The Salamander Part 5

CHAPTER II

At this time, it happened that the highest democratic circles of New York were thrown into a turmoil of intrigue and social carnage by the visit of representatives of one of the royal houses of Europe, traveling under the t.i.tle of the Comte and Comtesse de Joncy. A banquet had been respectfully tendered these rare manifestations of the principle of divine right. The list of guests, directed by the autocratic hand of Mrs. Albert Edward Sa.s.soon, tore New York society to shreds, and reconst.i.tuted that social map which had been so opportunely established by the visit of the lamented Grand Duke and Royal Imperial Highness Alexis. Twenty-five young gentlemen of irreproachable standing had flung themselves enthusiastically at the distinguished honor of offering soup to such exalted personages, and the press of New York scrupulously published the list of honorary waiters high among the important details of the probable cost per plate of this extraordinary banquet.

Now, the Comte de Joncy, being profoundly bored by such amateur exhibitions, had remarked to Sa.s.soon that, in his quality of traveler and student of important social manifestations, what had impressed him most was the superior equipment, physically and mentally, of the American chorus girl.

It was a remark that Sa.s.soon was eminently fitted to comprehend--having, indeed, received the same confidential observation from the Comte de Joncy's last royal predecessor. The present luncheon was the prompt response, and to insure the necessary freedom from publicity, Harrigan Blood, editor of the _New York Free Press_, was invited.

They waited in the brilliant Louis XVI salon of that private suite which Tenafly reserved for his choicest patrons, patiently prepared for that extra half-hour of delay which the ladies of the chorus would be sure to take in their desire to show themselves ladies of the highest fashion.

The curtains were open on the cozy dining-room, on the spectacle of shining linen, the spark of silver and the gay color of fragrant bouquets. Two or three waiters were giving the last touches under the personal supervision of Tenafly himself, who accorded this mark of respect only to the master who had raised him from head waiter in a popular roadside inn to the management of a restaurant capitalized in millions.

There were six: Sa.s.soon, slight, waxen, bored, with a wandering, fatigued glance, oriental in the length of his head and the deep setting of the eyes; the Comte de Joncy, short, round-bellied, hair transparent and polished, parted from the forehead to the neck, with nothing of dignity except in his gesture and the agreeable modulation of his voice; Judge Ma.s.singale of the magistrates court, urbane, slightly stooped in shoulders, high in forehead, set in glance, an onlooker keenly observant, and observing with a relish that showed in the tolerant humor of the thin ever-smiling lips; Tom Busby, leader of cotillions and social prescriber to a bored and desperate world, active as a young girl, bald at thirty, but with a radiating charm, disliking no one, never failing in zest, animating the surface of gaiety, blind to ugliness below, well born and indispensable; Garret Lindaberry, known better as "Garry" Lindaberry, not yet thirty, framed like a frontiersman, with a head molded for a statesman, endowed with every mental energy except necessity, burning up his superb vitality in insignificant supremacies, a magnificent man-of-war sailing without a rudder, supremely elegant; never, in the wildest orgies, relaxing the control of absolute courtesy; finally, Harrigan Blood, interloper, last to arrive, abrupt and on the rush, in gray cheviot, which he had a.s.sumed as a flaunting of his independence before those whose motive for inviting him he perfectly understood. Neck and shoulders ma.s.sive, head capacious and already beginning to show the stealing in of the gray, jaw strong and undershot like a bulldog's, cropped mustache, forehead seamed with wrinkles, incapable of silence or attention except when in the sudden contemplative pursuit of an idea, disdaining men, and women more than men on account of the distraction they flung him into, pa.s.sionately devoted to ideas, he bided his time, knowing no morality but achievement.

The group formed an interesting commentary on American society of the day, which parallels that of modern France, with its Bourbon, its Napoleonic and its Orleanist strata of n.o.bility. Sa.s.soon and Ma.s.singale were of the old legitimists, offshoots of families that had never relaxed their supremacy from colonial days; Lindaberry and Busby were inheritors in the third generation of that first period of industrial adventure, the period of the gold-fields of 1845, while Harrigan Blood was of the present era of volcanic opportunity, that creates in a day its marshals of the Grand Army of Industry, enn.o.bles its soldiers of yesterday, and forces the portals of established sets with the golden knocking of new giants, who cast on the steps the soiled garments of the factory, the mining camp and the construction gang.

Past and present have given the American two distinct types. The characteristics of the first are aristocratic, the thinly elongated head, the curved skull balancing on a slender neck, nose and forehead advancing, the jaw less and less accentuated. Of the second, the type of the roughly arriving adventurer, Harrigan Blood was the ideal. His was the solid, crust-breaking, boulder type of head, embedded on shoulders capable of propelling it upward through the mult.i.tude, the democrat who places his chair roughly in the overcrowded front rank, whose wife and daughters will crown, by way of Europe, the foundation which he flings down.

"_Mon cher_ Sa.s.soon," said the Comte de Joncy, studying Blood,--who, in another group, was discussing the coming political campaign with Ma.s.singale,--"I'll give you a bit of advice. The animal is dangerous! I know the kind!"

"Words--words!" said Sa.s.soon, his wandering eye flitting a moment to the group. "We manage him very well."

"If you could dangle the prospect of a t.i.tle before his eyes," said the count, with a sardonic smile. "But you--what have you to offer him?"

"Money!" said Sa.s.soon indifferently. "We make him a partner in our operations. He won't attack us!"

"He will use you!" said De Joncy shrewdly. "That type doesn't love money! When he gets as much as he wants, beware! Do you receive him?"

"Oh, we invite him to half a dozen of these affairs," said Sa.s.soon, without looking at his companion and speaking as if his mind were elsewhere. "That keeps him to generalizations!"

This word, which was afterward repeated, and reaching the ears of Harrigan Blood, made of him an overt enemy, made the Comte de Joncy smile.

"I see you, too, have your diplomacy," he said, studying Sa.s.soon with more interest.

"Yes. Generalizations are blank cartridges: they can be aimed at any one," Sa.s.soon said, without animation. He ran a thin forefinger over the scarce mustache that mounted in a W from the full upper lip. Then, raising his voice a little, he called Busby:

"I say, Buzzy, hurry things up a bit!"

Busby, like Ganymede at a frown from Jove, departed lightly in the direction of the ladies' dressing-room.

"It's Buzzy, my darlings," he said, sticking in his beaky nose and wide grinning mouth. "You've prinked enough; I'm coming in!"

He was immediately surrounded and a.s.sailed with exclamations:

"Oh, Buzzy! why didn't you tell us!"

"A Royal Highness!"

"Mean thing!--not to warn us!"

"What d'ye call His Nibs?"

"We're tickled to death!"

"Don't suffocate me, sweethearts," said Busby, defending himself. "I didn't tell you for a d.a.m.n good reason. No press-agent stunts before or after. Understand? Besides, the papers are bottled up--democratic respect for His Highness."

"I've a mind to have appendicitis," said one in a whisper to a companion. "Gee! What a chance!"

"If you do, Consuelo, dear," said Busby urbanely, "we'll ship you down in a service elevator, and see you get the operation, too. Now, no nonsense, girls. You know what that means."

"What we've got to keep it out of the poipers? What, no publicity? Gee!"

"None, now or after," said Busby firmly.

All at once he looked up, astonished, perceiving Dore, who floated in at this moment like a golden bird.

"Gwendolyn had the sneezes," said Adele Vickers hastily. "This is her sister."

"What's her name?" said Busby suspiciously, while the chorus girls, with their mountainous hats and sweeping feathers, their overloaded bodices and jeweled necks, studied with some concern the simple daring of this new arrival, uncertain and apprehensive.

"Miss Baxter," said Miss Vickers in a low voice.

"She's not a reporter?" said Busby, hesitating.

"Honest to G.o.d, Buzzy," said Adele Vickers vehemently. "She's on the stage, the legitimate--Dore Baxter, a friend of mine!"

"I know her!" said Busby, suddenly enlightened by the full name, and going to her, he said: "Met you at a party of Bruce Gunther's, I believe, Miss Baxter."

Dore, who thus found herself, to her vexation, sailing under her own colors, said, with a pleading look:

"Don't give me away, will you? It's just a lark, and," she added lower, "don't call me Miss Baxter!"

"A stage name, eh?"

"Splendid one--Trixie Tennyson. Doesn't that sound like a head-liner?"

she added confidentially, in the low tone in which the conversation had been conducted.

Busby repeated the name, chuckling to himself, yielding to his sense of humor. "All right! Now, girls, come on!"

"But what shall we call him?"

"Call him anything you like ... after the soup!" said Busby, laughing.

"Remember! he's here to be amused!... Have any of you girls changed your names since I saw you last?... No?... Then I know them!..." He told them off, counting with his fingers: "Adele Vickers, Georgie Gwynne--it used to be Bronson last year--"

"It never was!" exclaimed a pet.i.te Irish brunette, with a saucy smile and a roguish eye: "Baron--"

"I'll give you a better one: Georgie Washington!" continued Busby. "Why not? Fine!... A press-agent would charge for that!... I see an inch of nose, a gray eye and a brown cheek under an avalanche of hat--must be Viola Pax!"