THE two tiers of boxes at the Metropolitan Opera House reserved
for the beauty and fashion of New York flashed with the plumage
of women and a thousand thousand gems. Women of superb style, with
little of artifice but much of art, gowned so smartly that only
their intense vitality saved them from confusion with the fashion-plate,
carrying themselves with a royal, albeit somewhat self-conscious air,
many of them crowned like empresses, others starred like night,
producing the effect _en masse_ of resplendent beauty, and individually
of deficiency in all upon which the centuries have set their seal,
hung, two or three in a frame, against the curving walls and red
background of the great house: suspended in air, these goddesses
of a new civilisation, as if with insolent challenge to all that
had come to stare. To the music they paid no attention. They had
come to decorate, not to listen; without them there would be no opera.
The music lovers were stuffed on high, where they seemed to cling to
the roof like flies. The people in the parquette and orchestra chairs,
in the dress-circle and balconies, came to see the hundreds of millions
represented in the grand tier. Two rows of _blasé_ club faces studded
the long omnibus box. Behind the huge sleeves and voluminous skirts
that sheathed their proudest possessions, were the men that had coined
or inherited the wealth which made this triumphant exhibition possible.
As the curtain went down on the second act and the boxes emptied
themselves of their male kind that other male kind might enter to do
homage, two young men took their stand in the back of a box near the
stage and scanned the house. One of them remarked after a few moments:
“I thought that all American women were beautiful. So far, I see only
one.”
“These are the New York fashionettes, my dear boy. Their pedigree is
too short for aristocratic outline. You will observe that the pug is
as yet unmitigated. Not that blood always tells, by any means: some of
your old duchesses look like cooks. Our orchids travel on their style,
grooming, and health, and you must admit that the general effect is
stunning. Who is your beauty?”
“Directly in the middle of the house. Gad! she’s a ripper.”
“You are right. That is the prettiest woman in New York. And her
pedigree is probably as good as yours.”
“Who is she?”
“Mrs. Edward R. Forbes, the wife of one of the wealthiest and most
powerful men in the United States.”
“Really!”
“That is her daughter beside her.”
“Her what!”
“I always enjoy making that shot. It throws a flash-light on the
pitiful lack of originality in man every time. But it is nothing for
the petted wife of an American millionaire to look thirty when she is
forty. It’s the millionaire who looks sixty when he is fifty. I’m not
including Forbes, by the way. That tall man of fine physique that has
just left the box is he.”
“Poor thing!”
“Oh, don’t waste any pity on Forbes. He’s the envy of half New York.
She is devoted to him, and with good reason: there are few men that
can touch him at any point. I shall take you over presently. The first
thing a distinguished stranger, who has had the tip, does when he
comes to New York is to pay his court at that shrine. What a pity you
are booked. That girl will come in for forty millions.”
The other set his face more stolidly.
“Pounds?”
“Oh, no--dollars. But they’ll do.”
“I have not spoken as yet, although I don’t mind saying that that is
what I came over for.”
“I suppose you are in pretty deep--too deep to draw out?”
“I don’t know that I want to. I can be frank with you, Fletcher. Is
her father solid? American fortunes are so deucedly ricketty. I am
perfectly willing to state brutally that I wouldn’t--couldn’t--marry
Venus unless I got a half million (pounds) with her and something of an
income to boot.”
“As far as I know Creighton stands pretty well toward the top. You
can never tell though: American fortunes are so exaggerated. You
see, the women whose husbands are worth five millions can make pretty
much the same splurge as the twenty or thirty million ones. They know
so well how to do it. For the matter of that there’s one clever old
_parvenu_ here who has never handled more than a million and a
half--as I happen to know, for I’m her lawyer--and who entertains
with the best of them. Her house, clothes, jewels, are gorgeous.
A shrewd old head like that can do a lot on an income of seventy
thousand dollars a year. But Forbes, I should say, is worth his twenty
millions--that’s allowing for all embellishments--if he’s worth a
dollar, and Augusta is the only child. Unless America goes bankrupt,
she’ll come in for two-thirds of that one of these days, and an immense
dot meanwhile.”
At this moment Miss Creighton, who had been talking with charming
vivacity to a group of visitors, dismissed them with tactful badinage,
and beckoned to the two men in the back of the box.
“Sit down,” she commanded. “What do you think, Fletcher? I stayed away
from two important meetings to-day in order to receive the Duke. Was
not that genuine American hospitality?”
She spoke lightly; but as her eyes sought the Englishman’s, something
seemed to flutter behind her almost transparent face.
“These fads! These fads!” exclaimed the young man addressed as
Fletcher. “Have you resigned yourself to the New Woman, Bertie? The
New York variety is innocuous. They just have a real good time and the
newspapers take them seriously and write them up, which they think is
lovely.”
“Nobody pays any attention to Fletcher Cuyler,” said Miss Creighton
with affected disdain. “We will make you all stare yet.”
The Duke smiled absently. He was looking toward the box in the middle
of the tier.
“I think women should have whatever diversion they can find or invent,”
he said. “Society does not do much for them.”
The curtain rose.
“Keep quiet,” ordered Cuyler. “I allow no talking in a box which I
honour with my presence. That isn’t what _I_ ruin myself for.”
He was a tail nervous blonde bald-headed man of the Duke’s age, with
an imp-like expression and dazzling teeth. Despite the fact that he
was unwealthed, he was a fixed star in New York society; he not only
knew more dukes and princes than any other man in the United States,
but was intimate with them. He had smart English relatives and was a
graduate of Oxford, where he had been the chosen friend of the heir to
the Dukedom of Bosworth. His excessive liveliness, his adaptability and
versatility, his audacity, eccentricities, cleverness, and his utter
disregard of rank, had made him immensely popular in England. He was
treated as something between a curio and a spoilt child; and if people
guessed occasionally that his head was peculiarly level, they but
approved him the more.
When the act was done and the box again invaded, Cuyler carried the
Englishman off to call on Mrs. Forbes. Her box was already crowded,
and Mr. Forbes stood just outside the door. As the Duke was introduced
to him, he contracted his eyelids, and a brief glance of contempt shot
from eyes that looked twenty years younger than the fish-like orbs
which involuntarily twitched as they met that dart. But Mr. Forbes
was always courteous, and he spoke pleasantly to the young man of his
father, whom he had known.
Cuyler entered the box. “Get out,” he said, “everyone of you. I’ve got
a live duke out there. He’s mortgaged for the rest of the evening and
time’s short.” He drove the men out, then craned his long neck round
the half-open door.
“Dukee, dukee,” he called, “come hither.”
The Duke, summoning what dignity he could, entered, and was presented.
After he had paid a few moments’ court to Mrs. Forbes, Cuyler deftly
changed seats with him and plunged into an animated dispute with his
hostess anent the vanishing charms of _Don Giovanni_.
The Duke leaned over Miss Forbes’ chair with an air of languor, which
was due to physical fatigue, contemplating her absently, and not
taking the trouble to more than answer her remarks. Nevertheless, his
prolonged if indifferent stare disturbed the girl who had known little
susceptibility to men. There was something in the cold regard of his
eye, the very weariness of his manner, which had its charm for the type
of woman who is responsive to the magnetism of inertia, whom a more
vital force repels. And his title, all that it represented, the pages
of military glory it rustled, appealed to the mind of the American girl
who had felt the charm of English history. She was not a snob; she
had given no thought to marrying a title; and if the man had repelled
her, she would have relegated him to that far outer circle whence all
were banished who bored her or achieved her disapproval; but a thin
spell emanated from this cold self-contained personality and stirred
her languid pulse. Practical as she was, she had a girl’s imagination,
and she saw in him all that he had not, haloed with an ancient title;
behind him a great sweep of historical canvas. Then she remembered her
friend; and envied her with the most violent emotion of her life.
“Well, what do you think of her?” asked Cuyler of the Duke, as they
walked down the lobby. “I don’t mean _la belle dame sans merci_;
there’s only one opinion on that subject. But Augusta? do you think you
could stand her? If Forbes took the notion he’d come down with five
million dollars without turning a hair.”
“I could swallow her whole and without a grimace,” said the Duke drily.
“But I am half, two-thirds committed. I have no intention of making
Miss Creighton ridiculous, although I shall be obliged to tell her
father frankly that I cannot marry her unless he comes down with half
a million. It’s a disgusting thing to do, but I have no choice.”
“Oh, don’t go back on Mabel, of course. But I am sorry. However,
_nous verrons_. If Creighton doesn’t come to time, let me know.
I am pretty positive I can arrange the other: I think I know my fair
compatriot’s weak spot. I suppose you go on with the Creightons to the
big affair at the Schemmerhorn-Smiths to-night? Well, give Augusta a
quarter of an hour or so of your flattering attentions. It will do no
harm, in any event. I feel like a conspirator, but I’d like to see you
on your feet. Gad! I wish I had a title; I wouldn’t be in debt as long
as you have been.”