THE two tiers of boxes at the Metropolitan Opera House reserved for the beauty and fashion of New York flashed with the plumage of women and a thousand thousand gems. Women of superb style, with little of artifice but much of art, gowned so smartly that only their intense vitality saved them from confusion with the fashion-plate, carrying themselves with a royal, albeit somewhat self-conscious air, many of them crowned like empresses, others starred like night, producing the effect en masse of resplendent beauty, and individually of deficiency in all upon which the centuries have set their seal, hung, two or three in a frame, against the curving walls and red background of the great house: suspended in air, these goddesses of a new civilisation, as if with insolent challenge to all that had come to stare. To the music they paid no attention. They had come to decorate, not to listen; without them there would be no opera. The music lovers were stuffed on high, where they seemed to cling to the roof like flies. The people in the parquette and orchestra chairs, in the dress-circle and balconies, came to see the hundreds of millions represented in the grand tier. Two rows of blasé club faces studded the long omnibus box. Behind the huge sleeves and voluminous skirts that sheathed their proudest possessions, were the men that had coined or inherited the wealth which made this triumphant exhibition possible.
As the curtain went down on the second act and the boxes emptied themselves of their male kind that other male kind might enter to do homage, two young men took their stand in the back of a box near the stage and scanned the house. One of them remarked after a few moments:
“I thought that all American women were beautiful. So far, I see only one.”
“These are the New York fashionettes, my dear boy. Their pedigree is too short for aristocratic outline. You will observe that the pug is as yet unmitigated. Not that blood always tells, by any means: some of your old duchesses look like cooks. Our orchids travel on their style, grooming, and health, and you must admit that the general effect is stunning. Who is your beauty?”
“Directly in the middle of the house. Gad! she’s a ripper.”
“You are right. That is the prettiest woman in New York. And her pedigree is probably as good as yours.”
“Who is she?”
“Mrs. Edward R. Forbes, the wife of one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the United States.”
“Really!”
“That is her daughter beside her.”
“Her what!”
“I always enjoy making that shot. It throws a flash-light on the pitiful lack of originality in man every time. But it is nothing for the petted wife of an American millionaire to look thirty when she is forty. It’s the millionaire who looks sixty when he is fifty. I’m not including Forbes, by the way. That tall man of fine physique that has just left the box is he.”
“Poor thing!”
“Oh, don’t waste any pity on Forbes. He’s the envy of half New York. She is devoted to him, and with good reason: there are few men that can touch him at any point. I shall take you over presently. The first thing a distinguished stranger, who has had the tip, does when he comes to New York is to pay his court at that shrine. What a pity you are booked. That girl will come in for forty millions.”
The other set his face more stolidly.
“Pounds?”
“Oh, no—dollars. But they’ll do.”
“I have not spoken as yet, although I don’t mind saying that that is what I came over for.”
“I suppose you are in pretty deep—too deep to draw out?”
“I don’t know that I want to. I can be frank with you, Fletcher. Is her father solid? American fortunes are so deucedly ricketty. I am perfectly willing to state brutally that I wouldn’t—couldn’t—marry Venus unless I got a half million (pounds) with her and something of an income to boot.”
“As far as I know Creighton stands pretty well toward the top. You can never tell though: American fortunes are so exaggerated. You see, the women whose husbands are worth five millions can make pretty much the same splurge as the twenty or thirty million ones. They know so well how to do it. For the matter of that there’s one clever old parvenu here who has never handled more than a million and a half—as I happen to know, for I’m her lawyer—and who entertains with the best of them. Her house, clothes, jewels, are gorgeous. A shrewd old head like that can do a lot on an income of seventy thousand dollars a year. But Forbes, I should say, is worth his twenty millions—that’s allowing for all embellishments—if he’s worth a dollar, and Augusta is the only child. Unless America goes bankrupt, she’ll come in for two-thirds of that one of these days, and an immense dot meanwhile.”
At this moment Miss Creighton, who had been talking with charming vivacity to a group of visitors, dismissed them with tactful badinage, and beckoned to the two men in the back of the box.
“Sit down,” she commanded. “What do you think, Fletcher? I stayed away from two important meetings to-day in order to receive the Duke. Was not that genuine American hospitality?”
She spoke lightly; but as her eyes sought the Englishman’s, something seemed to flutter behind her almost transparent face.
“These fads! These fads!” exclaimed the young man addressed as Fletcher. “Have you resigned yourself to the New Woman, Bertie? The New York variety is innocuous. They just have a real good time and the newspapers take them seriously and write them up, which they think is lovely.”
“Nobody pays any attention to Fletcher Cuyler,” said Miss Creighton with affected disdain. “We will make you all stare yet.”
The Duke smiled absently. He was looking toward the box in the middle of the tier.
“I think women should have whatever diversion they can find or invent,” he said. “Society does not do much for them.”
The curtain rose.
“Keep quiet,” ordered Cuyler. “I allow no talking in a box which I honour with my presence. That isn’t what I ruin myself for.”
He was a tail nervous blonde bald-headed man of the Duke’s age, with an imp-like expression and dazzling teeth. Despite the fact that he was unwealthed, he was a fixed star in New York society; he not only knew more dukes and princes than any other man in the United States, but was intimate with them. He had smart English relatives and was a graduate of Oxford, where he had been the chosen friend of the heir to the Dukedom of Bosworth. His excessive liveliness, his adaptability and versatility, his audacity, eccentricities, cleverness, and his utter disregard of rank, had made him immensely popular in England. He was treated as something between a curio and a spoilt child; and if people guessed occasionally that his head was peculiarly level, they but approved him the more.
When the act was done and the box again invaded, Cuyler carried the Englishman off to call on Mrs. Forbes. Her box was already crowded, and Mr. Forbes stood just outside the door. As the Duke was introduced to him, he contracted his eyelids, and a brief glance of contempt shot from eyes that looked twenty years younger than the fish-like orbs which involuntarily twitched as they met that dart. But Mr. Forbes was always courteous, and he spoke pleasantly to the young man of his father, whom he had known.
Cuyler entered the box. “Get out,” he said, “everyone of you. I’ve got a live duke out there. He’s mortgaged for the rest of the evening and time’s short.” He drove the men out, then craned his long neck round the half-open door.
“Dukee, dukee,” he called, “come hither.”
The Duke, summoning what dignity he could, entered, and was presented. After he had paid a few moments’ court to Mrs. Forbes, Cuyler deftly changed seats with him and plunged into an animated dispute with his hostess anent the vanishing charms of Don Giovanni.
The Duke leaned over Miss Forbes’ chair with an air of languor, which was due to physical fatigue, contemplating her absently, and not taking the trouble to more than answer her remarks. Nevertheless, his prolonged if indifferent stare disturbed the girl who had known little susceptibility to men. There was something in the cold regard of his eye, the very weariness of his manner, which had its charm for the type of woman who is responsive to the magnetism of inertia, whom a more vital force repels. And his title, all that it represented, the pages of military glory it rustled, appealed to the mind of the American girl who had felt the charm of English history. She was not a snob; she had given no thought to marrying a title; and if the man had repelled her, she would have relegated him to that far outer circle whence all were banished who bored her or achieved her disapproval; but a thin spell emanated from this cold self-contained personality and stirred her languid pulse. Practical as she was, she had a girl’s imagination, and she saw in him all that he had not, haloed with an ancient title; behind him a great sweep of historical canvas. Then she remembered her friend; and envied her with the most violent emotion of her life.
“Well, what do you think of her?” asked Cuyler of the Duke, as they walked down the lobby. “I don’t mean la belle dame sans merci; there’s only one opinion on that subject. But Augusta? do you think you could stand her? If Forbes took the notion he’d come down with five million dollars without turning a hair.”
“I could swallow her whole and without a grimace,” said the Duke drily. “But I am half, two-thirds committed. I have no intention of making Miss Creighton ridiculous, although I shall be obliged to tell her father frankly that I cannot marry her unless he comes down with half a million. It’s a disgusting thing to do, but I have no choice.”
“Oh, don’t go back on Mabel, of course. But I am sorry. However, nous verrons. If Creighton doesn’t come to time, let me know. I am pretty positive I can arrange the other: I think I know my fair compatriot’s weak spot. I suppose you go on with the Creightons to the big affair at the Schemmerhorn-Smiths to-night? Well, give Augusta a quarter of an hour or so of your flattering attentions. It will do no harm, in any event. I feel like a conspirator, but I’d like to see you on your feet. Gad! I wish I had a title; I wouldn’t be in debt as long as you have been.”