Long Island is separated from New York by a narrow sound, across which
ferry-boats ply in both directions with extreme punctuality. From any
part of New York city a couple of electric cars or an electric railway
will take you to the threshold of the ferry-boat, and trains await
you at the back-door, so to speak, of the ferry-boats, to convey you
down the length of Long Island. On board the ferry-boat you can buy
a variety of badly-printed and sensational daily papers for the sum
of one cent; you can get your boots blacked for very little more;
and no doubt, if there was sufficient demand, the directors would
enable you to have your teeth brushed or your hair combed. No part of
the equipment, however, is at all lovely. It answers the purpose of
conveying you cheaply and expeditiously from one point to another, and
enables you to finish your toilet in transit, which is an invaluable
boon to those who want to save time. As a matter of fact, everyone
wants to save time, but it has been reserved for Americans to invent
such methods of doing it. The rest of the world, therefore, is in
their debt. The debt is acknowledged, but the rest of the world, quite
inscrutably, does not choose to follow their example. All may raise the
flower now all have got the seed, but they do not raise the flower.
There is no 'class' on these boats; there is no 'class' on the elevated
railway; there is no 'class' on the electric cars. Millionaires in
Long Island, in consequence, have the privilege of enjoying the same
discomforts as other people, and even Lewis S., who could have bought
up the whole system of electric cars, overhead railway, and ferry-boats
(after a little judicious distribution of emoluments to the officials
of New York City), habitually went by these unlovely conveyances,
because there were no other. During his transit he once sent a
cablegram buying, at any price, the whole dinner-service which had been
used on the last occasion on which Marie Antoinette dined at Petit
Trianon. It was extremely expensive, and, as he wrote, the drippings
from the rain fell on to his cablegram form, for the boat was full.
Subsequently he argued with the boot-boy who had blacked his boots,
but gave in when the boy produced his tariff-card. And Democracy, the
spirit of his fellow-passengers, sympathized in the main with him.
Once arrived on Long Island, a walk of a hundred yards or so leads to
the ticket-office. Those hundred yards are uncovered, however; but
since people who live on Long Island _must_ pass them in order to get
into the Delectable City, there is no reason why the railroad or the
ferry-boat company should offer conveniences in the way of shelter to
their passengers. Given competition, any line would vie with the others
in mirrors and gilded furniture; but if there is none, why on earth
spend a penny? Not a passenger the less will travel because the mode of
transit is bestial. Thus, common-sense, as usual, emerges triumphant.
For the purpose of this narrative, the low-lying swamp and companies
of jerry-built houses that cluster round the various stations on the
line may be disregarded, and after half an hour's travelling the train
emerges into a very pleasant land. There are no high uplands to dwarf
the immediate landscape, but there are trees of tolerable growth and
slim presence to add distinction to it. Underneath these trees, as the
train nears Port Washington, grow high clumps of purple Michaelmas
daisies, now, in September, full of bursting bud, and the temperate
sea-winds give a vividness of colour to the prevailing green, which
reminds foreigners of the Devon sea-coast.
Mrs. Palmer's new-built house stood on a charming hill-top some mile
or so beyond the station. The site had been occupied till a few years
before by a delightful bungalow structure, built of wood, with shingled
walls, and surrounded on all sides by deep, shady verandas. The wood in
those days came right up to the house on two sides, and was just lopped
of its topmost branches on a third, so that where the ground fell away
rapidly from the house a charming glimpse of the dim blue sound could
be seen framed in sky and tree-tops, while the fourth side was open,
the house-front giving on to a broad lawn of velvety turf which changed
into rougher meadow-land in the middle distance, while over distant
tree-tops and a wash of green country the gray smoke of New York sat
on the horizon. The house, in fact, had been like a hundred other
houses on Long Island, not perhaps very pretty, still less beautiful,
but not without a certain haphazard picturesqueness about it, restful
and unpretending, and most eminently adapted for the purpose of
affording to the brain-heated business man a draught of coolness and
greenness. Moreover, it had expressed somehow the genius of the place;
its woods, not huge nor of magnificent trees, but of pleasant growth,
always sounded in whispers through the rooms; and even as the greatest
heats of summer came tempered by the passage of the winds through the
filter of the woodlands, so, one would have thought, the fever of New
York was abated here, even as the smoke of the city was but a gray
_tache_ on the horizon. It had, as all houses should, been in tune
with the pleasant, mediocre charm of the island, even as the chateaux
on the Loire express the broad grandeur and classical formality of the
landscape, as the big houses of England are in the scale of their huge
timbered parks, and, for that matter, as the county gaol expresses the
security which His Majesty kindly affords to the criminal classes.
But within the last few years the whole place had been completely
changed, and it was no longer the genius of Long Island, but the genius
of mushroom wealth, that crowned the hill-top. For a quarter of a mile
on every side round the house the trees had been felled and their roots
dynamited, and huge lawns spread their green carpets in the most ample
expanses. Four-square in the centre stood the immense house of gray
stone, copied largely from one of the Valois chateaux in the South of
France, but with various protuberances, in the shape of a theatre, a
swimming-bath, and a tennis-court, grafted on to it. A carriage-drive
lay in long curves like a flicked whip-lash, surmounting terrace after
terrace set with nugatory nudities, till it reached the lead-roofed
portico at the front, where two great Græco-Roman candelabra of Parian
marble stood one on each side of the door, pierced for gas, and crowned
by large glass globes. To the north lay the Italian garden, all
laurels and tessellated pavement, cypresses and statuary, fountains
and flower-beds. To the west were the tennis and croquet lawns, and to
the south, where the ground in old days had fallen tumbling towards
the sea, it had been built up with thousands of tons of earth and
faced with masonry, so that from the edge of the terrace one looked
down on to the topmost fans of the waving trees. Heavy gilded vanes
crowned the lead roofs, and high over the central dome of the building
a flag-staff displayed Mrs. Palmer's very original device--Love caught
in a rose-bush--to the airs of heaven. Round the extreme edge of the
terrace ran the bicycle track, on which Lewis S. Palmer did his ten
miles a day, with black hatred in his heart of this extraordinary waste
of time.
The estate, which was of great extent, and produced nothing whatever,
since, to Mrs. Palmer's way of thinking, to live on an estate which
produced anything was of the nature of keeping a shop, was all pressed
into the amiable service of providing entertainment for the guests,
and of showing the wondering world a specimen of the delectable life.
For several miles the road through the woods had been run in artfully
contrived gradients, carried on struts over too precipitous ravines,
and quarried through cuttings to avoid undesirable steepnesses. The
sides of the cuttings were admirably planted, and creepers and ivy
covered the balustrades of the bridges. A golf-course, smooth as a
billiard-table, and not too heavily bunkered, lay near the house, and
Mrs. Palmer had tried a most original experiment last year of stocking
the woods with all sorts of game, to provide mixed shooting for a
couple of parties in the autumn. This had not been wholly a success,
for the deer she had turned out were so tame that they gazed in timid
welcome at the shooters, probably expecting to be fed, till they fell
riddled with bullets, while the pheasants were so wild that nobody
could touch a tail-feather. But the costume of the _chasseurs_--green
velvet, very Robin-Hoody--had been most tasteful, and she herself,
armed with a tiny pea-rifle and dressed in decent imitation of
Atalanta, had shot a roebuck and a beater, the latter happily not
fatally.
From the centre of the terrace on the east, which had been brought
over entire from a needy Italian palace, a broad flight of steps of
rose-coloured marble led down to the sea. A small breakwater was
sufficient to provide station and anchorage for the two steam-yachts
and smaller pleasure-boats, but otherwise the shore had not been
meddled with. There was a charming beach of sand, and a little further
on a fringe of seaweed-covered rock-pools. Behind this was a small
natural lagoon in a depression in the sandy foreshore, some half-acre
in extent, fed by a stream that came down through the woods, but
brackish through the infiltration of the salt water. This that highly
original woman had chosen to be the scene of the fête which was to
astonish society next week; but the secret had been well kept, and
no one except Reggie Armstrong knew the precise details of the new
surprise. For a fortnight or so, however, it was common knowledge that
a great many large pans wrapped in tarpaulin had been arriving, and the
shore had been populous with men who plied some sort of bare-legged
avocation, which implied wading in the lagoon. But the foreman of the
company who was executing Mrs. Palmer's orders had received notice that
if any word of what was being done leaked out or reached the papers,
at that moment all work would be suspended, and the firm would never
have another order from her. She herself, sometimes alone, sometimes
with Reggie, inspected the work; otherwise no one was allowed near the
place. The yachts of her dearest friends, it is true, constantly passed
and repassed up the sound, and many were the opera-glasses levelled at
the shore; but what the bare-legged men were doing baffled conjecture
and the best glasses.
The house inside was, with the exception of one small suite, of the
most sumptuous description. A huge hall, paved with marble, and covered
as to its walls with superb wood-work of Grinling Gibbons, occupied the
centre of the ground-floor, and _en suite_ round it were the rooms for
entertaining. Ping-pong being at this moment fashionable, it was to be
expected that almost every room had its table, and it was curious to
see the hideous little black board on its cheap trestle legs occupying
the centre of the great French drawing-room. Old rose-coloured satin
was stretched on the walls, an immense Aubusson carpet covered the
floor. All the furniture was gems of the early Empire style; the big
ormolu clock was by Vernier; great Dresden parrots in gilt mounts held
the shaded electric lights, and a statuette by Clodion stood on the
Queen's escritoire from the Tuileries. One side of the square block of
house was entirely occupied by the picture-gallery, which contained
some extremely fine specimens of the great English portrait-school, a
few dubious old masters, some good Lancrets, and several very valuable
pictures by that very bright young American artist, Sam Wallace.
These, as all the world knows, represent scenes from the ballet and
such subjects, and he is supposed to have a prodigious eye for colour.
Here, too, of course, was an unrivalled place for ping-pong, and Mrs.
Palmer had caused to be made a very large court, so that four people
could play together. Great grave English footmen, when the game was in
progress, were stationed at each end to pick up the balls, and hand
them on silver salvers to the server; and they had rather a busy time
of it, for the majority of Mrs. Palmer's guests found a difficulty in
inducing the ball to go anywhere near the table. But they found it very
amusing, and it produced shrieks of senseless laughter.
An observant man might have noticed in a dark corner of the hall a
small green baize door. It was in shadow of the staircase, and might
easily have escaped him altogether; but if he noticed it, it would have
struck him as odd that this plain baize door, with three brass initials
on it--L. S. P.--should find a place in this magnificence. If it had
only been L. S. D., it would have been quite in place, and might have
been taken to be the shrine of the tutelary god of the place. Shrine
indeed it was, and the tutelary god sat within; for the initials were
those of Mrs. Palmer's husband.
It was a perfectly plain, bare room, with drugget on the floor, an
almanac hung near the fireplace, a large table stood in the centre of
the room, on which were piles of papers, apparatus for writing, and
usually a glass of milk. From the door to the right there came the
subdued tickings of telegraph apparatus; near that door sat a young man
on a plain wooden chair, and at the table sat a small, gray-haired man,
very thin and spare, with bushy eyebrows which frowned over his work.
From time to time he would throw on to the floor a scrap of paper. Then
the young man would get up noiselessly, pick it up, and go through with
it into the room from which came the tickings of the telegraph. Then
he would return and sit down again. Occasionally a muffled knock would
come at the same door, upon which he would rise and take a paper which
was handed him, and lay it quite close to the right hand of the man
who sat at the table, who either crumpled it up after reading it or
wrote something in reply. These answers and messages were all written
on small scraps of paper measuring about three inches by one; there was
a pile of them always ready by his left hand. A telephone also stood
on this table which rang very constantly. Then the man at the table
would, as if automatically, place the receiver at his ear and listen,
sometimes not even looking up from his writing, and often replacing the
instrument without a word. More rarely he looked up, and he would say a
few words--'Yes, yes,' 'No, certainly not,' 'Very well, buy,' or 'Sell
at once.'
'Yes, all!' Sometimes, again, it would be he who first used the
instrument, and he would ring up his head clerk in New York or a
partner, never in a hurry, never apparently impatient. On the other
hand, he would not wait idle till the answering bell rang, but go
steadily on with his work. At such moments he would raise his eyes
sometimes when he was speaking, and if you happened to catch his
glance, it is probable you would never forget it, but would understand,
though momentarily only and dimly maybe, that at the table in the
bare room there sat a Force, a great natural phenomenon, before which
all the splendour and magnificence of the house, all the illimitable
outpouring of wealth which it implied, became insignificant--a mere
shirt-button or a tie-pin to the man from whose brain it had all sprung.
In face, but for those extraordinary eyes, dark gray in colour, but
of a vitality so great that it seemed as if each was a separate
living entity, his features were somewhat insignificant. He had gray,
rather thin whiskers, and iron-gray hair, still thick, and not yet
deserting his forehead. His nose was slightly hooked, suggesting that a
spoonful, perhaps, of Jewish blood ran in his veins; his mouth was very
thin-lipped and compressed. In body, he was short and thin almost to
meagreness, and, owing to a nearly total absence of digestive power, he
lived practically exclusively on milk, of which he drank some five or
six pints a day. And in nothing was his power of control so amazingly
shown; for ten years ago he had been both _gourmet_ and _gourmand_, and
had habitually eaten enormous masses of food with a relish and palate
for the curiously delicate and uncultivated sense of taste that Savarin
might have envied. Even now, when he sat at the head of the table at
his wife's parties, he knew, partly by keenness of nostril, partly
by look, whether any dish was not perfectly cooked, and next morning
the first of the slips which he dropped on to the floor to be picked
up by the young man at the door might run: 'To the _chef_: Not enough
asparagus-heads in the sauce Milanaise, Some three weeks ago I told you
the same thing.--L. S. P.'
This extraordinary sense of, and attention to, detail, characteristic
of the great Napoleon, was also most characteristic of Mr. Palmer. Only
the night before his daughter had come down to dinner in a new dress,
and found herself the instant target for the piercing gray eye of her
father.
'There ought to be two straps on the shoulder, not one,' he said; 'it
is copied from the figure of Madame Matignon, in the picture of the
last fête of the Empress Eugenie. Pray have it altered.'
'Dear old papa,' remarked Amelie, 'I dare say you know everything, but
it wouldn't be so pretty.'
'That is a matter of taste, but it would be right.'
This characteristic, which appeared so strongly even in such branches
of human interest as the position of a strap or a bow on a woman's
dress, appeared most piercingly of all on questions concerning finance.
Figures, indeed, once seen by him, seemed to be indelibly imprinted on
his mind, and, without reference, he would embark on enterprises where
an accurate knowledge of previous balance-sheets and present prices
was essential. It was essential to him; only, instead of referring to
books which would give him the required information, he carried it
about in his head. To his partners and those who were associated with
him in business he was a source of constant wonder. Partners they might
be to him in name, and, since they were all well-tried and trusted
men, they no doubt were of assistance to him; but as far as executive
power was concerned, they might as well have been junior clerks in some
other firm, for Palmer went on his way automatically, self-balanced
on the topmost crest of the huge wave of prosperity that was flooding
America, quicker than the whole of the rest of the New York Market to
scent coming trouble or prosperity in the world of money, prompter
than any to take advantage of it. Then, when his day's work was done,
at whatever hour that might be, it was as if the word 'business' was
unknown to him, and there sat at table, dressed in loose and somewhat
ill-fitting clothes, a man of very simple and kindly nature, a
connoisseur in cookery, art, and millinery, a gentleman at heart, and
to the backbone an American--one who, in spite of his gentleness, was
without breeding; one who, in spite of his deep and varied knowledge,
was without culture.
He and Amelie were seated at lunch alone together on the day following
Mrs. Emsworth's triumphant debut. Amelie had only just come in from
her ride--the horse she preferred to ride was one which few men could
have sat--and she still wore her riding-habit. She was quite obviously
the authentic daughter of her father and mother, and, like a clever
girl, which she undoubtedly was, she had selected, so it seemed, all
the good points possessed by both her parents, rejected all their
weaknesses, and embodied the result in the adorable compound known as
Amelie Palmer. She had been right, for instance, in possessing herself
of her mother's extraordinary vitality and physical health, rejecting
her father's digestive apparatus; on the other hand, she had chosen her
father's eyes, impressing upon them, however, a certain femininity, and
had set them in a complexion of dazzling fairness, which she owed to
her mother. And out of the careful selection there had sprung, crowning
it all, the quality that more than anything else was _she_--namely,
her unrivalled exuberance of enjoyment. Whether it was some new social
effort of her mother's to which she brought her glorious presence,
whether she rode alone through the flowering woods, or accompanied her
father on his hygienic bicycle ride--'papa's treadmill,' as she called
it--she brought to all her occupations the great glowing lantern of
her joy, the same brilliant smile of welcome for anything that might
turn up, the same divine content-She took nothing seriously, but had
enthusiasm for everything. Of refinement or intellectual qualities she
had none whatever, but he would be a bloodless man who could really
deplore their absence when he looked on that brilliant vitality. Surely
it would be time enough to think of such gray gifts when the sparkling
tide of her life ran less riotously; at present it would be like
teaching some clean-limbed young colt of the meadows to sit up and beg
or shake a paw.
In a certain way (and it is part of the purpose of this story to draw
out the eventual pedigree of the resemblance) her _joie de vivre_ was
very much akin to that quality which had so captivated the Americans
in New York on the occasion of Mrs. Emsworth's first night. In the
older woman, since her nature had been longer in the crucible of
life, it had necessarily undergone a certain change; but the critical
observer, had he hazarded the conjecture that at Amelie's age Mrs.
Emsworth had been very like Amelie, would, though he was quite wrong
about it, have had the satisfaction of making a really clever mistake.
For Mrs. Emsworth at that age had been possessed of a somewhat serious
and joyless nature; her present _joie de vivre_ was the result of her
experience of life, the conviction, thoughtfully arrived at, that joy
is the thing worth living for. But Amelie's exuberance was the result,
not of philosophy, but of instinct; she laughed like a child merely
because she laughed. And the critical observer, if, after making one
clever mistake, he had been willing to hazard another, and had guessed
that at Mrs. Emsworth's age Amelie would be like Mrs. Emsworth, would
have risked a mistake that was not clever. For it is very seldom that
experience confirms one's childish instincts; in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred it either eradicates them altogether, or, at any rate,
modifies them almost beyond recognition. Mrs. Emsworth had won back to
what had not been in her an instinct when she was a child; and it was
more unlikely that Amelie, when a woman, would retain the instincts
that were now hers.
At the present moment Amelie's enthusiasm was largely taken up with
food.
'Papa, you have an angelic nature,' she said; 'and how you can sit
there chewing crackers and sipping milk without throwing the table
things at me I can't conjecture.'
'Habit of self-control, Amelie,' said he, his eyes smiling at her;
'perhaps you will learn it some day. When does your mother come down?'
'This afternoon, with the two English folk. She's been telephoning all
the morning. When mamma gets hold, real tight hold, of the telephone,
she doesn't let go under an hour or two. Now, I'm not like that. The
moment I ring anyone up, I forget what I was going to say, and have to
ask them to dinner instead. I guess you and mamma took all the brains
of the family. Papa, I had the heavenliest ride this morning, all
through the fir-woods, and Tamburlaine wanted to jump the sound. The
daisies are all coming out, and it smelt so good. Oh, it smelt so good,
like--like a drug store. There's the telephone again!'
Mr. Palmer considered this a moment.
'When your mother gave her hunting-party last year,' he said, 'she
commenced ringing the telephone at half-past ten in the morning, and
she was late for lunch because she hadn't finished. Top speed all the
time, too. She takes things seriously; that's why she comes out on top
every time.'
'Yes, some more,' said Amelie to the footman.
Mr. Palmer looked quickly at the dish as it was handed her.
'What mess is that?' he asked.
'Pigeons once,' said she; 'it won't be anything in a minute or two.'
'There ought to be mushrooms in the stew. It's meant to be _à la
Toulon_. I've forgotten more about cookery than our present _chef_ ever
knew.'
Amelie laughed.
'Poor papá! what a lot you must forget! I guess you're failing. Well,
I've regretfully finished my lunch. Are you going treadmilling?'
'Yes. Who comes down with your mother?'
'Mrs. Massington and Lord Keynes. The others come on Saturday--Mrs.
Emsworth, Bilton, and that lot. Papa, I've thought of the right name
for Reggie Armstrong at last. It's Ping-pong. He's just that.'
Mr. Palmer considered this.
'Yes, Ping-pong is about the size. Small set, though. Come and
treadmill, Amelie.'
She got up and stretched herself, then let one arm fall round her
father's neck.
'There are schemes in the air,' she said to him, as they walked out.
'But on the day you see me marry Ping-pong you may tie me up by the
heels to Tamburlaine's tail.' From which it may be seen that either
Amelie was charmingly lacking in the wisdom of the world, or that her
mother had more of it than one would have guessed.