mortal wound for which she could never forgive him.
On their return to the Lorillard tenements, she promptly called Harry Kelly into Number Fifteen. The Harlem Gorilla (renicknamed Hercules as a mark of favor) was highly flattered and only too willing to be a listener and a comforter.
"Robert is getting to be quite impossible!" she exclaimed, with a lurid Belasco intonation. "I can't imagine what has come over him, or why he continues to honor the Outlaws with his presence, seeing that he is now an enemy of freedom and not a friend of it. Hercules, will you believe it, he cannot hear the word Lorillard so much as mentioned without showing the cloven hoof."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I
While Robert and Cornelia were going to and from the Grand Central Palace, Claude's car was carrying its occupants through pleasant stretches of Long Island country to the Mineola aerodrome. The day, the air, the landscape, and the man conspired to make the occasion an intoxicating one for Janet.
Claude's gayety and personal charm were fully matched by his perfect ease. This was the quality that magnetized her, it was so new in her experience of American men. The men she had known in Brooklyn, struggling professional and business men, wore their manners as they did their Sunday clothes, with a painful effect of unfamiliarity. Their behavior was as different from Claude's as a sputtering torch is from an arc light.
In the company of women, these men were nearly always ill at ease. Sometimes they acted obtrusively protective or aggressively possessive, more frequently they were apprehensive, timid or even pitiably afraid. Whatever they did, they did with constraint. And they never seemed able to forget the towering fact that their manhood had an economic value. They were as painfully conscious of this asset as an elderly maiden is of her chastity—and they guarded it with the same zeal.
Janet was inexpressibly thankful that Claude had never treated her as if she belonged to an unknown or unclassified species, and that he was not constantly filled with a nervous dread that she might at any moment begin picking his soul, if not his pocket.
They talked of everything under the sun; she of her childhood, her school days, her aspirations; he of social or artistic doings in and about New York, with the more notable and distinctive of which he had a first-hand familiarity. But no matter how sober or philosophic the topic chosen, it was sure, in some mysterious way, to be sidetracked into the catechism of love.
Janet had all she could do to keep matters from taking too amorous a turn. It was delicious to be made love to as audaciously as only Claude could. It was great fun to tremble on the quicksilvery margin between how much he dared and how little she permitted. And it was her native mother wit rather than her instinct that set a limit to his impetuous wooing.
As soon as they reached the aerodrome, Claude became a more conventionally courteous cavalier again. And Janet got a glimpse of a section of his life to which she had hardly given any thought.
II
The Trans-Continental Air Race had been widely advertised, and the gigantic aerodrome was jammed with excited crowds. Claude at once plunged his companion into the thick of things. Anybody and everybody appeared to know him, and he knew everybody who was anybody. In swift succession Janet was introduced to the superintendent of the grounds, the president of the Aero Club, the chief contestants of the day, several foreign aviators of renown, the naval officer who commanded the first "blimp" across the Atlantic, and to so many other notabilities that her head began to whirl.
Once or twice Claude left her to pay special homage to some lady, frequently an elderly one and a personage of uncommon account. In these intervals, while standing a little away from the throbbing, bewildering spectacle around her, she attempted to give some perspective to her impressions.
It was gradually clear to her that the spectators resolved themselves into two classes: first, thehoi polloiwhose teeming throngs pushed along the common passageways and packed the benches in the stands to the point of suffocation; and then a small, compact group of men and women whose breeding, dress and carriage would have differentiated them from the other spectators even if the weather-beaten air of superiority with which they promenaded within the fenced-off and sacrosanct places, had not sufficiently done so.
Superficially, the attitude of these chosen ones towards the gallery was the attitude of actors towards an audience: they affected to be oblivious of its existence, and yet it was patent that they were greedily conscious of the snobbish admiration and flattering envy which the crowd radiated collectively and in its component parts.
Janet watched these bankers and railroad directors and senators with their wives and daughters urbanely encircling the placid airplanes, the restive airmen and the little extra demonstrations for the elect. And it seemed to her that they appropriated the special privileges inseparable from the governors of a democracy with an affably paternal air which was as much as to say: "What a very democratic ruling-class it is that runs this very democratic nation."
Of course she knew that they were not really thinking this. Seeing that they were the ruling class, they ought to have weighty, superior problems of finance, transportation or statesmanship at the back of their minds. Had they? Or were they merely thinking that unless they were on thequi vivethey might be caught in an awkward pose by one of the brigade of camera men who were photographing celebrities for the Sunday pictorial supplements and the cinema current topics.
Janet perceived also that the faces of the ladies and gentlemen of the plutocracy, though set in hard lines and wreathed in hard smiles, were, on the whole, much less hard than the faces of the poorer middle-class people among whom she lived and moved and had her being. Their complexions were far better, too. And they were healthier and robuster and decidedly cleaner and politer.
Politer, but not better mannered. Temporarily, Janet might have been deceived by the surface courtesy with which the men approached one another and the ceaseless vehemence with which the women talked and smiled, or rather, exhibited the whole of a fine set of front teeth from the top of the upper row to the tip of the nether gum. But when she had mingled with them at Claude's side, these same ladies that paraded their toothful smiles so amiably for the photographer's benefit, had politely but uncannily looked her through and through in the most literal sense of the words. To put it bluntly, they had instantly sized her up as an intruder from a sphere they had no personal contact with. True, they murmured the necessary courteous phrases, but they did so to a creature whose common humanity with themselves their glances insolently and emphatically denied.
Had Claude sensed this, and left her alone to spare her (and perhaps himself) embarrassment? The question made her feel uneasy and disconcerted. It also made her wish him back, in the hope that his presence would restore her confidence. What was keeping him so long this time? By way of finding an answer, her eyes searched him out among the machines.
She saw him, not very far away, in the midst of a group of three other people: a couple in the prime of life, who were obviously the parents of a young lady of about Janet's own age. The attention of the daughter was fixed detainingly on Claude; that of the parents was fastened proudly on their daughter.
Thanks to a fine eyesight, Janet was enabled to get an excellent view of the young lady's appearance.
She was a tall, light brunette, and her frock, her sulky discontented mouth and her affectation of stateliness were all highly fashionable. So was her face, which had a tolerably clear skin and otherwise neither a noticeable blemish nor a spark of fire. It was the kind of standard feminine face just common enough in America to fit the popular conception of beauty and just enough above the common to be in constant request by illustrators as a model for the covers of monthly magazines.
It struck Janet that she was making some demand upon Claude which was taxing his charm and diplomacy to the utmost. Eventually, as he took leave of the group, she abruptly turned away from him, the back of her shoulders expressing the most intense vexation.
III
Soon thereafter he was at Janet's side again, looking somewhat harassed.
"Those were the Armstrongs and their daughter, Marjorie," he said, in answer to her look of curiosity.
"Who are the Armstrongs?"
Claude was taken aback by this question. In his world, where everybody knew everybody else, the bare name of Armstrong had a very definite and compact meaning.
"Dear little ignoramus! The Dupont Armstrongs, of course."
This addition meant very little more to Janet, although it rekindled a vague memory that she had seen the name somewhere in the newspapers. Politely concealing his wonderment, Claude explained more at length.
He said that Colonel Dupont Armstrong came of an old Southern family, and was the active head of the great firm of Harmon, Armstrong & Co., the international bankers whose financial power had built golden bridges between continents. His wife had a passion for collecting exquisite jewels; he had a mania for hoarding Chinese vases. But the operation of his esthetic taste being unreliable, he had struck up an intimacy with Claude's father soon after he discovered this gentleman to be a thoroughly dependable guide. In time, he became a regular patron of the Fontaine galleries and his purchases of diamonds, necklaces and porcelains had contributed appreciably to Mr. Fontaine's fortune.
Janet's curiosity in respect of worldly matters was much more quickly satisfied than her curiosity in respect of people.
"Is Mr. Armstrong's daughter as charming as she looks?" she asked Claude at the end of his explanation.
"Well, most men think so," said Claude, smiling. "Marjorie is undoubtedly very beautiful and fully conscious of the fact. You may have seen her portrait by Ben Ali Haggin in the last Academy exhibition? It was a tone poem in russet brown, quite the stir of the season."
"Oh, I'm sorry I missed it. I've never been to an Academy exhibition, Claude."
"How amazing! Not even to one?"
"Not even to one. Imagine how hopelessly ignorant I am of art!"
"Art! People don't go to the Academy in quest of art, you dear innocent. It would be a waste of effort. They go as a compliment to their friends whose portraits have been painted, not as a tribute to the men who painted them."
But Janet was not to be deflected from her purpose.
"I played the spy whilst your back was turned," she said, "and watched your pretty friend closely. She was evidently displeased with you. What had you done?"
"Absolutely nothing. That's just Marjorie's way when she can't have all she wants—which seldom happens."
"Then she wantedyou?"
"Yes, for some party or other. But I'm not going to leave you merely to gratify a passing whim of hers. Anyhow, it isn't so much a case of wanting me to be with her, as of wanting me not to be with anybody else."
"Rather dog-in-the-mangerish, isn't it?"
"Oh, all the tyrants of the earth are like that, especially the fascinating feminine tyrants," replied Claude, in an attempt to recapture his good spirits.
But it was plain that his mood had radically changed. For the remainder of their stay he was preoccupied and his gayety was forced.
The cloud that this cast over their outing was not fully lifted that day. Outwardly Claude recovered his equipoise and, on the way home, tried to make up for his earlier abstraction by a deepened tenderness towards his companion. But something was manifestly weighing on his mind. Janet herself was in a pensive mood. She had been quick to discern that in Claude's manner towards Marjorie Armstrong and the other young women of his own set there was an inexpressible something which was absent from his manner towards her.
This troubled and dissatisfied her. True, Claude no longer ventured to treat her as flippantly as he treated Mazie Ross. But neither did he treat her as finely as he treated Marjorie Armstrong. Why was this? Did Claude still misinterpret her considered expression of disbelief in marriage? She had a passionate longing to give love and to receive love on a plane worlds above material considerations. Could no masculine mind grasp the reality of this simple passion in a modern girl's heart? Was it possible that her freedom from the vulgar commercial associations of love was precisely what cheapened her to such as Claude?
The thought was ironic, it was maddening, it burrowed into one's soul. But it did not rob Janet of her self-approval. She set a high value on her integrity, and she was secretly resolved that by no mere man should this value lightly be set aside.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I
The Fontaine galleries occupied a conspicuous building on Fifth Avenue above the Forties. It was one of the show places in New York's principal show street, and it received a daily stream of visitors as much for the sumptuousness of its interior appointments as for the worth of its stock and its exhibitions.
Mr. Rene Fontaine had inherited the business from his father, who had left France in his boyhood and had begun in a small way as a jeweler on lower Sixth Avenue. The founder of the house had built up a fashionable trade in pearls and precious stones and, having a strong private fancy for certain kinds of ceramic ware, had been led into adding a department of rare porcelains.
After the death of the founder, the business was incorporated. Mr. Rene, as president of the firm, continued his father's twofold policy with such success that, when the uptown trend of high-class trade necessitated a change of quarters, Fontaine and Company transferred their establishment to one of the choicest corners of Fifth Avenue. Here the ceramic and other works of art were displayed in galleries on the second floor. And the patronage of these galleries was so profitable that Claude had persuaded his father to open a gallery for paintings on the third floor and let him conduct the new department.
Mr. Fontaine was a fastidious man and a stickler for appearances, particularly British appearances. The fashionable set in New York aped English manners, and consequently, the door attendant at Fontaine's was an English youth and the salesmen in the art departments were Englishmen with consciously superior airs fortified by British university educations, Oxford accents and modish London clothes.
A humble art lover on a visit to the galleries might easily have been frightened off by the sumptuous appointments, or overawed by seven or eight swagger young gentlemen who would eloquently ignore him as he crossed their several posts. They might have been so many heirs to dukedoms engaged in a feeble game of passing themselves off as prosaic American commoners. Yet they could pay a very flattering attention to multimillionaires, especially of the feminine gender; and these, as their astute employer knew, they attracted in considerable numbers.
Moving in and out among his father's young men, Claude might readily have passed for one of them. He was like them in the ingratiating, physical appearance that comes from a systematic cultivation of the body, and his accent, if not of an Oxford, was of a Harvard flavor. The only real difference was that he was several degrees less arrogant—not that humility was one of his specialties, by any means.
II
About ten days after the Mineola outing he was seated at his desk, opening the morning's mail. Two letters caught his eye. One, from Marjorie Armstrong, supplemented Mr. Armstrong's invitation to the two Fontaines to attend a week-end party in the Armstrong's Long Island home. The other was a note from Cornelia, reading:
"Lothario, remember your appointment with us this evening. We shall supal frescoin the Japanese pagoda on the Lorillard roof—Araminta, Hercules and you will be the guests of honor. Only the chosen few are invited: Lydia, Charlotte, Robert and the invisible Pryor. A special attraction has been provided after supper—if indeed you need an attraction other than the piteous spectacle of Araminta pining away for you.
Cornelia.
This operatic reminder was much more welcome to Claude than Marjorie's frigid message. Cornelia's latest party—parties trod on one another's heels in the model tenements—was in celebration of Janet's admission to the society of the Outlaws. Everybody counted on Claude to be the bright particular meteor of the occasion. Yet how was he to follow his natural inclination without offending his father, to say nothing of Colonel Armstrong and Marjorie?
He turned over a volume of Muther'sHistory of Paintingand, while staring vacantly into its pages, raked his mind for a diplomatic escape from attendance at the Armstrongs' party. He was still far from successful, when his father approached to transact a little business. This settled, Claude referred to a Van Gogh he had lately bought for $5,000. Mr. Fontaine's face puckered quizzically.
"You are worse than the prodigal son," he said. "That young man squandered his patrimony on real extravagances, while you fritter yours away on unreal mockeries."
"Did you look at it, father?"
"Bless my soul, no. Its mere presence in the house is enough to upset me. As soon as I learned of its arrival, I looked at a copy of Ruisdael's "Mill" for ten minutes to steady my nerves. Whenever I hear of one of your modern pictures, I steal comfort from an ancient one."
"But you can't judge a picture without seeing it," remonstrated Claude.
"My boy, you once induced me to spend ten minutes at a Matisse exhibition in Stieglitz's Little Secession Gallery. What I saw there was one horrible libel on humanity after another. That will last me a lifetime, thank you."
Claude laughed. He and his father got along admirably by rarely pursuing an argument beyond its illogical conclusion.
"What have you done with my particular 'libel'?"
"I had it sent upstairs, to join your other atrocities in the Chamber of Indecencies."
This was a nickname Mr. Rene Fontaine applied to a little room on the top floor where Claude had hung various "finds" in the later Impressionist, Cubist and Futurist styles.
"Tomb, not chamber," said Claude. "Everything there is practically buried."
"Not at all. Your friends are forever trotting upstairs. I even send people there myself. Only yesterday I invited J. Tuyler Harmon to go up. He said he enjoyed himself hugely."
"What brought the old rogue in here again?"
"His mistress. She's one of the chief patronesses of the Religion and Forward movement. She had to attend a committee meeting downtown. He escorted her from her apartments in the Plaza and waited here for her until the committee adjourned. Out of that waiting I made several handsome sales—but not of your pictures."
"Thus religion and art," said Claude, "are reconciled by the Mammon of Unrighteousness."
III
This reflection was lost on Mr. Fontaine, whose thoughts had switched to another line. He reminded Claude of the party they were to attend on the Armstrong estate in Huntington, Long Island.
"Can't you lunch with me at one, Claude?" he asked in an excellent humor. "Then we'll take the train together."
"I'm sorry, father, but I have another engagement this afternoon."
He elaborated the urgency of the matter with an anxiety that Mr. Fontaine was quick to detect.
"An invitation from Armstrong Hall, Claude, is like an invitation from Windsor Castle," he said, smiling. "It cancels all previous matters except matters of life and death."
"I never felt less like breaking my word," countered the younger man obstinately.
Mr. Fontaine did not press the point. His easy life and lucrative business had enabled him to cultivate certain expensive reticences. It pained him to drive anyone into a corner. As regards the three stages of paternal activity—the interrogative, the declarative and the imperative—he held that a competent father need rarely go beyond the first two. Besides, he had found by experience that, if he took a determined stand, his son frequently yielded to the mere pressure of silent expectation.
Mr. Fontaine, who had been a widower for ten years, habitually gave great latitude to Claude, his only son, of whom he was genuinely fond. He frankly made "keeping up appearances" the basis of all conduct. Apart from that, he had a naive Rousselian theory of education, to the effect that, if you let a young man indulge all his whims and passions to the top of his bent, he will settle down at thirty or thereabouts to a sane and steady career.
As refined tastes and good physical habits came natural to Claude, the operation of this theory had done him no bodily harm; but it had trained him to an exaggerated concern for his own desires and an enormous ignorance of other people's. Opposition to his stronger wishes was so rare that, when it occurred, he was tempted to regard it as wicked, and hence to crush it with a close approach to a feeling of self-righteousness. To put it shortly, he had the makings of a first-class tyrant, and he would have become a vicious one if his will had been as pronounced as his desires.
"You haven't had a tiff with Marjorie?" asked the father, with a casual air.
"No," said Claude. "We haven't quarrelled in three months."
"But you haven't seen her more than once or twice in that time."
"That's why, father!"
"Well, I'm glad you're not on bad terms with her, anyhow," repeated Mr. Fontaine, a deep interest beneath his affected unconcern.
"Oh, no. On as good terms as she'll allow. I don't know whether you've observed it, father, but it isn't easy to break through Marjorie's reserve."
"You don't mean she's a cold nature!"
"Only when Lord Dunbar is around."
The trace of petulance in this reply was the scar of an old wound. Claude, always first among his rivals on the battlefield of love, had once been obliged to yield the supremacy. This had happened about a year before, when the young Earl of Dunbar came to Newport in Marjorie's train. With two fine strings to her bow, Marjorie actually made Claude her second string. This sensation had been the talk of the smart set from Bar Harbor to Palm Beach. And Claude had never quite forgiven the very serious blow to his pride.
Mr. Rene Fontaine had no fault to find with Marjorie's supercilious airs and snobbish predelictions. He liked and admired her unreservedly and thought it quite natural that, in choosing a husband, she should prefer a titled Englishman to a Yankee commoner. Why not? That London was the real capital of American fashionable society was, after all, a fact no socially ambitious American girl could be expected to ignore.
"I don't think she ever cared for Dunbar," ventured Mr. Fontaine. "At all events, he's gone."
"Gone!"
"He sailed for England yesterday. I've just heard it from Mr. Armstrong."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Claude, walking up and down in marked agitation.
"My dear boy!" cried Mr. Fontaine, uncertain as to the cause of his son's emotions, "she didn't take him after all."
"No. Probably she couldn't. I dare say she means to take me, now."
"Why, Claude, everybody supposed you two were as good as engaged long before this Englishman came over."
"So we were—before he came."
"Well?"
"Well—he came."
"Really, Claude—"
"I mean, she preferred him to me. I don't blame her. He had more to offer."
"What had that to do with it?"
"Everything. He's a British nobleman. I'm only an ordinary American. He's got the entree of the best London circles. I've only the entree of the best New York."
"That's a very unkind thing to say of Marjorie. I've known her since she was a baby. She has her faults. But heartless calculation is not one of them."
Mr. Fontaine's indignation did not sound convincing. Like Claude, he knew that Marjorie would not hesitate to sacrifice her feelings to her social ambitions.
"I don't say it's a fault," protested Claude. "She had the right to change her mind. For women, the business side of marriage is the most important side, since marriage establishes them in life positions. I find it perfectly natural, therefore, that they should knock themselves down to the highest bidder."
This was a sentiment he had adopted, with his own modifications, from Robert Lloyd.
"Don't be cynical, my boy," said Mr. Fontaine. "Business is business, but family life is quite another thing."
"I agree with you, father," said Claude, pacifically. "As I said before, I don't blame Marjorie. And I'm not too proud to be her second choice."
"That's the way to talk. Second choice, like second thought, is often the sounder."
"Only, it happens that whenshechanged her sentiments,Ichanged mine, too."
"You mean there's some other girl?"
"In a way—yes," replied Claude, awkwardly.
Then, on the impulse of the moment, he plunged into an account of Janet Barr.
IV
Mr. Fontaine was distinctly uneasy. But he concealed his emotion as well as he could.
"You haven't any wild plan of marrying this young woman?" he said, adopting the air of a judicious outsider.
"I like her better than any girl I ever met."
"My boy, is that a good reason for marrying her? Take the word of an elderly man: It isn't worth while to marrysolelyfor love, because you are bound to fall in love with somebody else as soon as the honeymoon is over."
"If not for love, what is one to marry for?"
"Why, for compatability, position, money—these are the considerations that wise men weigh."
Both were silent for a while, Claude thinking sardonically of his father's charge that his view of family life was too materialistic. Then Mr. Fontaine resumed his objections.
"How do you intend to support the young lady?"
"Surely my interest in the firm is enough."
"You never made a bigger mistake, Claude. Perhaps the fault is mine, though. For I have never driven home to you the relative value of an income of twelve thousand a year. That is what you've been spending."
"Good Heavens, father! You exaggerate, surely."
"Not in the least. I am in the habit of keeping very careful accounts, a habit it would do you no harm to acquire. Let me remind you that your new car cost five thousand dollars. That puts your weekly outgo roughly at a hundred and fifty, of which your chauffeur alone gets fifty."
"I'll cut down my extravagances! Besides, two can live more economically than one."
"Can they? Well, just try it, my boy! I fear you've picked up that idea in some novel. But don't forget that all novels are written by middle-class people and reflect middle-class notions of economy. Possibly a middle-class couple can save if they double up in one sordid flat, sleep in one bed, limit their amusements to the few which please both, compromise on the one or two friends whom neither dislikes too much, and generally lead the spiritual life of the Siamese twins. But this can't be done in our class! With us, the diverse activities and needs of husband and wife make expenses for two run four times as high as expenses for one."
Mr. Fontaine returned significantly to the assertion that he was in no position to play the benevolent father. He would not deny that the firm was doing business on a magnificent scale. But magnificence was costly, on the debit side as well as on the credit side. There were ferocities of competition that were slicing off the safe margins of profits, besides pressing the management into transactions involving a peculiar risk.
"Risk!" exclaimed Claude, greatly surprised.
Ha begged his father to remember the huge dividends recently declared on Fontaine & Company's stock.
"I didn't say financial risk. There's a tremendous legal risk."
Mr. Fontaine felt that the time had come for Claude to learn more of the technique of a big business in jewelry and the fine arts. He pointed out that the war had caused a substantial reduction in the demand for luxuries accompanied by a substantial increase in the tax upon them. And he asked his son if he had never wondered why, in the face of this handicap, the firm's post-war profits had exceeded the records of pre-war years.
"Yes, it did puzzle me," admitted Claude. "But there's so much wizardry in your management of the business—"
"No wizardry at all. One or two of the biggest firms land their prizes without the Customs House being a penny the wiser."
Claude made a wild movement to rise, but fell back in his chair again.
"Then that blackguard was right," he cried, his face ashen.
"What on earth do you mean? What blackguard?"
"Hutchins Burley! He called me a diamond smuggler right out before everybody at the Outlaws' Ball."
In the greatest agitation Mr. Fontaine pressed Claude for particulars. When the whole story had been told, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Nothing to worry over, thank goodness!" he said, reassuring his son. "Nobody will pay the slightest attention to what a tipsy man blurts out against the Fontaines."
"No?" Claude's tone was decidedly skeptical.
"No, they won't dare to."
"Anyhow, we're actuallyinthis smuggling game—" Claude went on gloomily.
"Our competitors call it slight-of-hand organized."
The ghost of a smile flitted over Claude's face.
"And what do they call being at the mercy of a drunken cur's venom?"
"Don't rub it in, Claude. I blame myself severely for your embarrassment. I ought to have forewarned you earlier. But it won't happen again. Depend upon it, I shall lock that fellow's tongue, good and tight."
"Is it really necessary for us Fontaines to have truck with such degraded scoundrels?"
"Well, my boy, it isn't exactly easy to get certificated gentlemen for the work," said Mr. Fontaine, stung into irony. "But don't let's go into that now, Claude. You must have confidence in me. One of these days I shall give you the history of the whole matter from A to Z."
"But look here, father. Suppose we were caught!"
Mr. Fontaine sat down in an armchair opposite his son and lighted a cigar with leisurely grace.
"It's a possibility," he said, "a slim possibility. But we have excellent friends."
"Government officials?"
"H'm—yes. More especially—there's Colonel Armstrong."
"Mr. Armstrong! You don't mean to say he dickers with backstairs political grafters?"
"'Dickers' is hardly the word. Colonel Armstrong stands above, about and underneath the political machines—both of them."
"Mr. Armstrong in the boodle game! I can scarcely believe it."
"Boodle game! Don't talk like a grocer or a reporter, Claude. Mr. Armstrong is a lover of fine art who, like all sensible people, thinks it monstrous to tax foreign works of art destined to do an educational service here. By virtue of his influence at Washington, he has been able to use his good offices to our advantage. The result is that the Customs House officials are wise enough not to go behind our list of import declarations."
"Does he get much out of it?" inquired Claude.
"What a brutal question, Claude! Armstrong is so rich that he has nothing to live for except the luxury of being disinterested."
Mr. Fontaine added that there had never been any outright verbal understanding between himself and his protector. Mr. Armstrong might be said to have slid into the protectorate insidiously. He was chiefly interested in the exquisite vases and textiles handled by Fontaine, and he was probably ignorant of the fact that it was not these articles but the precious stones that comprised the larger and more profitable fraction of the smuggled goods.
"For the rest," said Mr. Fontaine, "he is, as you know, a steady purchaser here. He buys whatever suits his fancy at cost price. We needn't begrudge him the bargain."
"I wish our relations with the Armstrongs were not complicated in this way," said Claude, with an ominous feeling that he, too, might be knocked down at a bargain if the influential banker should fancy him as a bridegroom for Marjorie.
Claude had always taken special pride in the irreproachable origin of the Fontaine riches. He had looked up to his father as a convincing example of the possibility of making trade both clean and aristocratic. Mr. Fontaine's disclosures now robbed his son of this illusion, besides confronting him with the sordid hazards of reality.
One of these sordid hazards was barely a week old. A new customs inspector, in a fit of unsophisticated fervor, had stumbled upon an act of smuggling in which the complicity of the Fontaines appeared in the course of investigation. Only the lucky fact of Mr. Armstrong's nephew being the Collector of the Port of New York had saved Fontaine & Company from scandal, public exposure and humiliation.
"By Heaven!" said Claude. "We're indebted to Mr. Armstrong for being out of prison!"
"Quite so," replied the father. "An American business man who desires to keep out of prison must take one of two hygienic precautions. One is to form a friendship with a leading financier or a political boss; the other is to avoid being caught. I have done both."
Mr. Fontaine looked significantly at his son.
"Those plans of yours," he said, "about the William Morris art center and all that—there can't be anything in that line if you marry a poor girl, you know."
Claude was silent for a while. His father, watching him keenly and sympathetically, supposed him to be in the throes of a fierce emotional contest between his sense of duty and his love for Janet. Claude was under the same delusion. In reality, the willful force that swayed him was not so much inclining him to marry Janet as pushing him not to marry Marjorie. For the moment, the easiest course to pursue was to yield on the minor issue and gain time on the major one. He would give up the evening with Janet and go to Huntington, but he would refrain from committing himself definitely as regards Marjorie and marriage.
"I'll be in Huntington for dinner, father," he said briefly.
Mr. Fontaine, greatly relieved, patted his son's back affectionately and walked away with a satisfied smile.