Her Weight in Gold and others Part 26

Corky couldn't help blushing. He begged her not to get her Van Winkles mixed, and she tapped him on the knuckles with her pearl-studded fan.

At five o'clock that morning, Corky stood before the mirror in his bed-chamber and stared very intently at his somewhat wavering features.

Notwithstanding the champagne, he recognised a very stern resolve in the reflection.

"I'm going to marry that woman," he said with grave precision.

CHAPTER II

THE GRAND d.u.c.h.eSS

He went about it deliberately. According to report, the Grand d.u.c.h.ess was worth fifteen millions. Corky was not satisfied to accept rumour as fact, so he undertook an investigation on his own account. From reliable sources, he soon learned that she possessed but ten millions, but, he argued, it was better to know it in the beginning than to wait until she died to find out that her fortune had undergone the customary shrinkage. Moreover, he ascertained that she frequented half the baths in Europe in the effort to prolong a fast declining sense of humour--on the principle, no doubt, that life is a joke and death is not. She had a family of grown children in the States, but even that did not alarm Corky. He felt sure there would be enough to go around. Of course, it wasn't the nicest thing in the world being married to a woman more than twice one's age, but if everything went as he hoped, it might not be so very long before he could begin looking about for a wife half as old as himself. One sickening fear troubled him, however. She might insist on a house at Newport and a seat in the Inner Circle. She had that look about her.

He had the shrewdness to treat her with the disdain that his social position warranted. It was part of his plan of action to make her long for the opportunity to look down upon people instead of forever staring up at them from a grovelling att.i.tude. He knew her kind as he knew the first three letters of the alphabet. On the other hand, he was politely attentive, incomparably epigrammatic, and as full of exquisite mannerisms as the famous Brummel himself. In a word, he was THE Van Winkle, and she but a pa.s.ser-by.

By day he schemed, by night he lifted orisons to the G.o.ds and dreamed of the fruits thereof. Something seemed to tell him that if he didn't get her before she was sixty-six the quest would be hopeless.

Experience had shown him that women see themselves as they really are after they are past sixty-five. Moreover, they become absolutely insane on the subject of self-preservation so far as money is concerned. They seem to feel that their rainy day is imminent, if not actually at hand.

No matter how many millions they may possess, they lurk in the shadow of the poor-house. Men at sixty-five become podagrical and sour, perhaps, but they are not as much worried by thoughts of the poorhouse as they are by visions of the play-house.

Corky was to be seen everywhere with the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. (We may as well continue to speak of her as the Grand d.u.c.h.ess since every one in Paris was calling her that, now that she had been so aptly dubbed by the clever Mr. Van Winkle.) He drove in the Bois with her, and he drove without shame or embarra.s.sment. He was the life of her big and little feasts at Pre Catalin and D'Armenonville. He sat in her box at the Opera; he translated the conspicuously unspeakable pa.s.sages in all of the lively but naive comedies; he ordered her champagnes and invented hors d'oeuvres so neoterical in character that even the Frenchmen applauded his genius. And, through all, he was managing very nicely to keep his twelve thousand snugly to himself.

There were times when he could have cursed his own father--and perhaps did--but that is not relevant to this narrative.

In proper sequence he led the Grand d.u.c.h.ess through all the reflected phases of society and came at last to the juncture where his own adroitness told him it was time to speak of the glories of Newport and the wonders of New York as seen only from the centre of the inner Circle. There was a vast difference between the Outer Rim and the Inner Circle; he did not say it in so many words, but she had no trouble in divining it for herself. She was dazzled. She was beginning to understand that a palace in Fifth Avenue was no more than a social sepulchre unless it could be filled day and night with the Kings and Queens of Gotham. She felt very small, coming out of the Middle West.

It wasn't very difficult for him to secure for her an invitation to the American Amba.s.sador's ball, or to the pacific functions ordered by the French President, but it was not so easy to bring about introductions to the New York women of fashion who happened to be in Paris from time to time during the summer. The Grand d.u.c.h.ess read the newspapers. She always knew when New York notables were in the city, and she was not slow to express a desire to meet them. He could arrange it, of course.

And then, on meeting them, she would at once insist on giving a dinner or a supper at Pre Catalin, or, on finding that they couldn't sc.r.a.pe up a spare evening,--to make it afternoon tea. Poor Corky shrivelled at such times.

"If she wasn't so d.a.m.nED girlish!" he used to say to himself.

"Tell me," she said to him late one afternoon as they were driving home through the Champs Elysees; "is it true that servants' wages are lower in New York City than any place else in the country? I've always heard so."

She was looking at people through her magnificent lorgnon, and people undeniably were looking at her. There were many wonderful women in the Bois that day, but none so worthy of a stare as she.

Corky p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. It looked like a "feeler."

"Perceptibly lower," he said.

"And food is higher, they say."

"Ah," said he, "but so are the buildings."

"How much do you think I could live on per year in New York!"

"Why do you enquire?"

"For instance," said she. It grated on his nerves when she used such expressions as "for instance."

"Well, it depends on how well you intend to live."

"I want to live as well as anybody else."

"Then I should say that you couldn't very well manage on less than ten thousand a year." He knew he was equivocating but was fearful that if he said a hundred thousand she would take alarm.

"That isn't very much," she said, with a perplexed frown. "I had an idea that if I wanted to live in style it would cost somewhere around seventy-five or a hundred thousand. I know a woman from Iowa who lives at the Ritz-Carlton and goes about some--although not in the real smart set--and she says it costs five or six thousand a month, just puttering. Maybe you've met her out in society. Her name is Bliggs."

"Bliggs? Um! Name's not familiar. Of course, you CAN spend a hundred thousand easily in New York if you get into the right set," he said.

"That's just the point," said she. "If I get into the right set. I've got ample means, Mr. Van Winkle, if--"

"They scorn money," said he flatly.

She drew in her breath quickly. "I suppose they do," she sighed.

"Sometimes I really believe it's a handicap to have a lot of money."

"I know a good many charming Western women who have married into the smart set," he said slowly.

"And did they stick?" she enquired.

"Stick?" he gasped.

"I mean, did they make good--that is, were they PERMANENTLY received?"

"Oh, yes! Some of them have become leaders. It's really only a matter of marrying the right man."

She was silent as they drove across the Place de la Concorde.

"I suppose it's almost out of the question unless one does marry into it," she said finally.

"Or UP to it," he suggested. His sordid little heart was beating rather jerkily.

"Won't you stop in and have tea with me?" she asked suddenly.

He thought rapidly. "I'm sorry. I'm having tea with some New York people at the Ritz. Awfully sorry. People I shouldn't like to offend or I'd send an excuse. You understand, I hope."

Her jaws were set. He shot a furtive glance at the thickly plastered face and inwardly pitied himself while outwardly rejoicing.

"Some of the people who entertain baboons at dinner, I suppose," she said through compressed lips.

He smiled. "And poodles," he supplemented with perfect amiability and more truth than he knew. She sniffed. "I'm afraid you don't approve of our little larks. We've got to have something new once in a while or we'd die of ennui."

"Umph!" was her simple response, but he noted the pensive, wistful look in her eyes.

She set him down at his hotel. "Can't you dine with me at half past eight? I sha'n't ask any one else. I'm terribly blue today. You WILL come and cheer me up, won't you?"

"With pleasure," he said, bowing very low over her gloved hand, which was amazingly lumpy with invisible rubies and diamonds. "So good of you."