Lucy's adventure had so taken up the attention of them both that they had forgotten all about the matter of the stock. Afterwards, however, Montague mentioned it, and Lucy exclaimed indignantly at the smallness of the offer.
“That is only ten cents on the dollar!” she cried. “You surely would not advise me to sell for that!”
“No, I should not,” he answered. “I should reject the offer. It might be well, however, to set a price for them to consider.”
They had talked this matter over before, and had agreed upon a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. “I think it will be best to state that figure,” he said, “and give them to understand that it is final. I imagine they would expect to bargain, but I am not much of a hand at that, and would prefer to say what I mean and stick by it.”
“Very well!” said Lucy, “you use your own judgment.”
There was a pause; then Montague, seeing the look on Lucy's face, started to his feet. “It won't do you any good to think about to-day's mishap,” he said. “Let's start over again, and not make any more mistakes. Come with me this evening. I have some friends who have been begging me to bring you around ever since you came.”
“Who are they?” asked Lucy.
“General Prentice and his wife. Do you know of them?”
“I have heard Mr. Ryder speak of Prentice the banker. Is that the one you mean?”
“Yes,” said Montague,—“the president of the Trust Company of the Republic. He was an old comrade of my father's, and they were the first people I met here in New York. I have got to know them very well since. I told them I would bring you up to dinner sometime, and I will telephone them, if you say so. I don't think it's a good idea for you to sit here by yourself and think about Dan Waterman.”
“Oh, I don't mind it now,” said Lucy. “But I will go with you, if you like.”
They went to the Prentices'. There were the General himself, and Mrs. Prentice, and their two daughters, one of whom was a student in college, and the other a violinist of considerable talent. General Prentice was now over seventy, and his beard was snow-white, but he still had the erect carriage and the commanding presence of a soldier. Mrs. Prentice Montague had first met one evening when he had been their guest at the opera, and she had impressed him as a lady with a great many diamonds, who talked to him about other people while he was trying to listen to the music. But she was, as Lucy phrased it afterwards, “a motherly soul, when one got underneath her war-paint.” She was always inviting Montague to her home and introducing him to people whom she thought would be of assistance to him.
Also there came that evening young Harry Curtiss, the General's nephew. Montague had never met him before, but he knew him as a junior partner in the firm of William E. Davenant, the famous corporation lawyer—the man whom Montague had found opposed to him in his suit against the Fidelity Insurance Company. Harry Curtiss, whom Montague was to know quite well before long, was a handsome fellow, with frank and winning manners. He had met Alice Montague at an affair a week or so ago, and he sent word that he was coming to see her.
After dinner they sat and smoked, and talked about the condition of the market. It was a time of great agitation in Wall Street. There had been a violent slump in stocks, and matters seemed to be going from bad to worse.
“They say that Wyman has got caught,” said Curtiss, repeating one of the wild tales of the “Street.” “I was talking with one of his brokers yesterday.”
“Wyman is not an easy man to catch,” said the General. “His own brokers are often the last men to know his real situation. There is good reason to believe that some of the big insiders are loaded up, for the public is very uneasy, as you know; but with the situation as it is just now in Wall Street, you can't tell anything. The men who are really on the inside have matters so completely in their own hands that they are practically omnipotent.”
“You mean that you think this slump may be the result of manipulation?” asked Montague, wonderingly.
“Why not?” asked the General.
“It seems to be such a widespread movement,” said Montague. “It seems incredible that any one man could cause such an upset.”
“It is not one man,” said the General, “it is a group of men. I don't say that it's true, mind you. I wouldn't be at liberty to say it even if I knew it; but there are certain things that I have seen, and I have my suspicions of others. And you must realise that a half-dozen men now control about ninety per cent of the banks of this city.”
“Things will get worse before they get any better, I believe,” said Curtiss, after a pause.
“Something has got to be done,” replied the General. “The banking situation in this country at the present moment is simply unendurable; the legitimate banker is practically driven from the field by the speculator. A man finds himself in the position where he has either to submit to the dictation of such men, or else permit himself to be supplanted. It is a new element that has forced itself in. Apparently all a man needs in order to start a bank is credit enough to put up a building with marble columns and bronze gates. I could name you a man who at this moment owns eight banks, and when he started in, three years ago, I don't believe he owned a million dollars.”
“But how in the world could he manage it?” gasped Montague.
“Just as I stated,” said the General. “You buy a piece of land, with as big a mortgage as you can get, and you put up a million-dollar building and mortgage that. You start a trust company, and you get out imposing advertisements, and promise high rates of interest, and the public comes in. Then you hypothecate your stock in company number one, and you have your dummy directors lend you more money, and you buy another trust company. They call that pyramiding—you have heard the term, no doubt, with regard to stocks; it is a fascinating game to play with banks, because the more of them you get, the more prominent you become in the newspapers, and the more the public trusts you.”
And the General went on to tell of some of the cases of which he knew. There was Stewart, the young Lochinvar out of the West. He had tried to buy the Trust Company of the Republic long ago, and so the General knew him and his methods. He had fought the Copper Trust to a standstill in Montana; the Trust had bought up the Legislature and both political machines, but Cummings had appealed to the public in a series of sensational campaigns, and had got his judges into office, and in the end the Trust had been forced to buy him out. And now he had come to New York to play this new game of bank-gambling, which paid even quicker profits than buying courts.—And then there was Holt, a sporting character, a vulgar man-about-town, who was identified with everything that was low and vile in the city; he, too, had turned his millions into banks.—And there was Cummings, the Ice King, who for years had financed the political machine in the city, and, by securing a monopoly of the docking-privileges, had forced all his rivals to the wall. He had set out to monopolise the coastwise steamship trade of the country, and had bought line after line of vessels by this same device of “pyramiding”; and now, finding that he needed still more money to buy out his rivals, he had purchased or started a dozen or so of trust companies and banks.
“Anyone ought to realise that such things cannot go on indefinitely,” said the General. “I know that the big men realise it. I was at a directors' meeting the other day, and I heard Waterman remark that it would have to be ended very soon. Anyone who knows Waterman would not expect to get a second hint.”
“What could he do?” asked Montague.
“Waterman!” exclaimed young Curtiss.
“He would find a way,” said the General, simply. “That is the one hope that I see in the situation—the power of a conservative man like him.”
“You trust him, then?” asked Montague.
“Yes,” said the General, “I trust him.—One has to trust somebody.”
“I heard a curious story,” put in Harry Curtiss. “My uncle had dinner at the old man's house the other night, and asked him what he thought of the market. 'I can tell you in a sentence,' was the answer. 'For the first time in my life I don't own a security.'”
The General gave an exclamation of surprise. “Did he really say that?” he asked. “Then one can imagine that things will happen before long!”
“And one can imagine why the stock market is weak!” added the other, laughing.
At that moment the door of the dining-room was opened, and Mrs. Prentice appeared. “Are you men going to talk business all evening?” she asked. “If so, come into the drawing-room, and talk it to us.”
They arose and followed her, and Montague seated himself upon a sofa with Mrs. Prentice and the younger man.
“What were you saying of Dan Waterman?” she asked of the latter.
“Oh, it's a long story,” said Curtiss. “You ladies don't care anything about Waterman.”
Montague had been watching Lucy out of the corner of his eye, and he could not forbear a slight smile.
“What a wonderful man he is!” said Mrs. Prentice. “I admire him more than any man I know of in Wall Street.” Then she turned to Montague. “Have you met him?”
“Yes,” said he; and added with a mischievous smile, “I saw him to-day.”
“I saw him last Sunday night,” said Mrs. Prentice, guilelessly. “It was at the Church of the Holy Virgin, where he passes the collection-plate. Isn't it admirable that a man who has as much on his mind as Mr. Waterman has, should still save time for the affairs of his church?”
And Montague looked again at Lucy, and saw that she was biting her lip.
It was a week before Montague saw Lucy again. She came in to lunch with Alice one day, when he happened to be home early.
“I went to dinner at Mrs. Frank Landis's last night,” she said. “And who do you think was there—your friend, Mrs. Winnie Duval.”
“Indeed,” said Montague.
“I had quite a long talk with her,” said she. “I liked her very much.”
“She is easy to like,” he replied. “What did you talk about?”
“Oh, everything in the world but one thing,” said Lucy, mischievously.
“What do you mean?” asked Montague.
“You, you goose,” she answered. “Mrs. Winnie knew that I was your friend, and I had a feeling that every word she was saying was a message to you.”
“Well, and what did she have to say to me?” he asked, smiling.
“She wants you to understand that she is cheerful, and not pining away because of you,” was the answer. “She told me about all the things that she was interested in.”
“Did she tell you about the Babubanana?”
“The what?” exclaimed Lucy.
“Why, when I saw her last,” said Montague, “she was turning into a Hindoo, and her talk was all about Swamis, and Gnanis, and so on.”
“No, she didn't mention them,” said Lucy.
“Well, probably she has given it up, then,” said he. “What is it now?”
“She has gone in for anti-vivisection.”
“Anti-vivisection!”
“Yes,” said the other; “didn't you see in the papers that she had been elected an honorary vice-president of some society or other, and had contributed several thousand dollars?”
“One cannot keep track of Mrs. Winnie in the newspapers,” said Montague.
“Well,” she continued, “she has heard some dreadful stories about how surgeons maltreat poor cats and dogs, and she would insist on telling me all about it. It was the most shocking dinner-table conversation imaginable.”
“She certainly is a magnificent-looking creature,” said Lucy, after a pause. “I don't wonder the men fall in love with her. She had her hair done up with some kind of a band across the front, and I declare she might have been an Egyptian princess.”
“She has many roles,” said Montague.
“Is it really true,” asked the other, “that she paid fifty thousand dollars for a bath-tub?”
“She says she did,” he answered. “The newspapers say it, too, so I suppose it is true. I know Duval told me with his own lips that she cost him a million dollars a year; but then that may have been because he was angry.”
“Is he so rich as all that?” asked Lucy.
“I don't know how rich he is personally,” said Montague. “I know he is one of the most powerful men in New York. They call him the 'System's' banker.”
“I have heard Mr. Ryder speak of him,” said she.
“Not very favourably, I imagine,” said he, with a smile.
“No,” said she, “they had some kind of a quarrel. What was the matter?”
“I don't know anything about it,” was the answer. “But Ryder is a free lance, and a new man, and Duval works with the big men who don't like to have trespassers about.”
Lucy was silent for a minute; her brows were knit in thought. “Is it really true that Mr. Ryder's position is so unstable? I thought the Gotham Trust Company was one of the largest institutions in the country. What are those huge figures that you see in their advertisements,—seventy millions—eighty millions—what is it?”
“Something like that,” said Montague.
“And is not that true?” she asked.
“Yes, I guess that's true,” he said. “I don't know anything about Ryder's affairs, you know—I simply hear the gossip. Everyone says he is playing a bold game. You take my advice, and keep your money somewhere else. You have to be doubly careful because you have enemies.”
“Enemies?” asked Lucy, in perplexity.
“Have you forgotten what Waterman said to you?” Montague asked.
“You don't mean to tell me,” cried she, “that you think that Waterman would interfere with Mr. Ryder on my account.”
“It sounds incredible, I know,” said Montague, “but such things have happened before this. If anyone knew the inside stories of the battles that have shaken Wall Street, he would find that many of them had some such beginning.”
Montague said this casually, and with nothing in particular in mind. He was not watching his friend closely, and he did not see the effect which his words had produced upon her. He led the conversation into other channels; and he had entirely forgotten the matter the next day, when he received a telephone call from Lucy.
It had been a week since he had written to Smith and Hanson, the lawyers, in regard to the sale of her stock. “Allan,” she asked, “no letter from those people yet?”
“Nothing at all,” he answered.
“I was talking about it with a friend this morning, and he made a suggestion that I thought was important. Don't you think it might be well to find out whom they are representing?”
“What good would that do?” asked Montague.
“It might help us to get an idea of the prospects,” said she. “I fancy they know who wants to sell the stock, and we ought to know who is thinking of buying it. Suppose you write them that you don't care to negotiate with agents.”
“But I am in no position to do that,” said Montague. “I have already set the people a figure, and they have not replied. We should only weaken our position by writing again. It would be much better to try to interest someone else.”
“But I would like to know very much who made that offer,” Lucy insisted. “I have heard rumours about the stock, and I really would like to know.”
She reiterated this statement several times, and seemed to be very keen about it; Montague wondered a little who had been talking to her, and what she had heard. But warned by what the Major had told him, he did not ask these questions over the 'phone. He answered, finally, “I think you are making a mistake, but I will do what you wish.”
So he sat down and wrote a note to Messrs. Smith and Hanson, and said that he would like to have a consultation with a member of their firm. He sent this note by messenger, and an hour or so later a wiry little person, with a much-wrinkled face and a shrewd look in his eyes, came into his office and introduced himself as Mr. Hanson.
“I have been talking with my client about the matter of the Northern Mississippi stock,” said Montague. “You know, perhaps, that this road was organised under somewhat unusual circumstances; most of the stockholders were personal friends of our family. For this reason my client would prefer not to deal with an agent, if it can possibly be arranged. I wish to find out whether your client would consent to deal directly with the owner of the stock.”
Montague finished what he had to say, although while he was speaking he noticed that Mr. Hanson was staring at him with very evident astonishment. Before he finished, this had changed to a slight sneer.
“What kind of a trick is this you are trying to play on me?” the man demanded.
Montague was too much taken aback to be angry. He simply stared. “I don't understand you,” he said.
“You don't, eh?” said the other, laughing in his face. “Well, it seems I know more than you think I do.”
“What do you mean?” asked Montague.
“Your client no longer has the stock that you are talking about,” said the other.
Montague caught his breath. “No longer has the stock!” he gasped.
“Of course not,” said Hanson. “She sold it three days ago.” Then, unable to deny himself the satisfaction, he added, “She sold it to Stanley Ryder. And if you want to know any more about it, she sold it for a hundred and sixty thousand dollars, and he gave her a six months' note for a hundred and forty thousand.”
Montague was utterly dumfounded. He could do nothing but stare.
It was evident to the other man that his emotion was genuine, and he smiled sarcastically. “Evidently, Mr. Montague,” he said, “you have been permitting your client to take advantage of you.”
Montague caught himself together, and bowed politely. “I owe you an apology, Mr. Hanson,” he said, in a low voice. “I can only assure you that I was entirely helpless in the matter.”
Then he rose and bade the man good morning.
When the door of his office was closed, he caught at the chair by his desk to steady himself, and stood staring in front of him. “To Stanley Ryder!” he gasped.
He turned to the 'phone, and called up his friend.
“Lucy,” he said, “is it true that you have sold that stock?”
He heard her give a gasp. “Answer me!” he cried.
“Allan,” she began, “you are going to be angry with me—”
“Please answer me!” he cried again. “Have you sold that stock?”
“Yes, Allan,” she said, “I didn't mean—”
“I don't care to discuss the matter on the telephone,” he said. “I will stop in to see you this afternoon on my way home. Please be in, because it is important.” And then he hung up the receiver.
He called at the time he had set, and Lucy was waiting for him. She looked pale, and very much distressed. She sat in a chair, and neither arose to greet him nor spoke to him, but simply gazed into his face.
It was a very sombre face. “This thing has given me a great deal of pain,” said Montague; “and I don't want to prolong it any more than necessary. I have thought the matter over, and my mind is made up, so there need be no discussion. It will not be possible for me to have anything further to do with your affairs.”
Lucy gave a gasp: “Oh, Allan!”
He had a valise containing all her papers. “I have brought everything up to date,” he said. “There are all the accounts, and the correspondence. Anyone will be able to find exactly how things stand.”
“Allan,” she said, “this is really cruel.”
“I am very sorry,” he answered, “but there is nothing else that I can do.”
“But did I not have a right to sell that stock to Stanley Ryder?” she cried.
“You had a perfect right to sell it to anyone you pleased,” he said. “But you had no right to ask me to take charge of your affairs, and then to keep me in the dark about what you had done.”
“But, Allan,” she protested, “I only sold it three days ago.”
“I know that perfectly well,” he said; “but the moment you made up your mind to sell it, it was your business to tell me. That, however, is not the point. You tried to use me as a cat's-paw to pull chestnuts out of the fire for Stanley Ryder.”
He saw her wince under the words. “Is it not true?” he demanded. “Was it not he who told you to have me try to get that information?”
“Yes, Allan, of course it was he,” said Lucy. “But don't you see my plight? I am not a business woman, and I did not realise—”
“You realised that you were not dealing frankly with me,” he said. “That is all that I care about, and that is why I am not willing to continue to represent you. Stanley Ryder has bought your stock, and Stanley Ryder will have to be your adviser in the future.”
He had not meant to discuss the matter with her any further, but he saw how profoundly he had hurt her, and the old bond between them held him still.
“Can't you understand what you did to me, Lucy?” he exclaimed. “Imagine my position, talking to Mr. Hanson, I knowing nothing and he knowing everything. He knew what you had been paid, and he even knew that you had taken a note.”
Lucy stared at Montague with wide-open eyes. “Allan!” she gasped.
“You see what it means,” he said. “I told you that you could not keep your doings secret. Now it will only be a matter of a few days before everybody who knows will be whispering that you have permitted Stanley Ryder to do this for you.”
There was a long silence. Lucy sat staring before her. Then suddenly she faced Montague.
“Allan!” she cried. “Surely—you understand!”
She burst out violently, “I had a right to sell that stock! Ryder needed it. He is going to organise a syndicate, and develop the property. It was a simple matter of business.”
“I have no doubt of it, Lucy,” said Montague, in a low voice, “but how will you persuade the world of that? I told you what would happen if you permitted yourself to be intimate with a man like Stanley Ryder. You will find out too late what it means. Certainly that incident with Waterman ought to have opened your eyes to what people are saying.”
Lucy gave a start, and gazed at him with horror in her eyes. “Allan!” she panted.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Do you mean to tell me that happened to me because Stanley Ryder is my friend?”
“Of course I do,” said he. “Waterman had heard the gossip, and he thought that if Ryder was a rich man, he was a ten-times-richer man.”
Montague could see the colour mount swiftly over Lucy's throat and face. She stood twisting her hands together nervously. “Oh, Allan!” she said. “That is monstrous!”
“It is not of my making. It is the way the world is. I found it out myself, and I tried to point it out to you.”
“But it is horrible!” she cried. “I will not believe it. I will not yield to such things. I will not be coward enough to give up a friend for such a motive!”
“I know the feeling,” said Montague. “I'd stand by you, if it were another man than Stanley Ryder. But I know him better than you, I believe.”
“You don't, Allan, you can't!” she protested. “I tell you he is a good man! He is a man nobody understands—”
Montague shrugged his shoulders. “It is possible,” he said. “I have heard that before. Many men are better than the things they do in this world; at any rate, they like to persuade themselves that they are. But you have no right to wreck your life out of pity for Ryder. He has made his own reputation, and if he had any real care for you, he would not ask you to sacrifice yourself to it.”
“He did not ask me to,” said Lucy. “What I have done, I have done of my own free will. I believe in him, and I will not believe the horrible things that you tell me.”
“Very well,” said Montague, “then you will have to go your own way.”
He spoke calmly, though really his heart was wrung with grief. He knew exactly the sort of conversation by which Stanley Ryder had brought Lucy to this state of mind. He could have shattered the beautiful image of himself which Ryder had conjured up; but he could not bear to do it. Perhaps it was an instinct which guided him—he knew that Lucy was in love with the man, and that no facts that anyone could bring would make any difference to her. All he could say was, “You will have to find out for yourself.”
And then, with one more look at her pitiful face of misery, he turned and went away, without even touching her hand.
It was now well on in May, and most of the people of Montague's acquaintance had moved out to their country places; and those who were chained to their desks had yachts or automobiles or private cars, and made the trip into the country every afternoon. Montague was invited to spend another week at Eldridge Devon's, where Alice had been for a week; but he could not spare the time until Saturday afternoon, when he made the trip up the Hudson in Devon's new three-hundred-foot steam-yacht, the Triton. Some unkind person had described Devon to Montague as “a human yawn”; but he appeared to have a very keen interest in life that Saturday afternoon. He had been seized by a sudden conviction that a new and but little advertised automobile had proven its superiority to any of the seventeen cars which he at present maintained in his establishment. He had got three of these new cars, and while Montague sat upon the quarter-deck of the Triton and gazed at the magnificent scenery of the river, he had in his ear the monotonous hum of Devon's voice, discussing annular ball-bearings and water-jacketed cylinders.
One of the new cars met them at Devon's private pier, and swept them over the hill to the mansion. The Devon place had never looked more wonderful to Montague than it did just then, with fruit trees in full blossom, and the wonder of springtime upon everything. For miles about one might see hillsides that were one unbroken stretch of luscious green lawn. But alas, Eldridge Devon had no interest in these hills, except to pursue a golf-ball over them. Montague never felt more keenly the pitiful quality of the people among whom he found himself than when he stood upon the portico of this house—a portico huge enough to belong to some fairy palace in a dream—and gazed at the sweeping vista of the Hudson over the heads of Mrs. Billy Alden and several of her cronies, playing bridge.
After luncheon, he went for a stroll with Alice, and she told him how she had been passing the time. “Young Curtiss was here for a couple of days,” she said.
“General Prentice's nephew?” he asked.
“Yes. He told me he had met you,” said she. “What do you think of him?”
“He struck me as a sensible chap,” said Montague.
“I like him very much,” said Alice. “I think we shall be friends. He is interesting to talk to; you know he was in a militia regiment that went to Cuba, and also he's been a cowboy, and all sorts of exciting things. We took a walk the other morning, and he told me some of his adventures. They say he's quite a successful lawyer.”
“He is in a very successful firm,” said Montague. “And he'd hardly have got there unless he had ability.”
“He's a great friend of Laura Hegan's,” said Alice. “She was over here to spend the day. She doesn't approve of many people, so that is a compliment.”
Montague spoke of a visit which he had paid to Laura Hegan, at one of the neighbouring estates.
“I had quite a talk with her,” said Alice. “And she invited me to luncheon, and took me driving. I like her better than I thought I would. Don't you like her, Allan?”
“I couldn't say that I really know her,” said Montague. “I thought I might like her, but she did not happen to like me.”
“But how could that be?” asked the girl.
Montague smiled. “Tastes are different,” he said.
“But there must be some reason,” protested Alice. “For she looks at many things in the same way that you do. I told her I thought she would be interested to talk to you.”
“What did she say?” asked the other.
“She didn't say anything,” answered Alice; and then suddenly she turned to him. “I am sure you must know some reason. I wish you would tell me.”
“I don't know anything definite,” Montague answered. “I have always imagined it had to do with Mrs. Winnie.”
“With Mrs. Winnie!” exclaimed Alice, in perplexing wonder.
“I suppose she heard gossip and believed it,” he added.
“But that is a shame!” exclaimed the girl. “Why don't you tell her the truth?”
“Itell her?” laughed Montague. “I have no reason for telling her. She doesn't care anything in particular about me.”
He was silent for a moment or two. “I thought of it once or twice,” he said. “For it made me rather angry at first. I saw myself going up to her, and startling her with the statement, 'What you believe about me is not true!' Then again, I thought I might write her a letter and tell her. But of course it would be absurd; she would never acknowledge that she had believed anything, and she would think I was impertinent.”
“I don't believe she would do anything of the sort,” Alice answered. “At least, not if she meant what she said to me. She was talking about people one met in Society, and how tiresome and conventional it all was. 'No one ever speaks the truth or deals frankly with you,' she said. 'All the men spend their time in paying you compliments about your looks. They think that is all a woman cares about. The more I come to know them, the less I think of them.'”
“That's just it,” said Montague. “One cannot feel comfortable knowing a girl in her position. Her father is powerful, and some day she will be enormously rich herself; and the people who gather about her are seeking to make use of her. I was interested in her when I first met her. But when I learned more about the world in which she lives, I shrank from even talking to her.”
“But that is rather unfair to her,” said Alice. “Suppose all decent people felt that way. And she is really quite easy to know. She told me about some charities she is interested in. She goes down into the slums, on the East Side, and teaches poor children. It seemed to me a wonderfully daring sort of thing, but she laughed when I said so. She says those people are just the same as other people, when you come to know them; you get used to their ways, and then it does not seem so terrible and far off.”
“I imagine it would be so,” said Montague, with a smile.
“Her father came over to meet her,” Alice added. “She said that was the first time he had been out of the city in six months. Just fancy working so hard, and with all the money he has! What in the world do you suppose he wants more for?”
“I don't suppose it is the money,” said he. “It's the power. And when you have so much money, you have to work hard to keep other people from taking it away from you.”
“He certainly looks as if he ought to be able to protect himself,” said the girl. “His face is so grim and forbidding. You would hardly think he could smile, to look at him.”
“He is very pleasant, when you know him,” said Montague.
“He remembered you, and asked about you,” said she. “Wasn't it he who was going to buy Lucy Dupree's stock?”
“I spoke to him about it,” he answered, “but nothing came of it.”
There was a moment's pause. “Allan,” said Alice, suddenly, “what is this I hear about Lucy?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“People are talking about her and Mr. Ryder. I overheard Mrs. Landis yesterday. It's outrageous!”
Montague did hot know what to say. “What can I do?” he asked.
“I don't know,” said Alice, “but I think that Victoria Landis is a horrible woman. I know she herself does exactly as she pleases. And she tells such shocking stories—”
Montague said nothing.
“Tell me,” asked the other, after a pause, “because you've given up Lucy's business affairs, are we to have nothing to do with her at all?”
“I don't know,” he answered. “I don't imagine she will care to see me. I have told her about the mistake she's making, and she chooses to go her own way. So what more can I do?”
That evening Montague found himself settled on a sofa next to Mrs. Billy Alden. “What's this I hear about your friend, Mrs. Taylor?” she asked.
“I don't know,” said he, abruptly.
“The fascinating widow seems to be throwing herself away,” continued the other.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“Vivie Patton told me,” said she. “She's an old flame of Stanley Ryder's, you know; and so I imagine it came directly from him.”
Montague was dumb; he could think of nothing to say.
“It's too bad,” said Mrs. Billy. “She is really a charming creature. And it will hurt her, you know—she is a stranger, and it's a trifle too sudden. Is that the Mississippi way?”
Montague forced himself to say, “Lucy is her own mistress.” But his feeble impulse toward conversation was checked by Mrs. Billy's prompt response, “Vivie said she was Stanley Ryder's.”
“I understand how you feel,” continued the great lady, after a pause. “Everybody will be talking about it.—Your friend Reggie Mann heard what Vivie said, and he will see to that.”
“Reggie Mann is no friend of mine,” said Montague, abruptly.
There was a pause. “How in the world do you stand that man?” he asked, by way of changing the conversation.
“Oh, Reggie fills his place,” was the reply. And Mrs. Billy gazed about the room. “You see all these women?” she said. “Take them in the morning and put half a dozen of them together in one room; they all hate each other like poison, and there are no men around, and there is nothing to do; and how are you to keep them from quarrelling?”
“Is that Reggie's role?” asked the other.
“Precisely. He sees a spark fly, and he jumps up and cracks a joke. It doesn't make any difference what he does—I've known him to crow like a rooster, or stumble over his own feet—anything to raise a laugh.”
“Aren't you afraid these epigrams may reach your victim?” asked Montague, with a smile.
“That is what they are intended to do,” was the reply.
“I judge you have not many enemies,” added Mrs. Billy, after a pause.
“No especial ones,” said he.
“Well,” said she, “you should cultivate some. Enemies are the spice of life. I mean it, really,” she declared, as she saw him smile.
“I had never thought of it,” said he.
“Have you never known what it is to get into a really good fight? You see, you are conventional, and you don't like to acknowledge it. But what is there that wakes one up more than a good, vigorous hatred? Some day you will realise it—the chief zest in life is to go after somebody who hates you, and to get him down and see him squirm.”
“But suppose he gets you down?” interposed Montague.
“Ah!” said she, “you mustn't let him! That is what you go into the fight for. Get after him, and do him first.”
“It sounds rather barbarous,” said he.
“On the contrary,” was the answer, “it's the highest reach of civilisation. That is what Society is for—the cultivation of the art of hatred. It is the survival of the fittest in a new realm. You study your victim, you find out his weaknesses and his foibles, and you know just where to plant your sting. You learn what he wants, and you take it away from him. You choose your allies carefully, and you surround him and overwhelm him; then when you get through with him, you go after another.”
And Mrs. Billy glanced about her at the exquisite assemblage in Mrs. Devon's Louis Seize drawing-room. “What do you suppose these people are here for to-night?” she asked.