Among sundry maxims and observations of King Solomon, collated by the discerning men of Hezekiah, it will be recalled that the way of a man with a maid is held up to wonder. "There be," says the wise king, who composed a little in the crisp manner of Mr. Kipling, "three things which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." Why he neglected to include the way of a maid with a man is not at once apparent. His unusual facilities for observation must seemingly have inspired him to wonder at the maid's way even more than at the man's; and wise men later than he have not hesitated to confess their entire lack of understanding in the matter. But if Solomon included this item in his summary, the men of Hezekiah omitted to report the fact, and by their chronicles we learn only that the woman "eateth and wipeth her mouth and saith 'I have done no wickedness.'" Perhaps it was Solomon's mischance to observe phenomena of this character too much in the mass.
Miss Milbrey's way, at any rate, with the man she had decided to marry, would undoubtedly have made more work for the unnamed Boswells of the king, could it have been brought to his notice.
For, as she journeyed to the meeting-place on a bright October afternoon, she confessed to herself that it was of a depth beyond her own fathoming. Lolling easily back in the wicker chair of the car that bore her, and gazing idly out over the brown fields and yellow forests of Long Island as they swirled by her, she found herself wishing once that her eyes were made like those of a doll. She had lately discovered of one that when it appeared to fall asleep, it merely turned its eyes around to look into its own head. With any lesser opportunity for introspection she felt that certain doubts as to her own motives and processes would remain for ever unresolved. It was not that she could not say "I have done no wickedness;" let us place this heroine in no false light. She was little concerned with the morality of her course as others might appraise it. The fault, if fault it be, is neither ours nor hers, and Mr. Darwin wrote a big book chiefly to prove that it isn't. From the force of her environment and heredity Miss Milbrey had debated almost exclusively her own chances of happiness under given conditions; and if she had, for a time, questioned the wisdom of the obvious course, entirely from her own selfish standpoint, it is all that, and perhaps more than, we were justified in expecting from her. Let her, then, cheat the reader of no sympathy that might flow to a heroine struggling for a high moral ideal. Merely is she clear-headed enough to have discovered that selfishness is not the thing of easy bonds it is reputed to be; that its delights are not certain; that one does not unerringly achieve happiness by the bare circumstance of being uniformly selfish. Yet even this is a discovery not often made, nor one to be lightly esteemed; for have not the wise ones of Church and State ever implied that the way of selfishness is a way of sure delight, to be shunned only because its joys endure not? So it may be, after all, no small merit we claim for this girl in that, trained to selfishness and a certain course, she yet had the wit to suspect that its joys have been overvalued even by its professional enemies. It is no small merit, perhaps, even though, after due and selfish reflection, she determined upon the obvious course.
If sometimes her heart was sick with the hunger to love and be loved by the one she loved, so that there were times when she would have bartered the world for its plenary feeding, it is all that, we insist, and more, than could be expected of this sort of heroine.
And so she had resolved upon surrender—upon an outward surrender. Inwardly she knew it to be not more than a capitulation under duress, whose terms would remain for ever secret except to those clever at induction. And now, as the train took her swiftly to her fate, she made the best of it.
There would be a town-house fit for her; a country-house at Tuxedo or Lenox or Westbury, a thousand good acres with greeneries, a game preserve, trout pond, and race-course; a cottage at Newport; a place in Scotland; a house in London, perhaps. Then there would be jewels such as she had longed for, a portrait by Chartran, she thought. And there was the dazzling thought of going to Felix or Doucet with credit unlimited.
And he—would the thought of him as it had always come to her keep on hurting with a hurt she could neither explain nor appease? Would he annoy her, enrage her perhaps, or even worse, tire her? He would be very much in earnest, of course, and so few men could be in earnest gracefully. But would he be stupid enough to stay so? And if not, would he become brutal? She suspected he might have capacities for that. Would she be able to hide all but her pleasant emotions from him,—hide that want, the great want, to which she would once have done sacrifice?
Well, it was easier to try than not to try, and the sacrifice—one could always sacrifice if the need became imperative.
"And I'm making much of nothing," she concluded. "No other girl I know would do it. And papa shall 'give me away.' What a pretty euphemism that is, to be sure!"
But her troubled musings ended with her time alone. From a whirl over the crisp, firm macadam, tucked into one of Phimister Gwilt-Athelstan's automobiles with four other guests, with no less a person than her genial host for chauffeur, she was presently ushered into the great hall where a huge log-fire crackled welcome, and where blew a lively little gale of tea-chatter from a dozen people.
Tea Miss Milbrey justly reckoned among the little sanities of life. Her wrap doffed and her veil pushed up, she was in a moment restored to her normal ease, a part of the group, and making her part of the talk that touched the latest news from town, the flower show, automobile show, Irving and Terry, the morning's meet, the weekly musicale and dinner-dance at the club; and at length upon certain matters of marriage and divorce.
"Ladies, ladies—this is degenerating into a mere hammer-fest." Thus spoke a male wit who had listened. "Give over, and be nice to the absent."
"The end of the fairy story was," continued the previous speaker, unheeding, "and so they were divorced and lived happily ever after."
"I think she took the Chicago motto, 'Marry early and often,'" said another, "but here she comes."
And as blond and fluffy little Mrs. Akemit, a late divorcee, joined the group the talk ranged back to the flourishing new hunt at Goshen, the driving over of Tuxedo people for the meet, the nasty accident to Warner Ridgeway when his blue-ribbon winner Musette fell upon him in taking a double-jump.
Miss Milbrey had taken stock of her fellow guests. Especially was she interested to note the presence of Mrs. Drelmer and her protege, Mauburn. It meant, she was sure, that her brother's wooing of Miss Bines would not be uncontested.
Another load of guests from a later train bustled in, the Bineses among them, and there was more tea and fresher gossip, while the butler circulated again with his tray for the trunk-keys.
The breezy hostess now took pains to impress upon all that only by doing exactly as they pleased, as to going and coming, could they hope to please her. Had she not, by this policy, conquered the cold, Scottish exclusiveness of Inverness-shire, so that the right sort of people fought to be at her house-parties during the shooting, even though she would persist in travelling back and forth to London in gowns that would be conspicuously elaborate at an afternoon reception, and even though, in any condition of dress, she never left quite enough of her jewels in their strong-box?
During the hour of dressing-sacque and slippers, while maids fluttered through the long corridors on hair-tending and dress-hooking expeditions, Mrs. Drelmer favoured her hostess with a confidential chat in that lady's boudoir, and, over Scotch and soda and a cigarette, suggested that Mr. Mauburn, in a house where he could really do as he pleased, would assuredly take Miss Bines out to dinner.
Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan was instantly sympathetic.
"Only I can't take sides, you know, my dear, and young Milbrey will think me shabby if he doesn't have first go; but I'll be impartial; Milbrey shall take her in, and Mauburn shall be at her other side, and may God have mercy on her soul! These people have so much money, I hear, it amounts to financial embarrassment, but with those two chaps for the girl, and Avice Milbrey for that decent young chap, I fancy they'll be disembarrassed, in a measure. But I mustn't 'play favourites,' as those slangy nephews of mine put it."
And so it befell at dinner in the tapestried dining-room that Psyche Bines received assiduous attention from two gentlemen whom she considered equally and superlatively fascinating. While she looked at one, she listened to the other, and her neck grew tired with turning. Of anything, save the talk, her mind was afterward a blank; but why is not that the ideal dinner for any but mere feeders?
Nor was the dazzled girl conscious of others at the table,—of Florence Akemit, the babyish blond, listening with feverish attention to the German savant, Doctor von Herzlich, who had translated Goethe's "Iphigenie in Tauris" into Greek merely as recreation, and who was now justifying his choice of certain words and phrases by citing passages from various Greek authors; a choice which the sympathetic listener, after discreet intervals for reflection, invariably commended.
"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man, you!" she exclaimed, resolving to sit by some one less wonderful another time.
Or there was Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, like a motherly Venus rising from a sea of pink velvet and white silk lace, asserting that some one or other would never get within sniffing-distance of the Sandringham set.
Or her husband, whose face, when he settled it in his collar, made the lines of a perfect lyre, and of whom it would presently become inaccurate to say that he was getting bald. He was insisting that "too many houses spoil the home," and that, with six establishments, he was without a place to lay his head, that is, with any satisfaction.
Or there was pale, thin, ascetic Winnie Wilberforce, who, as a theosophist, is understood to believe that, in a former incarnation, he came near to having an affair with a danseuse; he was expounding the esoterics of his cult to a high-coloured brunette with many turquoises, who, in turn, was rather inclined to the horse-talk of one of the nephews.
Or there were Miss Milbrey and Percival Bines, of whom the former had noted with some surprise that the latter was studying her with the eyes of rather cold calculation, something she had never before detected in him.
After dinner there were bridge and music from the big pipe-organ in the music-room, and billiards and some dancing.
The rival cavaliers of Miss Bines, perceiving simultaneously that neither would have the delicacy to withdraw from the field, cunningly inveigled each other into the billiard-room, where they watchfully consumed whiskey and soda together with the design of making each other drunk. This resulted in the two nephews, who invariably hunted as a pair, capturing Miss Bines to see if she could talk horse as ably as her mother, and, when they found that she could, planning a coaching trip for the morrow.
It also resulted in Miss Bines seeing no more of either cavalier that night, since they abandoned their contest only after every one but a sleepy butler had retired, and at a time when it became necessary for the Englishman to assist the American up the stairs, though the latter was moved to protest, as a matter of cheerful generality, that he was "aw ri'—entirely cap'le." At parting he repeatedly urged Mauburn, with tears in his eyes, to point out one single instance in which he had ever proved false to a friend.
To herself, when the pink rose came out of her hair that night, Miss Milbrey admitted that it wasn't going to be so bad, after all.
She had feared he might rush his proposal through that night; he had been so much in earnest. But he had not done so, and she was glad he could be restrained and deliberate in that "breedy" sort of way. It promised well, that he could wait until the morrow.
Miss Milbrey, the next morning, faced with becoming resignation what she felt would be her last day of entire freedom. She was down and out philosophically to play nine holes with her host before breakfast.
Her brother, awakening less happily, made a series of discoveries regarding his bodily sensations that caused him to view life with disaffection. Noting that the hour was early, however, he took cheer, and after a long, strong, cold drink, which he rang for, and a pricking icy shower, which he nerved himself to, he was ready to ignore his aching head and get the start of Mauburn.
The Englishman, he seemed to recall, had drunk even more than he, and, as it was barely eight o'clock, would probably not come to life for a couple of hours yet. He made his way to the breakfast-room. The thought of food was not pleasant, but another brandy and soda, beading vivaciously in its tall glass, would enable him to watch with fortitude the spectacle of others who might chance to be eating. And he would have at least two hours of Miss Bines before Mauburn's head should ache him back to consciousness.
He opened the door of the spacious breakfast-room. Through the broad windows from the south-east came the glorious shine of the morning sun to make him blink; and seated where it flooded him as a calcium was Mauburn, resplendent in his myriad freckles, trim, alive, and obviously hungry. Around his plate were cold mutton, a game pie, eggs, bacon, tarts, toast, and sodden-looking marmalade. Mauburn was eating of these with a voracity that published his singleness of mind to all who might observe.
Milbrey steadied himself with one hand upon the door-post, and with the other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes. But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ice, and a siphon beckoned.
Between two gulps of coffee Mauburn grinned affably.
"Mornin', old chap! Feelin' a bit seedy? By Jove! I don't wonder. I'm not so fit myself. I fancy, you know, it must have been that beastly anchovy paste we had on the biscuits."
Milbrey's burning eyes beheld him reach out for another slice of the cold, terrible mutton.
"Life," said Milbrey, as he inflated his brandy from the siphon, "is an empty dream this morning."
"Wake up then, old chap!" Mauburn cordially urged, engaging the game pie in deadly conflict; "try a rasher; nothing like it; better'n peggin' it so early. Never drink till dinner-time, old chap, and you'll be able to eat in the morning like—like a blooming baby." And he proceeded to crown this notion of infancy's breakfast with a jam tart of majestic proportions.
"Where are the people?" inquired Milbrey, eking out his own moist breakfast with a cigarette.
"All down and out except some of the women. Miss Bines just drove off a four-in-hand with the two Angsteads—held the reins like an old whip, too, by Jove; but they'll be back for luncheon;—and directly after luncheon she's promised to ride with me. I fancy we'll have a little practice over the sticks."
"And I fancy I'm going straight back to bed,—that is, if it's all right to fancy a thing you're certain about."
Outside most of the others had scattered for life in the open, each to his taste. Some were on the links. Some had gone with the coach. A few had ridden early to the meet of the Essex hounds near Easthampton, where a stiff run was expected. Others had gone to follow the hunt in traps. A lively group came back now to read the morning papers by the log-fire in the big cheery hall. Among these were Percival and Miss Milbrey. When they had dawdled over the papers for an hour Miss Milbrey grew slightly restive.
"Why doesn't he have it over?" she asked herself, with some impatience. And she delicately gave Percival, not an opportunity, but opportunities to make an opportunity, which is a vastly different form of procedure.
But the luncheon hour came and people straggled back, and the afternoon began, and the request for Miss Milbrey's heart and hand was still unaccountably deferred. Nor could she feel any of those subtle premonitions that usually warn a woman when the event is preparing in a lover's secret heart.
Reminding herself of his letters, she began to suspect that, while he could write unreservedly, he might be shy and reluctant of speech; and that shyness now deterred him. So much being clear, she determined to force the issue and end the strain for both.
Percival had shown not a little interest in pretty Mrs. Akemit, and was now talking with that fascinating creature as she lolled on a low seat before the fire in her lacy blue house-gown. At the moment she was adroitly posing one foot and then the other before the warmth of the grate. It may be disclosed without damage to this tale that the feet of Mrs. Akemit were not cold; but that they were trifles most daintily shod, and, as her slender silken ankles curved them toward the blaze from her froth of a petticoat, they were worth looking at.
Miss Milbrey disunited the chatting couple with swiftness and aplomb.
"Come, Mr. Bines, if I'm to take that tramp you made me promise you, it's time we were off."
Outside she laughed deliciously. "You know you did make me promise it mentally, because I knew you'd want to come and want me to come, but I was afraid Mrs. Akemit mightn't understand about telepathy, so I pretended we'd arranged it all in words."
"Of course! Great joke, wasn't it?" assented the young man, rather awkwardly.
Down the broad sweep of roadway, running between its granite coping, they strode at a smart pace.
"You know you complimented my walking powers on that other walk we took, away off there where the sun goes down."
"Yes, of course," he replied absently.
"Now, he's beginning," she said to herself, noting his absent and somewhat embarrassed manner.
In reality he was thinking how few were the days ago he would have held this the dearest of all privileges, and how strange that he should now prize it so lightly, almost prefer, indeed, not to have it; that he should regard her, of all women, "the fairest of all flesh on earth" with nervous distrust.
She was dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee:"She's hunting night and day for a rich husband; she tries for them as fast as they come; she'd rather marry a sub-treasury—she'd marry me in a minute—she'd marryYOU;but if you were broke she'd have about as much use for you...."
Her glance was frank, friendly, and encouraging. Her deep eyes were clear as a trout-brook. He thought he saw in them once almost a tenderness for him.
She thought, "Hedoeslove me!"
Outside the grounds they turned down a bridle-path that led off through the woods—off through the golden sun-wine of an October day. The air bore a clean autumn spice, and a faint salty scent blended with it from the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance, suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a lightning flash of vivid turquoise and heard a jay's harsh scream.
In this stillness their voices instinctively lowered, while their eyes did homage to the wondrous play of colour about them. Over a yielding brown carpet they went among maple and chestnut and oak, with their bewildering changes through crimson, russet, and amber to pale yellow; under the deep-stained leaves of the sweet-gum they went, and past the dogwood with scarlet berries gemming the clusters of its dim red leaves.
But through all this waiting, inciting silence Miss Milbrey listened in vain for the words she had felt so certain would come.
Sometimes her companion was voluble; again he was taciturn—and through it all he was doggedly aloof.
Miss Milbrey had put herself bravely in the path of Destiny. Destiny had turned aside. She had turned to meet it, and now it frankly fled. Destiny, as she had construed it, was turned a fugitive. She was bruised, puzzled, and not a little piqued. During the walk back, when this much had been made clear, the silence was intolerably oppressive. Without knowing why, they understood perfectly now that neither had been ingenuous.
"She would love the money and play me for a fool," he thought, under the surface talk. Youth is prone to endow its opinions with all the dignity of certain knowledge.
"Yet I am certain he loves me," thought she. On the other hand, youth is often gifted with a credulity divine and unerring.
At the door as they came up the roadway a trap was depositing a man whom Miss Milbrey greeted with evident surprise and some restraint. He was slight, dark, and quick of movement, with finely cut nostrils that expanded and quivered nervously like those of a high-bred horse in tight check.
Miss Milbrey introduced him to Percival as Mr. Ristine.
"I didn't know you were hereabouts," she said.
"I've run over from the Bloynes to dine and do Hallowe'en with you," he answered, flashing his dark eyes quickly over Percival and again lighting the girl with them.
"Surprises never come singly," she returned, and Percival noted a curious little air of defiance in her glance and manner.
Now it is possible that Solomon's implied distinction as to the man's way with a maid was not, after all, so ill advised.
For young Bines, after dinner, fell in love with Miss Milbrey all over again. The normal human mind going to one extreme will inevitably gravitate to its opposite if given time. Having put her away in the conviction that she was heartless and mercenary—having fasted in the desert of doubt—he now found himself detecting in her an unmistakable appeal for sympathy, for human kindness, perhaps for love. He forgot the words of Higbee and became again the confident, unquestioning lover. He noted her rather subdued and reserved demeanour, and the suggestions of weariness about her eyes. They drew him. He resolved at once to seek her and give his love freedom to tell itself. He would no longer meanly restrain it. He would even tell her all his distrust. Now that they had gone she should know every ignoble suspicion; and, whether she cared for him or not, she would comfort him for the hurt they had been to him.
The Hallowe'en frolic was on. Through the long hall, lighted to pleasant dusk by real Jack-o'-lanterns, stray couples strolled, with subdued murmurs and soft laughter. In the big white and gold parlour, in the dining-room, billiard-room, and in the tropic jungle of the immense palm-garden the party had bestowed itself in congenial groups, ever intersecting and forming anew. Little flutters of high laughter now and then told of tests that were being made with roasting chestnuts, apple-parings, the white of an egg dropped into water, or the lighted candle before an open window.
Percival watched for the chance to find Miss Milbrey alone. His sister had just ventured alone with a candle into the library to study the face of her future husband in a mirror. The result had been, in a sense, unsatisfactory. She had beheld looking over her shoulder the faces of Mauburn, Fred Milbrey, and the Angstead twins, and had declared herself unnerved by the weird prophecy.
Before the fire in the hall Percival stood while Mrs. Akemit reclined picturesquely near by, and Doctor von Herzlich explained, with excessive care as to his enunciation, that protoplasm can be analysed but cannot be reconstructed; following this with his own view as to why the synthesis does not produce life.
"You wonderful man!" from Mrs. Akemit; "I fairly tremble when I think of all you know. Oh, what a delight science must be to her votaries!"
The Angstead twins joined the group, attracted by Mrs. Akemit's inquiry of the savant if he did not consider civilisation a failure. The twins did. They considered civilisation a failure because it was killing off all the big game. There was none to speak of left now except in Africa; and they were pessimistic about Africa.
Percival listened absently to the talk and watched Miss Milbrey, now one of the group in the dining-room. Presently he saw her take a lighted candle from one of the laughing girls and go toward the library.
His heart-beats quickened. Now she should know his love and it would be well. He walked down the hall leisurely, turned into the big parlour, momentarily deserted, walked quickly but softly over its polished floor to a door that gave into the library, pushed the heavy portiere aside and stepped noiselessly in.
The large room was lighted dimly by two immense yellow pumpkins, their sides cut into faces of grinning grotesqueness. At the far side of the room Miss Milbrey had that instant arrived before an antique oval mirror whose gilded carvings reflected the light of the candle. She held it above her head with one rounded arm. He stood in deep shadow and the girl had been too absorbed in the play to note his coming. He took one noiseless step toward her, but then through the curtained doorway by which she had come he saw a man enter swiftly and furtively.
Trembling on the verge of laughing speech, something held him back, some unexplainable instinct, making itself known in a thrill that went from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle. The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl. Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the very swiftness of what followed.
In the mirror under the candle-light he saw the man's dark face come beside the other, heard a little cry from the girl as she half-turned; then he saw the man take her in his arms, saw her head fall on to his shoulder, and her face turn to his kiss.
He tried to stop breathing, fearful of discovery, grasping with one hand the heavy fold of the curtain back of him to steady himself.
There was the space of two long, trembling breaths; then he heard her say, in a low, tense voice, as she drew away:
"Oh, you are my bad angel—why?—why?"
She fled toward the door to the hall.
"Don't come this way," she called back, in quick, low tones of caution.
The man turned toward the door where Percival stood, and in the darkness stumbled over a hassock. Instantly Percival was on the other side of the portiere, and, before the other had groped his way to the dark corner where the door was, had recrossed the empty parlour and was safely in the hall.
He made his way to the dining-room, where supper was under way.
"Mr. Bines has seen a ghost," said the sharp-eyed Mrs. Drelmer.
"Poor chap's only starved to death," said Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan. "Eat something, Mr. Bines; this supper is go-as-you-please. Nobody's to wait for anybody."
Strung loosely about the big table a dozen people were eating hot scones and bannocks with clotted cream and marmalade, and drinking mulled cider.
"And there's cold fowl and baked beans and doughnuts and all, for those who can't eat with a Scotch accent," said the host, cheerfully.
Percival dropped into one of the chairs.
"I'm Scotch enough to want a Scotch high-ball."
"And you're getting it so high it's top-heavy," cautioned Mrs. Drelmer.
Above the chatter of the table could be heard the voices of men and the musical laughter of women from the other rooms.
"I simply can't get 'em together," said the hostess.
"It's nice to have 'em all over the place," said her husband, "fair women and brave men, you know."
"The menhaveto be brave," she answered, shortly, with a glance at little Mrs. Akemit, who had permitted Percival to seat her at his side, and was now pleading with him to agree that simple ways of life are requisite to the needed measure of spirituality.
Then came strains of music from the rich-toned organ.
"Oh, that dear Ned Ristine is playing," cried one; and several of the group sauntered toward the music-room.
The music flooded the hall and the room, so that the talk died low.
"He's improvising," exclaimed Mrs. Akemit. "How splendid! He seems to be breathing a paean of triumph, some high, exalted spiritual triumph, as if his soul had risen above us—how precious!"
When the deep swell had subsided to silvery ripples and the last cadence had fainted, she looked at Percival with moistened parted lips and eyes half-shielded, as if her full gaze would betray too much of her quivering soul.
Then Percival heard the turquoised brunette say: "What a pity his wife is such an unsympathetic creature!"
"But Mr. Ristine is unmarried, is he not?" he asked, quickly.
There was a little laugh from Mrs. Drelmer.
"Not yet—not that I've heard of."
"I beg pardon!"
"There have been rumours lots of times that he was going to beunmarried, but they always seem to adjust their little difficulties. He and his wife are now staying over at the Bloynes."
"Oh! I see," answered Percival; "you're a jester, Mrs. Drelmer."
"Ristine," observed the theosophic Wilberforce, in the manner of a hired oracle, "is, in his present incarnation, imperfectly monogamous."
Some people came from the music-room.
"Miss Milbrey has stayed by the organist," said one; "and she's promised to make him play one more. Isn't he divine?"
The music came again.
"Oh!" from Mrs. Akemit, again in an ecstasy, '"' he's playing that heavenly stuff from the second act of 'Tristan and Isolde'—the one triumphant, perfect love-poem of all music."
"That Scotch whiskey is good in some of the lesser emergencies," remarked Percival, turning to her; "but it has its limitations. Let's you and me trifle with a nice cold quart of champagne!"
The Hightower Hotel is by many observers held to be an instructive microcosm of New York, more especially of upper Broadway, with correct proportions of the native and the visiting provincial. With correct proportions, again, of the money-making native and the money-spending native, male and female. A splendid place is this New York; splendid but terrible. London for the stranger has a steady-going, hearty hospitality. Paris on short notice will be cosily and coaxingly intimate. New York is never either. It overwhelms with its lavish display of wealth, it stuns with its tireless, battering energy. But it stays always aloof, indifferent if it be loved or hated; if it crush or sustain.
The ground floor of the Hightower Hotel reproduces this magnificent, brutal indifference. One might live years in its mile or so of stately corridors and its acre or so of resplendent cafes, parlours, reception-rooms, and restaurants, elbowed by thousands, suffocated by that dense air of human crowdedness, that miasma of brain emanations, and still remain in splendid isolation, as had he worn the magic ring of Gyges. Here is every species of visitor: the money-burdened who "stop" here and cultivate an air of being blase to the wealth of polished splendours; and the less opulent who "stop" cheaply elsewhere and venture in to tread the corridors timidly, to stare with honest, drooping-jawed wonder at its marvels of architecture and decoration, and to gaze with becoming reverence at those persons whom they shrewdly conceive to be social celebrities.
This mixture of many and strange elements is never at rest. Its units wait expectantly, chat, drink, eat, or stroll with varying airs through reception-room, corridor, and office. It is an endless function, attended by all of Broadway, with entertainment diversely contrived for every taste by a catholic-minded host with a sincere desire to please the paying public.
"Isn't it a huge bear-garden, though?" asks Launton Oldaker of the estimable Doctor von Herzlich, after the two had observed the scene in silence for a time.
The wise German dropped an olive into his Rhine wine, and gazed reflectively about the room. Men and women sat at tables drinking. Beyond the tables at the farther side of the room, other men were playing billiards. It was four o'clock and the tide was high.
"It is yet more," answered the doctor. "In my prolonged studies of natural phenomena this is the most valuable of all which I have been privileged to observe."
He called them "brifiletched" and "awbsairf" with great nicety. Perhaps his discernment was less at fault.
"Having," continued the doctor, "granted myself some respite from toil in the laboratory at Marburg, I chose to pleasure voyage, to study yet more the social conditions in this loveworthy land. I suspected that much tiredness of travel would be involved. Yet here I find all conditions whatsoever—here in that which you denominate 'bear-garden'. They have been reduced here for my edification, yes? But your term is a term of inadequate comprehensiveness. It is to me more what you call a 'beast-garden,' to include all species of fauna. Are there not here moths and human flames? are there not cunning serpents crawling with apples of knowledge to unreluctant, idling Eves, yes? Do we not hear the amazing converse of parrots and note the pea-fowl negotiating admiration from observers? Mark at that yet farther table also the swine and the song-bird; again, mark our draught-horses who have achieved a competence, yes? You note also the presence of wolves and lambs. And, endly, mark our tailed arborean ancestors, trained to the wearing of garments and a single eye-glass. May I ask, have you bestowed upon this diversity your completest high attention?Hanh!"
This explosion of the doctor's meant that he invited and awaited some contradiction. As none ensued, he went on:
"For wolf and lamb I direct your attention to the group at yonder table. I notice that you greeted the young man as he entered—a common friend to us then—Mr. Bines, with financial resources incredibly unlimited? Also he is possessed of an unexperienced freedom from suspectedness-of-ulterior-motive-in-others—one may not in English as in German make the word to fit his need of the moment—that unsuspectedness, I repeat, which has ever characterised the lamb about to be converted into nutrition. You note the large, loose gentleman with wide-brimmed hat and beard after my own, somewhat, yes? He would dispose of some valuable oil-wells which he shall discover at Texas the moment he shall have sufficiently disposed of them. A wolf he is, yes? The more correctly attired person at his right, with the beak of a hawk and lips so thin that his big white teeth gleam through them when they are yet shut, he is what he calls himself a promoter. He has made sundry efforts to promote myself. I conclude 'promoter' is one other fashion of wolf-saying. The yet littler and yet younger man at his left of our friend, the one of soft voice and insinuating manner, much resembling a stray scion of aristocracy, discloses to those with whom he affably acquaints himself the location of a luxurious gaming house not far off; he will even consent to accompany one to its tables; and still yet he has but yesterday evening invited me the all-town to see.
"As a scientist, I remind you, I permit myself no prejudices. I observe the workings of unemotional law and sometimes record them. You have a saying here that there are three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves. I observe the process of the progress. It is benign as are all processes. I have lately observed it in England. There, by their law of entail, the same process is unswifter,—yet does it unvary. The poor aristocrats, almost back to shirt-sleeves, with their taxes and entailed lands, seek for the money in shops of dress and bonnet and ale, and graciously rent their castles to the but-newly-opulent in American oil or the diamonds of South Africa. Here the posterity of your Mynherr Knickerbocker do likewise. The ancestor they boast was a toiler, a market-gardener, a fur-trader, a boatman, hardworking, simple-wayed, unspending. The woman ancestor kitchen-gardened, spun, wove, and nourished the poultry. Their descendants upon the savings of these labours have forgotten how to labour themselves. They could not yet produce should they even relinquish the illusion that to produce is of a baseness, that only to consume is noble. I gather reports that a few retain enough of the ancient strain to become sturdy tradesmen and gardeners once more. Others seek out and assimilate this new-richness, which, in its turn, will become impoverished and helpless. Ah, what beautiful showing of Evolution!
"See the pendulum swing from useful penury to useless opulence. Why does it not halt midway, you inquire? Because the race is so young. Ach! a mere two hundred and forty million years from our grandfather-grandmother amoeba in the ancestral morass! What can one be expecting? Certain faculties develop in response to the pressure of environment. Omit the pressure and the faculties no longer ensue. Yes? Withdraw the pressure, and the faculties decay. Sightless moles, their environment demands not the sight; nor of the fishes that inhabit the streams of your Mammoth Cave. Your aristocrats between the sleeve-of-the-shirt periods likewise degenerate. There is no need to work, they lose the power. No need to sustain themselves, they become helpless. They are as animals grown in an environment that demands no struggle of them. Yet their environment is artificial. They live on stored energy, stored by another. It is exhausted, they perish. All but the few that can modify to correspond with the changed environment, as when your social celebrities venture into trade, and the also few that in their life of idleness have acquired graces of person and manner to let them find pleasure in the eyes of marryers among the but-now-rich."
The learned doctor submitted to have his glass refilled from the cooler at his side, dropped another olive into the wine, and resumed before Oldaker could manage an escape.
"And how long, you ask, shall the cosmic pendulum swing between these extremes of penurious industry and opulent idleness?"
Oldaker had not asked it. But he tried politely to appear as if he had meant to. He had really meant to ask the doctor what time it was and then pretend to recall an engagement for which he would be already late.
"It will so continue," the doctor placidly resumed, "until the race achieves a different ideal. Now you will say, but there can be no ideal so long as there is no imagination; and as I have directly—a moment-soon—said, the race is too young to have achieved imagination. The highest felicity which we are yet able to imagine is a felicity based upon much money; our highest pleasures the material pleasures which money buys, yes? We strive for it, developing the money-getting faculty at the expense of all others; and when the money is obtained we cannot enjoy it. We can imagine to do with it only delicate-eating and drinking and dressing for show-to-others and building houses immense and splendidly uncalculated for homes of rational dwelling. Art, science, music, literature, sociology, the great study and play of our humanity, they are shut to us.
"Our young friend Bines is a specimen. It is as if he were a child, having received from another a laboratory full of the most beautiful instruments of science. They are valuable, but he can do but common things with them because he knows not their possibilities. Or, we may call it stored energy he has; for such is money, the finest, subtlest, most potent form of stored energy; it may command the highest fruits of genius, the lowest fruits of animality; it is also volatile, elusive. Our young friend has many powerful batteries of it. But he is no electrician. Some he will happily waste without harm to himself. Much of it, apparently, he will convert into that champagne he now drinks. For a week since I had the pleasure of becoming known to him he has drunk it here each day, copiously. He cannot imagine a more salutary mode of exhausting his force. I am told he comes of a father who died at fifty, and who did in many ways like that. This one, at the rate I have observed, will not last so long. He will not so long correspond with an environment even so unexacting as this. And his son, perhaps his grandson, will become what you call broke; will from lack of pressure to learn some useful art, and from spending only, become useless and helpless. For besides drink, there is gambling. He plays what you say, the game of poker, this Bines. You see the gentleman, rounded gracefully in front, who has much the air of seeming to stand behind himself,—he drinks whiskey at my far right, yes? He is of a rich trust, the magnate-director as you say, and plays at cards nightly with our young friend. He jested with him in my presence before you entered, saying, 'I will make you look like'—I forget it now, but his humourous threat was to reduce our young friend to the aspect of some inconsiderable sum in the money of your country. I cannot recall the precise amount, but it was not so much as what you call one dollar. Strange, is it not, that the rich who have too much money gamble as feverishly as the poor who have none, and therefore have an excuse? And the love of display-for-display. If one were not a scientist one might be tempted to say there is no progress. The Peruvian grandee shod his mules with pure gold, albeit that metal makes but inferior shodding for beasts of burden. The London factory girl hires the dyed feathers of the ostrich to make her bonnet gay; and your money people are as display-loving. Lucullus and your latest millionaire joy in the same emotion of pleasure at making a show. Ach! we are truly in the race's childhood yet. The way of evolution is so unfast, yes? Ah! you will go now, Mr. Oldaker. I shall hope to enjoy you more again. Your observations have interested me deeply; they shall have my most high attention. Another time you shall discuss with me how it must be that the cosmic process shall produce a happy mean between stoic and epicure, by learning the valuable arts of compromise, yes? How Zeno with his bread and dates shall learn not to despise a few luxuries, and Vitellius shall learn that the mind may sometimes feast to advantage while the body fasts."
Through the marbled corridors and regal parlours, down long perspectives of Persian rugs and onyx pillars, the function raged.
The group at Percival's table broke up. He had an appointment to meet Colonel Poindexter the next morning to consummate the purchase of some oil stock certain to appreciate fabulously in value. He had promised to listen further to Mr. Isidore Lewis regarding a plan for obtaining control of a certain line of one of the metal stocks. And he had signified his desire to make one of a party the affable younger man would guide later in the evening to a sumptuous temple of chance, to which, by good luck, he had gained the entree. The three gentlemen parted most cordially from him after he had paid the check.
To Mr. Lewis, when Colonel Poindexter had also left, the young man with a taste for gaming remarked, ingenuously:
"Say, Izzy, on the level, there's the readiest money that ever registered at this joint. You don't have to be Mr. William Wisenham to do business with him. You can have all you want of that at track odds."
"I'm making book that way myself," responded the cheerful Mr. Lewis; "fifty'll get you a thousand any time, my lad. It's a lead-pipe at twenty to one. But say, with all these Petroleum Pete oil-stock grafters and Dawson City Daves with frozen feet and mining-stock in their mitts, a man's got to play them close in to his bosom to win out anything. Competition is killing this place, my boy."
In the Turkish room Percival found Mrs. Akemit, gowned to perfection, glowing, and wearing a bunch of violets bigger than her pretty head.
"I've just sent cards to your mother and sister," she explained, as she made room for him upon the divan.
To them came presently Mrs. Drelmer, well-groomed and aggressively cheerful.
"How de do! Just been down to Wall Street seeing how my other half lives, and now I'm famished for tea and things. Ah! here are your mother and our proud Western beauty!" And she went forward to greet them.
"It's more thanherother half knows about her," was Mrs. Akemit's observation to the violets on her breast.
"Come sit with me here in this corner, dear," said Mrs. Drelmer to Psyche, while Mrs. Bines joined her son and Mrs. Akemit. "I've so much to tell you. And that poor little Florence Akemit, isn't it too bad about her. You know one of those bright French women said it's so inconvenient to be a widow because it's necessary to resume the modesty of a young girl without being able to feign her ignorance. No wonder Florence has a hard time of it; but isn't it wretched of me to gossip? And I wanted to tell you especially about Mr. Mauburn. You know of course he'll be Lord Casselthorpe when the present Lord Casselthorpe dies; a splendid title, really quite one of the best in all England; and, my dear, he's out-and-out smitten with you; there's no use in denying it; you should hear him rave to me about you; really these young men in love are so inconsiderate of us old women. Ah! here is that Mrs. Errol who does those fascinating miniatures of all the smart people. Excuse me one moment, my dear; I want her to meet your mother."
The fashionable miniature artist was presently arranging with the dazed Mrs. Bines for miniatures of herself and Psyche. Mrs. Drelmer, beholding the pair with the satisfied glance of one who has performed a kindly action, resumed hertete-a-tetewith Psyche.
Percival, across the room, listened to Mrs. Akemit's artless disclosure that she found life too complex—far too hazardous, indeed, for a poor little creature in her unfortunate position, so liable to cruel misjudgment for thoughtless, harmless acts, the result of a young zest for life. She had often thought most seriously of a convent, indeed she had—"and, really, Mr. Bines, I'm amazed that I talk this way—so freely to you—you know, when I've known you so short a time; but something in you compels my confidences, poor little me! and my poor little confidences! One so seldom meets a man nowadays with whom one can venture to talk about any of therealthings!"
A little later, as Mrs. Drelmer was leaving, the majestic figure of the Baron Ronault de Palliac framed itself in the handsome doorway. He sauntered in, as if to give the picture tone, and then with purposeful air took the seat Mrs. Drelmer had just vacated. Miss Bines had been entertained by involuntary visions of herself as Lady Casselthorpe. She now became in fancy the noble Baroness de Palliac, speaking faultless French and consorting with the rare old families of the Faubourg St. Germain. For, despite his artistic indirection, the baron's manner was conclusive, his intentions unmistakable.
And this day was much like many days in the life of the Bines and in the life of the Hightower Hotel. The scene from parlour to cafe was surveyed at intervals by a quiet-mannered person with watchful eyes, who appeared to enjoy it as one upon whom it conferred benefits. Now he washed his hands in the invisible sweet waters of satisfaction, and murmured softly to himself, "Setters and Buyers!" Perhaps the term fits the family of Bines as well as might many another coined especially for it.
When the three groups in the Turkish room dissolved, Percival with his mother and sister went to their suite on the fourth floor.
"Think of a real live French nobleman!" cried Psyche, with enthusiasm, "and French must be such a funny language—he talks such funny English. I wish now I'd learned more of it at the Sem, and talked more with that French Delpasse girl that was always toasting marshmallows on a hat-pin."
"That lady Mrs. Drelmer introduced me to," said Mrs. Bines, "is an artist, miniature artist, hand-painted you know, and she's going to paint our miniatures for a thousand dollars each because we're friends of Mrs. Drelmer."
"Oh, yes," exclaimed Psyche, with new enthusiasm, "and Mrs. Drelmer has promised to teach me bridge whist if I'll go to her house to-morrow. Isn't she kind? Really, every one must play bridge now, she tells me."
"Well, ladies," said the son and brother, "I'm glad to see you both getting some of the white meat. I guess we'll do well here. I'm going into oil stock and lead, myself."
"How girlish your little friend Mrs. Akemit is!" said his mother. "How did she come to lose her husband?"
"Lost him in South Dakota," replied her son, shortly.
"Divorced, ma," explained Psyche, "and Mrs. Drelmer says her family's good, but she's too gay."
"Ah!" exclaimed Percival, "Mrs. Drelmer's hammer must be one of those cute little gold ones, all set with precious stones. As a matter of fact, she's anything but gay. She's sad. She couldn't get along with her husband because he had no dignity of soul."
He became conscious of sympathising generously with all men not thus equipped.