A day of appalling heat and airlessness was drawing to its close,
and the unloveliest city in the world was beginning to find it just
possible to breathe again. For fourteen hours New York had been
grilling beneath a September sun in an anticyclone; and though
anticyclone is a word that does not seem to matter much when it occurs
in an obscure corner of the _Herald_, under the heading of 'Weather
Report,' yet, when it is translated from this fairy-land of print into
actual life, it matters a good deal if the place is New York and the
month is September. Other papers talked airily of a 'heat wave,' and up
in Newport everyone reflected with some gusto how unbearable it must
be in town, and went to their balls and dinner-parties and picnics and
bridge with the added zest that the sauce of these reflections gave.
Even in Newport the heat was almost oppressive, but to think of New
York made it seem cooler.
From the corner where Sixth Avenue slices across Broadway and
Thirty-fourth Street crosses both, one can see the huge mass of the
Waldorf Hotel rising gigantic against the evening sky, and wonder,
if one is that way inclined, how many million dollars it has taken
to blot out the evening sun. But during the afternoon to-day most
people were probably grateful for the shadow which those millions had
undesignedly procured them; it was something as one went from Fifth
Avenue to Broadway to be shielded a little by that hideous immensity,
for the dazzle and glare of the sun had been beyond all telling. And
though now the sun was close to its setting, the airlessness and acrid
heat of the evening was scarcely more tolerable than the furnace heat
of the day, for boiling was not appreciably more pleasant than baking.
Yet in the relentless city, where no one may pause for a moment unless
he wishes to be left behind in the great universal race for gold, which
begins as soon as a child can walk, and ceases not until he is long
past walking, the climbings of the thermometer into the nineties is an
acrobatic feat which concerns the thermometer only, and at the junction
of Sixth Avenue and Broadway there was no slackening in the tides of
the affairs of men. The electric street cars which ran up and down both
these streets, and the cars that crossed them, running east and west
up Thirty-fourth Street, were all full to overflowing, and passengers
hung on to straps and steps as swarming bees cluster around their
queen. Those in the centre of the car were unable to get out where they
wanted, while those at the ends who could get out did not want to. A
mass of damp human heat, patient, tired, nasal-voiced, and busy, made
ingress and egress impossible, and that on which serene philosophers
would gaze, saying, 'How beautiful is democracy!' appeared to those who
took part in it to be merely mis-management. Incessant ringings of the
conductor's bell, the sudden jerks of stoppages and startings, joltings
over points where the lights were suddenly extinguished, punctuated
the passage of the cars up and down the street, and still the swarming
crowds clustered and hung on to straps and backs of seats wherever
they could find foot-hold and standing room. But all alike, in payment
for this demoniacal means of locomotion, put their five cents into the
hot and grimy hands of the conductor, from which, by occult and subtle
processes, they were gradually transformed into the decorations of the
yachts and palaces of the owners of the line.
Democracy and discomfort, too, held equal sway in the crowded trams of
the elevated railway which roared by overhead down Sixth Avenue, in the
carriages of which tired millionaires and tired milliners sat stewing
side by side, with screeching whistles, grinding brakes, and the
vomiting forth of the foul smoke from soft coal; for a strike of some
kind was in progress in Pennsylvania, and the men who had stored coal
and also engineered the strike were reaping a million dollars a day in
increased prices and slight inconvenience to a hundred million people,
for the thick pungent smoke poured in wreaths into the first-floor
windows of the dingy, dirty habitations of the street. But the train
passed by on the trembling and jarring trestles, and the inconvenience
passed also, till the next train came.
Thunder of the passing trains above; rumbling of the electric cars;
roar of heavy, iron-shod wheels of drays on the uneven, ill-paved
cobbles of the street; jostling of the foot passengers on the
side-walks, as they streamed in and out from the rickety wooden
staircases of the elevated railway, from the crammed, perspiring cars,
from dingy, sour-smelling restaurants; shouts of the newsboys with
sheaves of ill-printed newspapers under their arms, giving horrible
details of the latest murder, and abominable prints of the victim's
false teeth, shoes, and the dress she had last been seen in; the
thump-thump of the engines in the _Herald_ office; the sickening
stew of the streets; the sickening heat of the skies--Democracy, or
'Everyone for himself.'
As an antidote or warning--though it did not seem to have the least
effect on the dogged, unending bustle--the note of 'Impermanence' was
everywhere sounded loudly. A block or two further up, for instance,
the street was torn up for some new underground enterprise (Lewis
S. Palmer, as a matter of fact, had floated a company to run a new
subterranean line across New York, and had been paid a million and a
half dollars for the loan of his credit); and while the cars, which
will certainly not cease running till the last trump has been sounded
several times, passed over spindle-shanked iron girders and supports,
shaken every now and again by the blasting of the rock below, thousands
of workmen were toiling day and night deep down in the earth, loading
the baskets of the cranes with the splinters of the riven rocks, or
giving the larger pieces into the embrace of huge iron pincers that
tackled them as a spider tackles a fat fly, and, rising aloft with
them above street level, took them along the ropes of their iron web,
over the heads of passengers and vehicles, for the carts which waited
for them. Elsewhere, half a block of building had vanished almost as
the night to make way for something taller, and where yesterday a
five-storied building had stood, the site to-day was vacant but for a
dozen pistons half buried in the ground, which puffed and shook in a
sort of hellish ecstasy of glee at the work, while a gang of men with
axe and pick dug out the foundations for the steel house-frames. Yet
though to-morrow almost would see the newly completed building again
filling up the gap in the street, the exposed walls of the adjacent
houses were just for to-day only covered with advertisements, and a
notice informed the bewildered shopper that business was going on as
usual. That in New York might be taken for granted, but the notice
omitted to say where it was going on. But for the crowd in general it
was sufficient that work was to be done, and money to be made. That
was the whole business and duty of each unit there, and as far as each
unit was concerned, the devil might take the rest. Everyone looked
tired, worn out, but indefatigable, and extraordinarily patient. One
man pushed roughly by another, and where in England the one would
look aggrieved, and the other probably, however insincerely, mutter
an apology, here neither grievance nor apology was felt, desired, or
expressed, for it is a waste of time to feel aggrieved and a waste of
energy to express or feel regret. To-morrow the crowd would, on the
average, be a little richer than to-day; that was all they wanted.
To-morrow the world in general would be a day richer.
Sybil Massington and Bertie Keynes had arrived that morning by the
_Celtic_, after a voyage of complete uneventfulness. The sea had been
rough, but the _Celtic_ had not been aware of it. Bertie had seen a
whale blow, or so he said, and Sybil had seen three fisher boats off
the banks. There had been six hours' fog, and they had got in that
morning in this day of frightful heat. They had been on deck like
honest tourists to see the immense green, mean statue of Liberty, or
whatever that female represents, and had found the huge sky-scrapers
by the docks, the bustling paddle-steamers of the ferries, the hooting
sirens, the general hideousness, exactly what they had expected.
They were, in fact, neither disappointed nor pleased, and when a
small, tired young man with a note-book had met them on the moment
of their landing, and asked Bertie his first impressions of America,
they had felt that they were indeed in the authentic place. Nor had
the impression been in any way dimmed all day, and now, as they sat
together in the darkened sitting-room at the Waldorf, just before going
to dress for dinner, they felt like old inhabitants. Bertie had bought
a paper containing the account of his interview, headed, 'Marquis
Bolton's eldest son lands: Lord Keynes' first impressions,' and had
just finished reading to Sybil, half a column of verbose illiteracy of
which, to do him justice, he had not been in any way guilty.
'You're getting on, Bertie,' said she; 'that interview shows you have
struck the right note. And where have you been this afternoon?'
'Like Satan, walking up and down the earth,' said he. 'I went by an
overhead railway and an underground railway. There are swing gates into
the stations of the overhead railway. As I passed in, I naturally held
the gate for the next man, so as not to let it bang in his face. He did
not take it from me, but passed through, leaving me still holding it. I
might have stood there all day, and they would have all passed through.
Then I learned better, and let it slam in other people's faces. It
saves time. Somehow I thought the incident was characteristic of the
country.'
Sybil lit a cigarette.
'I like it,' she said. 'The air, or the people, or something, makes
me feel alert. Now, when I feel alert in England it is mere waste of
energy. There is nothing to expend one's alertness on; besides, one
is out of tone. But here, somehow, it is suitable. I like the utter
hideousness of it, too. Look from that window at the line of houses.
They are like a row of jagged, broken teeth. Well, it is no worse
than Park Lane, and, somehow, there is an efficiency about them here.
One is ninety-five stories high for a definite reason--because land
is valuable; the next is three stories high because it belongs to a
millionaire who doesn't want to walk upstairs. By the way, Mrs. Palmer
came in while you were out. We are going to dine with her this evening,
and go to Mrs. Emsworth's first night.'
She looked at him rather closely as she said this.
'That will be charming,' he said quite naturally. 'And to-morrow we go
down to Mrs. Palmer's on Long Island, don't we?'
'Yes. Really, Bertie, their idea of hospitality is very amazing. She
came up here to-day to this blazing gridiron of a place simply in order
not to let us be dull on our first evening here. It seemed to her quite
natural. And she has put a motor-car at my disposal. I like that sort
of thing.'
Bertie thought a moment.
'I know,' he said. 'But though it sounds horrid to say it, a motor-car
doesn't mean anything to Mrs. Palmer.'
'It means the kindliness of thinking of it,' said Sybil.
'It was the same kindliness which brought her up from Long Island.
Would you and I, if we were in the country, come up to town to
entertain someone who was going to stay with us next day? You know we
shouldn't.'
'That is true,' said he. 'Is Mrs. Palmer alone here?'
'Yes. Her husband and daughter are both down in Long Island. She is
making a sort of rival Newport, you know. You and I plunge into it all
to-morrow. I think I am rather frightened, but I am not sure. No, I
don't think I am frightened. I am merely trembling with determination
to enjoy it all immensely.'
'Trembling?' he asked.
'Yes; just as when you hold something as tight as you can your hand
trembles. You must go and dress--at least, I must. Bertie, I am going
to be very English. I think they will like it best.'
'Oh, don't pose! You are never so nice when you pose.'
'I'm not going to pose. I am going to be absolutely natural.'
'That is the most difficult pose of all,' said he.
About half-way up Fifth Avenue the two rival restaurants, Sherry's and
Delmonico's, glare at each other from opposite sides of the street,
each with its row of attendant hansoms and motor-cars. Though New York
was technically empty--that is to say, of its millions a few hundred
were still at Newport--both restaurants were full, for Mrs. Emsworth's
opening night was an occasion not to be missed, and many of those who
would naturally have been out of town were there in order to lend
their distinguished support to the actress. Furthermore, Mr. Lewis S.
Palmer, from his retreat in Long Island, had been operating yesterday
on the Stock Exchange in a manner which compelled the attendance
of many of the lesser magnates who at this season usually left the
money-market to attend to itself. This was very inconsiderate of him,
so it was generally thought, but he was not a man who consulted the
convenience of others when he saw his own opportunity. But it was
extremely characteristic of him that, while nervous brokers, bankers,
and financiers rushed back to the furnace of the streets, he remained
himself in the coolness of Long Island, and spoke laconically through
the telephone.
Mrs. Palmer was waiting in the anteroom at Sherry's when her two
English guests arrived, and greeted them with shrill enthusiasm. A
rather stout young American, good-looking in a coarse, uncultivated
kind of manner, and dressed in a subtly ill-dressed, expensive mode,
was with her.
'And here you are!' she cried. 'How are you, Lord Keynes? I'm delighted
to see you again. Mrs. Massington, you must let me present to you Mr.
Armstrong, who has been so long dying to make your acquaintance that
I thought he would be dead before you got here. Mrs. Massington, Mr.
Reginald Armstrong. Lord Keynes, Mr. Armstrong.'
The American murmured his national formula about being very pleased,
and Mrs. Palmer continued without intermission.
'And I've got no party to meet you,' she said, 'because I thought you
would be tired with your journey, and want to have a quiet evening,
and we'll go in to dinner at once. Lord Keynes, you look as if America
agreed with you, and I see they have been interviewing you already.
Well, that's our way here. Why, when Reginald Armstrong gave his
equestrian party down at Port Washington last week, I assure you there
was a string of our newspaper men a quarter of a mile long waiting to
see him.'
The curious shrillness of talk peculiar to America sounded loud in the
restaurant as they made their sidling way by crowded tables toward one
of the windows looking on the street.
'Equestrian party?' asked Mrs. Massington. 'What is that?'
'Tell them, Reginald,' said Mrs. Palmer. 'Why, it tickled me to death,
your equestrian party. Mrs. Massington, those are blue points. You must
eat them. Tell them, Reginald.'
'Well, my stable was burned down last fall,' said he, 'and I've
been building a new one. So I determined to open it in some kind of
characteristic way.'
'His own idea,' said Mrs. Palmer in a loud aside to Bertie. 'He's one
of our brightest young men; you'll see a lot of him.'
'So I thought,' continued Mr. Armstrong, 'that I'd give a stable
party--make everyone dress as grooms. But then the ladies objected to
dressing as grooms. I'm sure I don't know why. I should have thought
they'd have liked to show their figures. But some objected. Mrs. Palmer
objected. I don't know why she objected--looking at her--but she did
object.'
Mrs. Palmer smiled.
'Isn't he lovely?' she said loudly across the table to Mrs. Massington.
'Well, she objected,' again continued Mr. Armstrong; 'and when Mrs.
Palmer objects, she objects. She said she wouldn't come. So I had to
think of something else. And it occurred to me that the best thing we
could do was to have dinner on horseback in the stables.'
He paused a moment.
'Well, that dinner was a success,' he said. 'I say it was a success,
and I'm modest too. I had fifty tables made, fitting on to the horses'
shoulders, and we all sat on horseback, and ate our dinners in the new
stables. Fifty of us in a big circle with the horses' heads pointing
inwards, and simultaneously the horses ate their dinner out of a big
circular manger. And that dinner has been talked about for a week, and
it 'll be talked about till next week. Next week Mrs. Palmer gives a
party, and my dinner will be as forgotten as what Adam and Eve had for
tea when they were turned out of Paradise.'
'No, don't tell them,' screamed Mrs. Palmer. 'Reginald, if you tell
them, I shall never forgive you.'
'Please don't, then, Mr. Armstrong,' said Sybil. 'I should hate it if
you were never forgiven. Besides, I like surprises. I should have loved
your dinner; I think it was too unkind of you to have given it before I
came. Or else it is unkind of you to have told me about it now that it
is over.'
She laughed with genuine amusement.
'Bertie, is it not heavenly?' she said. 'We think of that sort of thing
sometimes in England. Do you remember the paper ball? But we so seldom
do it. And did it all go beautifully? Did not half fall off their
horses?'
'Well, Mrs. Palmer's husband, Lewis S., he wouldn't get on a
real horse,' he said. 'He said that he was endangering too many
shareholders. So I got a wooden horse for him, and had it covered with
gold-leaf.'
'Lewis on a rocking-horse!' screamed his wife. 'I died--I just died!'
'Luckily, she had a resurrection,' said Mr. Armstrong; 'otherwise I
should never have forgiven myself. But you did laugh, you did laugh,'
he said.
Mrs. Palmer probably did. Certainly she did now.
The dinner went on its way. Everything was admirable: what was
designed to be cold was iced; what was designed to be hot was molten.
Round them the shrill-toned diners grew a little shriller; outside
the crisp noise of horses' hoofs on asphalt grew more frequent. Mrs.
Emsworth's first night was the feature of the evening; and even the
harassed financiers, to whom to-morrow, as dictated by the voice of
the telephone from Long Island, might mean ruin or redoubled fortunes,
had with closing hours laid all ideas of dollars aside, and, like
sensible men, proposed to distract themselves till the opening of
business next morning distracted them. For Mrs. Emsworth was something
of a personality; her friends, who were many, said she could act; her
enemies, who were legion, allowed she was beautiful, and New York,
which sets the time in so many things, takes its time very obediently
in matters of artistic import from unbusiness-like England and France.
In this conviction, it was flocking there to-night. Besides the great
impresario, Bilton, had let her the Dominion Theatre, and was known to
have given her _carte blanche_ in the matter of mounting and dresses.
This meant, since he was a shrewd man, a belief in her success, for
into the value of business he never allowed any other consideration to
enter. Furthermore, there had been from time to time a good deal of
interest in England over Mrs. Emsworth's career, the sort of interest
which does more for a time in filling a theatre than would acting of
a finer quality than hers have done. The piece she was to appear in
was a _petit saleté_ of no importance whatever. That always suited her
best; she liked her audience to be quite undistracted by any interest
in the plot, so that they might devote themselves to the contemplation
of her dresses and herself. Of her dresses the quality was admirable,
the quantity small; of herself there was abundance, both of quality
and quantity, for she was a tall woman, and, as we have said, even her
enemies conceded her good looks.
The piece had already begun when the little _partie carrée_ from
Sherry's entered, and rustled to the large stage-box which Bilton had
reserved for them. Mrs. Emsworth, in fact, was at the moment making
her first entrance, and, as they took their places, was acknowledging
the applause with which she was greeted. Naturally enough, her eye, as
she bowed to the house, travelled over its occupants, and she saw the
party arriving. This was made easy for her by Mrs. Palmer's voluble
enthusiasm, which really for the moment divided the attention of the
house between the stage and her box.
'I adore her, I just adore her!' she cried; 'and she promised to come
down from Saturday till Monday to Long Island. You know her, of course,
Lord Keynes? There's something magnetic to me about her. I told her so
this afternoon. I think it's her neck. Look at her bending her head,
Mrs. Massington. I really think that Mrs. Emsworth's neck is the most
magnetic thing I ever saw. Reginald, isn't it magnetic?'
The magnetic lady proceeded. She acted with immense and frolicsome
enjoyment, like some great good-humoured child bursting with animal
spirits. To the rather tired and heated occupants of the stalls
she came like a sudden breeze on a hot day, so infectious was her
enjoyment, so natural and unaffected her pleasure in exhibiting her
beauty and buoyant vitality. The critical element in the audience--in
any case there was not much--she simply took by the scruff of the neck
and turned out of the theatre. 'We are here to enjoy ourselves,' she
seemed to say. 'Laugh, then; look at me, and you will.' And they looked
and laughed. Whether she was an actress or not was really beside the
point; there was in her, anyhow, something of the irrepressible _gamin_
of the streets, and the _gamin_ that there is in everybody hailed its
glorious cousin. Long before the act was over her success was assured,
and when Mr. Bilton came in to see them in the interval, it was no
wonder that his mercantile delight was apparent in his face. Once more,
for the fiftieth or the hundredth time, he had staked heavily and won
heavily.
'I knew she would take,' he said. 'We Americans, Mrs. Massington, are
the most serious people on the face of the earth, and there is nothing
we adore so much as the entire absence of seriousness. Mrs. Emsworth is
like Puck in the "Midsummer Night's Dream." They'll be calling her Mrs.
Puck before the week's out. And she's playing up well. There is a crowd
of a hundred reporters behind the scenes now, and she's interviewing
them ten at a time, and making her dog give audience to those she
hasn't time for. Do you know her dog? I thought it would knock the
scenery down when it wagged its tail.'
Armstrong in the meantime was regaling Bertie with more details of the
equestrian party, and the justice of Bilton's remarks about seriousness
was evident from his conversation.
'It was all most carefully thought out,' he was saying, 'for one
mustn't have any weak point in an idea of that sort. I don't think you
go in for that sort of social entertainments in London, do you?'
'No; we are much more haphazard, I think,' said Bertie.
'Well, it's not so here--anyhow, in our set. If you want to keep in the
swim you must entertain people now and then in some novel and highly
original manner. Mrs. Lewis S. Palmer there is the centre, the very
centre, of our American social life. You'll see things at her home done
just properly. Last year she gave a farm-party that we talked about, I
assure you, for a month. You probably heard of it.'
'I don't remember it, I'm afraid.'
'Well, you surprise me. All the men wore real smock-frocks and carried
shepherd's crooks or cart-whips or flails, and all the women were
dressed as milkmaids. It was the drollest thing you ever saw. And not
a detail was wrong. All the grounds down at Mon Repos--that's her
house, you know--were covered with cattle-sheds and poultry-houses
and pig-sties, and the cows and sheep were driven around and milked
and shorn just as they do on real farms. And inside the walls of her
ballroom were even boarded up, and it was turned into a dairy. She's
one of our very brightest women.'
'And next week there is to be a new surprise, is there not?' asked
Bertie.
'Yes, indeed, and I think it will top everything she has done yet. What
she has spent on it I couldn't tell you. Why, even Lewis S. Palmer got
a bit restive about it, and when Lewis S. gets restive about what Mrs.
Palmer is spending, you may bet that anyone else would have been broke
over it. Why, she spent nearly thirty thousand dollars the other day
over the funeral of her dog.'
'Did Mr. Palmer get restive over that?' asked Bertie.
'Well, I guess it would have been pretty mean of him if he had, and
Lewis, he isn't mean. He's a strenuous man, you know, and he likes
to see his wife strenuous as a leader of society. He'd be terribly
mortified if she didn't give the time to American society. And he knows
perfectly well that she has to keep firing away if she's to keep her
place, just as he's got to in his. Why, what would happen to American
finance if Lewis realized all his fortune, and put it in a box and
sat on the top twiddling his thumbs? Why, it would just crumble--go
to pieces. Same with American society, if Mrs. Palmer didn't keep on.
She's just got to.'
'Then what happened to you all when she came to London?' asked Bertie,
rather pertinently.
'Why, that was in the nature of extending her business. That was all
right,' said Armstrong. 'And here's some of the returns coming in right
along,' he added felicitously--' Mrs. Massington and you have come to
America.' At this point Bilton interrupted.
'Mrs. Emsworth saw you to-night, Lord Keynes,' he said, 6 and hopes
you will go to see her to-morrow morning. No. 127, West Twenty-sixth
Street. Easier than your Park Squares and Park Places and Park Streets?
isn't it?'
'Much easier,' said Bertie. 'Pray give my compliments to Mrs. Emsworth,
and say I regret so much I am leaving New York to-morrow with Mrs.
Palmer.'
'Ah, you couldn't have a better excuse,' said Bilton; 'but no excuse
does for Mrs. Emsworth. You'd better find half an hour, Lord Keynes.'