That was about half-past eleven. At a quarter to twelve the stock
went up an eighth, and then a quarter, and then another eighth. The
two gripped their hands in excitement. Had the time come?

Apparently it had. A minute later the stock leaped to 61, on large
buying. Then it went three-eighths more. A buzz of excitement ran
through the office, and the old-timers sat up in their seats. The
stock went another quarter.

Montague heard a man behind him say to his neighbour, "What does it
mean?"

"God knows," was the answer; but Oliver whispered in his brother's
ear, "I know what it means. The insiders are buying."

Somebody was buying, and buying furiously. The ticker seemed to set
all other business aside and give its attention to the trading in
Transcontinental. It was like a base-ball game, when one side begins
to pile up runs, and the man in the coacher's box chants exultantly,
and the dullest spectator is stirred--since no man can be
indifferent to success. And as the stock went higher and higher, a
little wave of excitement mounted with it, a murmur running through
the room, and a thrill passing from person to person. Some watched,
wondering if it would last, and if they had not better take on a
little; then another point would be scored, and they would wish they
had done it, and hesitate whether to do it now. But to others, like
the Montagues, who "had some," it was victory, glorious and
thrilling; their pulses leaped faster with every new change of the
figures; and between times they reckoned up their gains, and hung
between hope and dread for the new gains which were on the way, but
not yet in sight.

There was little lull, and the boys who tended the board had a
chance to rest. The stock was above 66; at which price, owing to the
device of "pyramiding." Montague was on "velvet," to use the
picturesque phrase of the Street. His earnings amounted to sixty
thousand dollars, and even if the stock were to fall and he were to
be sold out, he would lose nothing.

He wished to sell and realize his profits; but his brother gripped
him fast by the arm. "No! no!" he said. "It hasn't really come yet!"

Some went out to lunch--to a restaurant where they could have a
telephone on their table, so as to keep in touch with events. But
the Montagues had no care about eating; they sat picturing the
directors in session, and speculating upon a score of various
eventualities. Things might yet go wrong, and all their profits
would vanish like early snow-flakes--and all their capital with
them. Oliver shook like a leaf, but he would not stir. "Stay game!"
he whispered.

He took out his watch, and glanced at it. It was after two o'clock.
"It may go over till to-morrow!" he muttered.--But then suddenly
came the storm.

The ticker recorded a rise in the price of Transcontinental of a
point and a half, upon a purchase of five thousand shares; and then
half a point for two thousand more. After that it never stopped. It
went a point at a time; it went ten points in about fifteen minutes.
And babel broke loose in the office, and in several thousand other
offices in the street, and spread to others all over the world.
Montague had got up, and was moving here and there, because the
tension was unendurable; and at the door of an inner office he heard
some one at the telephone exclaiming, "For the love of God, can't
you find out what's the matter?"--A moment later a man rushed in,
breathless and wild-eyed, and his voice rang through the office,
"The directors have declared a quarterly dividend of three per cent,
and an extra dividend of two!"

And Oliver caught his brother by the arm and started for the door
with him. "Get to your broker's," he said. "And if the stock has
stopped moving, sell; and sell in any case before the close." And
then he dashed away to his own headquarters.

At about half after three o'clock, Oliver came into Hammond and
Streeter's, breathless, and with his hair and clothing dishevelled.
He was half beside himself with exultation; and Montague was
scarcely less wrought up--in fact he felt quite limp after the
strain he had been through.

"What price did you get?" his brother inquired; and he answered, "An
average of 78 3/8." There had been another sharp rise at the end,
and he had sold all his stock without checking the advance.

"I got five-eighths," said Oliver. "O ye gods!"

There were some unhappy "shorts" in the office; Mr. Streeter was one
of them. It was bitterness and gall to them to see the radiant faces
of the two lucky ones; but the two did not even see this. They went
out, half dancing, and had a drink or two to steady their nerves.

They would not actually get thoir money until the morrow; but
Montague figured a profit of a trifle under a quarter of a million
for himself. Of this about twenty thousand would go to make up the
share of his unknown informant; the balance he considered would be
an ample reward for his six hours' work that day.

His brother had won more than twice as much. But as they drove up
home, talking over it in awe-stricken whispers, and pledging
themselves to absolute secrecy, Oliver suddenly clenched his fist
and struck his knee.

"By God!" ho exclaimed. "If I hadn't been a fool and tried to save
an extra margin, I could have had a million!"






CHAPTER XV





After such a victory one felt in a mood for Christmas
festivities,--for music and dancing and all beautiful and happy
things.

Such a thing, for instance, as Mrs. Winnie, when she came to meet
him; clad in her best automobile coat, a thing of purest snowy
ermine, so truly gorgeous that wherever she went, people turned and
stared and caught their breath. Mrs. Winnie was a picture of joyful
health, with a glow in her rich complexion, and a sparkle in her
black eyes.

She sat in her big touring-car--in which one could afford to wear
ermine. It was a little private self-moving hotel; in the limousine
were seats for six persons, with revolving easy chairs, and berths
for sleeping, and a writing-desk and a wash-stand, and a beautiful
electric chandelier to light it at night. Its trimmings were of
South American mahogany, and its upholstering of Spanish and Morocco
leathers; it had a telephone with which one spoke to the driver; an
ice-box and a lunch hamper--in fact, one might have spent an hour
discovering new gimeracks in this magic automobile. It had been made
especially for Mrs. Winnie a couple of years ago, and the newspapers
said it had cost thirty thousand dollars; it had then been quite a
novelty, but now "everybody" was getting them. In this car one might
sit at ease, and laugh and chat, and travel at the rate of an
express train; and with never a jar or a quiver, nor the faintest
sound of any sort.

The streets of the city sped by them as if by enchantment. They went
through the park, and out Riverside Drive, and up the river-road
which runs out of Broadway all the way to Albany. It was a
macadamized avenue, lined with beautiful and stately homes. As one
went farther yet, he came to the great country estates-a whole
district of hundreds of square miles given up to them. There were
forests and lakes and streams; there were gardens and greenhouses
filled with rare plants and flowers, and parks with deer browsing,
and peacocks and lyre-birds strutting about. The road wound in and
out among hills, the surfaces of which would be one unbroken lawn;
and upon the highest points stood palaces of every conceivable style
and shape.

One might find these great domains anywhere around the city, at a
distance of from thirty to sixty miles; there were two or three
hundred of them, and incredible were the sums of money which had
been spent upon their decoration. One saw an artificial lake of ten
thousand acres, made upon land which had cost several hundred
dollars an acre; one saw gardens with ten thousand rose-bushes, and
a quarter of a million dollars' worth of lilies from Japan; there
was one estate in which had been planted a million dollars' worth of
rare trees, imported from all over the world. Some rich men, who had
nothing else to amuse them, would make their estates over and over
again, changing the view about their homes as one changes the
scenery in a play. Over in New Jersey the Hegans were building a
castle upon a mountain-top, and had built a special railroad simply
to carry the materials. Here, also, was the estate of the tobacco
king, upon which three million dollars had been spent before the
plans of the mansion had even been drawn; there were artificial
lakes and streams, and fantastic bridges and statuary, and scores of
little model plantations and estates, according to the whim of the
owner. And here in the Pocantico Hills was the estate of the oil
king, about four square miles, with thirty miles of model driveways;
many car-loads of rare plants had been imported for its gardens, and
it took six hundred men to keep it in order. There was a golf
course, a little miniature Alps, upon which the richest man in the
world pursued his lost health, with armed guards and detectives
patrolling the dace all day, and a tower with a search-light,
whereby at night he could flood the grounds with light by pressing a
button.

In one of these places lived the heir of the great house of Devon.
His cousin dwelt in Europe, saying that America was not a fit place
for a gentleman to live in. Each of them owned a hundred million
dollars' worth of New York real estate, and drew their tribute of
rents from the toil of the swarming millions of the city. And
always, according to the policy of the family, they bought new real
estate. They were directors of the great railroads tributary to the
city, and in touch with the political machines, and in every other
way in position to know what was under way: if a new subway were
built to set the swarming millions free, the millions would find the
land all taken up, and apartment-houses newly built for them--and
the Devons were the owners. They had a score of the city's greatest
hotels--and also slum tenements, and brothels and dives in the
Tenderloin. They did not even have to know what they owned; they did
not have to know anything, or do anything--they lived in their
palaces, at home or abroad, and in their offices in the city the
great rent-gathering machine ground on.

Eldridge Devon's occupation was playing with his country-place and
his automobiles. He had recently sold all his horses, and turned his
stables into a garage equipped with a score or so of cars; he was
always getting a new one, and discussing its merits. As to Hudson
Cliff, the estate, he had conceived the brilliant idea of
establishing a gentleman's country-place which should be
self-supporting--that is to say, which should furnish the luxuries
and necessities of its owner's table for no more than it would have
cost to buy them. Considering the prices usually paid, this was no
astonishing feat, but Devon took a child's delight in it; he showed
Montague his greenhouses, filled with rare flowers and fruits, and
his model dairy, with marble stables and nickel plumbing, and
attendants in white uniforms and rubber gloves. He was a short and
very stout gentleman with red cheeks, and his conversation was not
brilliant.

To Hudson Cliff came many of Montague's earlier acquaintances, and
others whom he had not met before. They amused themselves in all the
ways with which-he had become familiar at house-parties; likewise on
Christmas Eve there were festivities for the children, and on
Christmas night a costume ball, very beautiful and stately. Many
came from New York to attend this, and others from the
neighbourhood; and in returning calls, Montague saw others of these
hill-top mansions.

Also, and most important of all, they played bridge--as they had
played at every function which he had attended so far. Here Mrs.
Winnie, who had rather taken him up, and threatened to supplant
Oliver as his social guide and chaperon, insisted that no more
excuses would be accepted; and so for two mornings he sat with her
in one of the sun-parlours, and diligently put his mind upon the
game. As he proved an apt pupil, he was then advised that he might
take a trial plunge.

And so Montague came into touch with a new social phenomenon;
perhaps on the whole the most significant and soul-disturbing
phenomenon which Society had exhibited to him. He had just had the
experience of getting a great deal of money without earning it, and
was fresh from the disagreeable memories of it--the trembling and
suspense, the burning lustful greed, the terrible nerve-devouring
excitement. He had hoped that he would not soon have to go through
such an experience again-and here was the prospect of an endless
dalliance with it!

For that was the meaning of bridge; it was a penalty which people
were paying for getting their money without earning it. The disease
got into their blood, and they could no longer live without the
excitement of gain and the hope of gain. So after their labours were
over, when they were supposed to be resting and enjoying
themselves, they would get together and torment themselves with an
imitation struggle, mimicking the grim and dreadful gamble of
business. Down in the Street, Oliver had pointed out to his brother
a celebrated "plunger," who had sometimes won six or eight millions
in a single day; and that man would play at stocks all morning, and
"play the ponies" in the afternoon, and then spend the evening in a
millionaires' gambling-house. And so it was with the bridge fiends.

It was a social plague; it had run through all Society, high and
low. It had destroyed conversation and all good-fellowship--it would
end by destroying even common decency, and turning the best people
into vulgar gamblers.--Thus spoke Mrs. Billy Alden, who was one of
the guests; and Montague thought that Mrs. Billy ought to know, for
she herself was playing all the time.

Mrs. Billy did not like Mrs. Winnie Duval; and the beginning of the
conversation was her inquiry why he let that woman corrupt him. Then
the good lady went on to tell him what bridge had come to be; how
people played it on the trains all the way from New York to San
Francisco; how they had tables in their autos, and played while they
were touring over the world. "Once," said she, "I took a party to
see the America's Cup races off Sandy Hook; and when we got back to
the pier, some one called, 'Who won?' And the answer was, 'Mrs.
Billy's ahead, but we're going on this evening.' I took a party of
friends through the Mediterranean and up the Nile, and we passed
Venice and Cairo and the Pyramids and the Suez Canal, and they never
once looked up--they were playing bridge. And you think I'm joking,
but I mean just literally what I say. I know a man who was
travelling from New York to Philadelphia, and got into a game with
some strangers, and rode all the way to Palm Beach to finish it!"

Montague heard later of a well-known Society leader who was totally
incapacitated that winter, from too much bridge at Newport; and she
was passing the winter at Hot Springs and Palm Beach--and playing
bridge there. They played it even in sanitariums, to which they had
been driven by nervous breakdown. It was an occupation so exhausting
to the physique of women that physicians came to know the symptoms
of it, and before they diagnosed a case, they would ask, "Do you
play bridge?" It had destroyed the last remnants of the Sabbath--it
was a universal custom to have card-parties on that day.

It was a very expensive game, as they played it in Society; one
might easily win or lose several thousand dollars in an evening, and
there were many who could not afford this. If one did not play, he
would be dropped from the lists of those invited; and when one
entered a game, etiquette required him to stay in until it was
finished. So one heard of young girls who had pawned their family
plate, or who had sold their honour, to pay their bills at the game;
and all Society knew of one youth who had robbed his hostess of her
jewels and pawned them, and then taken her the tickets--telling her
that her guests had robbed him. There were women received in the
best Society, who lived as adventuresses pure and simple, upon their
skill at the game; hostesses would invite rich guests and fleece
them. Montague never forgot the sense of amazement and dismay with
which he listened while first Mrs. Winnie and then his brother
warned him that he must avoid playing with a certain aristocratic
dame whom he met in this most aristocratic household--because she
was such a notorious cheater!

"My dear fellow," laughed his brother, when he protested, "we have a
phrase 'to cheat at cards like a woman.'" And then Oliver went on to
tell him of his own first experience at cards in Society, when he
had played poker with several charming young debutantes; they would
call their hands and take the money without showing their cards, and
he had been too gallant to ask to see them. But later he learned
that this was a regular practice, and so he never played poker with
women. And Oliver pointed out one of these girls to his
brother--sitting, as beautiful as a picture and as cold as marble,
with a half-smoked cigarette on the edge of the table, and whisky
and soda and glasses of cracked ice beside her. Later on, as he
chanced to be reading a newspaper, his brother leaned over his
shoulder and pointed out another of the symptoms of the craze--an
advertisement headed, "Your luck will change." It gave notice that
at Rosenstein's Parlours, just off Fifth Avenue, one might borrow
money upon expensive gowns and furs!

All during the ten days of this house-party, Mrs. Winnie devoted
herself to seeing that Montague had a good time; Mrs. Winnie sat
beside him at table--he found that somehow a convention had been
established which assigned him to Mrs. Winnie as a matter of course.
Nobody said anything to him about it, but knowing how relentlessly
the affairs of other people were probed and analyzed, he began to
feel exceedingly uncomfortable.

There came a time when he felt quite smothered by Mrs. Winnie; and
immediately after lunch one day he broke away and went for a long
walk by himself. This was the occasion of his meeting with an
adventure.

An inch or two of snow had fallen, and lay gleaming in the sunlight.
The air was keen, and he drank deep draughts of it, and went
striding away over the hills for an hour or so. There was a gale
blowing, and as he came over the summits it would strike him, and he
would see the river white with foam. And then down in the valleys
again all would be still.

Here, in a thickly wooded place, Montague's attention was arrested
suddenly by a peculiar sound, a heavy thud, which seemed to shake
the earth. It suggested a distant explosion, and he stopped for a
moment and then went on, gazing ahead. He passed a turn, and then he
saw a great tree which had fallen directly across the road.

He went on, thinking that this was what he had heard. But as he came
nearer, he saw his mistake. Beyond the tree lay something else, and
he began to run toward it. It was two wheels of an automobile,
sticking up into the air.

He sprang upon the tree-trunk, and in one glance he saw the whole
story. A big touring-car had swept round the sharp turn, and swerved
to avoid the unexpected obstruction, and so turned a somersault into
the ditch.

Montague gave a thrill of horror, for there was the form of a man
pinned beneath the body of the car. He sprang toward it, but a
second glance made him stop--he saw that blood had gushed from the
man's mouth and soaked the snow all about. His chest was visibly
crushed flat, and his eyes were dreadful, half-started from their
sockets.

For a moment Montague stood staring, as if turned to stone. Then
from the other side of the car came a moan, and he ran toward the
sound. A second man lay in the ditch, moving feebly. Montague sprang
to help him.

The man wore a heavy bearskin coat. Montague lifted him, and saw
that he was a very elderly person, with a cut across his forehead,
and a face as white as chalk. The other helped him to a position
with his back against the bank, and he opened his eyes and groaned.

Montague knelt beside him, watching his breathing. He had a sense of
utter helplessness--there was nothing he could think of to do, save
to unbutton the man's coat and keep wiping the blood from his face.

"Some whisky," the stranger moaned. Montague answered that he had
none; but the other replied that there was some in the car.

The slope of the bank was such that Montague could crawl under, and
find the compartment with the bottle in it. The old man drank some,
and a little colour came back to his face. As the other watched him,
it came to him that this face was familiar; but he could not place
it.

"How many were there with you?" Montague asked; and the man
answered, "Only one."

Montague went over and made certain that the other man--who was
obviously the chauffeur--was dead. Then he hurried down the road,
and dragged some brush out into the middle of it, where it could be
seen from a distance by any other automobile that came along; after
which he went back to the stranger, and bound his handkerchief about
his forehead to stop the bleeding from the cut.

The old man's lips were tightly set, as if he were suffering great
pain. "I'm done for!" he moaned, again and again.

"Where are you hurt?" Montague asked.

"I don't know," he gasped. "But it's finished me! I know it--it's
the last straw."

Then he closed his eyes and lay back. "Can't you get a doctor?" he
asked.

"There are no houses very near," said Montague. "But I can run--"

"No, no!" the other interrupted, anxiously. "Don't leave me! Some
one will come.--Oh, that fool of a chauffeur--why couldn't he go
slow when I told him? That's always the way with them--they're
always trying to show off."

"The man is dead," said Montague, quietly.

The other started upon his elbow. "Dead!" ho gasped.

"Yes," said Montague. "He's under the car."

The old man's eyes had started wild with fright; and he caught
Montague by the arm. "Dead!" he said. "O my God--and it might have
been me!"

There was a moment's pause. The stranger caught his breath, and
whispered again: "I'm done for! I can't stand it! it's too much!"

Montague had noticed when he lifted the man that he was very frail
and slight of build. Now he could feel that the hand that held his
arm was trembling violently. It occurred to him that perhaps the man
was not really hurt, but that his nerves had been upset by the
shock.

And he felt certain of this a moment later, when the stranger
suddenly leaned forward, clutching him with redoubled intensity, and
staring at him with wide, horror-stricken eyes.

"Do you know what it means to be afraid of death?" he panted. "Do
you know what it means to be afraid of death?"

Then, without waiting for a reply, he rushed on--"No, no! You
can't! you can't! I don't believe any man knows it as I do! Think of
it--for ten years I've never known a minute when I wasn't afraid of
death! It follows me around--it won't let me be! It leaps out at me
in places, like this! And when I escape it, I can hear it laughing
at me--for it knows I can't get away!"

The old man caught his breath with a choking sob. He was clinging to
Montague like a frightened child, and staring with a wild, hunted
look upon his face. Montague sat transfixed.

"Yes," the other rushed on, "that's the truth, as God hears me! And
it's the first time I've ever spoken it in my life! I have to hide
it--because men would laugh at me--they pretend they're not afraid!
But I lie awake all night, and it's like a fiend that sits by my
bedside! I lie and listen to my own heart--I feel it beating, and I
think how weak it is, and what thin walls it has, and what a
wretched, helpless thing it is to have your life depend on
that!--You don't know what that is, I suppose."

Montague shook his head.

"You're young, you see," said the other. "You have health--everybody
has health, except me! And everybody hates me--I haven't got a
friend in the world!"

Montague was quite taken aback by the suddenness of this outburst.
He tried to stop it, for he felt almost indecent in listening--it
was not fair to take a man off his guard like this. But the stranger
could not be stopped--he was completely unstrung, and his voice grew
louder and louder.

"It's every word of it true," he exclaimed wildly. "And I can't
stand it any more. I can't stand anything any more. I was young and
strong once--I could take care of myself; and I said: I'll make
money, I'll be master of other men! But I was a fool--I forgot my
health. And now all the money on earth can't do me any good! I'd
give ten million dollars to-day for a body like any other man's--and
this--this is what I have!"

He struck his hands against his bosom. "Look at it!" he cried,
hysterically. "This is what I've got to live in! It won't digest any
food, and I can't keep it warm--there's nothing right with it! How
would you like to lie awake at night and say to yourself that your
teeth were decaying and you couldn't help it--your hair was falling
out, and nobody could stop it? You're old and worn out--falling to
pieces; and everybody hates you--everybody's waiting for you to die,
so that they can get you out of the way. The doctors come, and
they're all humbugs! They shake their heads and use long words--they
know they can't do you any good, but they want their big fees! And
all they do is to frighten you worse, and make you sicker than
ever!"

There was nothing that Montague could do save to sit and listen to
this outburst of wretchedness. His attempts to soothe the old man
only had the effect of exciting him more.

"Why does it all have to fall on me?" he moaned. "I want to be like
other people--I want to live! And instead, I'm like a man with a
pack of hungry wolves prowling round him--that's what it's like!
It's like Nature--hungry and cruel and savage! You think you know
what life is; it seems so beautiful and gentle and pleasant--that's
when you're on top! But now I'm down, and I KNOW what it is--it's a
thing like a nightmare, that reaches out for you to clutch you and
crush you! And you can't get away from it--you're helpless as a rat
in a corner--you're damned--you're damned!" The miserable man's
voice broke in a cry of despair, and he sank down in a heap in front
of Montague, shaking and sobbing. The other was trembling slightly,
and stricken with awe.

There was a long silence, and then the stranger lifted his
tear-stained face, and Montague helped to support him. "Have a
little more of the whisky," said he.

"No," the other answered feebly, "I'd better not."

"--My doctors won't let me have whisky," he added, after a while.
"That's my liver. I've so many don'ts, you know, that it takes a
note-book to keep track of them. And all of them together do me no
good! Think of it--I have to live on graham crackers and
milk--actually, not a thing has passed my lips for two years but
graham crackers and milk."

And then suddenly, with a start, it came to Montague where he had
seen this wrinkled old face before. It was Laura Hegan's uncle, whom
the Major had pointed out to him in the dining-room of the
Millionaires' Club! Old Henry S. Grimes, who was really only sixty,
but looked eighty; and who owned slum tenements, and evicted more
people in a month than could be crowded into the club-house!

Montague gave no sign, but sat holding the man in his arms. A little
trickle of blood came from under the handkerchief and ran down his
cheek; Montague felt him tremble as he touched this with his ringer.

"Is it much of a cut?" he asked.

"Not much," said Montague; "two or three stitches, perhaps."

"Send for my family physician," the other added. "If I should faint,
or anything, you'll find his name in my card-case. What's that?"

There was the sound of voices down the road. "Hello!"' Montague
shouted; and a moment later two men in automobile costume came
running toward him. They stopped, staring in dismay at the sight
which confronted them.

At Montague's suggestion they made haste to find a log by means of
which they lifted the auto sufficiently to drag out the body of the
chauffeur. Montague saw that it was quite cold.

He went back to old Grimes. "Where do you wish to go?" he asked.

The other hesitated. "I was bound for the Harrisons'--" he said.

"The Leslie Harrisons?" asked Montague. (They were people he had met
at the Devons'.)

The other noticed his look of recognition. "Do you know them?" he
asked.

"I do," said Montague.

"It isn't far," said the old man. "Perhaps I had best go
there."--And then he hesitated for a moment; and catching Montague
by the arm, and pulling him toward him, whispered, "Tell me--you-you
won't tell--"

Montague, comprehending what he meant, answered, "It will be between
us." At the same time he felt a new thrill of revulsion for this
most miserable old creature.

They lifted him into the car; and because they delayed long enough
to lay a blanket over the body of the chauffeur, he asked peevishly
why they did not start. During the ten or fifteen minutes' trip he
sat clinging to Montague, shuddering with fright every time they
rounded a turn in the road.

They reached the Harrisons' place; and the footman who opened the
door was startled out of his studied impassivity by the sight of a
big bundle of bearskin in Montague's arms. "Send for Mrs. Harrison,"
said Montague, and laid the bundle upon a divan in the hall. "Get a
doctor as quickly as you can," he added to a second attendant.

Mrs. Harrison came. "It's Mr. Grimes," said Montague; and then he
heard a frightened exclamation, and turned and saw Laura Hegan, in a
walking costume, fresh from the cold outside.

"What is it?" she cried. And he told her, as quickly as he could,
and she ran to help the old man. Montague stood by, and later
carried him upstairs, and waited below until the doctor came.

It was only when he set out for home again that he found time to
think about Laura Hegan, and how beautiful she had looked in her
furs. He wondered if it would always be his fate to meet her under
circumstances which left her no time to be aware of his own
existence.

At home he told about his adventure, and found himself quite a hero
for the rest of the day. He was obliged to give interviews to
several newspaper reporters, and to refuse to let one of them take
his picture. Every one at the Devons' seemed to know old Harry
Grimes, and Montague thought to himself that if the comments of this
particular group of people were a fair sample, the poor wretch was
right in saying that he had not a friend in the world.

When he came downstairs the next morning, he found elaborate
accounts of the accident in the papers, and learned that Grimes had
nothing worse than a scalp wound and a severe shock. Even so, he
felt it was incumbent upon him to pay a visit of inquiry, and rode
over shortly before lunch.

Laura Hegan came down to see him, wearing a morning gown of white.
She confirmed the good news of the papers, and said that her uncle
was resting quietly. (She did not say that his physician had come
post-haste, with two nurses, and taken up his residence in the
house, and that the poor old millionaire was denied even his graham
crackers and milk). Instead she said that he had mentioned
Montague's kindness particularly, and asked her to thank him.
Montague was cynical enough to doubt this.

It was the first time that he had ever had any occasion to talk with
Miss Hegan. He noticed her gentle and caressing voice, with the
least touch of the South in it; and he was glad to find that it was
possible for her to talk without breaking the spell of her serene
and noble beauty. Montague stayed as long as he had any right to
stay.

And all the way as he rode home he was thinking about Laura Hegan.
Here for the first time was a woman whom he felt he should like to
know; a woman with reserve and dignity, and some ideas in her life.
And it was impossible for him to know her--because she was rich!

There was no dodging this fact--Montague did not even try. He had
met women with fortunes already, and he knew how they felt about
themselves, and how the rest of the world felt about them. They
might wish in their hearts to be something else besides the keepers
of a treasure-chest, but their wishes were futile; the money went
with them, and they had to defend it against all comers. Montague
recalled one heiress after another--debutantes, some of them,
exquisite and delicate as butterflies--but under the surface as hard
as chain-armour. All their lives they had been trained to think of
themselves as representing money, and of every one who came near
them as adventurers seeking money. In every word they uttered, in
every glance and motion, one might read this meaning. And then he
thought of Laura Hegan, with the fortune she would inherit; and he
pictured what her life must be--the toadies and parasites and
flatterers who would lay siege to her--the scheming mammas and the
affectionate sisters and cousins who would plot to gain her
confidence! For a man who was poor, and who meant to keep his
self-respect, was there any possible conclusion except that she was
entirely unknowable to him?






CHAPTER XVI





Montague came back to the city, and dug into his books again; while
Alice gave her spare hours to watching the progress of the new gown
in which she was to uphold the honour of the family at Mrs. Devon's
opening ball. The great event was due in the next week and Society
was as much excited about it as a family of children before
Christmas. All whom Montague met were invited and all were going
unless they happened to be in mourning. Their gossip was all of the
disappointed ones, and their bitterness and heartburning.

Mrs. Devon's mansion was thrown open early on the eventful evening,
but few would come until midnight. It was the fashion to attend the
Opera first, and previous to that half a dozen people would give big
dinners. He was a fortunate person who did not hear from his liver
after this occasion; for at one o'clock came Mrs. Devon's massive
supper, and then again at four o'clock another supper. To prepare
these repasts a dozen extra chefs had been imported into the Devon
establishment for a week--for it was part of the great lady's pride
to permit no outside caterer to prepare anything for her guests.

Montague had never been able to get over his wonder at the social
phenomenon known as Mrs. Devon. He came and took his chances in the
jostling throngs; and except that he got into casual conversation
with one of the numerous detectives whom he took for a guest he came
off fairly well. But all the time that he was being passed about and
introduced and danced with, he was looking about him and wondering.
The grand staircase and the hall and parlours had been turned into
tropical gardens, with palms and trailing vines, and azaleas and
roses, and great vases of scarlet poinsettia, with hundreds of
lights glowing through them. (It was said that this ball had
exhausted the flower supply of the country as far south as Atlanta.)
And then in the reception room one came upon the little old lady,
standing' beneath a bower of orchids. She was clad in a robe of
royal purple trimmed with silver, and girdled about with an
armour-plate of gems. If one might credit the papers, the diamonds
that were worn at one of these balls were valued at twenty million
dollars.

The stranger was quite overwhelmed by all the splendour. There was a
cotillion danced by two hundred gorgeously clad women and their
partners--a scene so gay that one could only think of it as
happening in a fairy legend, or some old romance of knighthood. Four
sets of favours were given during this function, and jewels and
objects of art were showered forth as if from a magician's wand.
Mrs. Devon herself soon disappeared, but the riot of music and
merry-making went on until near morning, and during all this time
the halls and rooms of the great mansion were so crowded that one
could scarcely move about.

Then one went home, and realized that all this splendour, and the
human effort which it represented, had been for nothing but a
memory! Nor would he get the full meaning of it if he failed to
realize that it was simply one of thousands--a pattern which every
one there would strive to follow in some function of his own. It was
a signal bell, which told the world that the "season" was open. It
loosed the floodgates of extravagance, and the torrent of
dissipation poured forth. From then on there would be a continuous
round of gaieties; one might have three banquets every single
night--for a dinner and two suppers was now the custom, at
entertainments! And filling the rest of one's day were receptions
and teas and musicales--a person might take his choice among a score
of opportunities, and never leave the circle he met at Mrs. Devon's.
Nor was this counting the tens of thousands of aspirants and
imitators all over the city; nor in a host of other cities, each
with thousands of women who had nothing to do save to ape the ways
of the Metropolis. The mind could not realize the volume of this
deluge of destruction--it was a thing which stunned the senses, and
thundered in one's ears like Niagara.

The meaning of it all did not stop with the people who poured it
forth; its effects were to be traced through the whole country.
There were hordes of tradesmen and manufacturers who supplied what
Society bought, and whose study it was to induce people to buy as
much as possible. And so they devised what were called
"fashions"--little eccentricities of cut and material, which made
everything go out of date quickly. There had once been two seasons,
but now there were four; and through window displays and millions of
advertisements the public was lured into the trap. The "yellow"
journals would give whole pages to describing "What the 400 are
wearing"; there were magazines with many millions of readers, which
existed for nothing save to propagate these ideas. And everywhere,
in all classes of Society, men and women were starving their minds
and hearts, and straining their energies to follow this phantom of
fashion; the masses were kept poor because of it, and the youth and
hope of the world was betrayed by it. In country villages poor
farmers' wives were trimming their bonnets over to be "stylish"; and
servant-girls in the cities were wearing imitation sealskins, and
shop-clerks and sempstresses selling themselves into brothels for
the sake of ribbons and gilt jewellery.

It was the instinct of decoration, perverted by the money-lust. In
the Metropolis the sole test of excellence was money, and the
possession of money was the proof of power; and every natural desire
of men and women had been tainted by this influence. The love of
beauty, the impulse to hospitality, the joys of music and dancing
and love--all these things had become simply means to the
demonstration of money-power! The men were busy making more money--
but their idle women had nothing in life save this mad race in
display. So it had come about that the woman who could consume
wealth most conspicuously--who was the most effective instrument for
the destroying of the labour and the lives of other people--this was
the woman who was most applauded and most noticed.

The most appalling fact about Society was this utter blind
materialism. Such expectations as Montague had brought with him had
been derived from the literature of Europe; in a grand monde such as
this, he expected to meet diplomats and statesmen, scientists and
explorers, philosophers and poets and painters. But one never heard
anything about such people in Society. It was a mark of eccentricity
to be interested in intellectual affairs, and one might go about for
weeks and not meet a person with an idea. When these people read, it
was a sugar-candy novel, and when they went to the play, it was a
musical comedy. The one single intellectual product which it could
point to as its own, was a rancid scandal-sheet, used mainly as a
moans of blackmail. Now and then some aspiring young matron of the
"elite" would try to set up a salon after the fashion of the
continent, and would gather a few feeble wits about her for a time.
But for the most part the intellectual workers of the city held
themselves severely aloof; and Society was loft a little clique of
people whose fortunes had become historic in a decade or two, and
who got together in each other's palaces and gorged themselves, and
gambled and gossiped about each other, and wove about their
personalities a veil of awful and exclusive majesty.

Montague found himself thinking that perhaps it was not they who
were to blame. It was not they who had set up wealth as the end and
goal of things--it was the whole community, of which they were a
part. It was not their fault that they had been left with power and
nothing to use it for; it was not their fault that their sons and
daughters found themselves stranded in the world, deprived of all
necessity, and of the possibility of doing anything useful.

The most pitiful aspect of the whole thing to Montague was this
"second generation" who were coming upon the scene, with their lives
all poisoned in advance. No wrong which they could do to the world
would ever equal the wrong which the world had done them, in
permitting them to have money which they had not earned. They were
cut off for ever from reality, and from the possibility of
understanding life; they had big, healthy bodies, and they craved
experience--and they had absolutely nothing to do. That was the real
meaning of all this orgy of dissipation--this "social whirl" as it
was called; it was the frantic chase of some new thrill, some
excitement that would stir the senses of people who had nothing in
the world to interest them. That was why they were building palaces,
and flinging largesses of banquets and balls, and tearing about the
country in automobiles, and travelling over the earth in steam
yachts and private trains.

--And first and last, the lesson of their efforts was, that the
chase was futile; the jaded nerves would not thrill. The most
conspicuous fact about Society was its unutterable and agonizing
boredom; of its great solemn functions the shop-girl would read with
greedy envy, but the women who attended them would be half asleep
behind their jewelled fans. It was typified to Montague by Mrs.
Billy Alderi's yachting party on the Nile; yawning in the face of
the Sphinx, and playing bridge beneath the shadow of the pyramids--
and counting the crocodiles and proposing to jump in by way of
"changing the pain"!

People attended these ceaseless rounds of entertainments, simply
because they dreaded to be left alone. They wandered from place to
place, following like a herd of sheep whatever leader would
inaugurate a new diversion. One could have filled a volume with the
list of their "fads." There were new ones every week--if Society did
not invent them, the yellow journals invented them. There was a
woman who had her teeth filled with diamonds; and another who was
driving a pair of zebras. One heard of monkey dinners and pyjama
dinners at Newport, of horseback dinners and vegetable dances in New
York. One heard of fashion-albums and autograph-fans and talking
crows and rare orchids and reindeer meat; of bracelets for men and
ankle rings for women; of "vanity-boxes" at ten and twenty thousand
dollars each; of weird and repulsive pets, chameleons and lizards
and king-snakes--there was one young woman who wore a cat-snake as a
necklace. One would take to slumming and another to sniffing brandy
through the nose; one had a table-cover made of woven roses, and
another was wearing perfumed flannel at sixteen dollars a yard; one
had inaugurated ice-skating in August, and another had started a
class for the study of Plato. Some were giving tennis tournaments in
bathing-suits, and playing leap-frog after dinner; others had got
dispensations from the Pope, so that they might have private chapels
and confessors; and yet others were giving "progressive dinners,"
moving from one restaurant to another--a cocktail and blue-points at
Sherry's, a soup and Madeira at Delmonico's, some terrapin with
amontillado at the Waldorf--and so on.

One of the consequences of the furious pace was that people's health
broke down very quickly; and there were all sorts of bizarre ways of
restoring it. One person would be eating nothing but spinach, and
another would be living on grass. One would chew a mouthful of soup
thirty-two times; another would eat every two hours, and another
only once a week. Some went out in the early morning and walked
bare-footed in the grass, and others went hopping about the floor on
their hands and knees to take off fat. There were "rest cures" and
"water cures," "new thought" and "metaphysical healing" and
"Christian Science"; there was an automatic horse, which one might
ride indoors, with a register showing the distance travelled.
Montague met one man who had an electric machine, which cost thirty
thousand dollars, and which took hold of his arms and feet and
exercised him while he waited. Ho met a woman who told him she was
riding an electric camel!

Everywhere one went there were new people, spending their money in
new and incredible ways. Here was a man who had bought a chapel and
turned it into a theatre, and hired professional actors, and
persuaded his friends to come and see him act Shakespeare. Hero was
a woman who costumed herself after figures in famous paintings, with
arrangements of roses and cherry leaves, and wreaths of ivy and
laurel--and with costumes for her pet dogs to match! Hero was a man
who paid six dollars a day for a carnation four inches across; and a
girl who wore a hat trimmed with fresh morning-glories, and a ball
costume with swarms of real butterflies tied with silk threads; and
another with a hat made of woven silver, with ostrich plumes forty
inches long made entirely of silvei films. Here was a man who hired
a military company to drill all day long to prepare a floor for
dancing; and another who put up a building at a cost of thirty
thousand dollars to give a debutante dance for his daughter, and
then had it torn down the day aftor. Here was a man who bred
rattlesnakes and turned them loose by thousands, and had driven
everybody away from the North Carolina estate of one of the
Wallings. Here was a man who was building himself a yacht with a
model dairy and bakery on board, and a French laundry and a brass
band. Here was a million-dollar racing-yacht with auto-boats on it
and a platoon of marksmen, and some Chinese laundrymen, and two
physicians for its half-insane occupant. Here was a man who had
bought a Rhine castle for three-quarters of a million, and spent as
much in restoring it, and filled it with servants dressed in
fourteenth-century costumes. Here was a five-million-dollar art
collection hidden away where nobody ever saw it!

One saw the meaning of this madness most clearly in the young men of
Society. Some were killing themselves and other people in automobile
races at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Some went in for
auto-boats, mere shells of things, shaped like a knife-blade, that
tore through the water at forty miles an hour. Some would hire
professional pugilists to knock them out; others would get up
dog-fights and bear-fights, and boxing matches with kangaroos.
Montague was taken to the home of one young man who had given his
life to hunting wild gajne in every corner of the globe, and would
travel round the world for a new species to add to his museum of
trophies. He had heard that Baron Rothschild had offered a thousand
pounds for a "bongo," a huge grass-eating animal, which no white man
had ever seen; and he had taken a year's trip into the interior,
with a train of a hundred and thtiry natives, and had brought out
the heads of forty different species, including a bongo--which the
Baron did not get! He met another who had helped to organize a
balloon club, and two twenty-four-hour trips in the clouds. (This,
by the way, was the latest sport--at Tuxedo they had races between
balloons and automobiles; and Montague met one young lady who
boasted that she had been up five times.) There was another young
millionaire who sat and patiently taught Sunday School, in the
presence of a host of reporters; there was another who set up a
chain of newspapers all over the country and made war upon his
class. There were others who went in for settlement work and Russian
revolutionists--there were even some who called themselves
Socialists! Montague thought that this was the strangest fad of all;
and when he met one of these young men at an afternoon tea, he gazed
at him with wonder and perplexity--thinking of the man he had heard
ranting on the street-corner.

This was the "second generation." Appalling as it was to think of,
there was a third growing up, and getting ready to take the stage.
And with wealth accumulating faster than ever, who could guess what
they might do? There were still in Society a few men and women who
had earned their money, and had some idea of the toil and suffering
that it stood for; but when the third generation had taken
possession, these would all be dead or forgotten, and there would no
longer be any link to connect them with reality!

In the light of this thought one was moved to watch the children of
the rich. Some of these had inherited scores of millions of dollars
while they were still in the cradle; now and then one of them would
be presented with a million-dollar house for a birthday gift. When
such a baby was born, the newspapers would give pages to describing
its layette, with baby dresses at a hundred dollars each, and lace
handkerchiefs at five dollars, and dressing-sets with tiny gold
brushes and powder-boxes; one might see a picture of the precious
object in a "Moses basket," covered with rare and wonderful
Valenciennes lace.