The name written on his card was Mrs. Alden. She came in just after
him--a matron of about fifty, of vigorous aspect and ample figure,
approaching what he had not yet learned to call embonpoint. She wore
brocade, as became a grave dowager, and upon her ample bosom there
lay an ornament the size of a man's hand, and made wholly out of
blazing diamonds--the most imposing affair that Montague had ever
laid eyes upon. She gave him her hand to shake, and made no attempt
to disguise the fact that she was looking him over in the meantime.

"Madam, dinner is served," said the stately butler; and the
glittering procession moved into the dining-room--a huge state
apartment, finished in some lustrous jet-black wood, and with great
panel paintings illustrating the Romaunt de la Rose. The table was
covered with a cloth of French embroidery, and gleaming with its
load of crystal and gold plate. At either end there were huge
candlesticks of solid gold, and in the centre a mbund of orchids and
lilies of the valley, matching in colour the shades of the
candelabra and the daintily painted menu cards.

"You are fortunate in coming to New York late in life," Mrs. Alden
was saying to him. "Most of our young men are tired out before they
have sense enough to enjoy anything. Take my advice and look about
you--don't let that lively brother of yours set the pace for you."

In front of Mrs. Alden there was a decanter of Scotch whisky. "Will
you have some?" she asked, as she took it up.

"No, I thank you," said he, and then wondered if perhaps he should
not have said yes, as he watched the other select the largest of the
half-dozen wine-glasses clustered at her place, and pour herself out
a generous libation.

"Have you seen much of the city?" she asked, as she tossed it
off--without as much as a quiver of an eyelash.

"No," said he. "They have not given me much time. They took me off
to the country--to the Robert Wallings'."

"Ah," said Mrs. Alden; and Montague, struggling to make
conversation, inquired, "Do you know Mr. Walling?"

"Quite well," said the other, placidly. "I used to be a Walling
myself, you know."

"Oh," said Montague, taken aback; and then added, "Before you were
married?"

"No," said Mrs. Alden, more placidly than ever, "before I was
divorced."

There was a dead silence, and Montague sat gasping to catch his
breath. Then suddenly he heard a faint subdued chuckle, which grew
into open laughter; and he stole a glance at Mrs. Alden, and saw
that her eyes were twinkling; and then he began to laugh himself.
They laughed together, so merrily that others at the table began to
look at them in perplexity.

So the ice was broken between them; which filled Montague with a
vast relief. But he was still dimly touched with awe--for he
realized that this must be the great Mrs. Billy Alden, whose
engagement to the Duke of London was now the topic of the whole
country. And that huge diamond ornament must be part of Mrs. Alden's
million-dollar outfit of jewellery!

The great lady volunteered not to tell on him; and added generously
that when he came to dinner with her she would post him concerning
the company. "It's awkward for a stranger, I can understand," said
she; and continued, grimly: "When people get divorces it sometimes
means that they have quarrelled--and they don't always make it up
afterward, either. And sometimes other people quarrel--almost as
bitterly as if they had been married. Many a hostess has had her
reputation ruined by riot keeping track of such things."

So Montague made the discovery that the great Mrs. Billy, though.
forbidding of aspect, was good-natured when she chose to be, and
with a pretty wit. She was a woman with a mind of her own--a
hard-fighting character, who had marshalled those about her, and
taken her place at the head of the column. She had always counted
herself a personage enough to do exactly as she pleased; through the
course of the dinner she would take up the decanter of Scotch, and
make a pass to help Montague--and then, when he declined, pour out
imperturbably what she wanted. "I don't like your brother," she said
to him, a little later. "He won't last; but he tells me you're
different, so maybe I will like you. Come and see me sometime, and
let me tell you what not to do in New York."

Then Montague turned to talk with his hostess, who say on his right.

"Do you play bridge?" asked Mrs. Winnie, in her softest and most
gracious tone.

"My brother has given me a book to study from," he answered. "But if
he takes me about day and night, I don't know how I'm to manage it."

"Come and let me teach you," said Mrs. Winnie. "I mean it, really,"
she added. "I've nothing to do--at least that I'm not tired of. Only
I don't believe you'd take long to learn all that I know."

"Aren't you a successful player?" he asked sympathetically.

"I don't believe anyone wants me to learn," said Mrs.
Winnie.--"They'd rather come and get my money. Isn't that true,
Major?"

Major Venable sat on her other hand, and he paused in the act of
raising a spoonful of soup to his lips, and laughed, deep down in
his throat--a queer little laugh that shook his fat cheeks and neck.
"I may say," he said, "that I know several people to whom the status
quo is satisfactory."

"Including yourself," said the lady, with a little moue. "The
wretched man won sixteen hundred dollars from me last night; and he
sat in his club window all afternoon, just to have the pleasure of
laughing at me as I went by. I don't believe I'll play at all
to-night--I'm going to make myself agreeable to Mr. Montague, and
let you win from Virginia Landis for a change."

And then the Major paused again in his attack upon the soup. "My
dear Mrs. Winnie," he said, "I can live for much more than one day
upon sixteen hundred dollars!"

The Major was a famous club-man and bon vivant, as Montague learned
later on. "He's an uncle of Mrs. Bobbie Waiting's," said Mrs. Alden,
in his ear. "And incidentally they hate each other like poison."

"That is so that I won't repeat my luckless question again?" asked
Montague, with a smile.

"Oh, they meet," said the other. "You wouldn't be supposed to know
that. Won't you have any Scotch?"

Montague's thoughts were so much taken up with the people at this
repast that he gave little thought to the food. He noticed with
surprise that they had real spring lamb--it being the middle of
November. But he could not know that the six-weeks-old creatures
from which it had come had been raised in cotton-wool and fed on
milk with a spoon--and had cost a dollar and a half a pound. A
little later, however, there was placed before him a delicately
browned sweetbread upon a platter of gold, and then suddenly he
began to pay attention. Mrs. Winnie had a coat of arms; he had
noticed it upon her auto, and again upon the groat bronze gates of
the Snow Palace, and again upon the liveries of her footmen, and yet
again upon the decanter of Scotch. And now--incredible and
appalling--he observed it branded upon the delicately browned
sweetbread!

After that, who would not have watched? There were large dishes of
rare fruits upon the table--fruits which had been packed in cotton
wool and shipped in cold storage from every corner of the earth.
There were peaches which had come from South Africa (they had cost
ten dollars apiece). There were bunches of Hamburg grapes, dark
purple and bursting fat, which had been grown in a hot-house,
wrapped in paper bags. There were nectarines and plums, and
pomegranates and persimmons from Japan, and later on, little dishes
of plump strawberries-raised in pots. There were quail which had
come from Egypt, and a wonderful thing called "crab-flake a la
Dewey," cooked in a chafing-dish, and served with mushrooms that had
been grown in the tunnels of abandoned mines in Michigan. There was
lettuce raised by electric light, and lima beans that had come from
Porto Eico, and artichokes brought from France at a cost of one
dollar each.--And all these extraordinary viands were washed down by
eight or nine varieties of wines, from the cellar of a man who had
made collecting them a fad for the last thirty years, who had a
vineyard in France for the growing of his own champagne, and kept
twenty thousand quarts of claret in storage all the time--and
procured his Rhine wine from the cellar of the German Emperor, at a
cost of twenty-five dollars a quart!

There were twelve people at dinner, and afterward they made two
tables for bridge, leaving Charlie Carter to talk to Alice, and Mrs.
Winnie to devote herself to Montague, according to her promise.
"Everybody likes to see my house," she said. "Would you?" And she
led the way from the dining-room into the great conservatory, which
formed a central court extending to the roof of the building. She
pressed a button, and a soft radiance streamed down from above, in
the midst of which Mrs. Winnie stood, with her shimmering jewels a
very goddess of the fire.

The conservatory was a place in which he could have spent the
evening; it was filled with the most extraordinary varieties of
plants. "They were gathered from all over the world," said Mrs.
Winnie, seeing that he was staring at them. "My husband employed a
connoisseur to hunt them out for him. He did it before we were
married--he thought it would make me happy."

In the centre of the place there was a fountain, twelve or fourteen
feet in height, and set in a basin of purest Carrara marble. By the
touch of a button the pool was flooded with submerged lights, and
one might see scores of rare and beautiful fish swimming about.

"Isn't it fine!" said Mrs. Winnie, and added eagerly, "Do you know,
I come here at night, sometimes when I can't sleep, and sit for hours
and gaze. All those living things; with their extraordinary
forms-some of them have faces, and look like human beings! And I
wonder what they think about, and if life seems as strange to them
as it does to me."

She seated herself by the edge of the pool, and gazed in. "These
fish were given to me by my cousin, Ned Carter. They call him
Buzzie. Have you met him yet?--No, of course not. He's Charlie's
brother, and he collects art things--the most unbelievable things.
Once, a long time ago, he took a fad for goldfish--some goldfish
are very rare and beautiful, you know--one can pay twenty-five and
fifty dollars apiece for them. He got all the dealers had, and when
he learned that there were some they couldn't get, he took a trip to
Japan and China on purpose to get them. You know they raise them
there, and some of them are sacred, and not allowed to be sold or
taken out of the country. And he had all sorts of carved ivory
receptacles for them, that he brought home with him--he had one
beautiful marble basin about ten feet long, that had been stolen
from the Emperor."

Over Montague's shoulder where he sat, there hung an orchid, a most
curious creation, an explosion of scarlet flame. "That is the
odonto-glossum," said Mrs. Winnie. "Have you heard of it?"

"Never," said the man.

"Dear me," said the other. "Such is fame!"

"Is it supposed to be famous?" he asked.

"Very," she replied. "There was a lot in the newspapers about it.
You see Winton--that's my husband, you know--paid twenty-five
thousand dollars to the man who created it; and that made a lot of
foolish talk--people come from all over to look at it. I wanted to
have it, because its shape is exactly like the coronet on my crest.
Do you notice that?"

"Yes," said Montague. "It's curious."

"I'm very proud of my crest," continued Mrs. Winnie. "Of course
there are vulgar rich people who have them made to order, and make
them ridiculous; but ours is a real one. It's my own--not my
husband's; the Duvals are an old French family, but they're not
noble. I was a Morris, you know, and our line runs back to the old
French ducal house of Montmorenci. And last summer, when we were
motoring, I hunted up one of their chateaux; and see! I brought over
this."

Mrs. Winnie pointed to a suit of armour, placed in a passage leading
to the billiard-room. "I have had the lights fixed," she added. And
she pressed a button, and all illumination vanished, save for a
faint red glow just above the man in armour.

"Doesn't he look real?" said she. (He had his visor down, and a
battle-axe in his mailed hands.) "I like to imagine that he may have
been my twentieth great-grandfather. I come and sit here, and gaze
at him and shiver. Think what a terrible time it must have been to
live in--when men wore things like that! It couldn't be any worse to
be a crab."

"You seem to be fond of strange emotions," said Montague, laughing.

"Maybe I am," said the other. "I like everything that's old and
romantic, and makes you forget this stupid society world."

She stood brooding for a moment or two, gazing at the figure. Then
she asked, abruptly, "Which do you like best, pictures or swimming?"

"Why," replied the man, laughing and perplexed, "I like them both,
at times."

"I wondered which you'd rather see first," explained his escort;
"the art gallery or the natatorium. I'm afraid you'll get tired
before you've seen every thing."

"Suppose we begin with the art-gallery," said he. "There's not much
to see in a swimming-pool."

"Ah, but ours is a very special one," said the lady.--"And some
day, if you'll be very good, and promise not to tell anyone, I'll
let you see my own bath. Perhaps they've told you, I have one in my
own apartments, cut out of a block of the most wonderful green
marble."

Montague showed the expected amount of astonishment.

"Of course that gave the dreadful newspapers another chance to
gossip," said Mrs. Winnie, plaintively. "People found out what I had
paid for it. One can't have anything beautiful without that question
being asked."

And then followed a silence, while Mrs. Winnie waited for him to ask
it. As he forebore to do so, she added, "It was fifty thousand
dollars."

They were moving towards the elevator, where a small boy in the
wonderful livery of plush and scarlet stood at attention.
"Sometimes," she continued, "it seems to me that it is wicked to pay
such prices for things. Have you ever thought about it?"

"Occasionally," Montague replied.

"Of course," said she, "it makes work for people; and I suppose they
can't be better employed than in making beautiful things. But
sometimes, when I think of all the poverty there is, I get unhappy.
We have a winter place down South--one of those huge country-houses
that look like exposition buildings, and have rooms for a hundred
guests; and sometimes I go driving by myself, down to the mill
towns, and go through them and talk to the children. I came to know
some of them quite well--poor little wretches."

They stepped out of the elevator, and moved toward the art-gallery.
"It used to make me so unhappy," she went on. "I tried to talk to my
husband about it, but he wouldn't have it. 'I don't see why you
can't be like other people,' he said--he's always repeating that to
me. And what could I say?"

"Why not suggest that other people might be like you?" said the man,
laughing.

"I wasn't clever enough," said she, regretfully.--"It's very hard
for a woman, you know--with no one to understand. Once I went down
to a settlement, to see what that was like. Do you know anything
about settlements?"

"Nothing at all," said Montague.

"Well, they are people who go to live among the poor, and try to
reform them. It takes a terrible lot of courage, I think. I give
them money now and then, but I am never sure if it does any good.
The trouble with poor people, it seems to me, is that there are so
many of them."

"There are, indeed," said Montague, thinking of the vision he had
seen from Oliver's racing-car.

Mrs. Winnie had seated herself upon a cushioned seat near the
entrance to the darkened gallery. "I haven't been there for some
time," she continued. "I've discovered something that I think
appeals more to my temperament. I have rather a leaning toward the
occult and the mystical, I'm afraid. Did you ever hear of the
Babists?"

"No," said Montague.

"Well, that's a religious sect--from Persia, I think--and they are
quite the rage. They are priests, you understand, and they give
lectures, and teach you all about the immanence of the divine, and
about reincarnation, and Karma, and all that. Do you believe any of
those things?"

"I can't say that I know about them," said he.

"It is very beautiful and strange," added the other. "It makes you
realize what a perplexing thing life is. They teach you how the
universe is all one, and the soul is the only reality, and so bodily
things don't matter. If I were a Babist, I believe that I could be
happy, even if I had to work in a cotton-mill."

Then Mrs. Winnie rose up suddenly. "You'd rather look at the
pictures, I know," she said; and she pressed a button, and a soft
radiance flooded the great vaulted gallery.

"This is our chief pride in life," she said. "My husband's object
has been to get one representative work of each of the great
painters of the world. We got their masterpiece whenever we could.
Over there in the corner are the old masters--don't you love to look
at them?"

Montague would have liked to look at them very much; but he felt
that he would rather it were some time when he did not have Mrs.
Winnie by his side. Mrs. Winnie must have had to show the gallery
quite frequently; and now her mind was still upon the Persian
transcendentalists.

"That picture of the saint is a Botticelli," she said. "And do you
know, the orange-coloured robe always makes me think of the swami.
That is my teacher, you know--Swami Babubanana. And he has the most
beautiful delicate hands, and great big brown eyes, so soft and
gentle--for all the world like those of the gazelles in our place
down South!"

Thus Mrs. Winnie, as she roamed from picture to picture, while the
souls of the grave old masters looked down upon her in silence.






CHAPTER VI





Montague had now been officially pronounced complete by his tailor;
and Reval had sent home the first of Alice's street gowns,
elaborately plain, but fitting her conspicuously, and costing
accordingly. So the next morning they were ready to be taken to call
upon Mrs. Devon.

Of course Montague had heard of the Devons, but he was not
sufficiently initiated to comprehend just what it meant to be asked
to call. But when Oliver came in, a little before noon, and
proceeded to examine his costume and to put him to rights, and
insisted that Alice should have her hair done over, he began to
realize that this was a special occasion. Oliver was in quite a
state of excitement; and after they had left the hotel, and were
driving up the Avenue, he explained to them that their future in
Society depended upon the outcome of this visit. Calling upon Mrs.
Devon, it seemed, was the American equivalent to being presented at
court. For twenty-five years this grand lady had been the undisputed
mistress of the Society of the metropolis; and if she liked them,
they would be invited to her annual ball, which took place in
January, and then for ever after their position would be assured.
Mrs. Devon's ball was the one great event of the social year; about
one thousand people were asked, while ten thousand disappointed ones
gnashed their teeth in outer darkness.

All of which threw Alice into a state of trepidation.

"Suppose we don't suit her!" she said.

To that the other replied that their way had been made smooth by
Reggie Mann, who was one of Mrs. Devon's favourites.

A century and more ago the founder of the Devon line had come to
America, and invested his savings in land on Manhattan Island. Other
people had toiled and built a city there, and generation after
generation of the Devons had sat by and collected the rents, until
now their fortune amounted to four or five hundred millions of
dollars. They were the richest old family in America, and the most
famous; and in Mrs. Devon, the oldest member of the line, was
centred all its social majesty and dominion. She lived a stately and
formal life, precisely like a queen; no one ever saw her save upon
her raised chair of state, and she wore her jewels even at
breakfast. She was the arbiter of social destinies, and the
breakwater against which the floods of new wealth beat in vain.
Reggie Mann told wonderful tales about the contents of her enormous
mail--about wives and daughters of mighty rich men who flung
themselves at her feet and pleaded abjectly for her favour--who laid
siege to her house for months, and intrigued and pulled wires to get
near her, and even bought the favour of her servants! If Reggie
might be believed, great financial wars had been fought, and the
stock-markets of the world convulsed more than once, because of
these social struggles; and women of wealth and beauty had offered
to sell themselves for the privilege which was so freely granted to
them.

They came to the old family mansion and rang the bell, and the
solemn butler ushered them past the grand staircase and into the
front reception-room to wait. Perhaps five minutes later he came in
and rolled back the doors, and they stood up, and beheld a withered
old lady, nearly eighty years of age, bedecked with diamonds and
seated upon a sort of throne. They approached, and Oliver introduced
them, and the old lady held out a lifeless hand; and then they sat
down.

Mrs. Devon asked them a few questions as to how much of New York
they had seen, and how they liked it, and whom they had met; but
most of the time she simply looked them over, and left the making of
conversation to Oliver. As for Montague, he sat, feeling perplexed
and uncomfortable, and wondering, deep down in him, whether it could
really be America in which this was happening.

"You see," Oliver explained to them, when they were seated in their
carriage again, "her mind is failing, and it's really quite
difficult for her to receive."

"I'm glad I don't have to call on her more than once," was Alice's
comment. "When do we know the verdict?"

"When you get a card marked 'Mrs. Devon at home,'" said Oliver. And
he went on to tell them about the war which had shaken Society long
ago, when the mighty dame had asserted her right to be "Mrs. Devon,"
and the only "Mrs. Devon." He told them also about her wonderful
dinner-set of china, which had cost thirty thousand dollars, and was
as fragile as a humming-bird's wing. Each piece bore her crest, and
she had a china expert to attend to washing and packing it--no
common hand was ever allowed to touch it. He told them, also, how
Mrs. Devon's housekeeper had wrestled for so long, trying to teach
the maids to arrange the furniture in the great reception-rooms
precisely as the mistress ordered; until finally a complete set of
photographs had been taken, so that the maids might do their work by
chart.

Alice went back to the hotel, for Mrs. Robbie Walling was to call
and take her home to lunch; and Montague and his brother strolled
round to Reggie Mann's apartments, to report upon their visit.

Reggie received them in a pair of pink silk pyjamas, decorated with
ribbons and bows, and with silk-embroidered slippers, set with
pearls--a present from a feminine adorer. Montague noticed, to his
dismay, that the little man wore a gold bracelet upon one arm! He
explained that he had led a cotillion the night before--or rather
this morning; he had got home at five o'clock. He looked quite white
and tired, and there were the remains of a breakfast of
brandy-and-soda on the table.

"Did you see the old girl?" he asked. "And how does she hold up?"

"She's game," said Oliver.

"I had the devil's own time getting you in," said the other. "It's
getting harder every day."

"You'll excuse me," Reggie added, "if I get ready. I have an
engagement." And he turned to his dressing-table, which was covered
with an array of cosmetics and perfumes, and proceeded, in a
matter-of-fact way, to paint his face. Meanwhile his valet was
flitting silently here and there, getting ready his afternoon
costume; and Montague, in spite of himself, followed the man with
his eyes. A haberdasher's shop might have been kept going for quite
a while upon the contents of Reggie's dressers. His clothing was
kept in a room adjoining the dressing-room; Montague, who was near
the door, could see the rosewood wardrobes, each devoted to a
separate article of clothing-shirts, for instance, laid upon sliding
racks, tier upon tier of them, of every material and colour. There
was a closet fitted with shelves and equipped like a little shoe
store--high shoes and low shoes, black ones, brown ones, and white
ones, and each fitted over a last to keep its shape perfect. These
shoes were all made to order according to Reggie's designs, and
three or-four times a year there was a cleaning out, and those which
had gone out of fashion became the prey of his "man." There was a
safe in one closet, in which Reggie's jewellery was kept.

The dressing-room was furnished like a lady's boudoir, the furniture
upholstered with exquisite embroidered silk, and the bed hung with
curtains of the same material. There was a huge bunch of roses on
the centre-table, and the odour of roses hung heavy in the room.

The valet stood at attention with a rack of neckties, from which
Reggie critically selected one to match his shirt. "Are you going to
take Alice with you down to the Havens's?" he was asking; and he
added, "You'll meet Vivie Patton down there--she's had another row
at home."



"You don't say so!" exclaimed Oliver.

"Yes," said the other. "Frank waited up all night for her, and he
wept and tore his hair and vowed he would kill the Count. Vivie told
him to go to hell."

"Good God!" said Oliver. "Who told you that?"

"The faithful Alphomse," said Reggie, nodding toward his valet. "Her
maid told him. And Frank vows he'll sue--I half expected to see it
in the papers this morning."

"I met Vivie on the street yesterday," said Oliver. "She looked as
chipper as ever."

Reggie shrugged his shoulders. "Have you seen this week's paper?" he
asked. "They've got another of Ysabel's suppressed poems in."--And
then he turned toward Montague to explain that "Ysabel" was the
pseudonym of a young debutante who had fallen under the spell of
Baudelaire and Wilde, and had published a volume of poems of such
furious eroticism that her parents were buying up stray copies at
fabulous prices.

Then the conversation turned to the Horse Show, and for quite a
while they talked about who was going to wear what. Finally Oliver
rose, saying that they would have to get a bite to eat before
leaving for the Havens's. "You'll have a good time," said Reggie.
"I'd have gone myself, only I promised to stay and help Mrs. de
Graffenried design a dinner. So long!"

Montague had heard nothing about the visit to the Havens's; but now,
as they strolled down the Avenue, Oliver explained that they were to
spend the weekend at Castle Havens. There was quite a party going up
this Friday afternoon, and they would find one of the Havens's
private cars waiting. They had nothing to do meantime, for their
valets would attend to their packing, and Alice and her maid would
meet them at the depot.

"Castle Havens is one of the show places of the country," Oliver
added. "You'll see the real thing this time." And while they
lunched, he went on to entertain his brother with particulars
concerning the place and its owners. John had inherited the bulk of
the enormous Havens fortune, and he posed as his father's successor
in the Steel Trust. Some day some one of the big men would gobble
him up; meantime he amused himself fussing over the petty details of
administration. Mrs. Havens had taken a fancy to a rural life, and
they had built this huge palace in the hills of Connecticut, and she
wrote verses in which she pictured herself as a simple
shepherdess--and all that sort of stuff. But no one minded that,
because the place was gr'and, and there was always so much to do.
They had forty or fifty polo ponies, for instance, and every spring
the place was filled with polo men.

At the depot they caught sight of Charlie Carter, in his big red
touring-car. "Are you going to the Havens's?" he said. "Tell them
we're going to pick up Chauncey on the way."

"That's Chauncey Venable, the Major's nephew," said Oliver, as they
strolled to the train. "Poor Chauncey--he's in exile!"

"How do you mean?" asked Montague.

"Why, he daren't come into New York," said the other. "Haven't you
read about it in the papers? He lost one or two hundred thousand the
other night in a gambling place, and the district attorney's trying
to catch him."

"Does he want to put him in jail?" asked Montague.

"Heavens, no!" said Oliver. "Put a Venable in jail? He wants him for
a witness against the gambler; and poor Chauncey is flitting about
the country hiding with his friends, and wailing because he'll miss
the Horse Show."

They boarded the palatial private car, and were introduced to a
number of other guests. Among them was Major Venable; and while
Oliver buried himself in the new issue of the fantastic-covered
society journal, which contained the poem of the erotic "Ysabel,"
his brother chatted with the Major. The latter had taken quite a
fancy to the big handsome stranger, to whom everything in the city
was so new and interesting."

"Tell me what you thought of the Snow Palace," said he. "I've an
idea that Mrs. Winnie's got quite a crush on you. You'll find her
dangerous, my boy--she'll make you pay for your dinners before you
get through!"

After the train was under way, the Major got himself surrounded with
some apollinaris and Scotch, and then settled back to enjoy himself.
"Did you see the 'drunken kid' at the ferry?" he asked. "(That's
what our abstemious district attorney terms my precious young
heir-apparent.) You'll meet him at the Castle--the Havens are good
to him. They know how it feels, I guess; when John was a youngster
his piratical uncle had to camp in Jersey for six months or so, to
escape the strong arm of the law."

"Don't you know about it?" continued the Major, sipping at his
beverage. "Sic transit gloria mundi! That was when the great Captain
Kidd Havens was piling up the millions which his survivors are
spending with such charming insouciance. He was plundering a
railroad, and the original progenitor of the Wallings tried to buy
the control away from him, and Havens issued ten or twenty millions
of new stock overnight, in the face of a court injunction, and got
away with most of his money. It reads like opera bouffe, you
know--they had a regular armed camp across the river for about six
months--until Captain Kidd went up to Albany with half a million
dollars' worth of greenbacks in a satchel, and induced the
legislature to legalize the proceedings. That was just after the
war, you know, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. It seems
strange to think that anyone shouldn't know about it."

"I know about Havens in a general way," said Montague.

"Yes," said the Major. "But I know in a particular way, because I've
carried some of that railroad's paper all these years, and it's
never paid any dividends since. It has a tendency to interfere with
my appreciation of John's lavish hospitality."

Montague was reminded of the story of the Roman emperor who pointed
out that money had no smell.

"Maybe not," said the Major. "But all the same, if you were
superstitious, you might make out an argument from the Havens
fortune. Take that poor girl who married the Count."

And the Major went on to picture the denouement of that famous
international alliance, which, many years ago, had been the
sensation of two continents. All Society had attended the gorgeous
wedding, an archbishop had performed the ceremony, and the
newspapers had devoted pages to describing the gowns and the jewels
and the presents and all the rest of the magnificence. And the Count
was a wretched little degenerate, who beat and kicked his wife, and
flaunted his mistresses in her face, and wasted fourteen million
dollars of her money in a couple of years. The mind could scarcely
follow the orgies of this half-insane creature--he had spent two
hundred thousand dollars on a banquet, and half as much again for a
tortoise-shell wardrobe in which Louis the Sixteenth had kept his
clothes! He had charged a diamond necklace to his wife, and taken
two of the four rows of diamonds out of it before he presented it to
her! He had paid a hundred thousand dollars a year to a jockey whom
the Parisian populace admired, and a fortune for a palace in Verona,
which he had promptly torn down, for the sake of a few painted
ceilings. The Major told about one outdoor fete, which he had given
upon a sudden whim: ten thousand Venetian lanterns, ten thousand
metres of carpet; three thousand gilded chairs, and two or three
hundred waiters in fancy costumes; two palaces built in a lake, with
sea-horses and dolphins, and half a dozen orchestras, and several
hundred chorus--girls from the Grand Opera! And in between
adventures such as these, he bought a seat in the Chamber of
Deputies, and made speeches and fought duels in defence of the Holy
Catholic Church--and wrote articles for the yellow journals of
America. "And that's the fate of my lost dividends!" growled the
Major.

There were several automobiles to meet the party at the depot, and
they were whirled through a broad avenue up a valley, and past a
little lake, and so to the gates of Castle Havens.

It was a tremendous building, a couple of hundred feet long. One
entered into a main hall, perhaps fifty feet wide, with a great
fireplace arid staircase of marble and bronze, and furniture of
gilded wood and crimson velvet, and a huge painting, covering three
of the walls, representing the Conquest of Peru. Each of the rooms
was furnished in the style of a different period--one Louis
Quatorze, one Louis Quinze, one Marie Antoniette, and so on. There
was a drawing-room and a regal music-room; a dining-room in the
Georgian style, and a billiard-room, also in the English fashion,
with high wainscoting and open beams in the coiling; and a library,
and a morning-room and conservatory. Upstairs in the main suite of
rooms was a royal bedstead, which alone was rumoured to have cost
twenty-five thousand dollars; and you might have some idea of the
magnificence of things when you learned that underneath the gilding
of the furniture was the rare and precious Circassian walnut.

All this was beautiful. But what brought the guests to Castle Havens
was the casino, so the Major had remarked. It was really a private
athletic club--with tan-bark hippodrome, having a ring the size of
that in Madison Square Garden, and a skylight roof, and thirty or
forty arc-lights for night events. There were bowling-alloys,
billiard and lounging-rooms, hand-ball, tennis and racket-courts, a
completely equipped gymnasium, a shooting-gallery, and a
swimming-pool with Turkish and Russian baths. In this casino alone
there were rooms for forty guests.

Such was Castle Havens; it had cost three or four millions of
dollars, and within the twelve-foot wall which surrounded its
grounds lived two world-weary people who dreaded nothing so much as
to be alone. There were always guests, and on special occasions
there might be three or four score. They went whirling about the
country in their autos; they rode and drove; they played games,
outdoor and indoor, or gambled, or lounged and chatted, or wandered
about at their own sweet will. Coming to one of these places was not
different from staying at a great hotel, save that the company was
selected, and instead of paying a bill, you gave twenty or thirty
dollars to the servants when you left.

It was a great palace of pleasure, in which beautiful and graceful
men and women played together in all sorts of beautiful and graceful
ways. In the evenings great logs blazed in the fireplace in the
hall, and there might be an informal dance--there was always music
at hand. Now and then there would be a stately ball, with rich gowns
and flashing jewels, and the grounds ablaze with lights, and a full
orchestra, and special trains from the city. Or a whole theatrical
company would be brought down to give an entertainment in the
theatre; or a minstrel show, or a troupe of acrobats, or a menagerie
of trained animals. Or perhaps there would be a great pianist, or a
palmist, or a trance medium. Anyone at all would be welcome who
could bring a new thrill--it mattered nothing at all, though the
price might be several hundred dollars a minute.

Montague shook hands with his host and hostess, and with a number of
others; among them Billy Price who forthwith challenged him, and
carried him off to the shooting-gallery. Here he took a rifle, and
proceeded to satisfy her as to his skill. This brought him to the
notice of Siegfried Harvey, who was a famous cross-country rider and
"polo-man." Harvey's father owned a score of copper-mines, and had
named him after a race-horse; he was a big broad-shouldered fellow,
a favourite of every one; and next morning, when he found that
Montague sat a horse like one who was born to it, he invited him to
come out to his place on Long Island, and see some of the
fox-hunting.

Then, after he had dressed for dinner, Montague came downstairs, and
found Betty Wyman, shining like Aurora in an orange-coloured cloud.
Sho introduced him to Mrs. Vivie Patton, who was tall and slender
and fascinating, and had told her husband to go to hell. Mrs. Vivie
had black eyes that snapped and sparkled, and she was a geyser of
animation in a perpetual condition of eruption. Montague wondered if
she would have talked with him so gaily had she known what he knew
about her domestic entanglements.

The company moved into the dining-room, where there was served
another of those elaborate and enormously expensive meals which he
concluded he was fated to eat for the rest of his life. Only,
instead of Mrs. Billy Alden with her Scotch, there was Mrs. Vivie,
who drank champagne in terrifying quantities; and afterward there
was the inevitable grouping of the bridge fiends.

Among the guests there was a long-haired and wild-looking foreign
personage, who was the "lion" of the evening, and sat with half a
dozen admiring women about him. Now he was escorted to the
music-room, and revealed the fact that he was a violin virtuoso. He
played what was called "salon music"--music written especially for
ladies and gentlemen to listen to after dinner; and also a strange
contrivance called a concerto, put together to enable the player to
exhibit within a brief space the utmost possible variety of finger
gymnastics. To learn to perform these feats one had to devote his
whole lifetime to practising them, just like any circus acrobat; and
so his mind became atrophied, and a naive and elemental vanity was
all that was left to him.

Montague stood for a while staring; and then took to watching the
company, who chattered and laughed all through the performance.
Afterward, he strolled into the billiard-room, where Billy Price and
Chauncey Venable were having an exciting bout; and from there to the
smoking-room, where the stout little Major had gotten a group of
young bloods about him to play "Klondike." This was a game of deadly
hazards, which they played without limit; the players themselves
were silent and impassive, but the spectators who gathered about
were tense with excitement.

In the morning Charlie Carter carried off Alice and Oliver and Betty
in his auto; and Montague spent his time in trying some of Havens's
jumping horses. The Horse Show was to open in New York on Monday,
and there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement because of this
prospect; Mrs. Caroline Smythe, a charming young widow, strolled
about with him and told him all about this Show, and the people who
would take part in it.

And in the afternoon Major Venable took him for a stroll and showed
him the grounds. He had been told what huge sums had been expended
in laying them out; but after all, the figures were nothing compared
with an actual view. There were hills and slopes, and endless vistas
of green lawns and gardens, dotted with the gleaming white of marble
staircases and fountains and statuary. There was a great Italian
walk, leading by successive esplanades to an electric fountain with
a basin sixty feet across, and a bronze chariot and marble horses.
There were sunken gardens, with a fountain brought from the South of
France, and Greek peristyles, and seats of marble, and vases and
other treasures of art.

And then there were the stables; a huge Renaissance building, with a
perfectly equipped theatre above. There was a model farm and dairy;
a polo-field, and an enclosed riding-ring for the children; and
dog-kennels and pigeon-houses, greenhouses and deer-parks--one was
prepared for bear-pits and a menagerie. Finally, on their way back,
they passed the casino, where musical chimes pealed out the
quarter-hours. Montague stopped and gazed up at the tower from which
the sounds had come.

The more he gazed, the more he found to gaze at The roof of this
building had many gables, in the Queen Anne style; and from the
midst of them shot up the tower, which was octagonal and solid,
suggestive of the Normans. It was decorated with Christmas-wreaths
in white stucco, and a few miscellaneous ornaments like the gilded
tassels one sees upon plush curtains. Overtopping all of this was
the dome of a Turkish mosque. Rising out of the dome was something
that looked like a dove-cot; and out of this rose the slender white
steeple of a Methodist country church. On top of that was a statue
of Diana.

"What are you looking at?" asked the Major.

"Nothing," said Montague, as he moved on. "Has there ever been any
insanity in the Havens family?"

"I don't know," replied the other, puzzled. "They say the old man
never could sleep at night, and used to wander about alone in the
park. I suppose he had things on his conscience."

They strolled away; and the Major's flood-gates of gossip were
opened. There was an old merchant in New York, who had been Havens's
private secretary. And Havens was always in terror of assassination,
and so whenever they travelled abroad he and the secretary exchanged
places. "The old man is big and imposing," said the Major, "and it's
funny to hear him tell how he used to receive the visitors and be
stared at by the crowds, while Havens, who was little and
insignificant, would pretend to make himself useful. And then one
day a wild-looking creature came into the Havens office, and began
tearing the wrappings off some package that shone like metal--and
quick as a flash he and Havens flung themselves down on the floor
upon their faces. Then, as nothing happened, they looked up, and saw
the puzzled stranger gazing over the railing at them. He had a
patent churn, made of copper, which he wanted Havens to market for
him!"

Montague could have wished that this party might last for a week or
two, instead of only two days. He was interested in the life, and in
those who lived it; all whom he met were people prominent in the
social world, and some in the business world as well, and one could
not have asked a better chance to study them.

Montague was taking his time and feeling his way slowly. But all the
time that he was playing and gossiping he never lost from mind his
real purpose, which was to find a place for himself in the world of
affairs; and he watched for people from whose conversation he could
get a view of this aspect of things. So he was interested when Mrs.
Smythe remarked that among his fellow-guests was Vandam, an official
of one of the great life-insurance companies. "Freddie" Vandam, as
the lady called him, was a man of might m the financial world; and
Montague said to himself that in meeting him he would really be
accomplishing something. Crack shots and polo-players and
four-in-hand experts were all very well, but he had his living to
earn, and he feared that the problem was going to prove complicated.

So ho was glad when chance brought him and young Vandam together,
and Siegfried Harvey introduced them. And then Montague got the
biggest shock which New York had given him yet.

It was not what Freddie Vandam said; doubtless he had a right to be
interested in the Horse Show, since he was to exhibit many fine
horses, and he had no reason to feel called upon to talk about
anything more serious to a stranger at a house party. But it was the
manner of the man, his whole personality. For Freddie was a man of
fashion, with all the exaggerated and farcical mannerisms of the
dandy of the comic papers. He wore a conspicuous and foppish
costume, and posed with a little cane; he cultivated a waving
pompadour, and his silky moustache and beard were carefully trimmed
to points, and kept sharp by his active fingers. His conversation
was full of French phrases and French opinions; he had been reared
abroad, and had a whole-souled contempt for all things American-even
dictating his business letters in French, and leaving it for his
stenographer to translate them. His shirts were embroidered with
violets and perfumed with violets--and there were bunches of violets
at his horses' heads, so that he might get the odour as he drove!

There was a cruel saying about Freddie Vandam--that if only he had
had a little more brains, he would have been half-witted. And
Montague sat, and watched his mannerisms and listened to his
inanities, with his mind in a state of bewilderment and dismay. When
at last he got up and walked away, it was with a new sense of the
complicated nature of the problem that confronted him. Who was there
that could give him the key to this mystery--who could interpret to
him a world in which a man such as this was in control of four or
five hundred millions of trust funds?






CHAPTER VII





It was quite futile to attempt to induce anyone to talk about
serious matters just now--for the coming week all Society belonged
to the horse. The parties which went to church on Sunday morning
talked about horses on the way, and the crowds that gathered in
front of the church door to watch them descend from their
automobiles, and to get "points" on their conspicuous
costumes--these would read about horses all afternoon in the Sunday
papers, and about the gowns which the women would wear at the show.

Some of the party went up on Sunday evening; Montague went with the
rest on Monday morning, and had lunch with Mrs. Robbie Walling and
Oliver and Alice. They had arrayed him in a frock coat and silk hat
and fancy "spats"; and they took him and sat him in the front row of
Robbie's box.

There was a great tan-bark arena, in which the horses performed; and
then a railing, and a broad promenade for the spectators; and then,
raised a few feet above, the boxes in which sat all Society. For the
Horse Show had now become a great social function. Last year a
visiting foreign prince had seen fit to attend it, and this year
"everybody" would come.

Montague was rapidly getting used to things; he observed with a
smile how easy it was to take for granted embroidered bed and table
linen, and mural paintings, and private cars, and gold plate. At
first it had seemed to him strange to be waited upon by a white
woman, and by a white man quite unthinkable; but he was becoming
accustomed to having silent and expressionless lackeys everywhere
about him, attending to his slightest want. So he presumed that if
he waited long enough, he might even get used to horses which had
their tails cut off to stumps, and their manes to rows of bristles,
and which had been taught to lift their feet in strange and
eccentric ways, and were driven with burred bits in their mouths to
torture them and make them step lively.

There were road-horses, coach-horses, saddle-horses and hunters,
polo-ponies, stud-horses--every kind of horse that is used for
pleasure, over a hundred different "classes" of them. They were put
through their paces about the ring, and there was a committee which
judged them, and awarded blue and red ribbons. Apparently their
highly artificial kind of excellence was a real thing to the people
who took part in the show; for the spectators thrilled with
excitement, and applauded the popular victors. There was a whole set
of conventions which were generally understood--there was even a
new language. You were told that these "turnouts" were "nobby" and
"natty"; they were "swagger" and "smart" and "swell."

However, the horse was really a small part of this show; before one
had sat out an afternoon he realized that the function was in
reality a show of Society. For six or seven hours during the day the
broad promenade would be so packed with human beings that one moved
about with difficulty; and this throng gazed towards the ring almost
never--it stared up into the boxes. All the year round the
discontented millions of the middle classes read of the doings of
the "smart set"; and here they had a chance to come and see
them-alive, and real, and dressed in their showiest costumes. Here
was all the grand monde, in numbered boxes, and with their names
upon the programmes, so that one could get them straight. Ten
thousand people from other cities had come to New York on purpose to
get a look. Women who lived in boarding-houses and made their own
clothes, had come to get hints; all the dressmakers in town were
present for the same purpose.. Society reporters had come, with
notebooks in hand; and next morning the imitators of Society all
over the United States would read about it, in such fashion as this:
"Mrs. Chauncey Venable was becomingly gowned in mauve cloth, made
with an Eton jacket trimmed with silk braid, and opening over a
chemisette of lace. Her hat was of the same colour, draped with a
great quantity of mauve and orange tulle, and surmounted with birds
of paradise to match. Her furs were silver fox."

The most intelligent of the great metropolitan dailies would print
columns of this sort of material; and as for the "yellow" journals,
they would have discussions of the costumes by "experts," and half a
page of pictures of the most conspicuous of the box-holders. While
Montague sat talking with Mrs. Walling, half a dozen cameras were
snapped at them; and once a young man with a sketch-book placed
himself in front of them and went placidly to work.--Concerning such
things the society dame had three different sets of emotions: first,
the one which she showed in public, that of bored and contemptuous
indifference; second, the one which she expressed to her friends,
that of outraged but helpless indignation; and third, the one which
she really felt, that of triumphant exultation over her rivals,
whose pictures were not published and whose costumes were not
described.