MAMMON AND CO.
BY E. F. BENSON.
* * * * *
Mammon and Co.
12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
This latest novel by a popular author deals with personages living in
the same society that was characterized by "Dodo" and "The Rubicon." Mr.
Benson is thoroughly acquainted with the society in which he places the
scenes of his novels of London life. In "Mammon and Co." the good genius
of the tale is an American girl. The book will be found to be one of
exceeding interest throughout.
Dodo.
_A Detail of the Day._ 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
"'Dodo' is a delightfully witty sketch of the 'smart' people of
society.... The writer is a true artist."--_London Spectator._
The Rubicon.
12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
"The anticipations which must have been formed by all readers of 'Dodo'
will in no wise be disappointed by 'The Rubicon.' The new work is well
written, stimulating, unconventional, and, in a word, characteristic.
Intellectual force is never absent, and the keen observation and
knowledge of character, of which there is abundant evidence, are aided
by real literary power."--_Birmingham Post._
* * * * *
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
MAMMON
AND CO.
By E. F. BENSON
Author of DODO, THE RUBICON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS
_BOOK I_
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE CITY DINNER 1
II.--SUNDAY MORNING 17
III.--AFTER THE GEE-GEE PARTY 34
IV.--KIT'S LITTLE PLAN 48
V.--TOBY 63
VI.--TOBY'S PARTNER 75
VII.--THE SOLITARY FINANCIER 92
VIII.--THE SIMPLY NOBODY 102
IX.--THE PLOT MISCARRIES 116
X.--MRS. MURCHISON'S DIPLOMACY 128
XI.--MR. ALINGTON OPENS CHECK 140
XII.--THE COTTAGE BY THE SEA 159
XIII.--TOBY TO THE RESCUE 174
XIV.--THE CHAIRMAN AND THE DIRECTOR 192
XV.--THE WEEK BY THE SEA 206
_BOOK II_
I.--KIT'S MEDITATIONS 220
II.--THE FIRST DEAL 234
III.--LILY DRAWS A CHEQUE 248
IV.--THE DARKENED HOUSE 262
V.--TOBY ACTS WITHOUT SPEAKING 280
VI.--LILY'S DESIRE 292
VII.--THE SECOND DEAL 304
VIII.--MR. ALINGTON LEAVES LONDON 321
IX.--THE SLUMP 336
X.--TOBY DRAWS THE MORAL 352
_BOOK I_
CHAPTER I
THE CITY DINNER
"Egotism is certainly the first," said Lady Conybeare with admirable
firmness; "and your inclination towards your neighbour is the second."
Now, this was the sort of thing which Alice Haslemere liked; and she
stopped abruptly in the middle of her rather languishing conversation
with nobody in particular to ask for explanations. It sounded promising.
"The first what, and the second what, Kit?" she inquired.
"The first and the second lessons," said Lady Conybeare promptly. "The
first and the second social virtues, if you are particular. I am going
to set up a school for the propagation of social virtues, where I shall
teach the upper classes to be charming. There shall be a special class
for royalty."
Lady Haslemere was not generally known as being particularly particular,
but she took her stand on Kit's conditional, and defended it.
"There is nothing like particularity--nothing," she said earnestly, with
a sort of missionary zeal to disagree with somebody; "though some people
try to get on without it."
Being a great friend of Kit's, she knew that it was sufficient for her
to state a generality of any kind to get it contradicted. She was not
wrong in this instance. Kit sighed with the air of a woman who meant to
do her unpleasant duty like a sister and a Christian.
"Dear Alice," she said, "there is nothing so thoroughly irritating as
particularity. I am not sure what you mean by it, but I suppose you
allude either to people who are prudes or to people who are always
letting fly precise information at one. They always want it back too.
Don't you know how the people who insist on telling one the exact time
are just those who ask one for the exact time. I never know the exact
time, and I never want to be told it. And I hate a prudish woman," she
concluded with emphasis, "as much as I abhor a well-informed man."
"Put it the other way round," said Lady Haslemere, "and I agree with
you. I loathe a prudish man, and I detest a well-informed woman."
"There aren't any of either," said Lady Conybeare.
She sat up very straight in her chair as she made this surprising
assertion, and arranged the lace round her throat. Her attitude gave one
the impression somehow of a rakish frigate clearing for action, and on
the moment came the first shot.
"I am a prude," said a low, bass voice at her elbow.
Kit scarcely glanced round.
"I know you are," she said, replying with a heavy broadside; "but then
you are not a man."
"That depends on what you mean by a man," said the voice again.
The speaker was so hidden by the arms of the low chair in which he sat,
that a knee, shin and foot, in a horizontal line on the invisible
support of another knee, was all that could be seen of him.
"I mean a human being who likes killing things," said Kit without
hesitation.
"I killed a wasp yesterday," said the voice; "at least, I think it died
afterwards. Certainly I disabled it. Oh, I am sure I killed it."
"Yes, and you remembered it to-day," said Lady Conybeare briskly. "You
did not really kill it; it lives in your memory, and--and poisons your
life. In time it will kill you. Do you suppose Jack remembers the grouse
he killed yesterday?"
"Oh, but Jack is like the oldest inhabitant," said Lady Haslemere. "He
never remembers anything, just as the oldest inhabitant never remembers
a flood or a thunderstorm or a famine at all like the one in question.
That means they don't remember anything at all, for one famine is just
like another; so are thunderstorms."
Kit paused a moment, with her head on one side, regarding the speaker.
"No; forgetfulness is not characteristic of Jack," she said, "any more
than memory is. He remembers what he wants to remember, and forgets what
he wants to forget. Now, it's just the opposite with me. I forget what I
want to remember--horrid stories about my friends, for instance--and I
remember the sort of thing I want to forget--like--like Sunday morning.
Isn't it so, Jack?"
A slightly amused laugh came from a man seated in the window, who was no
other than the Jack in question, and, incidentally, Kit's husband.
"It is true I make a point of forgetting unpleasant things," he said;
"that is the only real use of having a memory decently under control. I
forget Kit's milliner's bills----"
"So do I, darling," said Kit with sudden affection.
"No, you don't; you only remind me to forget them. I forget the names
and faces of uninteresting people. I forget--no, I don't forget
that----"
"What don't you forget, Jack?" demanded Kit with some sharpness. "I
don't believe it."
"I don't forget that we've got to dine in the City at half-past seven.
Why ever there was such an hour as half-past seven to put into a
Christian clock I can't conjecture," he said in a tone of regretful
wonder.
"Well, if you forget unpleasant things, and you don't forget that,
perhaps it will be pleasant."
"I am quite certain it will be infernal," said Jack. "Go and dress,
Kit."
Lady Conybeare frowned impatiently.
"Oh, Jack! when will you learn that I cannot do what you ask if you talk
to me in that way?" she cried. "I was just going to dress. Now I can't,
and we shall both be late, which will be very tiresome. You will curse
and swear at me like St. Peter for keeping you waiting. How stupid you
are, and how little you know me!"
Lord Conybeare looked at his watch.
"It is exactly three minutes to six," he said. "You needn't go for half
an hour yet. There is loads of time--loads!"
Kit got up at once.
"That's a dear boy," she said. "Gracious! it's past the half-hour! I
must fly! Good-bye, Alice; Conybeare and I will look in on you after our
dinner. I think you said you were going to have a nice round game with
counters. Good-bye, Tom, and learn not to be a prude."
"I'm sure you would teach me, if anybody could," said Tom rather
viciously.
Kit adjusted the lace round her throat again.
"Thanks for the compliment," she said; "but prudes are born, not made.
You don't shoot, you don't hunt, you remember every wasp you have
possibly killed. Oh, Tom, I am afraid you are hopeless. Don't laugh. I
mean what I say; at least, I think I mean the greater part of it."
"I reserve the less, then," said Tom. "I must go too. So Alice and
Haslemere and I will see you to-night?"
"Yes; we'll escape as soon as we can from the dinner. Mind you take some
money with you, Jack, for the round game. I must fly," she said again,
and took her graceful presence very slowly out of the room.
There was a short silence, broken by Lord Conybeare.
"It is odd how you can tell a man by the hour at which he dines," he
said. "Seven is an impossible hour, and the people who dine at seven are
as impossible as the hour. People who dine at half-past are those who
are trying to dine at eight and cannot manage it. They are also trying
not to be impossible, and cannot."
Lady Haslemere got up.
"I once knew a man who dined at ten minutes to eight," she said, "which
struck me as extremely curious. He was an archdeacon. I believe all
archdeacons dine at ten minutes to eight. And they call it a quarter to,
which is even odder."
"I don't know any archdeacons," said Tom, with a touch of wistfulness in
his voice. "Introduce me to one to-night, Alice."
"Archdeacons don't come to Berkeley Street," said she.
"Why not? How exclusive! Do they expect Berkeley Street to come to
them?"
"Probably. They are trained to believe nothing which is not incredible.
It is exactly that which makes them impossible."
"Extremes meet," said Lord Conybeare. "The sceptic forces himself to
believe everything that is perfectly credible. And he succeeds so well.
Sceptics believe that they once ate nuts--we've all eaten nuts once--and
are descended from apes. And how obvious is their genealogy from their
faces! If I was going to be anything, it should not be a sceptic."
Lady Haslemere wandered once round the room, condemning the china
silently.
"I must positively go," she said.
"Do, Alice!" said Jack; "because I want to dress. But you are rather
like Kit. When she says she must fly, it means she has little intention
of walking, just yet."
Lady Haslemere laughed.
"Come, Tom," she said. "We are not wanted. How deeply pathetic that is!
They will want us some day, as the hangman said. Well, Jack, we shall
see you later. I _am_ going."
Lord Conybeare went upstairs to his dressing-room, revolving with some
intentness the affair of this City dinner. The taking off his coat led
him to wind up his watch, and he was so lost in thought that for a
moment he looked surprisedly at his dress-clothes, which were laid out
for him, as if pyjamas would have been a more likely find. But his
linked and studded shirt was an irresistible reminder that it was
dinner-time, not bedtime, and he proceeded to dress with a certain neat
haste that was clearly characteristic of him. In stature he was somewhat
below the average size, both in height and breadth; but one felt that an
auctioneer of men might most truthfully have said, when he came to him
at a sale: "Here is a rather smaller specimen, gentlemen, but much more
highly finished, and very strong!"
The quick deftness of even unimportant movements certainly gave the
impression of great driving power; everything he did was done
unerringly; he had no fumblings with his studs, and his tie seemed to
fashion a faultless, careless bow under a mere suggestion from his thin,
taper-nailed fingers. He looked extremely well bred, and a certain
Mephistophelian sharpness about his face, though it might have warned
those whom Kit would have called prudes--for this was rather a sweeping
word with her--that he might not be desirable as a friend, would
certainly have warned the prudent that he would assuredly be much more
undesirable as an enemy. On the whole, a prudent prude would have tried
to keep on good terms with him. He appeared, in fact, even on so hasty
and informal a glance as that which we are giving him as he arranges his
tie, to be one of those lucky people to whom it is well to be pleasant,
for it was difficult to imagine that he was afraid of anything or cared
for anybody. Certain happily-constituted folk have never had any doubt
about the purpose of the world, so clearly was it designed to feed and
amuse them. Lord Conybeare was one of these; and in justice to the
world we must say that it performed its altruistic part very decently
indeed.
Jack Conybeare was still on the sunny side of thirty-five. He and Kit
had been married some seven years, and had no children, a privation for
which they were touchingly thankful. They had, both of them, quite
sufficient responsibilities, or, to speak more precisely, liabilities;
and to be in any way responsible for any liabilities beyond their own
would have seemed to them a vicarious burden of the most intolerable
sort. Their own, it is only fair to add, sat but lightly on them; Kit,
in particular, wore hers most gracefully, like a becoming mantle.
Chronic conditions, for the most part, tend to cease being acutely felt,
and both she and Jack would far sooner have had a couple of thousand
pounds in hand, and fifty thousand pounds in debt, than not to have owed
or owned a penny. Kit had once even thought of advertising in the
morning papers that a marchioness of pleasing disposition was willing to
do anything in the world for a thousand pounds, and Jack had agreed that
there was something in the idea, though the flaw in it was cheapness:
you should not give yourself away. He himself had mortgaged every
possible acre of his property, and sold all that was available to sell,
and the close of every day exhibited to a wondering world how it was
possible to live in the very height of fashion and luxury without any
means of living at all. Had he and Kit sat down for a moment by the side
of a road, or loitered in Park Lane, they would probably have been
haled, by the fatherly care of English law, to the nearest magistrate,
for that they had no apparent means of sustenance. Luckily they never
thought of doing anything of the kind, finding it both safer and
pleasanter to entertain princes and give the best balls in London.
A want of money is an amiable failing, common to the saint and the
sinner alike, and does not stand in the way of the _accusé_ acquiring
great popularity. Jack, it is true, had no friends, for the very simple
reason that he did not in the least want them; Kit, on the other hand,
had enough for two.
Her rules of life were very uncomplicated, and they daily became more
so. "You can't be too charming," was the chief of them. She took
infinite pains to make herself almost universally agreeable, and was
amply repaid, for she was almost universally considered to be so. This
embracing desire had its drawbacks, but Kit's remedies for them quite
met the case. For instance, when any woman whom she did not happen to
remember by sight greeted her, as often happened, effusively at some
evening party, Kit always kissed her with a corresponding effusion; if a
man in the same circumstances did the same, she always said
reproachfully, "You _never_ come to see us now." In this way her total
ignorance of who they were became a trivial thing; both were charmed,
and when people are charmed, their names become of notable
insignificance.
The finest inventions of all are the simplest, and the simplicity of
Jack's _modus vivendi_ rivalled its own subtlety and the subtlety of
Kit's. He loudly professed staunch Conservative principles, always voted
with the Bishops in the House of Lords on any question, and had made a
special study of guano and Church ritual. A method exposed always sounds
a little crude, but the crudity often belongs not to the method but to
its exposure. Certainly Jack's method answered, and no method can do
more. The mammon of unrighteousness, not being deceived, but not being
shocked at such duplicity, thought him very clever, and the unmammon of
righteousness, being deceived, was not shocked at other things which
were occasionally in the air about him. With perfect justice they
labelled the world scandal-loving and uncharitable when they were told
these other things, and asked Jack to dinner, to show that they did not
believe them. A further proof of his wisdom may be seen in the fact that
he accepted such invitations, and if he and Kit left early, it was not
because they were going on elsewhere to play round games, but because
the laying of foundation-stones and the opening of bazaars had been so
fatiguing.
But though both he and Kit were fond of appearing other than they were
to sets other than their own, they were on the whole singularly
unsecretive to each other. In the first place, they both knew that the
other was reasonably sharp, and while each respected the other for this
sharpness, they realized that any attempt to deceive would probably be
detected. In the second place, a far better reason, even on the lowest
grounds, on which they took it, they knew that mutual lying is a rotten
basis for married life. Each allowed the other a wide latitude, and in
consequence they were excellent friends, and always lent each other a
helping hand if there was any scheme of mutual aggrandizement to be put
through. There were just a few questions that Kit never put to Jack, nor
he to her; each had a cupboard, a very little one, to which there was
only one key, and they were wise enough never to ask each other for it.
Such, hitherto, had been their married life--a great deal of frankness
and confidence, and an absolute respect for the privacy of the other's
innermost sanctum.
To-night there was a beautiful scheme in the egg ready to be hatched, or
neither of them would have dreamed of dining in the City at half-past
seven. Attention was just beginning to be directed to West Australian
gold-mining, and the public had awoke to the fact that there were large
fortunes to be made, or lost, in that direction. Thus Jack, having no
fortune to lose, went into it with a light heart; he was clearly marked
out as one of those who were destined to win. In pursuance of the
laudable idea of avoiding a really serious financial crisis, they were
dining at the Drapers' Company, where they would meet a Mr. Frank
Alington, who had a whole fleet of little paper companies, it was
understood, ready to be floated. Jack had met him once, and had taken
this opportunity of meeting him again, hoping to find bread upon the
waters. It was to be Kit's business to make herself inimitably
agreeable, ask him to Park Lane, and leave the rest to Jack. She, of
course, would have a finger in the profits.
Kit was delighted to take the part assigned to her. Jack had looked into
her bedroom as she was dressing, and through the half-open door had
said, "Very gorgeous, please, Kit," and she had understood that this was
a really important operation, and that a dazzling wife was part of the
apparatus necessary. She had not meant to dress very particularly; plush
and cairngorms, she had once said to Jack, was the sort of thing the
City really appreciated, but she was always ready, within reason, to do
as Jack wished, and she told her maid to get out a dress that had
arrived from Paris only that morning. But Jack's remark to her as she
was dressing was the sort of hint that Kit always took. It cost so
little to be pleasant in these ways, and how wise it was to obey one's
husband in such matters! She had intended to keep this dress for a royal
dinner a week hence, but she put it on without a murmur, and, indeed,
her wifely devotion had its immediate reward.
For the dress! That surpassing man Jean Worth had said once, not to
herself, but to some other customer, and no friend of hers, that it was
a real pleasure to dress Lady Conybeare; and Lady Conybeare, on her
side, kindly considered it a real pleasure to be dressed by Worth.
Thus the gratification was mutual, and it must have been a consolation
to the dressmaker, if he had to whistle long and loud for his cheque,
to have his artistic pleasure to fall back on. Now Kit--a rare
accomplishment--could stand orange, and to stand orange means to be
admirably suited to orange. She loved it herself, Jean genuinely agreed
with her, and in this dress four tints of orange chiffon, _Dantè_,
_faisan doré_, _Vésuve_, and _pomme d'or_, blazed together. Even Worth,
the greatly daring, had inwardly felt a qualm of audacity, but how
admirably, when Kit was inside the gown, had his audacity succeeded!
"_Réussi!_" he would have sighed had he seen it. Over all was a fine net
of pale mandarin yellow, to which was tacked a cusped acanthus pattern
of sequins; and Kit, looking at herself long and critically in her
wardrobe glass, said "Lor'!" Her glorious red-gold hair, full of dusky
flames, of a tint after which Nature blindly gropes where Paris leads
the way, was the point to which Worth had worked, and his success was
beyond all approval or praise.
Next came the question of jewels, and Hortense, her maid, with the
artist's eye, thought that pearls and pearls only, _pas un diamant_,
would be consummately chic. Kit saw what she meant, and from an artistic
point of view devoutly agreed, but she turned up her nose at the
suggestion. "We don't want to be chic, my good woman," she said. "We
want to hit 'em in the eye. The rubies, Hortense!"
Now, the rubies were really fine, glorious molten lakes of colour,
almost barbarically splendid, and being entailed, they had been forced
to remain in the Conybeare coffers. But if ever a woman and her dress
were designed and built for rubies, Kit and this creation were.
Hortense, moved beyond her wont, ejaculated "_Mon Dieu!_" as the
gorgeous baubles were clasped on Kit's dazzling neck; and her mistress,
being as candid with herself as she was with her husband, smiled
serenely at her own reflection.
"A touch of rouge," she said to Hortense, and when that was unerringly
applied, "There," she murmured, "that will double up the City. And
Jack," she added to herself, "will then proceed to pick its pockets."
She rustled across the floor, and tapped at the door of her husband's
dressing-room.
"Are you ready, Jack?" she asked.
"Yes, just. Come in, Kit."
Kit took from her table the orange-red fan which Worth had sent with the
dress, threw the door open and held her head very high.
"The gold-miner's wife," she remarked.
Her husband looked at her a moment in blank admiration. Seven years'
husband as he was, Kit still occasionally "knocked him over" as he
expressed it, and she knocked him over now. Then he laughed outright.
"That ought to fetch 'em," he said frankly.
"So I think," said Kit; "but really, Jack, it was a sacrifice putting
this on. Remember that, please. I was keeping it for the royalties next
week, but you said 'very gorgeous,' and I obeyed."
"Oh, blow the royalties!" said Jack. "Dress in tartan plaid for them, or
a kilt even. Besides, it is bad form for a hostess to be better dressed
than her guests. That dress wouldn't do at all, Kit, in your own house.
They would think you were an advanced Radical."
The India-rubber-tired brougham, with its little electric lamp in the
roof (Kit's only real extravagance for more than ten days, as she
triumphantly told Jack) was ready when they got downstairs, and they
rolled off into the gaslit roar of the streets. This way and that
flashed the gleaming lights of hansoms and carriages; it was like
passing through an August shower of shooting-stars. Long queues of
waiting folk stretched like snakes from the pit-doors of theatres;
newsboys roared their "'orrible and revoltin'" details; jewellers' shops
with windows a blaze of gems signalled and winked across the streets;
feathered women peacocked along, making eyes at the passers; loungers
lounged; busy little men with black bags made scurrying bee-lines across
the crowded roadway; buses, a plaster of advertisements, swung nodding
on their way; and bicycles glided by them so spare and silent that they
might have been incorporeal things. High up on house-roofs glowed the
changing colours of prima-donna soaps, putting to shame the lesser
lights of heaven; now an invisible gigantic penman would write _Kodak_
with large flowing hand in red ink, then, dissatisfied, delete it,
and try it again in yellow. Here the crystal signs of music-halls
flashed diamonds, or the open door of a restaurant cast a brilliant
square of light on to the street. Then for a moment a strident,
diabolically-precise scale from a street-organ would overscore all other
noises; but the hoofs and wheels which bore the hungry world to the
houses of its friends to be fed reasserted itself with a crash and
trample like some Valkürie-ritt; the whole town was abroad, and humming
like a swarming beehive.
Kit was never tired of the spectacle of life, provided it was gay, and
varied, and full. The incessant movement, the infinite separate
businesses, which went to make up the great major chord of London
streets, the admirable pace at which the world moved, the marvel of its
contrasts, the gas, the glitter, the sordidness and the splendour
rubbing shoulders, all appealed to her tremendous _joie de vivre_, the
best and the most unvarying factor in her very living character. She had
once expressed a wish to be buried, like a suicide at cross-roads, in
the very centre of Piccadilly Circus. "No country churchyards or knells
of parting day for me, thank you," she had said.
All down Piccadilly she was silent, looking devouringly from the window
of the brougham at the kaleidoscope outside, but when they turned out of
Trafalgar Square down Northumberland Avenue, to avoid the Strand, which
at that hour spouts and bubbles with traffic like a weir in spring, she
turned to her husband with a sigh of regret at leaving the fuller
streets.
"The outline of the plot, Jack?" she said.
"Don't know it myself yet," said Jack. "But the _vieux premier_ is
Alington--a heavy, solemn man, like a butler, rather tiresome, I'm
afraid. Very likely you will sit next him; he is a guest of the
Drapers' like ourselves. If not, get hold of him somehow. He might dine
to-morrow."
"But we give a dance to-morrow," said Kit, "and we feed only the very
brightest and best."
"All the more reason for Alington coming, perhaps," said Jack. "I have
heard it said that there are still a few people who care for a duke as
such. It sounds odd, but let us hope he is one."
"Yes, those people are so easy to deal with," said Kit thoughtfully.
"But it will upset the table, Jack."
"Of course, if you put your table as more important than possible
thousands," said Jack.
"It is really a big thing then?" asked Kit.
"It is possibly a very big thing. I know no more than you yet. It may
even run to a Saturday till Monday or more."
"Very good. I'll upset the whole apple-cart for it, as Mr. Rhodes says.
Here we are. Let's get away early, Jack. I said we'd go to Berkeley
Street afterwards."
"We'll go as early as we can," he replied. "But you mustn't risk not
landing your fish because you don't play him long enough."
"Oh, Jack, I am not a fool," she said. "Order the carriage for ten. I'd
undertake in this gown to land the whole house of laymen by ten without
a gaff. Dear Jean Worth! What a lot of money I owe him, and what a lot
of pleasure he gives me! I should be puzzled to say which was the
greater."