With the Barbaric Hosts
History repeats itself so cleverly, with a variance of stage-settings
and accessories so cunning, that the repetition seldom bores, and is,
indeed, frequently undetected. Thus, the descent of the Barbarians upon
a decadent people is a little _tour de force_ that has been performed
again and again since the oldest day. But because the assault nowadays
is made not with force of arms we are prone to believe it is no longer
made at all;--as if human ways had changed a bit since those ugly,
hairy tribes from the Northern forests descended upon the Roman empire.
And yet the mere difference that the assault is now made with force of
money in no way alters the process nor does it permit the result to
vary. On the surface all is cordiality and peaceful negotiation.
Beneath is the same immemorial strife, the life-and-death
struggle,--pitiless, inexorable.
What would have been a hostile bivouac within the city's gates, but for
the matter of a few centuries, is now, to select an example which
remotely concerns us, a noble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the
lordly Hudson and the majestic Palisades that form its farther wall.
And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly
reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes,
fighting for captive vestals, and bickering in uncouth tongues over the
golden spoils, what have we now to make the parallel convince? Why, the
same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined,
all-conquering, animal force; a red-faced, big-handed lot, imbued with
hearty good nature and an easy tolerance for the ways of those upon
whom they have descended.
Here are chiefs of renown from the farthest fastnesses; they and their
curious households: the ironmonger from Pittsburg, the gold-miner from
Dawson, the copper chief from Butte, the silver chief from Denver, the
cattle chief from Oklahoma, lord of three hundred thousand good acres
and thirty thousand cattle, the lumber prince from Michigan, the
founder of a later dynasty in oil, from Texas. And, for the unaesthetic
but effective Attila, an able fashioner of pork products from Chicago.
Here they make festival, carelessly, unafraid, unmolested. For, in the
lapse of time, the older peoples have learned not only the folly of
resisting inevitables, but that the huge and hairy invaders may be
treated and bartered with not unprofitably. Doubtless it often results
from this amity that the patrician strain is corrupted by the alien
admixture,--but business has been business since as many as two persons
met on the face of the new earth.
For example, this particular shelter is builded upon land which one of
the patrician families had held for a century solely because it could
not be disposed of. Yet the tribesmen came, clamouring for palaces, and
now this same land, with some adjoining areas of trifling extent,
produces an income that will suffice to maintain that family almost in
its ancient and befitting estate.
In this mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand
dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and
entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of
ornamentation, the building is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blois,
those splendid palaces of Francis I. Inside are all the line and colour
and device of elegant opulence, modern to the last note.
To this palace of an October evening comes the tribe of Bines, and many
another such, for a triumphal feast in the abode of Barbarian Silas
Higbee. The carriages pass through a pair of lordly iron gates, swung
from massive stone pillars, under an arch of wrought iron with its
antique lamp, and into the echoing courtyard flanked by trim hedges of
box.
Alighting, the barbaric guests of Higbee are ushered through a
marble-walled vestibule, from which a wrought-iron and bronze screen
gives way to the main entrance-hall. The ceiling here reproduces that
of a feudal castle in Rouen, with some trifling and effective touches
of decoration in blue, scarlet, and gold. The walls are of white Caen
stone, with ornate windows and balconies jutting out above. In one
corner is a stately stone mantel with richly carved hood, bearing in
its central panel the escutcheon of the gallant French monarch. Up a
little flight of marble steps, guarded by its hand-rail of heavy metal,
shod with crimson velvet, one reaches the elevator. This pretty
enclosure of iron and glass, of classic detail in the period of Henry
II., of Circassian walnut trim, with crotch panels, has more the aspect
of boudoir than elevator. The deep seat is of walnut, upholstered with
fat cushions of crimson velvet edged in dull gold galloon. Over the
seat is a mirror cut into small squares by wooden muntins. At each side
are electric candles softened by red silk shades. One's last view
before the door closes noiselessly is of a bay-window opposite, set
with cathedral glass casement-lights, which sheds soft colours upon the
hall-bench of carven stone and upon the tessellated floor.
The door to the Higbee domain is of polished mahogany, set between
lights of antique verte Italian glass, and bearing an ancient brass
knocker. From the reception-room, with its walls of green empire silk,
one passes through a foyer hall, of Cordova leather hangings, to the
drawing-room with its three broad windows. Opposite the entrance to
this superb room is a mantel of carved Caen stone, faced with golden
Pavanazza marble, with old Roman andirons of gold ending in the
fleur-de-lis. The walls are hung with blue Florentine silk, embossed in
silver. Beyond a bronze grill is the music-room, a library done in
Austrian oak with stained burlap panelled by dull-forged nails, a
conservatory, a billiard-room, a smoking-room. This latter has walls of
red damask and a mantel with "_Post Tenebras Lux_" cut into one of its
marble panels,--a legend at which the worthy lessee of all this
splendour is wont often to glance with respectful interest.
The admirable host--if one be broad-minded--is now in the drawing-room,
seconding his worthy wife and pretty daughter who welcome the
dinner-guests.
For a man who has a fad for ham and doesn't care who knows it, his
bearing is all we have a right to expect that it should be. Among the
group of arrivals, men of his own sort, he is speaking of the
ever-shifting fashion in beards, to the evangel of a Texas oil-field
who flaunts to the world one of those heavy moustaches spuriously
extended below the corners of the mouth by means of the chin-growth of
hair. Another, a worthy tribesman from Snohomish, Washington, wears a
beard which, for a score of years, has been let to be its own true
self; to express, fearlessly, its own unique capacity for variation
from type. These two have rallied their host upon his modishly trimmed
side-whiskers.
"You're right," says Mr. Higbee, amiably, "I ain't stuck any myself on
this way of trimming up a man's face, but the madam will have it this
way--says it looks more refined and New Yorky. And now, do you know,
ever since I've wore 'em this way--ever since I had 'em scraped from
around under my neck here--I have to go to Florida every winter. Come
January or February, I get bronchitis every blamed year!"
Two of the guests only are alien to the barbaric throng.
There is the noble Baron Ronault de Palliac, decorated, reserved,
observant,--almost wistful. For the moment he is picturing dutifully
the luxuries a certain marriage would enable him to procure for his
noble father and his aged mother, who eagerly await the news of his
quest for the golden fleece. For the baron contemplates, after the
fashion of many conscientious explorers, a marriage with a native
woman; though he permits himself to cherish the hope that it may not be
conditioned upon his adopting the manners and customs of the particular
tribe that he means to honour. Monsieur the Baron has long since been
obliged to confess that a suitable _mesalliance_ is none too easy of
achievement, and, in testimony of his vicissitudes, he has written for
a Paris comic paper a series of grimly satiric essays upon New York
society. Recently, moreover, he has been upon the verge of accepting
employment in the candy factory of a bourgeois compatriot. But hope has
a little revived in the noble breast since chance brought him and his
title under the scrutiny of the bewitching Miss Millicent Higbee and
her appreciative mother.
And to-night there is not only the pretty Miss Higbee, but the winning
Miss Bines, whose _dot_, the baron has been led to understand, would
permit his beloved father unlimited piquet at his club, to say nothing
of regenerating the family chateau. Yet these are hardly matters to be
gossiped of. It is enough to know that the Baron Ronault de Palliac
when he discovers himself at table between Miss Bines and the adorable
Miss Higbee, becomes less saturnine than has for some time been his
wont. He does not forget previous disappointments, but desperately
snaps his swarthy jaws in commendable superiority to any adverse fate.
"_Je ne donne pas un damn_," he says to himself, and translates, as was
his practice, to better his English--"I do not present a damn. I shall
take what it is that it may be."
The noble Baron de Palliac at this feast of the tribesmen was like the
captive patrician of old led in chains that galled. The other alien,
Launton Oldaker, was present under terms of honourable truce, willingly
and without ulterior motive saving--as he confessed to himself--a
consuming desire to see "how the other half lives." He was no longer
the hunted and dismayed being Percival had met in that far-off and
impossible Montana; but was now untroubled, remembering, it is true,
that this "slumming expedition," as he termed it, had taken him beyond
the recognised bounds of his beloved New York, but serene in the
consciousness that half an hour's drive would land him safely back at
his club.
Oldaker observed Miss Psyche Bines approvingly.
"We are so glad to be in New York!" she had confided to him, sitting at
her right.
"My dear young woman," he warned her, "you haven't reached New York
yet." The talk being general and loud, he ventured further.
"This is Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver--almost anything but
New York."
"Of course I know these are not the swell old families."
Oldaker sipped his glass of old Oloroso sherry and discoursed.
"And our prominent families, the ones whose names you read, are not New
York any more, either. They are rather London and Paris. Their
furniture, clothing, plate, pictures, and servants come from one or the
other. Yes, and their manners, too, their interests and sympathies and
concerns, their fashions--and--sometimes, their--er--morals. They are
assuredly not New York any more than Gobelin tapestries and Fortuny
pictures and Louis Seize chairs are New York."
"How queerly you talk. Where is New York, then?"
Oldaker sighed thoughtfully between two spoonfuls of _tortue verte,
claire_.
"Well, I suppose the truth is that there isn't much of New York left in
New York. As a matter of fact I think it died with the old Volunteer
Fire Department. Anyway the surviving remnant is coy. Real old New
Yorkers like myself--neither poor nor rich--are swamped in these days
like those prehistoric animals whose bones we find. There comes a time
when we can't live, and deposits form over us and we're lost even to
memory."
But this talk was even harder for Miss Bines to understand than the
English speech of the Baron Ronault de Palliac, and she turned to that
noble gentleman as the turbot with sauce Corail was served.
The dining-room, its wall wainscotted from floor to ceiling in Spanish
oak, was flooded with soft light from the red silk dome that depended
from its crown of gold above the table. The laughter and talk were as
little subdued as the scheme of the rooms. It was an atmosphere of
prodigal and confident opulence. From the music-room near by came the
soft strains of a Haydn quartet, exquisitely performed by finished and
expensive artists.
"Say, Higbee!" it was the oil chief from Texas, "see if them fiddlers
of yours can't play 'Ma Honolulu Lulu!'"
Oldaker, wincing and turning to Miss Bines for sympathy, heard her say:
"Yes, do, Mr. Higbee! I do love those ragtime songs--and then have them
play 'Tell Me, Pretty Maiden,' and the 'Intermezzo.'"
He groaned in anguish.
The talk ran mostly on practical affairs: the current values of the
great staple commodities; why the corn crop had been light; what wheat
promised to bring; how young Burman of the Chicago Board of Trade had
been pinched in his own wheat corner for four millions--"put up" by his
admiring father; what beef on the hoof commanded; how the Federal Oil
Company would presently own the State of Texas.
Almost every Barbarian at the table had made his own fortune. Hardly
one but could recall early days when he toiled on farm or in shop or
forest, herded cattle, prospected, sought adventure in remote and
hazardous wilds.
"'Tain't much like them old days, eh, Higbee?" queried the Crown Prince
of Cripple Creek--"when you and me had to walk from Chicago to Green
Bay, Wisconsin, because we didn't have enough shillings for
stage-fare?" He gazed about him suggestively.
"Corn-beef and cabbage was pretty good then, eh?" and with sure,
vigorous strokes he fell to demolishing his _filet de dinde a la
Perigueux_, while a butler refilled his glass with Chateau Malescot,
1878.
"Well, it does beat the two rooms the madam and me started to keep
house in when we was married," admitted the host. "That was on the
banks of the Chicago River, and now we got the Hudson flowin' right
through the front yard, you might say, right past our own
yacht-landing."
From old days of work and hardship they came to discuss the present and
their immediate surroundings, social and financial.
Their daughters, it appeared, were being sought in marriage by the sons
of those among whom they sojourned.
"Oh, they're a nice band of hand-shakers, all right, all right,"
asserted the gentleman from Kansas City. "One of 'em tried to keep
company with our Caroline, but I wouldn't stand for it. He was a
crackin' good shinny player, and he could lead them cotillion-dances
blowin' a whistle and callin', 'All right, Up!' or something, like a
car-starter,--but, 'Tell me something good about him,' I says to an old
friend of his family. Well, he hemmed and hawed--he was a New York
gentleman, and says he, 'I don't know whether I could make you
understand or not,' he says, 'but he's got Family,' jest like that,
bearin' down hard on 'Family'--'and you've got money,' he says, 'and
Money and Family need each other badly in this town,' he says. 'Yes,'
says I, 'I met up with a number of people here,' I says, 'but I ain't
met none yet that you'd have to blindfold and back into a lot of
money,' I says, 'family or no family,' I says. 'And that young man,' he
says, 'is a pleasant, charming fellow; why,' he says, 'he's the
best-coated man in New York.' Well, I looked at him and I says, 'Well,'
says I, 'he may be the best-coated man in New York, but he'll be the
best-booted man in New York, too,' I says, 'if he comes around trying
to spark Caroline any more,--or would be if I had my way. His chin's
pushed too far back under his face,' I says, 'and besides,' I says,
'Caroline is being waited on by a young hardware drummer, a good steady
young fellow travelling out of little old K.C.,' I says, 'and while he
ain't much for fam'ly,' I says, he'll have one of his own before he
gets through,' I says; 'we start fam'lies where I come from,' I says."
"Good boy! Good for you," cheered the self-made Barbarians, and drank
success to the absent disseminator of hardware.
With much loud talk of this unedifying character the dinner progressed
to an end; through _selle d'agneau_, floated in '84 champagne, terrapin
convoyed by a special Madeira of 1850, and canvas-back duck with
_Romanee Conti_, 1865, to a triumphant finale of Turkish coffee and
1811 brandy.
After dinner the ladies gossiped of New York society, while the
barbaric males smoked their big oily cigars and bandied reminiscences.
Higbee showed them through every one of the apartment's twenty-two
rooms, from reception-hall to laundry, manipulating the electric lights
with the skill of a stage-manager.
The evening ended with a cake-walk, for the musical artists had by rare
wines been mellowed from their classic reserve into a mood of ragtime
abandon. And if Monsieur the Baron with his ceremonious grace was less
exuberant than the Crown Prince of Cripple Creek, who sang as he
stepped the sensuous measure, his pleasure was not less. He joyed to
observe that these men of incredible millions had no hauteur.
"I do not," wrote the baron to his noble father the marquis, that
night, "yet understand their joke; why should it be droll to wish that
the man whose coat is of the best should also wear boots of the best?
but as for what they call _une promenade de gateau_, I find it very
enjoyable. I have met a Mlle. Bines to whom I shall at once pay my
addresses. Unlike Mlle. Higbee, she has not the father from Chicago nor
elsewhere. _Quel diable d'homme!_"