General Prentice had inquired kindly as to what Montague had seen in
New York, and how he was getting along. He added that he had talked
about him to Judge Ellis, and that when he was ready to get to work,
the Judge would perhaps have some suggestions to make to him. He
approved, however, of Montague's plan of getting his bearings first;
and said that he would introduce him and put him up at a couple of
the leading clubs.

All this remained in Montague's mind; but there was no use trying to
think of it at the moment. Thanksgiving was at hand, and in
countless country mansions there would be gaieties under way. Bertie
Stuyvesant had planned an excursion to his Adirondack camp, and had
invited a score or so of young people, including the Montagues. This
would be a new feature of the city's life, worth knowing about.

Their expedition began with a theatre-party. Bertie had engaged four
boxes, and they met there, an hour or so after the performance had
begun. This made no difference, however, for the play was like the
opera-a number of songs and dances strung together, and with only
plot. enough to provide occasion for elaborate scenery and costumes.
From the play they were carried to the Grand Central Station, and a
little before midnight Bertie's private train set out on its
journey.

This train was a completely equipped hotel. There was a baggage
compartment and a dining-car and kitchen; and a drawing-room and
library-car; and a bedroom-car--not with berths, such as the
ordinary sleeping-car provides, but with comfortable bedrooms,
furnished in white mahogany, and provided with running water and
electric light. All these cars were built of steel, and
automatically ventilated: and they were furnished in the luxurious
fashion of everything with which Bertie Stuyvcsant had anything to
do. In the library-car there were velvet carpets upon the floor, and
furniture of South American mahogany, and paintings upon the walls
over which groat artists had laboured for years.

Bertie's chef and servants were on board, and a supper was ready in
the dining-car, which they ate while watching the Hudson by
moonlight. And the next morning they reached their destination, a
little station in the mountain wilderness. The train lay upon a
switch, and so they had breakfast at their leisure, and then,
bundled in furs, came out into the crisp pine-laden air of the
woods. There was snow upon the ground, and eight big sleighs
waiting; and for nearly three hours they drove in the frosty
sunlight, through most beautiful mountain scenery. A good part of
the drive was in Bertie's "preserve," and the road was private, as
big signs notified one every hundred yards or so.

So at last they reached a lake, winding like a snake among towering
hills, and with a huge baronial castle standing out upon the rocky
shore. This imitation fortress was the "camp."

Bertie's father had built it, and visited it only half a dozen times
in his life. Bertie himself had only been here twice, he said. The
deer were so plentiful that in the winter they died in scores.
Nevertheless there were thirty game-keepers to guard the ten
thousand acres of forest, and prevent anyone's hunting in it. There
were many such "preserves" in this Adiron-dack wilderness, so
Montague was told; one man had a whole mountain fenced about with
heavy iron railing, and had moose and elk and even wild boar inside.
And as for the "camps," there were so many that a new style of
architecture had been developed here--to say nothing of those which
followed old styles, like this imported Rhine castle. One of
Bertie's crowd had a big Swiss chalet; and one of the Wallings had a
Japanese palace to which he came every August--a house which had
been built from plans drawn in Japan, and by labourers imported
especially from Japan. It was full of Japanese ware--furniture,
tapestry, and mosaics; and the guides remembered with wonder the
strange silent, brown-skinned little men who had laboured for days
at carving a bit of wood, and had built a tiny pagoda-like tea-house
with more bits of wood in it than a man could count in a week.

They had a luncheon of fresh venison and partridges and trout, and
in the afternoon a hunt. The more active set out to track the deer
in the snow; but most prepared to watch the lake-shore, while the
game-keepers turned loose the dogs back in the hills. This
"hounding" was against the law, but Bertie was his own law here--and
at the worst there could simply be a small fine, imposed upon some
of the keepers. They drove eight or ten deer to water; and as they
fired as many as twenty shots at one deer, they had quite a lively
time. Then at dusk they came back, in a fine glow of excitement, and
spent the evening before the blazing logs, telling over their
adventures.

The party spent two days and a half here, and on the last evening,
which was Thanksgiving, they had a wild turkey which Bertie had shot
the week before in Virginia, and were entertained by a minstrel show
which had been brought up from New York the night before. The next
afternoon they drove back to the train.

In the morning, when they reached the city, Alice found a note from
Mrs. Winnie Duval, begging her and Montague to come to lunch and
attend a private lecture by the Swami Babubanana, who would tell
them all about the previous states of their souls. They went--though
not without a protest from old Mrs. Montague, who declared it was
"worse than Bob Ingersoll."

And then, in the evening, came Mrs. de Graffenried's opening
entertainment, which was one of the great events of the social year.
In the general rush of things Montague had not had a chance properly
to realize it; but Reggie Mann and Mrs. de Graffenried had been
working over it for weeks. When the Montagues arrived, they found
the Riverside mansion--which was decorated in imitation of an
Arabian palace--turned into a jungle of tropical plants.

They had come early at Reggie's request, and he introduced them to
Mrs. de Graffenried, a tall and angular lady with a leathern
complexion painfully painted; Mrs. de Graffenried was about fifty
years of age, but like all the women of Society she was made up for
thirty. Just at present there were beads of perspiration upon her
forehead; something had gone wrong at the last moment, and so Reggie
would have no time to show them the favours, as he had intended.

About a hundred and fifty guests were invited to this entertainment.
A supper was served at little tables in the great ball-room, and
afterward the guests wandered about the house while the tables were
whisked out of the way and the room turned into a play-house. A
company from one of the Broadway theatres would be bundled into cabs
at the end of the performance, and by midnight they would be ready
to repeat the performance at Mrs. do Graffenried's. Montague chanced
to bo near when this company arrived, and he observed that the
guests had crowded up too close, and not left room enough for the
actors. So the manager had placed them in a little ante-room, and
when Mrs. de Graffenried observed this, she rushed at the man, and
swore at him like a dragoon, and ordered the bewildered performers
out into the main room.

But this was peering behind the scenes, and he was supposed to be
watching the play. The entertainment was another "musical comedy"
like the one he had seen a few nights before. On that occasion,
however, Bertie Stuyvesant's sister had talked to him the whole
time, while now he was let alone, and had a chance to watch the
performance.

This was a very popular play; it had had a long run, and the papers
told how its author had an income of a couple of hundred thousand
dollars a year. And here was an audience of the most rich and
influential people in the city; and they laughed and clapped, and
made it clear that they were enjoying themselves heartily. And what
sort of a play was it?

It was called "The Kaliph of Kamskatka." It had no shred of a plot;
the Kaliph had seventeen wives, and there was an American drummer
who wanted to sell him another--but then you did not need to
remember this, for nothing came of it. There was nothing in the play
which could be called a character--there was nothing which could be
connected with any real emotion ever felt by human beings. Nor could
one say that there was any incident--at least nothing happened
because of anything else. Each event was a separate thing, like the
spasmodic jerking in the face of an idiot. Of this sort of "action"
there was any quantity--at an instant's notice every one on the
stage would fall simultaneously into this condition of idiotic
jerking. There was rushing about, shouting, laughing, exclaiming;
the stage was in a continual uproar of excitement, which was without
any reason or meaning. So it was impossible to think of the actors
in their parts; one kept thinking of them as human beings--thinking
of the awful tragedy of full-grown men and women being compelled by
the pressure of hunger to dress up and paint themselves, and then
come out in public and dance, stamp, leap about, wring their hands,
make faces, and otherwise be "lively."

The costumes were of two sorts: one fantastic, supposed to represent
the East, and the other a kind of reductio ad absurdum of
fashionable garb. The leading man wore a "natty" outing-suit, and
strutted with a little cane; his stock-in-trade was a jaunty air, a
kind of perpetual flourish, and a wink that suggested the cunning of
a satyr. The leading lady changed her costume several times in each
act; but it invariably contained the elements of bare arms and bosom
and back, and a skirt which did not reach her knees, and
bright-coloured silk stockings, and slippers with heels two inches
high. Upon the least provocation she would execute a little
pirouette, which would reveal the rest of her legs, surrounded by a
mass of lace ruffles. It is the nature of the human mind to seek the
end of things; if this woman had worn a suit of tights and nothing
else, she would have been as uninteresting as an underwear
advertisement in a magazine; but this incessant not-quite-revealing
of herself exerted a subtle fascination. At frequent intervals the
orchestra would start up a jerky little tune, and the two "stars"
would begin to sing in nasal voices some words expressive of
passion; then the man would take the woman about the waist and dance
and swing her about and bend her backward and gaze into her
eyes--actions all vaguely suggestive of the relationship of sex. At
the end of the verse a chorus would come gliding on, clad in any
sort of costume which admitted of colour and the display of legs;
the painted women of this chorus were never still for an instant--if
they were not actually dancing, they were wriggling their legs, and
jerking their bodies from side to side, and nodding their heads, and
in all other possible ways being "lively."

But it was not the physical indecency of this show that struck
Montague so much as its intellectual content. The dialogue of the
piece was what is called "smart"; that is, it was full of a kind of
innuendo which implied a secret understanding of evil between the
actor and his audience--a sort of countersign which passed between
them. After all, it would have been an error to say that there were
no ideas in the play--there was one idea upon which all the
interest of it was based; and Montague strove to analyze this idea
and formulate it to himself. There are certain life principles-one
might call them moral axioms--which are the result of the experience
of countless ages of the human race, and upon the adherence to which
the continuance of the race depends. And here was an audience by
whom all these principles were--not questioned, nor yet disputed,
nor yet denied--but to whom the denial was the axiom, something
which it would be too banal to state flatly, but which it was
elegant. and witty to take for granted. In this audience there were
elderly people, and married men and women, and young men and
maidens; and a perfect gale of laughter swept through it at a story
of a married woman whose lover had left her when he got married:--

"She must have been heartbroken," said the leading lady.

"She was desperate," said the leading man, with a grin.

"What did she do?" asked the lady "Go and shoot herself?"

"Worse than that," said the man. "She, went back to her husband and
had a baby!"

But to complete your understanding of the significance of this play,
you must bring yourself to realize that it was not merely a play,
but a kind of a play; it had a name--a "musical comedy"--the meaning
of which every one understood. Hundreds of such plays were written
and produced, and "dramatic critics" went to see them and gravely
discussed them, and many thousands of people made their livings by
travelling over the country and playing them; stately theatres were
built for them, and hundreds of thousands of people paid their money
every night to see them. And all this no joke and no nightmare--but
a thing that really existed. Men and women were doing these
things--actual flesh-and-blood human beings.

Montague wondered, in an awestricken sort of way, what kind of human
being it could be who had flourished the cane and made the grimaces
in that play. Later on, when ho came to know the "Tenderloin," he
met this same actor, and he found that he had begun life as a little
Irish "mick" who lived in a tenement, and whoso mother stood at the
head of the stairway and defended him with a rolling-pin against a
policeman who was chasing him. He had discovered that he could make
a living by his comical antics; but when he came home and told his
mother that he had been offered twenty dollars a week by a show
manager, she gave him a licking for lying to her. Now he was making
three thousand dollars a week--more than the President of the
United States and his Cabinet; but he was not happy, as he confided
to Montague, because he did not know how to read, and this was a
cause of perpetual humiliation. The secret desire of this little
actor's heart was to play Shakespeare; he had "Hamlet" read to him,
and pondered how to act it--all the time that he was flourishing his
little cane and making his grimaces! He had chanced to be on the
stage when a fire had broken out, and five or six hundred victims of
greed were roasted to death. The actor had pleaded with the people
to keep their seats, but all in vain; and all his life thereafter he
went about with this vision of horror in his mind, and haunted by
the passionate conviction that he had failed because of his lack of
education--that if only he had been a man of culture, he would have
been able to think of something to say to hold those terror-stricken
people!

At three o'clock in the morning the performance came to an end, and
then there were more refreshments; and Mrs. Vivie Patton came and
sat by him, and they had a nice comfortable gossip. When Mrs. Vivie
once got started at talking about people, her tongue ran on like a
windmill.

There was Reggie Mann, meandering about and simpering at people.
Reggie was in his glory at Mrs. do Graffenricd's affairs. Reggie had
arranged all this-he did the designing and the ordering, and
contracted for the shows with the agents. You could bet that ho had
got his commission on them, too--though sometimes Mrs. do
Graffenricd got the shows to come for nothing, because of the
advertising her name would bring. Commissions wore Reggie's
speciality--he had begun life as an auto agent. Montague didn't know
what that was? An auto agent was a man who was for ever begging his
friends to use a certain kind of car, so that he might make a
living; and Reggie had made about thirty thousand a year in that
way. He had come from Boston, where his reputation had been made by
the fact that early one morning, as they were driving home from a
celebration, he had dared a young society matron to take off her
shoes and stockings, and get out and wade in the public fountain;
and she had done it, and he had followed her. On the strength of the
eclat of this he had been taken up by Mrs. Devon; and one day Mrs.
Devon had worn a white gown, and asked him what he thought of it.
"It needs but one thing to make it perfect," said Reggie, and taking
a red rose, he pinned it upon her corsage. The effect was magical;
every one exclaimed with delight, and so Reggie's reputation as an
authority upon dress was made for ever. Now he was Mrs. de
Graffenried's right-hand man, and they made up their pranks
together. Once they had walked down the street in Newport with a big
rag doll between them. And Reggie had given a dinner at which the
guest of honour had been a monkey--surely Montague had heard of
that, for it had been the sensation of the season. It was really the
funniest thing imaginable; the monkey wore a suit of broad-cloth
with collar and cuffs, and he shook hands with all the guests, and
behaved himself exactly like a gentleman--except that he did not get
drunk.

And then Mrs. Vivie pointed out the great Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden,
who was sitting with one of her favourites, a grave, black-bearded
gentleman who had leaped into fame by inheriting fifty million
dollars. "Mrs. R.-C." had taken him up, and ordered his engagement
book for him, and he was solemnly playing the part of a social
light. He had purchased an old New York mansion, upon the decoration
of which three million dollars had been spent; and when he came down
to business from Tuxedo, his private train waited all day for him
with steam up. Mrs. Vivie told an amusing tale of a woman who had
announced her engagement to him, and borrowed large sums of money
upon the strength of it, before his denial came out. That had been a
source of great delight to Mrs. de Graffenried, who was furiously
jealous of "Mrs. R. C."

From the anecdotes that people told, Montague judged that Mrs. de
Graffenried must be one of those new leaders of Society, who, as
Mrs. Alden said, were inclined to the bizarre and fantastic. Mrs. de
Graffenried spent half a million dollars every season to hold the
position of leader of the Newport set, and you could always count
upon her for new and striking ideas. Once she had given away as
cotillion favours tiny globes with goldfish in them; again she had
given a dance at which everybody got themselves up as different
vegetables. She was fond of going about at Newport and inviting
people haphazard to lunch--thirty or forty at a time--and then
surprising them with a splendid banquet. Again she would give a big
formal dinner, and perplex people by offering them something which
they really cared to eat. "You see," explained Mrs. Vivie, "at these
dinners we generally get thick green turtle soup, and omelettes with
some sort of Florida water poured over them, and mushrooms cooked
under glass, and real hand-made desserts; but Mrs. de Graffenried
dares to have baked ham and sweet potatoes, or even real roast beef.
You saw to-night that she had green corn; she must have arranged for
that months ahead--we can never get it from Porto Rico until
January. And you see this little dish of wild strawberries-t-hey
were probably transplanted and raised in a hothouse, and every
single one wrapped separately before they were shipped."

All these labours had made Mrs. de Graffenried a tremendous power in
the social world. She had a savage tongue, said Mrs. Vivie, and
every one lived in terror of her; but once in a while she met her
match. Once she had invited a comic opera star to sing for her
guests, and all the men had crowded round this actress, and Mrs. de
Graffenried had flown into a passion and tried to drive them away;
and the actress, lolling back in her chair, and gazing up idly at
Mrs. do Graffenried, had drawled, "Ten years older than God!" Poor
Mrs. de Graffenried would carry that saying with her until she died.

Something reminiscent of this came under Montague's notice that same
evening. At about four o'clock Mrs. Vivie wished to go home, and
asked him to find her escort, the Count St. Elmo de Champignon--the
man, by the way, for whom her husband was gunning. Montague roamed
all about the house, and finally went downstairs, where a room had
been set apart for the theatrical company to partake of
refreshments. Mrs. de Graffenriod's secretary was on guard at the
door; but some of the boys had got into the room, and were drinking
champagne and "making dates" with the chorus-girls. And here was
Mrs. de Graffenried herself, pushing them bodily out of the room, a
score and more of them--and among them Mrs. Vivie's Count!

Montague delivered his message, and then went upstairs to wait until
his own party should be ready to leave. In the smoking-room were a
number of men, also waiting; and among them he noticed Major
Venable, in conversation with a man whom he did not know. "Come over
here," the Major called; and Montague obeyed, at the same time
noticing the stranger.

He was a tall, loose-jointed, powerfully built man, a small head and
a very striking face: a grim mouth with drooping corners tightly
set, and a hawk-like nose, and deep-set, peering eyes. "Have you met
Mr. Hegan?" said the Major. "Hegan, this is Mr. Allan Montague." Jim
Hegan! Montague repressed a stare and took the chair which they
offered him. "Have a cigar," said Hegan, holding out his case.

"Mr. Montague has just come to New York," said the Major. "He is a
Southerner, too."

"Indeed?" said Hegan, and inquired what State he came from. Montague
replied, and added, "I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter
last week, at the Horse Show."

That served to start a conversation; for Hegan came from Texas, and
when he found that Montague knew about horses--real horses--he
warmed to him. Then the Major's party called him away, and the other
two were left to carry on the conversation.

It was very easy to chat with Hegan; and yet underneath, in the
other's mind, there lurked a vague feeling of trepidation, as he
realized that he was chatting with a hundred millions of dollars.
Montague was new enough at the game to imagine that there ought to
be something strange, some atmosphere of awe and mystery, about a
man who was master of a dozen railroads and of the politics of half
a dozen States. He was simple and very kindly in his manner, a plain
man, interested in plain things. There was about him, as he talked,
a trace of timidity, almost of apology, which Montague noticed and
wondered at. It was only later, when he had time to think about it,
that he realized that Hegan had begun as a farmer's boy in Texas, a
"poor white"; and could it be that after all these years an instinct
remained in him, so that whenever he met a gentleman of the old
South he stood by with a little deference, seeming to beg pardon for
his hundred millions of dollars?

And yet there was the power of the man. Even chatting about horses,
you felt it; you felt that there was a part of him which did not
chat, but which sat behind and watched. And strangest of all,
Montague found himself fancying that behind the face that smiled was
another face, that did not smile, but that was grim and set. It was
a strange face, with its broad, sweeping eyebrows and its drooping
mouth; it haunted Montague and made him feel ill at ease.

There came Laura Hegan, who greeted them in her stately way; and
Mrs. Hegan, bustling and vivacious, costumed en grande dame. "Come
and see me some time," said the man. "You won't be apt to meet me
otherwise, for I don't go about much." And so they took their
departure; and Montague sat alone and smoked and thought. The face
still stayed with him; and now suddenly, in a burst of light, it
came to him what it was: the face of a bird of prey--of the great
wild, lonely eagle! You have seen it, perhaps, in a menagerie;
sitting high up, submitting patiently, biding its time. But all the
while the soul of the eagle is far away, ranging the wide spaces,
ready for the lightning swoop, and the clutch with the cruel talons!






CHAPTER X





The next week was a busy one for the Montagues. The Robbie Wallings
had come to town and opened their house, and the time drew near for
the wonderful debutante dance at which Alice was to be formally
presented to Society. And of course Alice must have a new dress for
the occasion, and it must be absolutely the most beautiful dress
ever known. In an idle moment her cousin figured out that it was to
cost her about five dollars a minute to be entertained by the
Wallings!

What it would cost the Wallings, one scarcely dared to think. Their
ballroom would be turned into a flower-garden; and there would be a
supper for a hundred guests, and still another supper after the
dance, and costly favours for every figure. The purchasing of these
latter had been entrusted to Oliver, and Montague heard with dismay
what they were to cost. "Robbie couldn't afford to do anything
second-rate," was the younger brother's only reply to his
exclamations.

Alice divided her time between the Wallings and her costumiers, and
every evening she came home with a new tale of important
developments. Alice was new at the game, and could afford to be
excited; and Mrs. Robbie liked to see her bright face, and to smile
indulgently at her eager inquiries. Mrs. Robbie herself had given
her orders to her steward and her florist and her secretary, and
went on her way and thought no more about it. That was the way of
the great ladies--or, at any rate, it was their pose.

The town-house of the Robbies was a stately palace occupying a block
upon Fifth Avenue--one of the half-dozen mansions of the Walling
family which were among the show places of the city. It would take a
catalogue to list the establishments maintained by the
Wallings--there was an estate in North Carolina, and another in the
Adirondacks, and others on Long Island and in New Jersey. Also there
were several in Newport--one which was almost never occupied, and
which Mrs. Billy Alden sarcastically described as "a
three-million-dollar castle on a desert."

Montague accompanied Alice once or twice, and had an opportunity to
study Mrs. Robbie at home. There were thirty-eight servants in her
establishment; it was a little state all in itself, with Mrs. Robbie
as queen, and her housekeeper as prime minister, and under them as
many different ranks and classes and castes as in a feudal
principality. There had to be six separate dining-rooms for the
various kinds of servants who scorned each other; there were
servants' servants and servants of servants' servants. There were
only three to whom the mistress was supposed to give orders--the
butler, the steward, and the housekeeper; she did not even know the
names of many of them, and they were changed so often, that, as she
declared, she had to leave it to her detective to distinguish
between employees and burglars.

Mrs. Robbie was quite a young woman, but it pleased her to pose as a
care-worn matron, weary of the responsibilities of her exalted
station. The ignorant looked on and pictured her as living in the
lap of ease, endowed with every opportunity: in reality the meanest
kitchen-maid was freer--she was quite worn thin with the burdens
that fell upon her. The huge machine was for ever threatening to
fall to pieces, and required the wisdom of Solomon and the patience
of Job to keep it running. One paid one's steward a fortune, and yet
he robbed right and left, and quarrelled with the chef besides. The
butler was suspected of getting drunk upon rare and costly vintages,
and the new parlour-maid had turned out to be a Sunday reporter in
disguise. The man who had come every day for ten years to wind the
clocks of the establishment was dead, and the one who took care of
the bric-a-brac was sick, and the housekeeper was in a panic over
the prospect of having to train another.

And even suppose that you escaped from these things, the real
problems of your life had still to be faced. It was not enough to
keep alive; you had your career--your duties as a leader of Society.
There was the daily mail, with all the pitiful letters from people
begging money--actually in one single week there were demands for
two million dollars. There were geniuses with patent incubators and
stove-lifters, and every time you gave a ball you stirred up swarms
of anarchists and cranks. And then there were the letters you really
had to answer, and the calls that had to be paid. These latter were
so many that people in the same neighbourhood had arranged to have
the same day at home; thus, if you lived on Madison Avenue you had
Thursday; but even then it took a whole afternoon to leave your
cards. And then there were invitations to be sent and accepted; and
one was always making mistakes and offending somebody--people would
become mortal enemies overnight, and expect all the world to know it
the next morning. And now there were so many divorces and
remarryings, with consequent changing of names; and some men knew
about their wives' lovers and didn't care, and some did care, but
didn't know--altogether it was like carrying a dozen chess games in
your head. And then there was the hairdresser and the manicurist and
the masseuse, and the tailor and the bootmaker and the jeweller; and
then one absolutely had to glance through a newspaper, and to see
one's children now and then.

All this Mrs. Robbie explained at luncheon; it was the rich man's
burden, about which common people had no conception whatever. A
person with a lot of money was like a barrel of molasses--all the
flies in the neighbourhood came buzzing about. It was perfectly
incredible, the lengths to which people would go to get invited to
your house; not only would they write and beg you, they might attack
your business interests, and even bribe your friends. And on the
other hand, when people thought you needed them, the time you had to
get them to come! "Fancy," said Mrs. Robbie, "offering to give a
dinner to an English countess, and having her try to charge you for
coming!" And incredible as it might seem, some people had actually
yielded to her, and the disgusting creature had played the social
celebrity for a whole season, and made quite a handsome income out
of it. There seemed to be no limit to the abjectness of some of the
tuft-hunters in Society.

It was instructive to hear Mrs. Robbie denounce such evils; and
yet--alas for human frailty--the next time that Montague called, the
great lady was blazing with wrath over the tidings that a new
foreign prince was coming to America, and that Mrs.
Ridgely-Clieveden had stolen a march upon her and grabbed him. He
was to be under her tutelage the entire time, and all the effulgence
of his magnificence would be radiated upon that upstart house. Mrs.
Robbie revenged herself by saying as many disagreeable things about
Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden as she could think of; winding up with the
declaration that if she behaved with this prince as she had with the
Russian grand duke, Mrs. Robbie Walling, for one, would cut her
dead. And truly the details which Mrs. Robbie cited were calculated
to suggest that her rival's hospitality was a reversion to the
customs of primitive savagery.

The above is a fair sample of the kind of conversation that one
heard whenever one visited any of the Wallings. Perhaps, as Mrs.
Robbie said, it may have been their millions that made necessary
their attitude toward other people; certain it was, at any rate,
that Montague found them all most disagreeable people to know. There
was always some tempest in a teapot over the latest machinations of
their enemies. And then there was the whole dead mass of people who
sponged upon them and toadied to them; and finally the barbarian
hordes outside the magic circle of their acquaintance--some
specimens of whom came up every day for ridicule. They had big feet
and false teeth; they ate mush and molasses; they wore ready-made
ties; they said: "Do you wish that I should do it?" Their
grandfathers had been butchers and pedlars and other abhorrent
things. Montague tried his best to like the Wallings, because of
what they were doing for Alice; but after he had sat at their
lunch-table and listened to a conversation such as this, he found
himself in need of fresh air.

And then he would begin to wonder about his own relation to these
people. If they talked about every one else behind their backs,
certainly they must talk about him behind his. And why did they go
out of their way to make him at home, and why were they spending
their money to launch Alice in Society? In the beginning he had
assumed that they did it out of the goodness of their hearts; but
now that he had looked into their hearts, he rejected the
explanation. It was not their way to shower princely gifts upon
strangers; in general, the attitude of all the Wallings toward a
stranger was that of the London hooligan--"'Eave a 'arf a brick at
'im!" They considered themselves especially appointed by Providence
to protect Society from the vulgar newly rich who poured into the
city, seeking for notoriety and recognition. They prided themselves
upon this attitude--they called it their "exclusiveness"; and the
exclusiveness of the younger generations of Wallings had become a
kind of insanity.

Nor could the reason be that Alice was beautiful and attractive. One
could have imagined it if Mrs. Robbie had been like--say, Mrs.
Winnie Duval. It was easy to think of Mrs. Winnie taking a fancy to
a girl, and spending half her fortune upon her. But from a hundred
little things that he had seen, Montague had come to realize that
the Robbie Wallings, with all their wealth and power and grandeur,
were actually quite stingy. While all the world saw them scattering
fortunes in their pathway, in reality they were keeping track of
every dollar. And Robbie himself was liable to panic fits of
economy, in which he went to the most absurd excesses--Montague once
heard him haggling over fifty cents with a cabman. Lavish hosts
though they both were, it was the literal truth that they never
spent money upon anyone but themselves--the end and aim of their
every action was the power and prestige of the Robbie Wallings.

"They do it because they are friends of mine," said Oliver, and
evidently wished that to satisfy his brother. But it only shifted
the problem and set him to watching Robbie and Oliver, and trying to
make out the basis of their relationship. There was a very grave
question concerned in this. Oliver had come to New York
comparatively poor, and now he was rich--or, at any rate, ho lived
like a rich man. And his brother, whose scent was growing keener
with every day of his stay in New York, had about made up his mind
that Oliver got his money from Robbie Walling.

Here, again, the problem would have been simple, if it had been
another person than Robbie; Montague would have concluded that his
brother was a "hanger-on." There were many great families whose
establishments were infested with such parasites. Siegfried Harvey,
for instance, was a man who had always half a dozen young chaps
hanging about him; good-looking and lively fellows, who hunted and
played bridge, and amused the married women while their husbands
were at work, and who, if ever they dropped a hint that they were
hard up, might be reasonably certain of being offered a cheque. But
if the Robbie Wallings were to write cheques, it must be for value
received. And what could the value be?

"Ollie" was rather a little god among the ultra-swagger; his taste
was a kind of inspiration. And yet his brother noticed that in such
questions he always deferred instantly to the Wallings; and surely
the Wallings were not people to be persuaded that they needed anyone
to guide them in matters of taste. Again, Ollie was the very devil
of a wit, and people were heartily afraid of him; and Montague had
noticed that he never by any chance made fun of Robbie--that the
fetiches of the house of Walling were always treated with respect.
So he had wondered if by any chance Robbie was maintaining his
brother in princely state for the sake of his ability to make other
people uncomfortable. But he realized that the Robbies, in their own
view of it, could have no more need of wit than a battleship has
need of popguns. Oliver's position, when they were about, was rather
that of the man who hardly ever dared to be as clever as he might,
because of the restless jealousy of his friend.

It was a mystery; and it made the elder brother very uncomfortable.
Alice was young and guileless, and a pleasant person to patronize;
but he was a man of the world, and it was his business to protect
her. He had always paid his own way through life, and he was very
loath to put himself under obligations to people like the Wallings,
whom he did not like, and who, he felt instinctively, could not like
him.

But of course there was nothing he could do about it. The date for
the great festivity was set; and the Wallings were affable and
friendly, and Alice all a-tremble with excitement. The evening
arrived, and with it came the enemies of the Wallings, dressed in
their jewels and fine raiment. They had been asked because they were
too important to be skipped, and they had come because the Wallings
were too powerful to be ignored. They revenged themselves by
consuming many courses of elaborate and costly viands; and they
shook hands with Alice and beamed upon her, and then discussed her
behind her back as if she were a French doll in a show-case. They
decided unanimously that her elder cousin was a "stick," and that
the whole family were interlopers and shameless adventurers; but it
was understood that since the Robbie Wallings had seen fit to take
them up, it would be necessary to invite them about.

At any rate, that was the way it all seemed to Montague, who had
been brooding. To Alice it was a splendid festivity, to which
exquisite people came to take delight in each other's society. There
were gorgeous costumes and sparkling gems; there was a symphony of
perfumes, intoxicating the senses, and a golden flood of music
streaming by; there were laughing voices and admiring glances, and
handsome partners with whom one might dance through the portals of
fairyland.--And then, next morning, there were accounts in all the
newspapers, with descriptions of one's costume and then some of
those present, and even the complete menus of the supper, to assist
in preserving the memories of the wonderful occasion.

Now they were really in Society. A reporter called to get Alice's
photo for the Sunday supplement; and floods of invitations came--and
with them all the cares and perplexities about which Mrs. Robbie had
told. Some of these invitations had to be declined, and one must
know whom it was safe to offend. Also, there was a long letter from
a destitute widow, and a proposal from a foreign count. Mrs.
Robbie's secretary had a list of many hundreds of these professional
beggars and blackmailers.

Conspicuous at the dance was Mrs. Winnie, in a glorious
electric-blue silk gown. And she shook her fan at Montague,
exclaiming, "You wretched man--you promised to come and see me!"

"I've been out of town," Montague protested.

"Well, come to dinner to-morrow night," said Mrs. Winnie. "There'll
be some bridge fiends."

"You forget I haven't learned to play," he objected.

"Well, come anyhow," she replied. "We'll teach you. I'm no player
myself, and my husband will be there, and he's good-natured; and my
brother Dan--he'll have to be whether he likes it or not."

So Montague visited the Snow Palace again, and met Winton Duval, the
banker,--a tall, military-looking man of about fifty, with a big
grey moustache, and bushy eyebrows, and the head of a lion. His was
one of the city's biggest banking-houses, and in alliance with
powerful interests in the Street. At present he was going in for
mines in Mexico and South America, and so he was very seldom at
home. He was a man of most rigid habits--he would come back
unexpectedly after a month's trip, and expect to find everything
ready for him, both at home and in his office, as if he had just
stepped round the corner. Montague observed that he took his
menu-card and jotted down his comments upon each dish, and then sent
it down to the chef. Other people's dinners he very seldom attended,
and when his wife gave her entertainments, he invariably dined at
the club.

He pleaded a business engagement for the evening; and as brother Dan
did not appear, Montague did not learn any bridge. The other four
guests settled down to the game, and Montague and Mrs. Winnie sat
and chatted, basking before the fireplace in the great
entrance-hall.

"Have you seen Charlie Carter?" was the first question she asked
him.

"Not lately," he answered; "I met him at Harvey's."

"I know that," said she. "They tell me he got drunk."

"I'm afraid he did," said Montague.

"Poor boy!" exclaimed Mrs. Winnie. "And Alice saw him! He must be
heartbroken!"

Montague said nothing. "You know," she went on, "Charlie really
means well. He has honestly an affectionate nature."

She paused; and Montague Said, vaguely, "I suppose so."

"You don't like him," said the other. "I can see that. And I suppose
now Alice will have no use for him, either. And I had it all fixed
up for her to reform him!"

Montague smiled in spite of himself.

"Oh, I know," said she. "It wouldn't have been easy. But you've no
idea what a beautiful boy Charlie used to be, until all the women
set to work to ruin him."

"I can imagine it," said Montague; but he did not warm to the
subject.

"You're just like my husband," said Mrs. Winnie, sadly. "You have no
use at all for anything that's weak or unfortunate."

There was a pause. "And I suppose," she said finally, "you'll be
turning into a business man also--with no time for anybody or
anything. Have you begun yet?"

--"Not yet," he answered. "I'm still looking round."

"I haven't the least idea about business," she confessed. "How does
one begin at it?"

"I can't say I know that myself as yet," said Montague, laughing.

"Would you like to be a protege of my husband's?" she asked.

The proposition was rather sudden, but he answered, with a smile, "I
should have no objections. What would he do with me?"

"I don't know that. But he can do whatever he wants down town. And
he'd show you how to make a lot of money if I asked him to." Then
Mrs. Winnie added, quickly, "I mean it--he could do it, really."

"I haven't the least doubt of it," responded Montague.

"And what's more," she went on, "you don't want to be shy about
taking advantage of the opportunities that come to you. You'll find
you won't get along in New York unless you go right in and grab what
you can. People will be quick enough to take advantage of you."

"They have all been very kind to me so far," said he. "But when I
get ready for business, I'll harden my heart."

Mrs. Winnie sat lost in meditation. "I think business is dreadful,"
she said. "So much hard work and worry! Why can't men learn to get
along without it?"

"There are bills that have to be paid," Montague replied.

"It's our dreadfully extravagant way of life," exclaimed the other.
"Sometimes I wish I had never had any money in my life."

"You would soon tire of it," said he. "You would miss this house."

"I should not miss it a bit," said Mrs. Winnie, promptly. "That is
really the truth--I don't care for this sort of thing at all. I'd
like to live simply, and without so many cares and responsibilities.
And some day I'm going to do it, too--I really am. I'm going to get
myself a little farm, away off somewhere in the country. And I'm
going there to live and raise chickens and vegetables, and have my
own flower-gardens, that I can take care of myself. It will all be
plain and simple--" and then Mrs. Winnie stopped short, exclaiming,
"You are laughing at me!"

"Not at all!" said Montague. "But I couldn't help thinking about the
newspaper reporters--"

"There you are!" said she. "One can never have a beautiful dream, or
try to do anything sensible--because of the newspaper reporters!"

If Montague had been meeting Mrs. Winnie Duval for the first time,
he would have been impressed by her yearnings for the simple life;
he would have thought it an important sign of the times. But alas,
he knew by this time that his charming hostess had more flummery
about her than anybody else he had encountered--and all of her own
devising! Mrs. Winnie smoked her own private brand of cigarettes,
and when she offered them to you, there were the arms of the old
ducal house of Montmorenci on the wrappers! And when you got a
letter from Mrs. Winnie, you observed a three-cent stamp upon the
envelope--for lavender was her colour, and two-cent stamps were an
atrocious red! So one might feel certain that it Mrs. Winnie ever
went in for chicken-raising, the chickens would be especially
imported from China or Patagonia, and the chicken-coops would be
precise replicas of those in the old Chateau de Montmorenci which
she had visited in her automobile.

But Mrs. Winnie was beautiful, and quite entertaining to talk to,
and so he was respectfully sympathetic while she told him about her
pastoral intentions. And then she told him about Mrs. Caroline
Smythe, who had called a meeting of her friends at one of the big
hotels, and organized a society and founded the "Bide-a-Wee Home"
for destitute cats. After that she switched off into psychic
research--somebody had taken her to a seance, where grave college
professors and ladies in spectacles sat round and waited for ghosts
to materialize. It was Mrs. Winnie's first experience at this, and
she was as excited as a child who has just found the key to the
jam-closet. "I hardly knew whether to laugh or to be afraid," she
said. "What would you think?"

"You may have the pleasure of giving me my first impressions of it,"
said Montague, with a laugh.

"Well," said she, "they had table-tipping--and it was the most
uncanny thing to see the table go jumping about the room! And then
there were raps--and one can't imagine how strange it was to see
people who really believed they were getting messages from ghosts.
It positively made my flesh creep. And then this woman--Madame
Somebody-or-other--went into a trance--ugh! Afterward I talked with
one of the men, and he told me about how his father had appeared to
him in the night and told him he had just been drowned at sea. Have
you ever heard of such a thing?"

"We have such a tradition in our family," said he.

"Every family seems to have," said Mrs. Winnie. "But, dear me, it
made me so uncomfortable--I lay awake all night expecting to see my
own father. He had the asthma, you know; and I kept fancying I heard
him breathing."

They had risen and were strolling into the conservatory; and she
glanced at the man in armour. "I got to fancying that his ghost
might come to see me," she said. "I don't think I shall attend any
more seances. My husband was told that I promised them some money,
and he was furious--he's afraid it'll get into the papers." And
Montague shook with inward laughter, picturing what a time the
aristocratic and stately old banker must have, trying to keep his
wife out of the papers!

Mrs. Winnie turned on the lights in the fountain, and sat by the
edge, gazing at her fish. Montague was half expecting her to inquire
whether he thought that they had ghosts; but she spared him this,
going off on another line.

"I asked Dr. Parry about it," she said. "Have you met him?"

Dr. Parry was the rector of St. Cecilia's, the fashionable Fifth
Avenue church which most of Montague's acquaintances attended. "I
haven't been in the city over Sunday yet," he answered. "But Alice
has met him."

"You must go with me some time," said she. "But about the ghosts--"

"What did he say?"

"He seemed to be shy of them," laughed Mrs. Winnie. "He said it had
a tendency to lead one into dangerous fields. But oh! I forgot--I
asked my swami also, and it didn't startle him. They are used to
ghosts; they believe that souls keep coming back to earth, you know.
I think if it was his ghost, I wouldn't mind seeing it--for he has
such beautiful eyes. He gave me a book of Hindu legends--and there
was such a sweet story about a young princess who loved in vain, and
died of grief; and her soul went into a tigress; and she came in the
night-time where her lover lay sleeping by the firelight, and she
carried him off into the ghost-world. It was a most creepy thing--I
sat out here and read it, and I could imagine the terrible tigress
lurking in the shadows, with its stripes shining in the firelight,
and its green eyes gleaming. You know that poem--we used to read it
in school--'Tiger, tiger, burning bright!'"

It was not very easy for Montague to imagine a tigress in Mrs.
Winnie's conservatory; unless, indeed, one were willing to take the
proposition in a metaphorical sense. There are wild creatures which
sleep in the heart of man, and which growl now and then, and stir
their tawny limbs, and cause one to start and turn cold. Mrs. Winnie
wore a dress of filmy softness, trimmed with red flowers which paled
beside her own intenser colouring. She had a perfume of her own,
with a strange exotic fragrance which touched the chorus of memory
as only an odour can. She leaned towards him, speaking eagerly, with
her soft white arms lying upon the basin's rim. So much loveliness
could not be gazed at without pain; and a faint trembling passed
through Montague, like a breeze across a pool. Perhaps it touched
Mrs. Winnie also, for she fell suddenly silent, and her gaze
wandered off into the darkness. For a minute or two there was
stillness, save for the pulse of the fountain, and the heaving of
her bosom keeping time with it.

And then in the morning Oliver inquired, "Where were you, last
night?" And when his brother answered, "At Mrs. Winnie's," he smiled
and said, "Oh!" Then he added, gravely, "Cultivate Mrs. Winnie--you
can't do better at present."






CHAPTER XI





Montague accepted his friend's invitation to share her pew at St.
Cecilia's, and next Sunday morning he and Alice went, and found Mrs.
Winnie with her cousin. Poor Charlie had evidently been scrubbed and
shined, both physically and morally, and got ready to appeal for
"one more chance." While he shook hands with Alice, he was gazing at
her with dumb and pleading eyes; he seemed to be profoundly grateful
that she did not refuse to enter the pew with him.