The Relentless City/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
Mrs. Palmer's house-party, which was to be with her during the week of the ' Revels,' as they were called, had arrived at Mon Repos the same afternoon. Mon Repos had been taking its rest in its usual relentless manner, and Bertie Keynes and Mrs. Massington were beginning to get into training. It had dawned on them both very soon that they were engaged in the exercise of the most strenuous mental and physical activity that their dawdling English lives had ever known. The whole party breakfasted together in a marquee on the lawn, and from that moment till after the ensuing midnight were engaged ohne rast with a prodigious quantity of hast in a continuous social effort. Bathing, boating, bridge (the two latter simultaneously) lasted till lunch; these and similar pursuits, all executed in the dazzling light, in the dazzling crowd, and largely to the dazzling sound of a band, went on without pause till dinner, after which was a short one-act play in the theatre, followed by a ' quiet dance.' After one day of it Mrs. Massington's quick perceptions made discoveries which she communicated to Bertie.
' You are here to play up,' she said, ' and not to amuse yourself. Don't drink any wine at lunch, and very little at dinner.'
' Then I shall die,' said Bertie.
' No, you will not; you will feel much less tired. The whole day is a stimulant, so why take more? Besides, alcohol produces a reaction. That doesn't matter in England, because we sit down and react; here you can't. Also don't attempt to sparkle in conversation. Here they sparkle naturally—at least, they open their mouths and let it come—whereas in England we tend rather to shut our mouths unless we want to say something. But you are being a great success. Go away now; I am going to rest for three minutes before I dress for dinner.'
Bertie lingered a moment at the door of her room.
' They are awfully kind,' he said. ' If only I was stronger, I should enjoy it enormously.'
' I am enjoying it,' said she; ' it suits me. You will, too, if you take my advice.'
' I feel more inclined to take to drink,' said he.
But the fact once grasped that life at Mon Repos was not a holiday, but hard, relentless work of a most exacting kind, they began forthwith to settle down to it and grapple with it. At once the difficulty and charm of it absorbed them. It was a continual piece of acting; whatever your mood, you had to assume a species of reckless gaiety, and all day long feverishly and seriously engage in things that were originally designed to be relaxations, but which the ingenuity of social life had turned into instruments of the profession. None of those present particularly cared for bridge, boating, or bathing in themselves; they would not have boated or bathed alone, or played bridge even with a dummy, but they used these relaxations as a means of accomplishing social efforts. Such a life cannot be undertaken frivolously, though it is purely frivolous; twenty years of it ages its devotees more than thirty years of hard and reasonable brain-work, and though they find it intensely fascinating, yet they know they have to pay for their pleasure, and grow quickly old in its service. Indeed, it might almost be classed as a dangerous trade; and if the pursuit of wealth is a relentless task, not less so is its expenditure as a means of social success. Certainly Mrs. Palmer worked quite as hard as her husband.
Three days passed thus, and it was now the afternoon of the first day of the Revels. In consequence, the telegraph and telephone lines down to Port Washington were congested with messages, for the greater part of the evening papers in New York had kept their first page open for them, and nothing could be sent to press until it was known in what manner the first afternoon would be spent. A good deal, of course, was ready to be set up, for the list of the guests was public property, and their dresses could be, even if imagined only, described; but as long as the lagoon on the shore held its secret, the page could not be made up. It was known also that there would be a ball at Mon Repos in the evening, and that the walls of the ball-room were to be covered—literally covered, as a paper covers a wall—with roses. But for the secret of the lagoon the papers had to wait, since it had been inviolably kept. Another event, too, hardly less momentous, hung in the balance, for only two days before the reigning Prince of Saxe-Hochlaben, a dissolute young man of twenty-five, with a limp, a past, and no future, had arrived like a thunderbolt in New York.
Now, to the frivolous and lightminded this does not seem a world-curdling event, but that very enlightened paper, the New York Gutter Snipe, was not frivolous, and with extreme rapidity it set the red flame of war ablaze when it announced in huge headlines: ' Arrival of His Royal Transparency the Prince of Saxe-Hochlaben. Mrs. Lewis S. Palmer's Revels doomed to Dire Failure. Fritz (that was his name) promises to favour Mrs. John Z. Adelboden at Newport.'
The editor of the Gutter Snipe, it may be remarked, had once been a man of enormous wealth, and had honoured Mr. Palmer by singling him out as an adversary in a certain financial campaign. Mr. Palmer had dropped quite a number of little notes on to the floor over him, and he was now poor but spiteful.
The effect of his announcement was magical, for there was already war to the knife between Mrs. John Z. Adelboden and Mrs. Palmer, the latter of whom had planted her standard at Long Island in direct defiance of Newport; and those headlines brought things to a crisis. The news of his arrival was of course telegraphed to Newport by the Gutter Snipe, which did not telegraph it to Mon Repos. Consequently Mrs. John Z. Adelboden knew it by mid-day (the Germanic having come in at 11.49), whereas it went down to Long Island in the ordinary issue of the paper. Thus, Mrs. John Z. Adelboden had seven hours' start.
That remarkable woman grasped the event in every aspect in about three minutes and a quarter. She knew—everyone in America knows everything—that Timothy Vandercrup, the editor of the Gutter Snipe, was her ally against Mrs. Palmer; she guessed also that the news would not reach Mrs. Palmer for some hours. So, within five minutes of the arrival of the telegram, she had called on Newport to rally round her, and sent out six hundred and fifty invitations for a ball two nights later—that is to say, on the evening of the first day of Mrs. Palmer's Revels. To each invitation she added on the bottom left-hand corner, ' Arrival of Prince of Saxe-Hochlaben.' That was rather clever; she did not actually commit herself to anything. The notes were sent out by a perfect army of special messengers, and the same evening all the answers arrived. There were no refusals. Simultaneously she wrote a rather familiar little note to H. R. T., whom she had met and flirted with in England the year before, saying: ' Pray come up to our little cottage here. We have a ball on Monday night. All Newport will be there.'
At Mon Repos the same evening the papers arrived as usual, and Mrs. Palmer (as usual) picked up the Gutter Snipe, since it always contained the manœuvres of the enemy. And, though at that moment her guests were in the middle of arriving, she left Amelie to do the honours, instantly left the room, went to her boudoir, and read the paragraph through twice. She also, it may be remarked, had met the Prince before; he had tried to flirt with Amelie, who had given him no encouragement whatever. But he had tried to flirt with so many people who had given him a great deal that she thought he might easily have forgotten that.
She sat with the paper in her hands for some five minutes, after she had read it through for the second time, her nimble brain leaping like a squirrel from bough to bough of possible policies, and she paused on each for a moment. The New York Evening Startler, for instance, would put in whatever she chose to send it, and she went so far as to seize a pen and write in capital letters: ' Mrs. Lewis S. Palmer refuses to receive Prince Fritz.'
Then she sat still again and thought. That would not do; Newport would only laugh at her—the one thing she dreaded; for to be laughed at drives the nails into the coffin of social failure. Then suddenly all the tension and activity of her leaping brain relaxed, and she smiled to herself at the extreme simplicity of The Plan. She took one of her ordinary Revel invitation-cards out of her desk, on which the word ' Revels ' was printed at the bottom left-hand corner. Before this she inserted one word, so that it read ' Indiscriminate Revels.' That was all; she directed it to the Prince's address at the Waldorf, and went back to her guests.
Now, a matter so momentous is best described in the simplest possible manner, and the emotions that for the next day or two swayed two factions—that of Newport and that of Long Island—more bitterly and poignantly than the War of Independence swayed the North and the South cannot be too simply treated.
The plain upshot, then, was as follows:
Mrs. John Z. Adelboden's familiar little note to the Prince arrived the same evening as Mrs. Palmer wrote hers. H. R. T. accepted it in his own hand with some effusion. Mrs. Palmer's card arrived next morning. H. R. T. read it in bed, thought to himself—the ' Indiscriminate ' did it—' That will be more amusing.' He had forgotten altogether about his acceptance of the Newport invitation, and if he had remembered it he would not have done differently. So, after a light and wholesome breakfast of a peach, washed down with some hock and soda, he accepted Mrs. Palmer's invitation.
The news was all over Newport (that he was coming there) before evening, and the Gutter Snipe gave his portrait and biography (both unrecognisable). The news was all over Long Island (that he was coming there) by evening, and the Startler gave the portrait and biography of Mrs. Lewis S. Palmer. Then followed two days of suspense and anxiety which can only be called sickening. Eventually the two announcements were laid before Prince Fritz by his trembling secretary, who asked him what he meant to do. He flew into a violent passion, and exclaimed with a strong German accent: ' Olso, I shall go where I choose, and when I choose, and how I choose.' And suspense continued to reign.
So the momentous afternoon arrived that was to bring the Prince in Mrs. Adelboden's private railway-carriage to Newport or in Mrs. Palmer's motor to Mon Repos, and still no word of enlightenment had come which should pierce the thick clouds of doubt which hid the face of the future. Newport and Long Island were both en fête, and at the railway-station of the one, and on the lawns of Mon Repos at the other, the rival factions were awaiting the supreme moment in a tense, unnatural calm. Mrs. Palmer alone was absent from her guests, sitting at the telephone. At length it sounded, and with a quivering lip she unhooked the receiver. Then she gave one long sob of relief, and rejoined her guests. The motor-car had started, and the Prince was in it. And the Revels began.
At the supreme moment of his arrival, when all attention was breathlessly concentrated on him, a large signboard, bearing the mystic inscription ' To the Pearl Fishery,' had been erected at the head of the staircase leading down to the lagoon, and with charming directness the Prince pointed to it, and said: ' What does that mean, Mrs. Adelboden—I should say, Mrs. Palmer?' And Mrs. Palmer replied: ' I guess, sir, we'll go and see.'
The expectant crowd followed them; it was felt that the secret on which so much fruitless curiosity had been wasted was about to be revealed, but, like a good secret, it baffled conjecture up till the very last moment. The crowd screamed and chattered through the woods, following their illustrious leader, and at last emerged on to the beach. There an immense sort of bathing establishment had been erected, containing hundreds of little cabinets; there were two wings—one for men, one for women—and in each cabinet for women was a blue serge skirt and sandals, a leather pouch, and a small fishing-net; in each cabinet for men was the same apparatus minus the skirt. The lagoon itself smelt strongly of rose-water, for thousands of gallons had just been emptied into it, and the surface was covered with floating tables laden with refreshments, and large artificial water-lilies. And scattered over the bottom of the lagoon—scattered, too, with a liberal hand—were hundreds of pearl oysters.
There was no time wasted; as soon as Prince Fritz grasped the situation, and it had been made clear to him that he might keep any pearls he found, he rushed madly to the nearest cabin, rolled his trousers up to the knee, put the sandals on his rather large, ungainly feet, and plunged into the rose-watered lagoon. Nor were the rest slow to follow his example, and in five minutes it was a perfect mob of serge-skirted women and bare-legged men. Mr. Palmer himself did not join in the wading, for, in addition to a slight cold, wading was bad for his chronic indigestion; but he seized a net, and puddled about with it from the shore. Shrieks of ecstasy greeted the finding of the pearls; cries of dismay arose if the shell was found to contain nothing. Faster and more furious grew the efforts of all to secure them; for a time the floating refreshment-tables attracted not the smallest attention. In particular, the Prince was entranced, and, not waiting to open the shells where the oyster was still alive (most, however, had been killed by the rose-water or the journey, and gaped open), he stowed them away in his pockets, in order to examine them afterwards—not waste the precious moments when so many were in competition with him; and his raucous cries of ' Ach, Himmel! there is a peauty!' resounded like a bass through the shrill din. He paid no attention whatever to the throng round him; for the present he was intent on the entertainment, and paused once only to empty a bottle of Munich beer which had been especially provided for him on a table with a scarlet tablecloth; for the day was hot, and the exertions of grubbing in the sand quite severe.
Bertie Keynes had not entered the water with the first wild scramble, but had stood on the bank a few minutes, divided between amazement and helpless giggling as he observed Mrs. Cyrus F. Bimm, a stout, middle-aged woman, lately widowed, plunge in without even pausing to take her stockings off, and fall flat on her face. But, though soaked, she was utterly undismayed, and, grasping her net, wasted no time in idle laments or in changing her clothes. Her hat was naturally black, and streams of dye poured down her face and neck. Her dress was black, too, and as wet as her hat. But then the indescribable frolic of the thing—there is no other word for it—seized him, and just as Amelie, looking like a nymph of Grecian waterways, hurried past him, radiant, slim-limbed, an embodiment of joy, and beckoned to him, he delayed no longer, but joined the rest. But, ' Oh, if Judy could see me now!' he said to himself, as he took off his socks.
For an hour or more the pearl-hunting went on, and every oyster had been fished up and the whole lagoon churned into mud long before the Prince could be persuaded to leave it. Twice he made a false start, and came out of the water, only to seize his net again and hurry back on the chance of finding another, his pockets bulging with the shells he had not yet opened. All the time the telegraph was whirring and clicking the news of the huge success of Mrs. Palmer's first afternoon of Revels and the ecstasies of the Prince all over the country; and Mrs. John Z. Adelboden, like Marius, sat and wept among the ruins of Newport.
Bilton and Mrs. Emsworth had driven down together in a motor from New York, but the latter had to get back in time to act that evening, to return late on Saturday night, stop over Sunday, and act at Mon Repos on Sunday evening. Bilton, on the other hand, had taken a rare holiday, and was not returning to town till the next week. Constitutionally, he disliked a holiday; this one, however, he had less objection to, since there was a definite aim he wished to accomplish during it. He was a man to be described as a person of appetites rather than of emotions, and his appetites partook of the nature of the rest of him. They were keen, definite, and orderly—not clamorous or brutal in the least degree, but hard and clear-cut. He was supposed not many years ago to have proposed by telegram to the lady who subsequently became Mrs. John Z. Adelboden, who had replied by the same medium, ' Much regret; am otherwise engaged.' This had tickled Bilton tremendously, and he had the telegram framed and put up in his flat.
During the past summer Mrs. Massington had seen a good deal of him in London, and though she had frankly conceded that, according, anyhow, to Charlie Brancepeth's notions, he was a cad, there was a great deal about him she liked immensely. Just as she liked the clearness of line, absence of ' fluff,' in a room, so she liked—more than liked—precision of mind in a person. He was quick, definite, and reasonable in the sense that he acted, and could always be counted on to act, strictly in accordance with conclusions at which he had arrived, and which would be found to be based on sound reasoning. She liked also his spare, business-like habit of body, his scrupulous tidiness of attire, his quick, firm movements, his extreme efficiency of person. Underlying this, and but dimly present to her consciousness, was the fact that he so much resembled in face and frame Charlie Brancepeth, towards whom she had always felt a good deal of affection—whose devotion to her touched, though at times it irritated, her. Had things been different, she would have married him, but since matrimonially he was impossible, she did not in the least propose to practise celibacy. As she had told Judy, she believed she was incapable of what many other people would call love; but she was a great believer in happiness, and knew that she had a fine appetite for it. Many things might contribute to it, but love was by no means an essential constituent. And more and more, especially since her arrival in America, she liked the quality of mind which may be broadly called sensibleness. Americans—except when they were revelling—seemed to her to have a great deal of it.
The pearl-fishing had been succeeded by bridge, bridge by dinner, and dinner by a ball in the room entirely papered with roses. Sensationally—from the point of view, that is, of cost—it was a great success, but practically the scent was so overpowering that it was impossible to dance there for more than a few minutes at a time without, so to speak, coming up to breathe. Consequently, there was a good deal of sitting-out done, and Bilton firmly and collectedly managed to spend a large part of the evening with Sybil Massington.
' I should so like to know what you really think of us all,' he said on one of these occasions in his quiet, English-sounding voice.
' I adore you,' said she—' collectively, I mean.'
' Ah, that spoils it all,' said he; ' we all want to be adored individually.'
' There are too many of you for me to do that,' she said; ' I should have to cut my heart up into so many little bits. Wherever I go—there's a song about it—I leave my heart behind me. I always do that. People seem to me very nice.'
' You are taking the rest of the stuffing out,' remarked he in a slightly injured voice.
She laughed.
' Well, I find you all charming,' she said again. ' Will that do?'
' I suppose it will have to. And your friend, Lord Keynes?'
' Ah, he finds one person so charming that I don't think he thinks much about the rest,' she said. Look, there they are.'
Bilton did not look; he had already seen them; he usually saw things first.
' Do you think he will marry her?' he asked.
' Yes; certainly, I hope so. If he marries at all, he must marry money.'
' And Nature clearly designed Miss Palmer to be a peeress. In fact, the match was made in heaven.'
' I hope it will be ratified on earth,' she said. ' Why are you cynical about it?'
' I am never cynical; what makes you think that?'
' Well, simple, direct; it comes to the same thing. To tell the truth is often the most cynical thing you can do.'
' Not if it is a pleasant truth. And it will be very pleasant to Miss Palmer to be an English peeress. And, as you said yourself, it is only possible for Lord Keynes to marry money. And he is fortunate in his money-bag,' he added.
She frowned a little; there was something in this speech which, with all her admiration for his countrymen, struck her as both characteristic and disagreeable. He saw it.
' Ah, that offends you,' he said quickly. ' I apologize. I wish you would teach me better. You know there is a something, an inherent coarseness, about us, which I have seen get, ever so slightly, on to your nerves fifty times a day.'
She laughed.
' Teach you!' she said; ' I am learning far too much myself.'
' You learning? What, for instance?'
' Not to be finicking, not to be slack and dawdling. To go ahead and do something. If a person of my nature was in Mr. Palmer's place, do you suppose I should go on working as he does? I would never touch a business question again.'
He shook his head.
' Believe me, you would; you would not be able to help it. Lewis Palmer can't stop; his wife can't stop; I can't stop, in my small way. But you at present have the power of stopping. It is the most exquisite thing in the world. To us, to me, I assure you, it is like a cool breeze on a hot day to see you leisurely English people. In England you have a leisured class; we have none. Our wealthy class is the least leisured of all. If you adore us, as you say, grant us the privilege of seeing you like that.'
There was something in this speech that rather touched her—something also that certainly pleased her, and that was the tone of honest deference in which he spoke.
' In fact, you want to be English,' she said, laughing it off, ' and I want to be American.' And she looked at him, smiling.
But he did not smile at all, only again his brown eyes grew hot and black. That, too, pleased her. Then suddenly she felt vaguely frightened; she had not definitely intended to give him his chance now, and she did not wish him to take it. So she rose.
' Take me back,' she said. ' Take me into a crowd of your people. I want to learn a little more.'