Part 18 (2/2)

”He's a man you want to fix in your mind--old Henry S. Grimes. Have you heard of him?”

”Vaguely,” said the other.

”He's Laura Hegan's uncle. She'll have his money also some day--but Lord, how he does hold on to it meantime! It's quite tragic, if you come to know him--he's frightened at his own shadow. He goes in for slum tenements, and I guess he evicts more people in a month than you could crowd into this building!”

Montague looked at the solitary figure at the table, a man with a wizened-up little face like a weasel's, and a big napkin tied around his neck. ”That's so as to save his s.h.i.+rt-front for to-morrow,” the Major explained. ”He's really only about sixty, but you'd think he was eighty. Three times every day he sits here and eats a bowl of graham crackers and milk, and then goes out and sits rigid in an arm-chair for an hour. That's the regimen his doctors have put him on--angels and ministers of grace defend us!”

The old gentleman paused, and a chuckle shook his scarlet jowls. ”Only think!” he said--”they tried to do that to me! But no, sir--when Bob Venable has to eat graham crackers and milk, he'll put in a.r.s.enic instead of sugar! That's the way with many a one of these rich fellows, though--you picture him living in Capuan luxury, when, as a matter of fact, he's a man with a torpid liver and a weak stomach, who is put to bed at ten o'clock with a hot-water bag and a flannel night-cap!”

The two had got up and were strolling toward the smoking-room; when suddenly at one side a door opened, and a group of men came out. At the head of them was an extraordinary figure, a big powerful body with a grim face. ”h.e.l.lo!” said the Major. ”All the big bugs are here to-night. There must be a governors' meeting.”

”Who is that?” asked his companion; and he answered, ”That? Why, that's Dan Waterman.”

Dan Waterman! Montague stared harder than ever, and now he identified the face with the pictures he had seen. Waterman, the Colossus of finance, the Croesus of copper and gold! How many trusts had Waterman organized! And how many puns had been made upon that name of his!

”Who are the other men?” Montague asked.

”Oh, they're just little millionaires,” was the reply.

The ”little millionaires” were following as a kind of body-guard; one of them, who was short and pudgy, was half running, to keep up with Waterman's heavy stride. When they came to the coat-room, they crowded the attendants away, and one helped the great man on with his coat, and another held his hat, and another his stick, and two others tried to talk to him. And Waterman stolidly b.u.t.toned his coat, and then seized his hat and stick, and without a word to anyone, bolted through the door.

It was one of the funniest sights that Montague had ever seen in his life, and he laughed all the way into the smoking-room. And, when Major Venable had settled himself in a big chair and bitten off the end of a cigar and lighted it, what floodgates of reminiscence were opened!

For Dan Waterman was one of the Major's own generation, and he knew all his life and his habits. Just as Montague had seen him there, so he had been always; swift, imperious, terrible, trampling over all opposition; the most powerful men in the city quailed before the glare of his eyes.

In the old days Wall Street had reeled in the shock of the conflicts between him and his most powerful rival.

And the Major went on to tell about Waterman's rival, and his life. He had been the city's traction-king, old Wyman had been made by him. He was the prince among political financiers; he had ruled the Democratic party in state and nation. He would give a quarter of a million at a time to the boss of Tammany Hall, and spend a million in a single campaign; on ”dough-day,” when the district leaders came to get the election funds, there would be a table forty feet long completely covered with hundred-dollar bills. He would have been the richest man in America, save that he spent his money as fast as he got it. He had had the most famous racing-stable in America; and a house on Fifth Avenue that was said to be the finest Italian palace in the world. Over three millions had been spent in decorating it; all the ceilings had been brought intact from palaces abroad, which he had bought and demolished! The Major told a story to show how such a man lost all sense of the value of money; he had once been sitting at lunch with him, when the editor of one of his newspapers had come in and remarked, ”I told you we would need eight thousand dollars, and the check you send is for ten.” ”I know it,” was the smiling answer--”but somehow I thought eight seemed harder to write than ten!”

”Old Waterman's quite a spender, too, when it comes to that,” the Major went on. ”He told me once that it cost him five thousand dollars a day for his ordinary expenses. And that doesn't include a million-dollar yacht, nor even the expenses of it.

”And think of another man I know of who spent a million dollars for a granite pier, so that he could land and see his mistress!--It's a fact, as sure as G.o.d made me! She was a well-known society woman, but she was poor, and he didn't dare to make her rich for fear of the scandal. So she had to live in a miserable fifty-thousand-dollar villa; and when other people's children would sneer at her children because they lived in a fifty-thousand-dollar villa, the answer would be, 'But you haven't got any pier!' And if you don't believe that--”

But here suddenly the Major turned, and observed a boy who had brought him some cigars, and who was now standing near by, pretending to straighten out some newspapers upon the table. ”Here, sir!” cried the Major, ”what do you mean--listening to what I'm saying! Out of the room with you now, you rascal!”

CHAPTER XIII

Another week-end came, and with it an invitation from the Lester Todds to visit them at their country place in New Jersey. Montague was buried in his books, but his brother routed him out with strenuous protests.

His case be d.a.m.ned--was he going to ruin his career for one case? At all hazards, he must meet people--”people who counted.” And the Todds were such, a big money crowd, and a power in the insurance world; if Montague were going to be an insurance lawyer, he could not possibly decline their invitation. Freddie Vandam would be a guest--and Montague smiled at the tidings that Betty Wyman would be there also. He had observed that his brother's week-end visits always happened at places where Betty was, and where Betty's granddaddy was not.

So Montague's man packed his grips, and Alice's maid her trunks; and they rode with a private-car party to a remote Jersey suburb, and were whirled in an auto up a broad sh.e.l.l road to a palace upon the top of a mountain. Here lived the haughty Lester Todds, and scattered about on the neighbouring hills, a set of the ultra-wealthy who had withdrawn to this seclusion. They were exceedingly ”cla.s.sy”; they affected to regard all the Society of the city with scorn, and had their own all-the-year-round diversions--an open-air horse show in summer, and in the fall fox-hunting in fancy uniforms.

The Lester Todds themselves were ardent pursuers of all varieties of game, and in various clubs and private preserves they followed the seasons, from Florida and North Carolina to Ontario, with occasional side trips to Norway, and New Brunswick, and British Columbia. Here at home they had a whole mountain of virgin forest, carefully preserved; and in the Renaissance palace at the summit-which they carelessly referred to as a ”lodge”--you would find such articles de vertu as a ten-thousand-dollar table with a set of two-thousand-dollar chairs, and quite ordinary-looking rugs at ten and twenty thousand dollars each.--All these prices you might ascertain without any difficulty at all, because there were many newspaper articles describing the house to be read in an alb.u.m in the hall. On Sat.u.r.day afternoons Mrs. Todd welcomed the neighbours in a pastel grey reception-gown, the front of which contained a peac.o.c.k embroidered in silk, with jewels in every feather, and a diamond solitaire for an eye; and in the evening there was a dance, and she appeared in a gown with several hundred diamonds sewn upon it, and received her guests upon a rug set with jewels to match.

All together, Montague judged this the ”fastest” set he had yet encountered; they ate more and drank more and intrigued more openly. He had been slowly acquiring the special lingo of Society, but these people had so much more slang that he felt all lost again. A young lady who was gossiping to him about those present remarked that a certain youth was a ”spasm”; and then, seeing the look of perplexity upon his face, she laughed, ”I don't believe you know what I mean!” Montague replied that he had ventured to infer that she did not like him.

And then there was Mrs. Harper, who came from Chicago by way of London.

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