Doctor Von Herzlich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied
Phenomena
The Hightower Hotel is by many observers held to be an instructive
microcosm of New York, more especially of upper Broadway, with correct
proportions of the native and the visiting provincial. With correct
proportions, again, of the money-making native and the money-spending
native, male and female. A splendid place is this New York; splendid
but terrible. London for the stranger has a steady-going, hearty
hospitality. Paris on short notice will be cosily and coaxingly
intimate. New York is never either. It overwhelms with its lavish
display of wealth, it stuns with its tireless, battering energy. But it
stays always aloof, indifferent if it be loved or hated; if it crush or
sustain.
The ground floor of the Hightower Hotel reproduces this magnificent,
brutal indifference. One might live years in its mile or so of stately
corridors and its acre or so of resplendent cafes, parlours,
reception-rooms, and restaurants, elbowed by thousands, suffocated by
that dense air of human crowdedness, that miasma of brain emanations,
and still remain in splendid isolation, as had he worn the magic ring
of Gyges. Here is every species of visitor: the money-burdened who
"stop" here and cultivate an air of being blase to the wealth of
polished splendours; and the less opulent who "stop" cheaply elsewhere
and venture in to tread the corridors timidly, to stare with honest,
drooping-jawed wonder at its marvels of architecture and decoration,
and to gaze with becoming reverence at those persons whom they shrewdly
conceive to be social celebrities.
This mixture of many and strange elements is never at rest. Its units
wait expectantly, chat, drink, eat, or stroll with varying airs through
reception-room, corridor, and office. It is an endless function,
attended by all of Broadway, with entertainment diversely contrived for
every taste by a catholic-minded host with a sincere desire to please
the paying public.
"Isn't it a huge bear-garden, though?" asks Launton Oldaker of the
estimable Doctor von Herzlich, after the two had observed the scene in
silence for a time.
The wise German dropped an olive into his Rhine wine, and gazed
reflectively about the room. Men and women sat at tables drinking.
Beyond the tables at the farther side of the room, other men were
playing billiards. It was four o'clock and the tide was high.
"It is yet more," answered the doctor. "In my prolonged studies of
natural phenomena this is the most valuable of all which I have been
privileged to observe."
He called them "brifiletched" and "awbsairf" with great nicety. Perhaps
his discernment was less at fault.
"Having," continued the doctor, "granted myself some respite from toil
in the laboratory at Marburg, I chose to pleasure voyage, to study yet
more the social conditions in this loveworthy land. I suspected that
much tiredness of travel would be involved. Yet here I find all
conditions whatsoever--here in that which you denominate 'bear-garden'.
They have been reduced here for my edification, yes? But your term is a
term of inadequate comprehensiveness. It is to me more what you call a
'beast-garden,' to include all species of fauna. Are there not here
moths and human flames? are there not cunning serpents crawling with
apples of knowledge to unreluctant, idling Eves, yes? Do we not hear
the amazing converse of parrots and note the pea-fowl negotiating
admiration from observers? Mark at that yet farther table also the
swine and the song-bird; again, mark our draught-horses who have
achieved a competence, yes? You note also the presence of wolves and
lambs. And, endly, mark our tailed arborean ancestors, trained to the
wearing of garments and a single eye-glass. May I ask, have you
bestowed upon this diversity your completest high attention? _Hanh_!"
This explosion of the doctor's meant that he invited and awaited some
contradiction. As none ensued, he went on:
"For wolf and lamb I direct your attention to the group at yonder
table. I notice that you greeted the young man as he entered--a common
friend to us then--Mr. Bines, with financial resources incredibly
unlimited? Also he is possessed of an unexperienced freedom from
suspectedness-of-ulterior-motive-in-others--one may not in English as
in German make the word to fit his need of the moment--that
unsuspectedness, I repeat, which has ever characterised the lamb about
to be converted into nutrition. You note the large, loose gentleman
with wide-brimmed hat and beard after my own, somewhat, yes? He would
dispose of some valuable oil-wells which he shall discover at Texas the
moment he shall have sufficiently disposed of them. A wolf he is, yes?
The more correctly attired person at his right, with the beak of a hawk
and lips so thin that his big white teeth gleam through them when they
are yet shut, he is what he calls himself a promoter. He has made
sundry efforts to promote myself. I conclude 'promoter' is one other
fashion of wolf-saying. The yet littler and yet younger man at his left
of our friend, the one of soft voice and insinuating manner, much
resembling a stray scion of aristocracy, discloses to those with whom
he affably acquaints himself the location of a luxurious gaming house
not far off; he will even consent to accompany one to its tables; and
still yet he has but yesterday evening invited me the all-town to see.
"As a scientist, I remind you, I permit myself no prejudices. I observe
the workings of unemotional law and sometimes record them. You have a
saying here that there are three generations between shirt-sleeves and
shirt-sleeves. I observe the process of the progress. It is benign as
are all processes. I have lately observed it in England. There, by
their law of entail, the same process is unswifter,--yet does it
unvary. The poor aristocrats, almost back to shirt-sleeves, with their
taxes and entailed lands, seek for the money in shops of dress and
bonnet and ale, and graciously rent their castles to the
but-newly-opulent in American oil or the diamonds of South Africa. Here
the posterity of your Mynherr Knickerbocker do likewise. The ancestor
they boast was a toiler, a market-gardener, a fur-trader, a boatman,
hardworking, simple-wayed, unspending. The woman ancestor
kitchen-gardened, spun, wove, and nourished the poultry. Their
descendants upon the savings of these labours have forgotten how to
labour themselves. They could not yet produce should they even
relinquish the illusion that to produce is of a baseness, that only to
consume is noble. I gather reports that a few retain enough of the
ancient strain to become sturdy tradesmen and gardeners once more.
Others seek out and assimilate this new-richness, which, in its turn,
will become impoverished and helpless. Ah, what beautiful showing of
Evolution!
"See the pendulum swing from useful penury to useless opulence. Why
does it not halt midway, you inquire? Because the race is so young.
Ach! a mere two hundred and forty million years from our
grandfather-grandmother amoeba in the ancestral morass! What can one be
expecting? Certain faculties develop in response to the pressure of
environment. Omit the pressure and the faculties no longer ensue. Yes?
Withdraw the pressure, and the faculties decay. Sightless moles, their
environment demands not the sight; nor of the fishes that inhabit the
streams of your Mammoth Cave. Your aristocrats between the
sleeve-of-the-shirt periods likewise degenerate. There is no need to
work, they lose the power. No need to sustain themselves, they become
helpless. They are as animals grown in an environment that demands no
struggle of them. Yet their environment is artificial. They live on
stored energy, stored by another. It is exhausted, they perish. All but
the few that can modify to correspond with the changed environment, as
when your social celebrities venture into trade, and the also few that
in their life of idleness have acquired graces of person and manner to
let them find pleasure in the eyes of marryers among the but-now-rich."
The learned doctor submitted to have his glass refilled from the cooler
at his side, dropped another olive into the wine, and resumed before
Oldaker could manage an escape.
"And how long, you ask, shall the cosmic pendulum swing between these
extremes of penurious industry and opulent idleness?"
Oldaker had not asked it. But he tried politely to appear as if he had
meant to. He had really meant to ask the doctor what time it was and
then pretend to recall an engagement for which he would be already
late.
"It will so continue," the doctor placidly resumed, "until the race
achieves a different ideal. Now you will say, but there can be no ideal
so long as there is no imagination; and as I have directly--a
moment-soon--said, the race is too young to have achieved imagination.
The highest felicity which we are yet able to imagine is a felicity
based upon much money; our highest pleasures the material pleasures
which money buys, yes? We strive for it, developing the money-getting
faculty at the expense of all others; and when the money is obtained we
cannot enjoy it. We can imagine to do with it only delicate-eating and
drinking and dressing for show-to-others and building houses immense
and splendidly uncalculated for homes of rational dwelling. Art,
science, music, literature, sociology, the great study and play of our
humanity, they are shut to us.
"Our young friend Bines is a specimen. It is as if he were a child,
having received from another a laboratory full of the most beautiful
instruments of science. They are valuable, but he can do but common
things with them because he knows not their possibilities. Or, we may
call it stored energy he has; for such is money, the finest, subtlest,
most potent form of stored energy; it may command the highest fruits of
genius, the lowest fruits of animality; it is also volatile, elusive.
Our young friend has many powerful batteries of it. But he is no
electrician. Some he will happily waste without harm to himself. Much
of it, apparently, he will convert into that champagne he now drinks.
For a week since I had the pleasure of becoming known to him he has
drunk it here each day, copiously. He cannot imagine a more salutary
mode of exhausting his force. I am told he comes of a father who died
at fifty, and who did in many ways like that. This one, at the rate I
have observed, will not last so long. He will not so long correspond
with an environment even so unexacting as this. And his son, perhaps
his grandson, will become what you call broke; will from lack of
pressure to learn some useful art, and from spending only, become
useless and helpless. For besides drink, there is gambling. He plays
what you say, the game of poker, this Bines. You see the gentleman,
rounded gracefully in front, who has much the air of seeming to stand
behind himself,--he drinks whiskey at my far right, yes? He is of a
rich trust, the magnate-director as you say, and plays at cards nightly
with our young friend. He jested with him in my presence before you
entered, saying, 'I will make you look like'--I forget it now, but his
humourous threat was to reduce our young friend to the aspect of some
inconsiderable sum in the money of your country. I cannot recall the
precise amount, but it was not so much as what you call one dollar.
Strange, is it not, that the rich who have too much money gamble as
feverishly as the poor who have none, and therefore have an excuse? And
the love of display-for-display. If one were not a scientist one might
be tempted to say there is no progress. The Peruvian grandee shod his
mules with pure gold, albeit that metal makes but inferior shodding for
beasts of burden. The London factory girl hires the dyed feathers of
the ostrich to make her bonnet gay; and your money people are as
display-loving. Lucullus and your latest millionaire joy in the same
emotion of pleasure at making a show. Ach! we are truly in the race's
childhood yet. The way of evolution is so unfast, yes? Ah! you will go
now, Mr. Oldaker. I shall hope to enjoy you more again. Your
observations have interested me deeply; they shall have my most high
attention. Another time you shall discuss with me how it must be that
the cosmic process shall produce a happy mean between stoic and
epicure, by learning the valuable arts of compromise, yes? How Zeno
with his bread and dates shall learn not to despise a few luxuries, and
Vitellius shall learn that the mind may sometimes feast to advantage
while the body fasts."
Through the marbled corridors and regal parlours, down long
perspectives of Persian rugs and onyx pillars, the function raged.
The group at Percival's table broke up. He had an appointment to meet
Colonel Poindexter the next morning to consummate the purchase of some
oil stock certain to appreciate fabulously in value. He had promised to
listen further to Mr. Isidore Lewis regarding a plan for obtaining
control of a certain line of one of the metal stocks. And he had
signified his desire to make one of a party the affable younger man
would guide later in the evening to a sumptuous temple of chance, to
which, by good luck, he had gained the entree. The three gentlemen
parted most cordially from him after he had paid the check.
To Mr. Lewis, when Colonel Poindexter had also left, the young man with
a taste for gaming remarked, ingenuously:
"Say, Izzy, on the level, there's the readiest money that ever
registered at this joint. You don't have to be Mr. William Wisenham to
do business with him. You can have all you want of that at track odds."
"I'm making book that way myself," responded the cheerful Mr. Lewis;
"fifty'll get you a thousand any time, my lad. It's a lead-pipe at
twenty to one. But say, with all these Petroleum Pete oil-stock
grafters and Dawson City Daves with frozen feet and mining-stock in
their mitts, a man's got to play them close in to his bosom to win out
anything. Competition is killing this place, my boy."
In the Turkish room Percival found Mrs. Akemit, gowned to perfection,
glowing, and wearing a bunch of violets bigger than her pretty head.
"I've just sent cards to your mother and sister," she explained, as she
made room for him upon the divan.
To them came presently Mrs. Drelmer, well-groomed and aggressively
cheerful.
"How de do! Just been down to Wall Street seeing how my other half
lives, and now I'm famished for tea and things. Ah! here are your
mother and our proud Western beauty!" And she went forward to greet
them.
"It's more than _her_ other half knows about her," was Mrs. Akemit's
observation to the violets on her breast.
"Come sit with me here in this corner, dear," said Mrs. Drelmer to
Psyche, while Mrs. Bines joined her son and Mrs. Akemit. "I've so much
to tell you. And that poor little Florence Akemit, isn't it too bad
about her. You know one of those bright French women said it's so
inconvenient to be a widow because it's necessary to resume the modesty
of a young girl without being able to feign her ignorance. No wonder
Florence has a hard time of it; but isn't it wretched of me to gossip?
And I wanted to tell you especially about Mr. Mauburn. You know of
course he'll be Lord Casselthorpe when the present Lord Casselthorpe
dies; a splendid title, really quite one of the best in all England;
and, my dear, he's out-and-out smitten with you; there's no use in
denying it; you should hear him rave to me about you; really these
young men in love are so inconsiderate of us old women. Ah! here is
that Mrs. Errol who does those fascinating miniatures of all the smart
people. Excuse me one moment, my dear; I want her to meet your mother."
The fashionable miniature artist was presently arranging with the dazed
Mrs. Bines for miniatures of herself and Psyche. Mrs. Drelmer,
beholding the pair with the satisfied glance of one who has performed a
kindly action, resumed her _tete-a-tete_ with Psyche.
Percival, across the room, listened to Mrs. Akemit's artless disclosure
that she found life too complex--far too hazardous, indeed, for a poor
little creature in her unfortunate position, so liable to cruel
misjudgment for thoughtless, harmless acts, the result of a young zest
for life. She had often thought most seriously of a convent, indeed she
had--"and, really, Mr. Bines, I'm amazed that I talk this way--so
freely to you--you know, when I've known you so short a time; but
something in you compels my confidences, poor little me! and my poor
little confidences! One so seldom meets a man nowadays with whom one
can venture to talk about any of the _real_ things!"
A little later, as Mrs. Drelmer was leaving, the majestic figure of the
Baron Ronault de Palliac framed itself in the handsome doorway. He
sauntered in, as if to give the picture tone, and then with purposeful
air took the seat Mrs. Drelmer had just vacated. Miss Bines had been
entertained by involuntary visions of herself as Lady Casselthorpe. She
now became in fancy the noble Baroness de Palliac, speaking faultless
French and consorting with the rare old families of the Faubourg St.
Germain. For, despite his artistic indirection, the baron's manner was
conclusive, his intentions unmistakable.
And this day was much like many days in the life of the Bines and in
the life of the Hightower Hotel. The scene from parlour to cafe was
surveyed at intervals by a quiet-mannered person with watchful eyes,
who appeared to enjoy it as one upon whom it conferred benefits. Now he
washed his hands in the invisible sweet waters of satisfaction, and
murmured softly to himself, "Setters and Buyers!" Perhaps the term fits
the family of Bines as well as might many another coined especially for
it.
When the three groups in the Turkish room dissolved, Percival with his
mother and sister went to their suite on the fourth floor.
"Think of a real live French nobleman!" cried Psyche, with enthusiasm,
"and French must be such a funny language--he talks such funny English.
I wish now I'd learned more of it at the Sem, and talked more with that
French Delpasse girl that was always toasting marshmallows on a
hat-pin."
"That lady Mrs. Drelmer introduced me to," said Mrs. Bines, "is an
artist, miniature artist, hand-painted you know, and she's going to
paint our miniatures for a thousand dollars each because we're friends
of Mrs. Drelmer."
"Oh, yes," exclaimed Psyche, with new enthusiasm, "and Mrs. Drelmer has
promised to teach me bridge whist if I'll go to her house to-morrow.
Isn't she kind? Really, every one must play bridge now, she tells me."
"Well, ladies," said the son and brother, "I'm glad to see you both
getting some of the white meat. I guess we'll do well here. I'm going
into oil stock and lead, myself."
"How girlish your little friend Mrs. Akemit is!" said his mother. "How
did she come to lose her husband?"
"Lost him in South Dakota," replied her son, shortly.
"Divorced, ma," explained Psyche, "and Mrs. Drelmer says her family's
good, but she's too gay."
"Ah!" exclaimed Percival, "Mrs. Drelmer's hammer must be one of those
cute little gold ones, all set with precious stones. As a matter of
fact, she's anything but gay. She's sad. She couldn't get along with
her husband because he had no dignity of soul."
He became conscious of sympathising generously with all men not thus
equipped.