The Metropolis Part 20

Again there was a pause; then suddenly Mrs. Winnie said: "Do you know, you feel differently about money from the way we do in New York. Do you realize it?"

"I'm not sure," said he. "How do you mean?"

"You look at it in an old-fashioned sort of way--a person has to earn it--it's a sign of something he's done. It came to me just now, all in a flash--we don't feel that way about money. We haven't any of us earned ours; we've just got it. And it never occurs to us to expect other people to earn it--all we want to know is if they have it."

Montague did not tell his companion how very profound a remark he considered that; he was afraid it would not be delicate to agree with her. He had heard a story of a negro occupant of the "mourners' bench,"

who was voluble in confession of his sins, but took exception to the fervour with which the congregation said "Amen!"

"The Evanses used to be a lot funnier than they are now," continued Mrs. Winnie, after a while. "When they came here last year, they were really frightful. They had an English chap for social secretary--a younger son of some broken-down old family. My brother knew a man who had been one of their intimates in the West, and he said it was perfectly excruciating--this fellow used to sit at the table and give orders to the whole crowd: 'Your ice-cream fork should be at your right hand, Miss Mary.--One never asks for more soup, Master Robert.--And Miss Anna, always move your soup-spoon from you--that's better!'"

"I fancy I shall feel sorry for them," said Montague.

"Oh, you needn't," said the other, promptly. "They'll get what they want."

"Do you think so?"

"Why, certainly they will. They've got the money; and they've been abroad--they're learning the game. And they'll keep at it until they succeed--what else is there for them to do? And then my husband says that old Evans is making himself a power here in the East; so that pretty soon they won't dare offend him."

"Does that count?" asked the man.

"Well, I guess it counts!" laughed Mrs. Winnie. "It has of late." And she went on to tell him of the Society leader who had dared to offend the daughters of a great magnate, and how the magnate had retaliated by turning the woman's husband out of his high office. That was often the way in the business world; the struggles were supposed to be affairs of men, but oftener than not the moving power was a woman's intrigue. You would see a great upheaval in Wall Street, and it would be two of the big men quarrelling over a mistress; you would see some man rush suddenly into a high office--and that would be because his wife had sold herself to advance him.

Mrs. Winnie took him up town in her auto, and he dressed for dinner; and then came Oliver, and his brother asked, "Are you trying to put the Evanses into Society?"

"Who's been telling you about them?" asked the other.

"Mrs. Winnie," said Montague.

"What did she tell you?"

Montague went over her recital, which his brother apparently found satisfactory. "It's not as serious as that," he said, answering the earlier question. "I help them a little now and then."

"What do you do?"

"Oh, advise them, mostly--tell them where to go and what to wear. When they first came to New York, they were dressed like paraquets, you know. And"--here Oliver broke into a laugh--"I refrain from making jokes about them. And when I hear other people abusing them, I point out that they are sure to land in the end, and will be dangerous enemies. I've got one or two wedges started for them."

"And do they pay you for doing it?"

"You'd call it paying me, I suppose," replied the other. "The old man carries a few shares of stock for me now and then."

"Carries a few shares?" echoed Montague, and Oliver explained the procedure. This was one of the customs which had grown up in a community where people did not have to earn their money. The recipient of the favour put up nothing and took no risks; but the other person was supposed to buy some stock for him, and then, when the stock went up, he would send a cheque for the "profits." Many a man who would have resented a direct offer of money, would a.s.sent pleasantly when a powerful friend offered to "carry a hundred shares for him." This was the way one offered a tip in the big world; it was useful in the case of newspaper men, whose good opinion of a stock was desired, or of politicians and legislators, whose votes might help its fortunes. When one expected to get into Society, one must be prepared to strew such tips about him.

"Of course," added Oliver, "what the family would really like me to do is to get the Robbie Wallings to take them up. I suppose I could get round half a million of them if I could manage that."

To all of which Montague replied, "I see."

A great light had dawned upon him. So that was the way it was managed!

That was why one paid thirty thousand a year for one's apartments, and thirty thousand more for a girl's clothes! No wonder it was better to spend Christmas week at the Eldridge Devons than to labour at one's law books!

"One more question," Montague went on. "Why are you introducing me to them?"

"Well," his brother answered, "it won't hurt you; you'll find it amusing. You see, they'd heard I had a brother; and they asked me to bring you. I couldn't keep you hidden for ever, could I?"

All this was while they were driving up town. The Evanses' place was on Riverside Drive; and when Montague got out of the cab and saw it looming up in the semi-darkness, he emitted an exclamation of wonder.

It was as big as a jail!

"Oh, yes, they've got room enough," said Oliver, with a laugh. "I put this deal through for them--it's the old Lamson palace, you know."

They had the room; and likewise they had all the trappings of sn.o.bbery--Montague took that fact in at a glance. There were knee-breeches and scarlet facings and gold braid--marble balconies and fireplaces and fountains--French masters and real Flemish tapestry. The staircase of their palace was a winding one, and there was a white velvet carpet which had been specially woven for it, and had to be changed frequently; at the top of it was a white cashmere rug which had a pedigree of six centuries--and so on.

And then came the family: this tall, raw-boned, gigantic man, with weather-tanned face and straggling grey moustache--this was Jack Evans; and Mrs. Evans, short and pudgy, but with a kindly face, and not too many diamonds; and the Misses Evans,--stately and slender and perfectly arrayed. "Why, they're all right!" was the thought that came to Montague.

They were all right until they opened their mouths. When they spoke, you discovered that Evans was a miner, and that his wife had been cook on a ranch; also that Anne and Mary had harsh voices, and that they never by any chance said or did anything natural.

They were escorted into the stately dining-room--Henri II., with a historic mantel taken from the palace of Fontainebleau, and four great allegorical paintings of Morning, Evening, Noon, and Midnight upon the walls. There were no other guests--the table, set for six, seemed like a toy in the vast apartment. And in a sudden flash--with a start of almost terror--Montague realized what it must mean not to be in Society. To have all this splendour, and n.o.body to share it! To have Henri II. dining-rooms and Louis XVI. parlours and Louis XIV.

libraries--and see them all empty! To have no one to drive with or talk with, no one to visit or play cards with--to go to the theatre and the opera and have no one to speak to! Worse than that, to be stared at and smiled at! To live in this huge palace, and know that all the horde of servants, underneath their cringing deference, were sneering at you! To face that--to live in the presence of it day after day! And then, outside of your home, the ever widening circles of ridicule and contempt--Society, with all its hangers-on and parasites, its imitators and admirers!

And some one had defied all that--some one had taken up the sword and gone forth to beat down that opposition! Montague looked at this little family of four, and wondered which of them was the driving force in this most desperate emprise!

He arrived at it by a process of elimination. It could not be Evans himself. One saw that the old man was quite hopeless socially; nothing could change his big hairy hands or his lean scrawny neck, or his irresistible impulse to slide down in his chair and cross his long legs in front of him. The face and the talk of Jack Evans brought irresistibly to mind the mountain trail and the prospector's pack-mule, the smoke of camp-fires and the odour of bacon and beans. Seventeen long years the man had tramped in deserts and mountain wildernesses, and Nature had graven her impress deep into his body and soul.

He was very shy at this dinner; but Montague came to know him well in the course of time. And after he had come to realize that Montague was not one of the grafters, he opened up his heart. Evans had held on to his mine when he had found it, and he had downed the rivals who had tried to take it away from him, and he had bought the railroads who had tried to crush him--and now he had come to Wall Street to fight the men who had tried to ruin his railroads. But through it all, he had kept the heart of a woman, and the sight of real distress was unbearable to him. He was the sort of man to keep a roll of ten-thousand-dollar bills in his pistol pocket, and to give one away if he thought he could do it without offence. And, on the other hand, men told how once when he had seen a porter insult a woman pa.s.senger on his line, he jumped up and pulled the bell-cord, and had the man put out on the roadside at midnight, thirty miles from the nearest town!

No, it was the women folks, he said to Montague, with his grim laugh.

It didn't trouble him at all to be called a "noovoo rich"; and when he felt like dancing a shakedown, he could take a run out to G.o.d's country. But the women folks had got the bee in their bonnet. The old man added sadly that one of the disadvantages of striking it rich was that it left the women folks with nothing to do.

Nor was it Mrs. Evans, either. "Sarey," as she was called by the head of the house, sat next to Montague at dinner; and he discovered that with the very least encouragement, the good lady was willing to become homelike and comfortable. Montague gave the occasion, because he was a stranger, and volunteered the opinion that New York was a shamelessly extravagant place, and hard to get along in; and Mrs. Evans took up the subject and revealed herself as a good-natured and kindly personage, who had wistful yearnings for mush and mola.s.ses, and flap-jacks, and bread fried in bacon-grease, and similar sensible things, while her chef was compelling her to eat _pate de foie gras_ in aspic, and milk-fed guinea-chicks, and _biscuits glacees Tortoni_. Of course she did not say that at dinner,--she made a game effort to play her part,--with the result of at least one diverting experience for Montague.

Mrs. Evans was telling him what a dreadful place she considered the city for young men; and how she feared to bring her boy here. "The men here have no morals at all," said she, and added earnestly, "I've come to the conclusion that Eastern men are naturally amphibious!"

Then, as Montague knitted his brows and looked perplexed, she added, "Don't you think so?" And he replied, with as little delay as possible, that he had never really thought of it before.

It was not until a couple of hours later that the light dawned upon him, in the course of a conversation with Miss Anne. "We met Lady Stonebridge at luncheon to-day," said that young person. "Do you know her?"

"No," said Montague, who had never heard of her.

"I think those aristocratic English women use the most abominable slang," continued Anne. "Have you noticed it?"

"Yes, I have," he said.

"And so utterly cynical! Do you know, Lady Stonebridge quite shocked mother--she told her she didn't believe in marriage at all, and that she thought all men were naturally polygamous!"

Later on, Montague came to know "Mrs. Sarey"; and one afternoon, sitting in her Pet.i.t Trianon drawing-room, he asked her abruptly, "Why in the world do you want to get into Society?" And the poor lady caught her breath, and tried to be indignant; and then, seeing that he was in earnest, and that she was cornered, broke down and confessed. "It isn't me," she said, "it's the gals." (For along with the surrender went a reversion to natural speech.) "It's Mary, and more particularly Anne."

They talked it over confidentially--which was a great relief to Mrs.

Sarey's soul, for she was cruelly lonely. So far as she was concerned, it was not because she wanted Society, but because Society didn't want her. She flashed up in sudden anger, and clenched her fists, declaring that Jack Evans was as good a man as walked the streets of New York--and they would acknowledge it before he got through with them, too! After that she intended to settle down at home and be comfortable, and mend her husband's socks.

She went on to tell him what a hard road was the path of glory. There were hundreds of people ready to know them--but oh, such a riffraff!

They might fill up their home with the hangers-on and the yellow, but no, they could wait. They had learned a lot since they set out. One very aristocratic lady had invited them to dinner, and their hopes had been high--but alas, while they were sitting by the fireplace, some one admired a thirty-thousand-dollar emerald ring which Mrs. Evans had on her finger, and she had taken it off and pa.s.sed it about among the company, and somewhere it had vanished completely! And another person had invited Mary to a bridge-party, and though she had played hardly at all, her hostess had quietly informed her that she had lost a thousand dollars. And the great Lady Stonebridge had actually sent for her and told her that she could introduce her in some of the very best circles, if only she was willing to lose always! Mrs. Evans had possessed a very homely Irish name before she was married; and Lady Stonebridge had got five thousand dollars from her to use some great influence she possessed in the Royal College of Heralds, and prove that she was descended directly from the n.o.ble old family of Magennis, who had been the lords of Iveagh, way back in the fourteenth century. And now Oliver had told them that this imposing charter would not help them in the least!