The Spenders Part 16

"Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly."

"He will go to the house of mourning."

"What's the latest?"

"Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was striving so bravely and n.o.bly to bear up. No one knows what that man suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about everything. Just before I left, he was saying that, when one considers the number of American homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it."

"Nothing has happened?"

"Well, there'll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but a very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the cruellest blows of his life. I fancy he didn't sleep at all last night, and he looked thoroughly bowled over this morning."

"But what is it?"

"Well--oh, it's awful!--first of all there were six dozen of early-bottled, 1875 Chateau Lafitte--that was the bitterest--but he had to see the rest go, too--Chateau Margeaux of '80--some terribly ancient port and Madeira--the dryest kind of sherry--a lot of fine, full clarets of '77 and '78--oh, you can't know how agonising it was to him--I've heard them so often I know them all myself."

"But what on earth about them?"

"Nothing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar--auctioned off, you know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it.

Sometimes he sounded like a French lesson--and he's been under a fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn't bid in a single drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that Chateau Lafitte go--and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar _nouveaux riches_ when he came home--he talked quite like an anarchist.

But by to-night he'll be blaming me for his misfortunes. That's why I chose to stay here with you."

"Poor Horace. Whatever are you going to do?"

"Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could do anything but one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West."

"You called him your 'athletic Bayard' once."

"The other's more to the point at present. And what else can I do? Oh, if some one would just be brave enough to live the raw, quivering life with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go by the board--but I am so alone and so helpless and no man is equal to it, nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a 'half portion' of life."

"Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those flying-machines that are constantly being tested by the credulous inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things come tumbling."

"Very well; then I shall be wise--I suppose I shall be--and I'll do it quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at once, and be accepted--so that I shall be able to look my dear old father in the face again--and then, after I'm married--well, don't blame me for anything that happens."

"I'm sure you'll be happy with him--it's only your silly notions. He's in love with you."

"That makes me hesitate. He really is a man--I like him--see this letter--a long review from the Arcady _Lyre_ of the 'poem' he wrote, a poem consisting of 'Avice Milbrey.' The reviewer has been quite enthusiastic over it, too,--written from some awful place in Montana."

"What more could you ask? He'll be kind."

"You don't understand, Mutterchen. He seems too decent to marry that way--and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me out--oh, think of what marriage _is_--he'd _have_ to find it out--I couldn't _act_ long--doubtless he wouldn't even be kind to me then."

"You are morbid, child."

"But I will do it; I shall; I will be a credit to my training--and I shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn--well, a great deal that he doesn't know about women."

She stared into the fire and added, after a moment's silence:

"Oh, if a man only _could_ live up to the verses he cuts out of magazines!"

CHAPTER XVI.

With the Barbaric Hosts

History repeats itself so cleverly, with a variance of stage-settings and accessories so cunning, that the repet.i.tion seldom bores, and is, indeed, frequently undetected. Thus, the descent of the Barbarians upon a decadent people is a little _tour de force_ that has been performed again and again since the oldest day. But because the a.s.sault nowadays is made not with force of arms we are p.r.o.ne to believe it is no longer made at all;--as if human ways had changed a bit since those ugly, hairy tribes from the Northern forests descended upon the Roman empire.

And yet the mere difference that the a.s.sault is now made with force of money in no way alters the process nor does it permit the result to vary. On the surface all is cordiality and peaceful negotiation.

Beneath is the same immemorial strife, the life-and-death struggle,--pitiless, inexorable.

What would have been a hostile bivouac within the city's gates, but for the matter of a few centuries, is now, to select an example which remotely concerns us, a n.o.ble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the lordly Hudson and the majestic Palisades that form its farther wall.

And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes, fighting for captive vestals, and bickering in uncouth tongues over the golden spoils, what have we now to make the parallel convince? Why, the same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined, all-conquering, animal force; a red-faced, big-handed lot, imbued with hearty good nature and an easy tolerance for the ways of those upon whom they have descended.

Here are chiefs of renown from the farthest fastnesses; they and their curious households: the ironmonger from Pittsburg, the gold-miner from Dawson, the copper chief from b.u.t.te, the silver chief from Denver, the cattle chief from Oklahoma, lord of three hundred thousand good acres and thirty thousand cattle, the lumber prince from Michigan, the founder of a later dynasty in oil, from Texas. And, for the unaesthetic but effective Attila, an able fashioner of pork products from Chicago.

Here they make festival, carelessly, unafraid, unmolested. For, in the lapse of time, the older peoples have learned not only the folly of resisting inevitables, but that the huge and hairy invaders may be treated and bartered with not unprofitably. Doubtless it often results from this amity that the patrician strain is corrupted by the alien admixture,--but business has been business since as many as two persons met on the face of the new earth.

For example, this particular shelter is builded upon land which one of the patrician families had held for a century solely because it could not be disposed of. Yet the tribesmen came, clamouring for palaces, and now this same land, with some adjoining areas of trifling extent, produces an income that will suffice to maintain that family almost in its ancient and befitting estate.

In this mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of ornamentation, the building is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blois, those splendid palaces of Francis I. Inside are all the line and colour and device of elegant opulence, modern to the last note.

To this palace of an October evening comes the tribe of Bines, and many another such, for a triumphal feast in the abode of Barbarian Silas Higbee. The carriages pa.s.s through a pair of lordly iron gates, swung from ma.s.sive stone pillars, under an arch of wrought iron with its antique lamp, and into the echoing courtyard flanked by trim hedges of box.

Alighting, the barbaric guests of Higbee are ushered through a marble-walled vestibule, from which a wrought-iron and bronze screen gives way to the main entrance-hall. The ceiling here reproduces that of a feudal castle in Rouen, with some trifling and effective touches of decoration in blue, scarlet, and gold. The walls are of white Caen stone, with ornate windows and balconies jutting out above. In one corner is a stately stone mantel with richly carved hood, bearing in its central panel the escutcheon of the gallant French monarch. Up a little flight of marble steps, guarded by its hand-rail of heavy metal, shod with crimson velvet, one reaches the elevator. This pretty enclosure of iron and gla.s.s, of cla.s.sic detail in the period of Henry II., of Circa.s.sian walnut trim, with crotch panels, has more the aspect of boudoir than elevator. The deep seat is of walnut, upholstered with fat cushions of crimson velvet edged in dull gold galloon. Over the seat is a mirror cut into small squares by wooden muntins. At each side are electric candles softened by red silk shades. One's last view before the door closes noiselessly is of a bay-window opposite, set with cathedral gla.s.s cas.e.m.e.nt-lights, which sheds soft colours upon the hall-bench of carven stone and upon the tessellated floor.

The door to the Higbee domain is of polished mahogany, set between lights of antique verte Italian gla.s.s, and bearing an ancient bra.s.s knocker. From the reception-room, with its walls of green empire silk, one pa.s.ses through a foyer hall, of Cordova leather hangings, to the drawing-room with its three broad windows. Opposite the entrance to this superb room is a mantel of carved Caen stone, faced with golden Pavanazza marble, with old Roman andirons of gold ending in the fleur-de-lis. The walls are hung with blue Florentine silk, embossed in silver. Beyond a bronze grill is the music-room, a library done in Austrian oak with stained burlap panelled by dull-forged nails, a conservatory, a billiard-room, a smoking-room. This latter has walls of red damask and a mantel with "_Post Tenebras Lux_" cut into one of its marble panels,--a legend at which the worthy lessee of all this splendour is wont often to glance with respectful interest.

The admirable host--if one be broad-minded--is now in the drawing-room, seconding his worthy wife and pretty daughter who welcome the dinner-guests.

For a man who has a fad for ham and doesn't care who knows it, his bearing is all we have a right to expect that it should be. Among the group of arrivals, men of his own sort, he is speaking of the ever-shifting fashion in beards, to the evangel of a Texas oil-field who flaunts to the world one of those heavy moustaches spuriously extended below the corners of the mouth by means of the chin-growth of hair. Another, a worthy tribesman from Snohomish, Washington, wears a beard which, for a score of years, has been let to be its own true self; to express, fearlessly, its own unique capacity for variation from type. These two have rallied their host upon his modishly trimmed side-whiskers.

"You're right," says Mr. Higbee, amiably, "I ain't stuck any myself on this way of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g up a man's face, but the madam will have it this way--says it looks more refined and New Yorky. And now, do you know, ever since I've wore 'em this way--ever since I had 'em sc.r.a.ped from around under my neck here--I have to go to Florida every winter. Come January or February, I get bronchitis every blamed year!"

Two of the guests only are alien to the barbaric throng.

There is the n.o.ble Baron Ronault de Palliac, decorated, reserved, observant,--almost wistful. For the moment he is picturing dutifully the luxuries a certain marriage would enable him to procure for his n.o.ble father and his aged mother, who eagerly await the news of his quest for the golden fleece. For the baron contemplates, after the fashion of many conscientious explorers, a marriage with a native woman; though he permits himself to cherish the hope that it may not be conditioned upon his adopting the manners and customs of the particular tribe that he means to honour. Monsieur the Baron has long since been obliged to confess that a suitable _mesalliance_ is none too easy of achievement, and, in testimony of his vicissitudes, he has written for a Paris comic paper a series of grimly satiric essays upon New York society. Recently, moreover, he has been upon the verge of accepting employment in the candy factory of a bourgeois compatriot. But hope has a little revived in the n.o.ble breast since chance brought him and his t.i.tle under the scrutiny of the bewitching Miss Millicent Higbee and her appreciative mother.

And to-night there is not only the pretty Miss Higbee, but the winning Miss Bines, whose _dot_, the baron has been led to understand, would permit his beloved father unlimited piquet at his club, to say nothing of regenerating the family chateau. Yet these are hardly matters to be gossiped of. It is enough to know that the Baron Ronault de Palliac when he discovers himself at table between Miss Bines and the adorable Miss Higbee, becomes less saturnine than has for some time been his wont. He does not forget previous disappointments, but desperately snaps his swarthy jaws in commendable superiority to any adverse fate.

"_Je ne donne pas un d.a.m.n_," he says to himself, and translates, as was his practice, to better his English--"I do not present a d.a.m.n. I shall take what it is that it may be."

The n.o.ble Baron de Palliac at this feast of the tribesmen was like the captive patrician of old led in chains that galled. The other alien, Launton Oldaker, was present under terms of honourable truce, willingly and without ulterior motive saving--as he confessed to himself--a consuming desire to see "how the other half lives." He was no longer the hunted and dismayed being Percival had met in that far-off and impossible Montana; but was now untroubled, remembering, it is true, that this "slumming expedition," as he termed it, had taken him beyond the recognised bounds of his beloved New York, but serene in the consciousness that half an hour's drive would land him safely back at his club.

Oldaker observed Miss Psyche Bines approvingly.

"We are so glad to be in New York!" she had confided to him, sitting at her right.

"My dear young woman," he warned her, "you haven't reached New York yet." The talk being general and loud, he ventured further.