"And what"s more," she went on, "you don"t want to be shy about taking advantage of the opportunities that come to you. You"ll find you won"t get along in New York unless you go right in and grab what you can.
People will be quick enough to take advantage of you."
"They have all been very kind to me so far," said he. "But when I get ready for business, I"ll harden my heart."
Mrs. Winnie sat lost in meditation. "I think business is dreadful," she said. "So much hard work and worry! Why can"t men learn to get along without it?"
"There are bills that have to be paid," Montague replied.
"It"s our dreadfully extravagant way of life," exclaimed the other.
"Sometimes I wish I had never had any money in my life."
"You would soon tire of it," said he. "You would miss this house."
"I should not miss it a bit," said Mrs. Winnie, promptly. "That is really the truth--I don"t care for this sort of thing at all. I"d like to live simply, and without so many cares and responsibilities. And some day I"m going to do it, too--I really am. I"m going to get myself a little farm, away off somewhere in the country. And I"m going there to live and raise chickens and vegetables, and have my own flower-gardens, that I can take care of myself. It will all be plain and simple--" and then Mrs. Winnie stopped short, exclaiming, "You are laughing at me!"
"Not at all!" said Montague. "But I couldn"t help thinking about the newspaper reporters--"
"There you are!" said she. "One can never have a beautiful dream, or try to do anything sensible--because of the newspaper reporters!"
If Montague had been meeting Mrs. Winnie Duval for the first time, he would have been impressed by her yearnings for the simple life; he would have thought it an important sign of the times. But alas, he knew by this time that his charming hostess had more flummery about her than anybody else he had encountered--and all of her own devising! Mrs.
Winnie smoked her own private brand of cigarettes, and when she offered them to you, there were the arms of the old ducal house of Montmorenci on the wrappers! And when you got a letter from Mrs. Winnie, you observed a three-cent stamp upon the envelope--for lavender was her colour, and two-cent stamps were an atrocious red! So one might feel certain that it Mrs. Winnie ever went in for chicken-raising, the chickens would be especially imported from China or Patagonia, and the chicken-coops would be precise replicas of those in the old Chateau de Montmorenci which she had visited in her automobile.
But Mrs. Winnie was beautiful, and quite entertaining to talk to, and so he was respectfully sympathetic while she told him about her pastoral intentions. And then she told him about Mrs. Caroline Smythe, who had called a meeting of her friends at one of the big hotels, and organized a society and founded the "Bide-a-Wee Home" for dest.i.tute cats. After that she switched off into psychic research--somebody had taken her to a seance, where grave college professors and ladies in spectacles sat round and waited for ghosts to materialize. It was Mrs.
Winnie"s first experience at this, and she was as excited as a child who has just found the key to the jam-closet. "I hardly knew whether to laugh or to be afraid," she said. "What would you think?"
"You may have the pleasure of giving me my first impressions of it,"
said Montague, with a laugh.
"Well," said she, "they had table-tipping--and it was the most uncanny thing to see the table go jumping about the room! And then there were raps--and one can"t imagine how strange it was to see people who really believed they were getting messages from ghosts. It positively made my flesh creep. And then this woman--Madame Somebody-or-other--went into a trance--ugh! Afterward I talked with one of the men, and he told me about how his father had appeared to him in the night and told him he had just been drowned at sea. Have you ever heard of such a thing?"
"We have such a tradition in our family," said he.
"Every family seems to have," said Mrs. Winnie. "But, dear me, it made me so uncomfortable--I lay awake all night expecting to see my own father. He had the asthma, you know; and I kept fancying I heard him breathing."
They had risen and were strolling into the conservatory; and she glanced at the man in armour. "I got to fancying that his ghost might come to see me," she said. "I don"t think I shall attend any more seances. My husband was told that I promised them some money, and he was furious--he"s afraid it"ll get into the papers." And Montague shook with inward laughter, picturing what a time the aristocratic and stately old banker must have, trying to keep his wife out of the papers!
Mrs. Winnie turned on the lights in the fountain, and sat by the edge, gazing at her fish. Montague was half expecting her to inquire whether he thought that they had ghosts; but she spared him this, going off on another line.
"I asked Dr. Parry about it," she said. "Have you met him?"
Dr. Parry was the rector of St. Cecilia"s, the fashionable Fifth Avenue church which most of Montague"s acquaintances attended. "I haven"t been in the city over Sunday yet," he answered. "But Alice has met him."
"You must go with me some time," said she. "But about the ghosts--"
"What did he say?"
"He seemed to be shy of them," laughed Mrs. Winnie. "He said it had a tendency to lead one into dangerous fields. But oh! I forgot--I asked my swami also, and it didn"t startle him. They are used to ghosts; they believe that souls keep coming back to earth, you know. I think if it was his ghost, I wouldn"t mind seeing it--for he has such beautiful eyes. He gave me a book of Hindu legends--and there was such a sweet story about a young princess who loved in vain, and died of grief; and her soul went into a tigress; and she came in the night-time where her lover lay sleeping by the firelight, and she carried him off into the ghost-world. It was a most creepy thing--I sat out here and read it, and I could imagine the terrible tigress lurking in the shadows, with its stripes shining in the firelight, and its green eyes gleaming. You know that poem--we used to read it in school--"Tiger, tiger, burning bright!""
It was not very easy for Montague to imagine a tigress in Mrs. Winnie"s conservatory; unless, indeed, one were willing to take the proposition in a metaphorical sense. There are wild creatures which sleep in the heart of man, and which growl now and then, and stir their tawny limbs, and cause one to start and turn cold. Mrs. Winnie wore a dress of filmy softness, trimmed with red flowers which paled beside her own intenser colouring. She had a perfume of her own, with a strange exotic fragrance which touched the chorus of memory as only an odour can. She leaned towards him, speaking eagerly, with her soft white arms lying upon the basin"s rim. So much loveliness could not be gazed at without pain; and a faint trembling pa.s.sed through Montague, like a breeze across a pool. Perhaps it touched Mrs. Winnie also, for she fell suddenly silent, and her gaze wandered off into the darkness. For a minute or two there was stillness, save for the pulse of the fountain, and the heaving of her bosom keeping time with it.
And then in the morning Oliver inquired, "Where were you, last night?"
And when his brother answered, "At Mrs. Winnie"s," he smiled and said, "Oh!" Then he added, gravely, "Cultivate Mrs. Winnie--you can"t do better at present."
CHAPTER XI
Montague accepted his friend"s invitation to share her pew at St.
Cecilia"s, and next Sunday morning he and Alice went, and found Mrs.
Winnie with her cousin. Poor Charlie had evidently been scrubbed and shined, both physically and morally, and got ready to appeal for "one more chance." While he shook hands with Alice, he was gazing at her with dumb and pleading eyes; he seemed to be profoundly grateful that she did not refuse to enter the pew with him.
A most interesting place was St. Cecilia"s. Church-going was another of the customs of men and women which Society had taken up, like the Opera, and made into a state function. Here was a magnificent temple, with carved marble and rare woods, and jewels gleaming decorously in a dim religious light. At the door of this edifice would halt the carriages of Society, and its wives and daughters would alight, rustling with new silk petticoats and starched and perfumed linen, each one a picture, exquisitely gowned and bonneted and gloved, and carrying a demure little prayer-book. Behind them followed the patient men, all in new frock-coats and shiny silk hats; the men of Society were always newly washed and shaved, newly groomed and gloved, but now they seemed to be more so--they were full of the atmosphere of Sunday. Alas for those unregenerate ones, the infidels and the heathen who scoff in outer darkness, and know not the delicious feeling of Sunday--the joy of being washed and starched and perfumed, and made to be clean and comfortable and good, after all the really dreadful wickedness of six days of fashionable life!--And afterward the parade upon the Avenue, with the congregations of several score additional churches, and such a show of stylish costumes that half the city came to see!
Amid this exquisite a.s.semblage at St. Cecilia"s, the revolutionary doctrines of the Christian religion produced neither perplexity nor alarm. The chance investigator might have listened in dismay to solemn p.r.o.nouncements of everlasting d.a.m.nation, to statements about rich men and the eyes of needles, and the lilies of the field which did not spin. But the congregation of St. Cecilia"s understood that these things were to be taken in a quixotic sense; sharing the view of the French marquis that the Almighty would think twice before d.a.m.ning a gentleman like him.
One had heard these phrases ever since childhood, and one accepted them as a matter of course. After all, these doctrines had come from the lips of a divine being, whom it would be presumptuous in a mere mortal to attempt to imitate. Such points one could but leave to those whose business it was to interpret them--the doctors and dignitaries of the church; and when one met them, one"s heart was set at rest--for they were not iconoclasts and alarmists, but gentlemen of culture and tact.
The bishop who presided in this metropolitan district was a stately personage, who moved in the best Society and belonged to the most exclusive clubs.
The pews in St. Cecilia"s were rented, and they were always in great demand; it was one of the customs of those who hung upon the fringe of Society to come every Sunday, and bow and smile, and hope against hope for some chance opening. The stranger who came was dependent upon hospitality; but there were soft-footed and tactful ushers, who would find one a seat, if one were a presentable person. The contingency of an unpresentable person seldom arose, for the proletariat did not swarm at the gates of St. Cecilia"s. Out of its liberal income the church maintained a "mission" upon the East Side, where young curates wrestled with the natural depravity of the lower cla.s.ses--meantime cultivating a soul-stirring tone, and waiting until they should be promoted to a real church. Society was becoming deferential to its religious guides, and would have been quite shocked at the idea that it exerted any pressure upon them; but the young curates were painfully aware of a process of unnatural selection, whereby those whose manner and cut of coat were not pleasing were left a long time in the slums.--On one occasion there had been an amusing blunder; a beautiful new church was built at Newport, and an eloquent young minister was installed, and all Society attended the opening service--and sat and listened in consternation to an arraignment of its own follies and vices! The next Sunday, needless to say, Society was not present; and within half a year the church was stranded, and had to be dismantled and sold!
They had elaborate music at St. Cecilia"s, so beautiful that Alice felt uncomfortable, and thought that it was perilously "high." At this Mrs.
Winnie laughed, offering to take her to an afternoon service around the corner, where they had a full orchestra, and a harp, and opera music, and incense and genuflexions and confessionals. There were people, it seemed, who like to thrill themselves by dallying with the wickedness of "Romanism"; somewhat as a small boy tries to see how near he can walk to the edge of a cliff. The "father" at this church had a jewelled robe with a train so many yards long, and which had cost some incredible number of thousands of dollars; and every now and then he marched in a stately procession through the aisles, so that all the spectators might have a good look at it. There was a fierce controversy about these things in the church, and libraries of pamphlets were written, and intrigues and social wars were fought over them.
But Montague and Alice did not attend this service--they had promised themselves the very plebeian diversion of a ride in the subway; for so far they had not seen this feature of the city. People who lived in Society saw Madison and Fifth Avenues, where their homes were, with the churches and hotels scattered along them; and the shopping district just below, and the theatre district at one side, and the park to the north. Unless one went automobiling, that was all of the city one need ever see. When visitors asked about the Aquarium, and the Stock Exchange, and the Museum of Art, and Tammany Hall, and Ellis Island, where the immigrants came, the old New Yorkers would look perplexed, and say: "Dear me, do you really want to see those tilings? Why, I have been here all my life, and have never seen them!"
For the hordes of sightseers there had been provided a special contrivance, a huge automobile omnibus which seated thirty or forty people, and went from the Battery to Harlem with a young man shouting through a megaphone a description of the sights. The irreverent had nicknamed this the "yap-wagon"; and declared that the company maintained a fake "opium-joint" in Chinatown, and a fake "dive" in the Bowery, and hired tough-looking individuals to sit and be stared at by credulous excursionists from Oklahoma and Kalamazoo. Of course it would never have done for people who had just been pa.s.sed into Society to climb upon a "yap-wagon"; but they were permitted to get into the subway, and were whirled with a deafening clatter through a long tunnel of steel and stone. And then they got out and climbed a steep hill like any common mortals, and stood and gazed at Grant"s tomb: a huge white marble edifice upon a point overlooking the Hudson. Architecturally it was not a beautiful structure--but one was consoled by reflecting that the hero himself would not have cared about that. It might have been described as a soap-box with a cheese-box on top of it; and these homely and familiar articles were perhaps not altogether out of keeping with the character of the humblest great man who ever lived.
The view up the river was magnificent, quite the finest which the city had to offer; but it was ruined by a hideous gas-tank, placed squarely in the middle of it. And this, again, was not inappropriate--it was typical of all the ways of the city. It was a city which had grown up by accident, with n.o.body to care about it or to help it; it was huge and ungainly, crude, uncomfortable, and grotesque. There was nowhere in it a beautiful sight upon which a man could rest his eyes, without having them tortured by something ugly near by. At the foot of the slope of the River Drive ran a hideous freight-railroad; and across the river the beautiful Palisades were being blown to pieces to make paving stone--and meantime were covered with advertis.e.m.e.nts of land-companies.
And if there was a beautiful building, there, was sure to be a tobacco advertis.e.m.e.nt beside it; if there was a beautiful avenue, there were trucks and overworked horses toiling in the harness; if there was a beautiful park, it was filled with wretched, outcast men. Nowhere was any order or system--everything was struggling for itself, and jarring and clashing with everything else; and this broke the spell of power which the t.i.tan city would otherwise have produced. It seemed like a monstrous heap of wasted energies; a mountain in perpetual labour, and producing an endless series of abortions. The men and women in it were wearing themselves out with toil; but there was a spell laid upon them, so that, struggle as they might, they accomplished nothing.
Coming out of the church, Montague had met Judge Ellis; and the Judge had said, "I shall soon have something to talk over with you." So Montague gave him his address, and a day or two later came an invitation to lunch with him at his club.
The Judge"s club took up a Fifth Avenue block, and was stately and imposing. It had been formed in the stress of the Civil War days; lean and hungry heroes had come home from battle and gone into business, and those who had succeeded had settled down here to rest. To see them now, dozing in huge leather-cushioned arm-chairs, you would have had a hard time to guess that they had ever been lean and hungry heroes. They were diplomats and statesmen, bishops and lawyers, great merchants and financiers--the men who had made the city"s ruling-cla.s.s for a century.
Everything here was decorous and grave, and the waiters stole about with noiseless feet.
Montague talked with the Judge about New York and what he had seen of it, and the people he had met; and about his father, and the war; and about the recent election and the business outlook. And meantime they ordered luncheon; and when they had got to the cigars, the Judge coughed and said, "And now I have a matter of business to talk over with you."
Montague settled himself to listen. "I have a friend," the Judge explained--"a very good friend, who has asked me to find him a lawyer to undertake an important case. I talked the matter over with General Prentice, and he agreed with me that it would be a good idea to lay the matter before you."
"I am very much obliged to you," said Montague.
"The matter is a delicate one," continued the other. "It has to do with life insurance. Are you familiar with the insurance business?"
"Not at all."
"I had supposed not," said the Judge. "There are some conditions which are not generally known about, but which I may say, to put it mildly, are not altogether satisfactory. My friend is a large policy-holder in several companies, and he is not satisfied with the management of them.