The Torbys were giving a large dinner-party, and a scarlet carpet was
rolled out from the glass and iron of their grilled door to the curb
of the Fifth Avenue gutter--a carpet as red as a cardinal's robe, as
the flags in the Bolshevist meeting which was being held simultaneously
two miles away in Madison Square and giving the police a good deal of
trouble.
It was customary to put on new clothes and treasured jewels for the
Torby parties, for they gave very good parties; they were fashionable,
and as they had been important, financially and socially, in New York
for two generations, and as most other New Yorkers had only lived there
a year or two, the Torbys were generally assumed to be as aboriginal as
the rocks of Manhattan Island.
As a matter of fact, the first identified Torby, Ephraim by name, had
strolled down to the great city from a Vermont farm just before the
Civil War, and had made his fortune in questionable real-estate deals
during the following years of unrest. But when the present Torby,
William, said, "My father used to say that when he held the property at
the corner of Twenty-third Street--" it sounded as if the family had
always been landed proprietors; and Trevillian Torby, William's son,
just twenty-four and not deeply interested in ancestry, had actually
come to believe, though he of course knew all the facts, that the
Torbys were the oldest and best family in America, and he was very
scornful of newcomers from other States or countries who drifted into
the metropolis to make their fortunes.
Hewer, the Torby butler, stood in the hall, wearing the old-fashioned
livery the Torbys affected. Hewer was not the kind of butler who opens
the door; on the contrary, when the great double doors had been swung
open by two footmen, Hewer was discovered standing back center, doing
absolutely nothing, except, if a female guest should be so thoughtless
as to direct her steps to the men's dressing-room, or a male to the
women's, he set them right with a slight but autocratic gesture of the
hand.
Hewer was rather a young man to be so very great. He was the son of one
of the gamekeepers on the Duke of Wessex's place, and being ambitious
and having a weak heart, he allowed it to be known through the proper
channels, when the Torbys were staying with the Duke, that he would
like to go to America; and the Torbys, who had had a great deal of
trouble with butlers, snapped him up at once.
At first Hewer had found social distinctions in America somewhat
confusing. He had been brought up in the strictest sect of inherited
aristocracy, but some of his friends who had been in the United States
explained to him that there everything was plutocratic--that nothing
mattered but money. Hewer thought this not such a bad idea; but when he
reached New York, he found it wasn't true. Social distinctions were not
entirely based on money--not nearly as much so as in London. He had a
friend living second footman to the third or fourth richest family in
America, and it appeared that they were asked nowhere. Of course his
own Torbys were all right--absolutely all right; they not only had
visiting royalties to stay with them, but what did not always follow,
they stayed with those same royalties when they went abroad.
As the motor doors began to slam, Hewer placed one foot on the lower
step of the Torbys' beautiful Italian stairway, banked on each side
with white lilies in honor of the party, and prepared to announce the
first guest who issued from the dressing-room. If he did not know the
name (though he almost always did, for he was intelligent, interested
in his job, and had been doing the telephoning for the Torby parties
for several years), he just drooped his ear toward the guest's mouth
for a dilatory second, and then having caught it, he moved straight
away upstairs, like a hunting-dog that had picked up the scent.
Many of the guests--more than a dozen--had arrived before one came in
who spoke to Hewer by name. This was a small, erect old lady, with eyes
as bright as her diamonds in their old-fashioned settings, and a smile
as fine as her long old hands.
"Ah, Hewer," she said with a brisk nod, "still here, are you? Do crowds
like this always collect for the Torbys' parties?"
Hewer, standing on the lower step, seemed just twice as tall as the old
lady as he answered: "Crowds, madam!" And then as she waved her hand
toward the front door, he understood and added: "Oh, yes, madam, quite
often a crowd collects. And how is Mr. Richard?"
"Oh, of course he's been wounded," said the old lady, as if that
had been the least of her expectations, "but he's well again now,
and on his way home." And then, noticing that other people were
waiting,--bejeweled creatures whom she did not know,--she nodded again,
to indicate that the conversation was over. Hewer mounted the stairs
five steps ahead of her and announced, as if this time he were really
saying something:
"Mrs. John Grey."
But all the time he was at work announcing other guests--"Admiral and
Mrs. Simpsom.... Lady Cecilia and Mr. Hume.... Mr. Lossing.... Miss
Watkins"--his mind was grappling with the problem of what Mrs. John
Grey was doing dining with the Torbys.
About a year before this, Hewer had left the Torbys and had been
engaged by Mrs. Grey. He deeply respected Mrs. Grey, but her household
had not been congenial to him. In the first place there was an elderly
maid in spectacles who managed everything, and had even attempted to
manage Hewer. Then, Mrs. Grey was a widow with an only son, often away,
and when he was away, Mrs. Grey dined by the library fire on a chop and
rice pudding, and she sometimes omitted the chop; and though when Mr.
Richard was at home, he was very gay and good-tempered, on the whole
Hewer felt the position to be depressing; and when the Torbys humbly
asked him to come back at a higher wage, he had consented.
But he retained a strong admiration for Mrs. Grey. She was afraid of
nothing, whereas he knew his present employers were afraid of many
things--afraid of being laughed at, afraid of missing the turn of the
social tide, afraid even of him, their butler, though they attempted to
conceal this fear under a studied insolence of manner. It was because
this insolence was not of the particular brand that Hewer admired that
he had left them. He had often noticed, as he waited on table, that
Mrs. Torby was afraid of having opinions; she always found out what
other people thought about art and politics, and only when strongly
backed by majority opinion would she express herself--with a good
deal of arrogance. She never confessed ignorance of any subject under
discussion--except possibly of a childhood friend.
Mrs. Grey, on the other hand, ripped out her opinions with the utmost
confidence, and could say, "No, my dear, I never heard of it," when
some new school of art or thought was under discussion, in a tone that
made those who had been somewhat overpraising it wonder if they had
not, after all, been making fools of themselves. Mr. Richard was the
same way--never afraid of what people would think of him; perhaps it
might have been better if he had been, judging from what Hewer himself
had thought of some of Mr. Richard's more youthful escapades.
Now, the last thing Mrs. Grey had said to Hewer when he left her
service was: "What, Mr. Hewer, back to those vulgar people?" The
words had been a shock to Hewer, for the Torbys were so fashionable,
so clearly sought-after, that he had not supposed anyone would apply
such a term as _vulgar_ to them. But he did know exactly what Mrs.
Grey meant, and he had never forgotten the words, and so he wondered
what Mrs. Grey was doing in the house of the people she had so
contemptuously described. She was not like the Torbys, who seemed to
go to their friends' houses chiefly for the sake of making an amusing
story afterward of how dull and badly done their parties had been.
Mrs. Grey did not go to the houses of those she considered her social
inferiors, and as she considered almost everyone her social inferiors,
and as most of them regarded her as a funny little old lady who didn't
matter anyhow, she ate most of her meals quietly in her own house.
As so often happens, while Hewer was pondering the problem, the
explanation of it was walking into the house--walking in with her head
in the air, and a sapphire-blue satin cloak wrapped tightly about her.
Hewer recognized her at once, but he did not know her name. She was
the young lady who used to come and sit with Mrs. Grey and look pale
and tearless during the terrible weeks when Mr. Richard was fighting
in the Argonne--and would have liked to cry, Hewer had thought, if
only Mrs. Grey had not been so dreadfully heroic, remarking like the
Roman emperor, that after all, she had never been under the illusion
that her son was immortal. She was the young lady whose photograph
had dropped out of one of Mr. Richard's coats one day when he was
brushing it. She was beautiful, and she came from far enough West to
be aware of the existence of the letter _r_. She and Mrs. Grey used
to have long amiable arguments as to whether or not well-bred people
would recognize the letter _r_, except, of course, in such magnificent
words as _Richard_. Hewer did not know this lady's name until she told
it to him at the foot of the stairs--"Miss Evington." He repressed a
start. It was the gossip belowstairs in the Torby household that Mr.
Trevillian wanted to marry a Miss Evington, whom his family did not
consider quite up to the Torbys' matrimonial standard. When Mrs.
Torby had given Hewer the cards and the diagram of the table, and he
had seen that Miss Evington's place was next to Mr. Trevillian, he had
taken this as a sign that the thing was settled. He never knew how much
he had liked Mr. Richard until he felt a wave of contempt for this
beautiful young creature who preferred Trevillian and his millions.
Hewer announced "Miss Evington" with quite a sniff.
When he went downstairs, another guest had arrived and was taking
his dinner-card from the tray a footman was offering him. It was Mr.
Barnsell. Barnsell was a sleek, brown, middle-aged man whose only
interest in life was comfort; and as his means were limited and his
tastes luxurious, the attainment of supreme comfort had become both an
art and sport to him.
"Ah, good evening, Hewer!" he said.
"Good evening, sir," said Hewer without the slightest change of
expression. He hated and despised Barnsell, for the reason that he
was one of those people who demand a far higher standard of comfort
from other people's houses and servants than he did from his own.
When he stayed at the Torbys,--as he did for long periods,--he gave a
great deal of trouble, and had been known to send a suit of clothes
downstairs three times because it had not been properly pressed,
although Hewer knew very well that at home his clothes were very
sketchily taken care of by the housemaid. Hewer's only revenge was to
force upward the whole scale of Mr. Barnsell's tips. Hewer himself did
not care much about money and was very well paid by the Torbys, but in
the interests of pure justice, he received Mr. Barnsell's crinkled
bill with an air of cold surprise that made him double it next time.
"Gad, Hewer," Mr. Barnsell was saying, "there's a pretty ugly situation
outside there--a crowd around the door, and marching up Fifth Avenue.
They nearly pulled my chauffeur off the box. If they'd laid a finger on
me, I'd have let them have it, I can tell you."
"I hope they did not hurt the chauffeur, sir."
"Oh, no," said Barnsell positively; but Hewer knew from his tone that
he had not waited to see.
Immediately after this, terrible things began to happen to the Torbys'
nice party--things that had never happened to any of their parties
before. The meeting in Madison Square having been broken up by methods
which the participants described as being a little short of massacre,
and which the police said were too velvet-gloved to be effective, had
drifted away into smaller groups, all looking for trouble. Perhaps
it was the color of the Torby's carpet, or the size or ugliness of a
house built in the worst taste of the '80's, or the delicious smell
of terrapin which came floating out of the kitchen windows; but for
whatever reason, a crowd had collected about the door and was mocking
at and jostling the guests in such a threatening manner that the night
watchman rushed in to tell a footman to telephone at once to the
police, and poor fat little Mrs. McFarlane arrived with her tiara quite
on one side and a conviction that she had just escaped being strung up
to a lamp-post in the best style of the French Revolution.
The McFarlanes, who took themselves seriously in every position, made
a dramatic entrance into the drawing-room. Mr. McFarlane held up his
hand for silence and then said:
"We are in grave danger."
He was a tall, solemn, hawk-nosed man, who had made a fortune after
forty, and had been elected president of a great bank after fifty--an
office which he accepted as if it were a sort of financial priesthood.
Mrs. McFarlane, who went in for jeweled crowns and sweeping velvets,
was suspected by her friends of a repressed wish to be queenly--nor
indeed was her height and figure so different from that of the late
Victoria.
"Hewer, send down and have the outer doors closed," said Mr. Torby. And
Hewer, having announced the last guest, who was a good deal flustered
from having had his high hat smashed over his nose--left the room to
obey.
"They are bloodthirsty, simply bloodthirsty," continued Mr. McFarlane.
"One villainous-looking fellow shouted at my wife: 'You don't look as
if you needed another square meal for a year; give us a chance.'"
"Accurate observers, at least," said Mrs. Grey in a twinkling aside to
Miss Evington. "Come and sit down, my dear, and let us talk while these
people regain their poise."
"Do you think we are in any danger from the mob, Mrs. Grey?" asked the
girl quietly.
"The mob inside, or the mob out?"
Miss Evington laughed. "Oh," she said. "Feeling like that about them,
why did you come?"
"I came," answered Mrs. Grey, "because I knew these people are trying
to dazzle you with all their hideous possessions; and I wanted," she
added simply, "to give you some standard of comparison."
Miss Evington turned away to hide a smile, or perhaps it was a tear,
at the old lady's self-confidence. She had an impulse to explain that
if she refused the Torby millions, it would not be on account of Mrs.
Grey's high breeding; and then she stopped to wonder whether, after
all, it had not something to do with the situation--indirectly.
Mr. Barnsell approached them, shaking his head. "Well," he said, "now
I hope Washington will see the consequence of coddling the lower
classes." Mr. Barnsell's railroad investments had declined.
"This should be a great lesson to the Administration," said Mr.
Lossing--a slim, elderly man, who seemed to have decreased in bulk
through constant shrinking from outrages against his notion of good
taste and good manners. "As my dear old father used to say--"
"It's the French Revolution over again," said Mrs. McFarlane,
still panting a little. "It's the hatred of the common man for the
aristocrat."
"The aristocrat, my dear!" murmured Mrs. Grey to her young friend. "Her
father-in-law was my father's gardener, and she must know I know it."
At this moment a stone crashed through one of the long French windows
of the drawing-room. Trevillian Torby rushed to Miss Evington's side.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Grey."
"Thank you--I'm not," said Mrs. Grey, tossing her gray head slightly,
as if to say it was a pretty state of affairs when Trevillian Torby
could intervene in her fate. "If you won't think me rude, I must say
the evening is turning out more amusing than I had expected."
Trevillian, fortunately, was not looking for malice from one so small
and gray and feminine, and he went on hotly: "I wonder what this
rabble thinks they could do with this country without us--without the
leadership of people like ourselves."
"They'll soon find out, it seems," answered Mrs. Grey.
"The trouble with this country," continued Trevillian, "is the growing
contempt for law and order. No one is brought up to respect the
state--the Government. What would the poor do without the ruling class?
Do you realize that the hospitals and charitable institutions of this
country would have to close? And what would happen then, I should like
to know?"
"They would be run by the state, of course," said Miss Evington, who
knew her way about sociology.
"The state!" cried Trevillian. "Do you mean government ownership? Well,
let me tell you that the state is about the most inefficient, the most
corrupt--"
"I thought we ought to respect it," said Miss Evington.
Mrs. Grey laughed out loud. "Ah, Mr. Torby," she said, "women ought not
to attempt argument, ought they?"
Trevillian felt soothed by this remark. "I own," he replied, "that I
do not think a woman appears at her best in argument." And he never
understood why it was that he seemed to have made a very good joke.
They now began to go in to dinner--the dining-room was safely situated
across the back of the house. The table was magnificent. Gold vases of
pink and white flowers alternated down its length with gold bowls of
yellow and orange fruit. Tall wineglasses of crystal engraved in gold
stood like little groves at each plate. The Torbys' engraved glass was
famous.
"But I thought," Lady Cecilia was heard saying to her host, who was of
course taking her in to dinner, "I thought there were no classes in the
United States?"
Mr. Torby was shocked that Lady Cecilia, who had had so many
opportunities, like the present, for observing, should make such a
mistake.
"Oh," he said, "I should hardly say that. I yield to none in my belief
in the principles of democracy--from the political point of view;
but socially, my dear Lady Cecilia, every country in the world has a
class--how shall I define it--"
He succeeded in defining it so that it included himself and excluded
most of the rest of the world. Aristocracy nowadays, he thought,
consisted in having had for two or three generations the advantages
of a large fortune with all the cultivation and refinement and
responsibility that it brings. A college president, who was present,
was equally sure that it was all a question of education. Mr.
McFarlane, the head of a large bank, thought it meant the group of men
in any country who control the financial destinies--and therefore all
the destinies--of a country. Mrs. Grey did not find it worth while to
define anything, but sat thinking: "It's being ladies and gentlemen, if
they only knew it."
Suddenly there was a tremendous sound of cracking and tearing--a crash
as if the stout double outer doors had given way, a shouting, the noise
of an ambulance gong, or of a police-wagon. Some people sprang up from
the table, but Mr. Torby urged them to remain seated.
"Hewer," he said, "go downstairs and see what is happening."
Hewer immediately left the room, and did not return for a long time.
In the downstairs hall Hewer found the night watchman with a dislocated
wrist, several policemen, a young man mopping his brow, whom he did not
at first notice, and a great deal of broken glass.
The whole trouble, it appeared, had arisen over the red carpet--the
Bolshevist meeting not being able to understand why, if they were not
allowed to display red flags in Madison Square, Mr. Torby should be
allowed to display a carpet of exactly the same hue in Fifth Avenue.
In the interests of pure logic, the participants in the late meeting
decided to point out this inconsistency to the municipal authorities,
by cutting the Torby's carpet into small pieces and carrying them
away. A number of returned sailors and soldiers, who felt perhaps that
to fight for a poor cause was better than not fighting at all, had
decided to defend the carpet. The complete harmony of everyone was
proved by the fact that when driven away by the police-reserves, both
parties were soon jointly engaged in upsetting all the ash-cans in a
neighboring side-street.
Hewer sent the night-watchman to the housekeeper to get his wrist
bandaged, got rid of the police by giving them some of Mr. Torby's
second-best cigars and a great deal of irrelevant information which
they said was necessary to the preservation of order, directed that
the broken glass should be swept up, and then turned his attention to
the young man.
"Why, Mr. Richard!" he exclaimed.
"Look here, Hewer," said Mr. Richard, "I know that Miss Evington is
dining here--I saw her going in, as I happened to be passing." He
glanced quickly at the butler to see if there was any criticism of an
officer in the United States Army hanging about doorways to watch young
ladies go in and out. "Is everyone in there frightened to death over
this shindy?"
"Well, you know, sir," said Hewer temperately, "they have been very
nervous about this Bolshevist movement for a long time; and they do
seem anxious--all except Mrs. Grey, sir."
"What!" cried the Captain. "Is my mother dining here?" And Hewer could
see that this was the last straw--that his mother should have gone
over to the enemy. Hewer was sorry, but felt it his duty to go back
to the dining-room. "They are anxious, sir, for fear the mob may have
overpowered the police, and I ought to go back and tell them that
everything is quiet."
"No, Hewer," said the Captain firmly. "Go back, but tell them just the
opposite. Tell them that the police have been driven off, that the mob
is in control, that a soviet committee has been formed, which will send
a representative to question them and decide on the merits of each of
their cases, and say that if a finger is laid on the people's delegate,
the house will be blown up with T N T."
Hewer could not help smiling at the plan, but he shook his head. "I'd
like to oblige you, sir," he said, "but I'd lose my job."
"Oh, the cream's off your job anyhow, Hewer," said Mr. Richard
decisively. "You don't want to be a butler under the new order. I've
just got a good job with a Western railroad. Come with me and run our
dining-car service."
The Great War has far-reaching effects. It was the war that made Hewer
yield to this insane suggestion--the sense of dissatisfaction with
himself because a weak heart had kept him from fighting, and the sense
of power in Grey which a year and a half of being obeyed had thrown
into his tone.
"But you can't go upstairs like that, sir--they'd all know you."
"You do your part, and I'll do mine," said Richard.
When Hewer entered the dining-room again, the tension had increased.
Some of the guests had arisen from the table and were looking for
weapons. All had decided to behave nobly. The six footmen, as if
paralyzed by the consciousness that they had identified themselves
with the capitalistic class, were standing idly about the room, not
attempting to go on with the serving of dinner. Mrs. McFarlane had
almost fainted again, but finding that no one had time to bring her to,
she was coming to by herself. Only Mrs. Grey was finishing her soup in
a thorough but not inelegant manner.
Hewer bent to whisper in Mr. Torby's ear.
"Good God!" said Mr. Torby; and an electric thrill ran through the
company, who did not know that the exclamation expressed anger rather
than fear.
"Don't be alarmed," said Mr. Torby, addressing the table. "Keep
perfectly calm. Hewer tells me the situation is this: the police have
been temporarily driven off. These Bolshevist rascals are in control
for a minute or two--nothing more, I am sure. I should advise our
yielding for the moment to their demands."
"But what are their demands?" asked Mrs. McFarlane nervously, with
a vague recollection of a program about women which her respectable
morning paper had not been able to print in full, but which she had
looked up later in the chauffeur's more liberal journal, while he was
putting on the chains.
Divining her fears, Mrs. Torby gracefully hastened to allay them.
"They demand nothing more than that we receive a delegate from their
committee, and answer his questions."
"Receive him," said the Admiral with that terrible calm which seems to
have replaced the old quarter-deck manner. "We'll receive him a good
deal more warmly than he'll like."
Mr. Torby held up his hand. "No," he said. "Our safety, the safety
of these ladies, is dependent upon the safe-conduct back of this
delegate. The mob, probably through the culpable carelessness of the
Administration--"
"Not a word against the Administration, sir," cried the Admiral, "--the
Administration under whom this country has just won one of the most
signal tri--"
"I'm afraid, sir," said Hewer most respectfully, "that the committee
is not inclined to wait very much longer."
It was decided to admit the People's delegate at once. After all,
however detestable his philosophy, he would be only one man against
twenty-four guests, six footmen and Hewer. But when Hewer opened
the dining-room door and announced in his very best manner, "The
Representative of the Soviet Committee," everyone saw that confidence
had been premature.
The delegate was an alarming figure. He was in his shirt-sleeves,
without collar and round his waist was tied a long strip of the Torby's
carpet; from this protruded the handle of an army revolver. The lower
part of his face was hidden by a black silk handkerchief; and a soft
hat, rather too large for him, was pulled down to his brows. It was a
hat which Trevillian had passed on to Hewer some months before, but
fortunately there is no way of identifying a soft felt hat. Below the
brim a pair of piercing gray eyes ran over the company like the glint
of steel.
The delegate was tall, and he stood in the doorway with folded arms.
Mrs. McFarlane, declaring that at last the aristocracy knew how to die,
burst into tears; and Trevillian Torby, bending over Miss Evington,
declared in a passionate undertone that he would give his life for
hers. But Miss Evington, with her eye fixed on the delegate, drew back
almost rudely from Trevillian's protecting droop and said quite loudly:
"Nonsense, Trevillian! I don't feel myself in any danger."
"I am here," said the delegate in a deep, rough voice, "as a
representative of the first soviet committee--a form of government
which, as you now doubtless understand, will soon take over this entire
country--indeed, the world. How dare you, a little, idle, parasitic
group, eat like this, drink like this--and," he added, snatching a
bottle of champagne from the nerveless hand of a footman and quickly
returning it, "and such a rotten brand, too? By what right, I say, do
you feast, while better people are starving? But we are not cruel or
unreasonable, and anyone here who can show that he or his immediate
family belong to the proletariat and has worked with his hands, will be
spared."
A confused silence greeted this speech. The company did not really take
in the meaning of his words, for the reason that any identification of
themselves with the proletariat--what they would have called the lower
classes--seemed to them simply fantastic. Though they were continually
readjusting their social standing with each other, they no more doubted
their general superiority to the rest of humanity than they doubted the
fact of the skies being above the earth.
Mr. Barnsell, who had had more practice than most of them in adapting
himself to his surroundings, spoke first. Getting up, with his hands in
his pockets, he said coolly:
"Oh, come, my dear fellow! This is ridiculous. This is
un-American--extremely un-American. There are no class-distinctions in
this country. We all in a sense belong to the proletariat."
"Speak for yourself," said Mrs. Grey.
Mrs. Torby bent over to her next-door neighbor and whispered, "Exactly
what do they mean by proletariat?" with the manner of one who, being
about to be elected to a club, would like to know what the organization
signified.
"You will have to offer proof of your assertions," said the delegate in
a more threatening tone. "A leisure class is a criminal class, and its
wealth will be confiscated for the common good. Are you or are you not
members of a leisure class?"
At this the company, which had so far shown a good deal of courage,
in face of one of the most terrifying agencies in the world,--an
angry mob,--began to show evidence of panic. A threat to human life,
even their own, seemed to them less horrible than this danger to
the existing order of society. The right of property--not their own
property, but the divine right of property in general--seemed worth
defending at great cost. A babel of voices arose, out of which Mr.
McFarlane's soared like a lark:
"I did, I did," he was saying. "I used to help my father pick the beets
and the rose-bugs. My father was a gardener. This lady"--indicating
Mrs. Grey--"knows that what I say is true. My father was her father's
gardener."
"Is this true?" asked the delegate.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Grey, "and a very coarse, uneducated man too, as I
remember him."
"Thank you--oh, thank you," said Mr. McFarlane warmly; and his wife,
raising her tiara-ed head, added:
"Yes, and as a girl I used to take in plain--"
"Hush, Maria!" said her husband. "It is unnecessary. A wife always
takes the rank of her husband in any society."
Mrs. McFarlane caught the idea at once, and leaning back with folded
hands, she looked about patronizingly on those whose position under the
new order was less solidly founded than her own.
The complete success of Mr. McFarlane pointed the way to others, whose
training had made them quick to learn new methods of pleasing--when
they wanted to please. In a few minutes astounding revelations had been
made on all sides. Mr. Lossing, the haughty and exclusive Mr. Lossing,
confessed, or rather he loudly and repeatedly asserted, that he had
long been secretly married to his cook--than whom, he insisted, no one
was a more persistent and skillful manual worker. Mr. Barnsell, who had
always seemed to live remarkably well on the proceeds of a somewhat
tenuous law-practice, pleaded for publicity for the fact that his
father had kept a tailor's shop--and he offered to produce photographs
in proof of his statement.
"Did you ever work in this shop?" asked the delegate.
"I'm afraid not," answered Mr. Barnsell reluctantly. "My mother,--you
know how petty women are about class distinctions,--she wanted me to
rise in the world--"
"_Rise!_" exclaimed the delegate haughtily. "You are untrue to your
class, sir."
"Perhaps--a little," murmured Mr. Barnsell meekly.
"But we will pass you," said the delegate, "for the sake of your
father."
By a somewhat unexpected application of Bolshevist principles, the
delegate exempted members of the military and naval services, and
visiting foreigners, from any examination. He showed a tendency
also to pass over Mrs. Grey, although she kept asserting that none
of her ancestors had ever done anything useful. "Unless," she added
thoughtfully, "Lionel Grey, whom they sent to the Tower for a day or
two in 1673 for killing his valet. He may have had to sweep out his
room. And I have a son," she added more loudly, "who is just as bad."
"You mean your son does not work?" said the delegate, as if he felt the
statement so unlikely that he was ready to contradict it.
"I shouldn't call him usefully employed at this moment," replied the
old lady. "Would you like me to describe what he is doing?"
"Be silent, madam," said the delegate, and turned hastily away to the
examination of the Torby family.
Asked rather roughly what he had to say for himself, Mr. Torby rose.
"I have to say," he began, "that I agree with my friend Mr. Barnsell,
that this whole movement is extremely un-American. This country is a
democracy--our forefathers died to make it so; and for you to attempt
to introduce all these dangerous ideas of class antagonism is opposed
to all the ideals of the founders of this nation. There are no class
distinctions in America. I may rise today, and you tomorrow--or you
might have, if you had not cast in your lot with these lawless rascals
who all will end in jail. Take the example of Mr. Barnsell here--proud
to own his father's trade." (Mr. Barnsell tried to oblige with a proud
look.) "And I too--my father was a farmer. He tilled the soil with his
own hands. That, ladies and gentlemen, is America."
"Ah, that's easy to say," replied the delegate, strangely unimpressed
by an oration that had drawn tears to Mr. Barnsell's eyes. "It's
easy to say that your father was a farmer, but can you prove it?
Only yesterday I saw an interview with you in our capitalistic press
on the occasion of your being elected president of one of these
aristocratic social clubs,--which the people will raze to the ground
immediately,--and this interview stated on your own authority that
yours was one of the oldest and idlest families in this country."
"The reporter misunderstood me," said Mr. Torby with the firmness of a
man whose public life has made him long familiar with the phrase.
Trevillian Torby sprang to his feet. "Father," he said pleadingly, "let
me go upstairs and bring down Grandfather."
"Goodness," exclaimed Mrs. Grey, "don't tell me that the original
Ephraim is still alive!"
"My father-in-law is very old," murmured Mrs. Torby faintly. "He shuns
society."
For the first time since the entrance of the People's delegate, the
interest of the company turned from him and rested on the door through
which Trevillian had departed. The idea that the great Ephraim--the
founder of the colossal Torby fortune, the ancestor who had become
almost a myth--was not only alive but living somewhere in the top of
the palace which his money had built, was an overwhelming surprise to
everyone. Everyone began calculating what his age must be, and having
reached the conclusion that he was well over eighty, they were prepared
to see Trevillian lead, wheel, or even carry him into the room; but the
reality was very different.
Ephraim Torby strode in ahead of his grandson. He was tall, over six
feet, and the long plum-colored dressing-gown he was wearing made him
look taller. The whiskers, which he wore in accordance with the fashion
of his youth, gave to his shaven upper lip an added expression of
shrewd humor. A slight smile wrinkled the upper part of his face, and
his bright black eyes twinkled. From the moment he entered the room,
the situation was in his hands.
"Well," he said in a leisurely tone, addressing the delegate, "what's
all this about?"
The delegate in a few words, made less fluent by the fact that the old
man had put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and was now studying
the delegate in detail, explained the principles of the Bolshevist
movement, and the relation of these principles to the present company.
"Foolishness!" said the old man. "For the land's sake, what are clever
fellars like you doing wasting your time fighting these folks?" And he
waved his hand toward the dinner-table. "Ain't you got sense enough to
see that you're jest the same--jest the same? Both against justice and
law and order--both discontented-- Oh, yes, Bill, you are discontented,
and Trevillian too. They don't get any fun out of life--not out of
spending the money I had such a heap of fun making. And you'll find,
young fellar," he added to the delegate, "that there's only two kinds
of folks worth fussing over in this world--them that enjoys life, and
them that would jest as lief jump off the bridge tomorrow. You're both
discontented, and you're both narrer: you can't see anybody's interest
but your own, and you're both as selfish as the dickens--want to run
the world jest for the sake of your own folks. Why, you two ought to
be able to get together. But the fellars who are going to beat you
both--and you're going to be beaten--is the fellars with a cheap car
and a couple of acres, or a three-room flat, who are having too good
a time out of it to let you bust it up. And you'll never get past
them--never in your lifetime, young fellar."
"We've got a good way already," said the delegate.
"Oh, maybe, maybe," answered the old man. "And I presume you're
having a good time out of trying--and if you want any advice about
organization, you might drop in to see me some afternoon, when Bill
is out. You can't tell; I might even want to subscribe to your
campaign-fund--"
"Father," said William Torby, displaying more feeling than at any time
during the evening, "that would be being untrue to your class."
"Why, Trevillian was just a-telling me, Bill, that you said there were
no classes in America," answered his father.
In the slight pause that followed, Mrs. Grey rose, and approaching
Ephraim, she said in her most gracious manner--and that was very
gracious:
"Do come over and sit down, Mr. Torby. I should like so much to talk to
you."
But the People's delegate interfered. "No, madam," he said fiercely.
"As you have shown no connection whatsoever with the proletariat, I
must trouble you to come with me."
Mrs. Grey nodded at the terrified company. "Good night," she said.
"Such a pleasant evening! Do ask me again sometime, dear Mrs. Torby."
And then she added to the delegate: "I insist on Miss Evington's
accompanying me. She's quite as bad in her own way as I am in mine."
"No," shouted Trevillian.
"Yes, we'll take her along," said the delegate; and the three left the
room hastily, taking the precaution to lock the door behind them.
When safely in the taxicab, which Hewer had waiting for them, Miss
Evington said: "Oh, Dick, can you ever forgive me for having been a
little bit dazzled by those people?"
"Well, Richard," said his mother, "I should think this would mean a
jail-sentence for you when it comes out. But I shall always think it
was well worth while, well worth while."
"They'll never tell if we don't," said Richard confidently.
"Perhaps not," said Mrs. Grey, settling back comfortably in her corner.
"I want to say this--not that I don't know that you are holding
Evalina's hand behind my back, and I should know it, even if I were as
blind as a bat, which I'm thankful to say I am not--I want to say that
I think I believe in democracy, after all. The only really interesting
and agreeable man there this evening, except yourself, my dear
Richard, was that delightful old farmer. Evidently the thing that makes
American society so dull is not the people they let in nowadays, as I
had always imagined, but the people they keep out. Yes, Richard, you
have converted me to democracy."
But Richard and Evalina were not paying as much attention to this
philosophy as it undoubtedly deserved.