“I don’t think I will go,” muttered John, doggedly, with fire in his dark eyes as he looked with disgust at Mr. Wilkins.
“You must,” said Mr. Wilkins, urgently, and he was very earnest about this. “Give me three months, sir, and it’ll be done. In the meantime, rein in your hosses.”
He had persuaded john, who had gloomily and irascibly agreed to go. But all the way home the young man had been tortured by memories, griefs and hatreds. He finally came to the conclusion that he must go alone. He would present his apologies to Mr. Gorth and his lady, saying that Mrs. Turnbull had been “unwell,” and had been unable to avail herself of the gracious invitation. John could not endure the thought of entering that elegant drawing-room in the company of his coarse and vulgar barmaid wife, and watching the venomous derision and satisfaction in the eyes of his old enemy, who had brought him to this pass. At that thought, John felt maddened, felt the old lust for murder, and had stood immobile for some moments on the street, clenching his fists. It was too much! Lilybelle should not go.
Now, here was Lilybelle, decked out in splendour, glowing, radiantly if too strikingly beautiful, and too colourful. After her first impulsive movement toward him, she had shrank back, and now stood perfectly still, her arms a little lifted at her sides, her head thrown back, her body upright and a trifle rigid. Yet, despite her immobility, which resembled a statue’s, she palpitated. Everything about her was sparkling and welling. John, for really the first time, saw the pearly translucence of her neck and bosom and shoulders, the brilliance of her curls, the redness of her lips, the stateliness and full-blown beauty of her figure.
She was gazing at him eagerly, with shyness and hope, for all her new restraint. He saw that she was much improved, and vaguely remembered that lately her voice was softer and quieter, her manners better. (He had not known of the secret sessions with Miss Beardsley.)
And now he thought: Gad, she will make a sensation! No doubt Andrew, who had arrived a week ago at his uncle’s house, (though not yet having appeared at the warehouse) had already regaled his relatives with the story of John’s downfall, much to their amusement. They had doubtless invited John and his wife for the pleasure of watching his discomfiture and mortification in the presence of his barmaid wife, who they had been told was a coarse and illiterate creature. Ah! but they would laugh on the other side of their faces tonight!
He smiled, and his smile was dark and excited. Now, if he could just persuade Lilybelle to hold her tongue and keep her silence, all would go well! He extended his hand and indulgently turned her about, in order to look her over. He missed nothing. The girl glowed and trembled under his touch on her bare arm and shoulder.
“Is she not beautiful?” said Miss Beardsley. John started at the unexpected sound of her voice.
He knew she was a lady of breeding, and had mistakenly suspected that she despised him for his mesalliance with a barmaid. He had thought that she detested Lilybelle, and had only suffered her presence in her house for the sake of Mr. Wilkins, and himself. What could a lady like Miss Beardsley have to do with a Lilybelle? He had suffered excruciating torments when he imagined what Miss Beardsley must think of his wife, and her secret derision.
Yet, here was Miss Beardsley surveying Lilybelle with pride, as though she had created her, and with deep affection. There was no patronage in her august manner, but only real if cold delight. Her head was on one side, her hands clasped before her. She resembled a gaunt but benevolent old vulture. There was real tenderness in her eyes.
More and more confused and startled, John gazed again at Lilybelle. Now if Miss Beardsley really, found Lilybelle presentable, and worthy of her patrician admiration, he could be certain that others would find her so, too. John was incredulous, but oddly intoxicated.
“I will do, Mr. T.?” asked Lilybelle, timidly. She gazed at him with frightened adoration, for even her simplicity divined that strong and turbulent thoughts were assaulting him.
“Of course you will do!” replied Miss Beardsley vigorously, divining John’s emotion with extraordinary acuteness. “You will be quite the belle of the ball, Mrs. Turnbull. You will create a sensation. New York ladies are so dull and spiritless, You will quite dazzle every one. You look quite—French,” she added, with only the slightest distaste at the word.
Miss Beardsley’s words (as she suspected) were the final undoing of John, and all he needed to convince and fortify him.
“Where did you get that necklace, Lily?” he asked, and in spite of his attempt at sternness, his strong voice was gentle and indulgent.
Lilybelle’s fingers flew to the jewelry, but Miss Beardsley said calmly:
“It was my mother’s, Mr. Turnbull. No one has ever worn it since her death, for I have never before seen any lady worthy of wearing it, or one who could confer such distinction upon it. It completes Mrs. Turnbull’s costume, does it not?” And she looked at John fully and blandly, without her usual coldness and dislike.
John was stupefied. He bowed stiffly. He said: “You have done my wife an honour, ma’am.”
“It is she who honours it,” replied Miss Beardsley, with dignity. She turned to Lilybelle: “My dear child, I have not lent the lecklace to you. I beg you to accept it. My mother would have been delighted.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” murmured Lilybelle, overcome with delight, but gazing fearfully at her husband.
“Don’t be so uncouth, and so ungrateful,” said John with severity. He turned to Miss Beardsley again, and bowed more deeply. “My wife accepts, ma’am, with tremendous gratitude.” In spite of himself, his voice faltered, and he said on a rush: “You can’t know how happy you’ve made me, Miss Beardsley!”
Lilybelle listened with bewilderment, staring first at one and then the other, but Miss Beardsley smiled grimly and imperceptibly under her long Phoenician nose, and inclined her head.
“I am afraid the other ladies will be sadly neglected tonight, Mr. Turnbull. But don’t let her head be turned, for she is so young. She must not forget,” and she turned with a stately sternness to Lilybelle, “that her first duty is to attend upon her husband, in spite of the compliments she will receive.”
“Oh, I will, I will!” murmured Lilybelle, quite overcome, and close to tears. She did not know what all this was about; it was sufficient for her to realize that John was pleased, not angered. She did so fear his rages.
“I hope,” said John, with Miss Beardsley’s own severity, (which seemed to league him as an adult with her in the face of Lilybelle’s youth and inexperience) “that she will be an honour to you, ma’am.” He felt the most mysterious affinity with his hated landlady, and exchanged a subtle smile with her.
“Come, my love,” he said, taking Lilybelle by the hand, “I must dress. Have you thanked Miss Beardsley properly?”
CHAPTER 18
Mr. Richard Gorth, among guests and friends, was known as a jolly soul, ready with rich ruddy laughter and a jest. One careful to observe, however, would have detected the fact that he laughed the loudest and with the most sincerity and spontaneity when some one’s good name, foibles, eccentricities or character was under discussion, or preferably, under doubt. Let a woman’s reputation be winked at, a man’s honour or integrity questioned, a joke told against a friend, and then came Mr. Gorth’s shaking harsh mirth accompanied by a cruel harsh glitter in his eye. It was also observed, however, that Mr. Gorth, though encouraging the speaker, and laughing most enormously at his tale, rarely added anything to it, or made an original observation of his own about the person under discussion. This gave him the name of not being a gossip, of never “saying a bad word about any one.” If he repeated what he had heard, (and he always managed to do that) he gave due credit to the informant, and quoted exactly, with perhaps a chuckling and deprecating word of his own. “I fancy it is all fabrication,” he would say. Thus it was that he also had the repute of defending Others. It was convenient. Mr. Gorth had ruined more men and plunged more women into despair than any other man of hi
s acquaintance.
He deceived every one except his wife and Mr. Wilkins, and a very few others.
Tonight, the occasion for his mirth was his trusted secretary, John Turnbull. “Oh, come now,” he said, several times to his nephew, Andrew Bollister, “you aren’t implying that Johnnie isn’t to be trusted?”
To which Andrew would reply in his toneless and neutral voice: “Johnnie can be trusted. He hasn’t the brains to be anything else but trustworthy.” A remark which made Mr. Gorth appreciatively hilarious.
The dinners were excellent in the Gorth mansion on lower Fifth Avenue, for despite the fact that Mr. Gorth was an Englishman, he was a gourmet. He had brought a French chef, whom he had discovered in a Parisian café, to America, at a fabulous salary. Again, despite his English blood, Mr. Gorth was a cosmopolitan. His home, of chaste white brick, with a white door decorated with brass knocker and fittings, was in remarkably good taste. He had, in the course of his business, travelled in the Southern States, and had been most agreeably impressed by the lovely architecture of the planters’ houses. But he was clever enough not to try to reproduce it exactly in the bleaker and more sterile atmosphere of New York. He contented himself with the general façade of a planter’s home, eliminating the pillars and upper gallery, thus presenting to the quiet stretches of Fifth Avenue a distinctive and dignified home, smooth and white of face, tall yet wide, gracious and symmetrical. But the great tall windows were there, low of sill, protected halfway by wrought iron grills, gracefully curved. The front doors were enormous, also grilled, and the narrow lawns in front of the house were an incredible emerald green despite the heat and dust of the summers.
Like many men with dirty souls, he had a passion for order and cleanliness. If there was soot in the neighbourhood, it appeared to avoid staining even one white brick of the Gorth mansion, or dulling the glittering expanse of the mighty windows. Even the trees near the kerb were perfectly matched, never revealing a perforated leaf or a blasted twig. Each day two servants washed outer window sills, polished knockers and plates, dusted grills, scrubbed doors, rubbed up windows, picked up stray leaves or chaff, swept walks and washed doorsteps. In the midst of tall narrow brownstone palaces, severe and ugly, the Gorth mansion was a jewel of white and orderly beauty. Yet, it was not incongruous, not at all suggestive of the South. It fitted its surroundings.
Mr. Gorth’s taste extended to the furnishings of his home. His wife, (the former Arabella Worthington of Philadelphia, and a descendant of the original Quakers) could not be trusted, in his estimation, to furnish even a kennel. (Though she had furnished the original fortune which had enabled Mr. Gorth to steal the business of his former employer, Nathan Appleton.) Mrs. Gorth ran rather to the lush opulence of New York than to the taste of her forebears, and would have filled her house with massive mahogany and tortured ebony, thick dark carpets and heavy drapes with huge gold tassels, and bathrooms all carved oak. But Mr. Gorth personally selected every article in the house himself. There were no ornate vases, no fringes, no fretted wood, no plush or velvet here. He had combed Europe thoroughly for the finest pieces of furniture, simple and waxed to a shimmering patina, but irreproachable and pure of line and exquisitely executed. He had avoided anything Latin, for Italian and Spanish furniture gave him a gruesome feeling, and was vaguely suggestive of plague, Popery and vermin. It did not matter to him whether the piece were antique or new, so long as it carried with it an impression of dignity, simplicity and unaffected beauty. He had a love for Oriental rugs, but not the Turkistan, which he declared made him think of American Indians, with its dark patterns, geometrical lines and raw colours. Only the Persian pleased him, for their delicate colouring, flowery grace and subtle blending of tints appealed to him enormously. These rugs were spread on floors so polished that they glittered in the faintest light, and gave an atmosphere of freshness and airiness to every room. Hating clutter, he had few pieces of furniture even in his drawing-rooms, and the upholstery was of damask, dim silks and faded tapestry. He ran to the Chippendale, but not the Chinese motif. His fireplaces were of pure dull white marble, and the ornaments also suggested the Chippendale, and the Dresden. (He loathed Chinese bric-a-brac, and could see nothing lovely in Japanese prints, either. Perhaps the latter’s lack of a third dimension irritated him for some obscure but interesting reason.) Mrs. Gorth would have loved to have cluttered the chaste austerity of the mantelpieces with vases and clocks and other decorations, but Mr. Gorth left them severely alone, enhanced only by an oval mirror over them or an excellent portrait.
Andrew Bollister, who had the conviction that America was a country of rude barbarians, was quite astonished to discover such taste, such beauty, such light and airiness in his uncle’s home. He could find nothing which offended his own meticulous taste. The dining room, with its creamy walls, its polished floors, its light and beautifully carved mahogany furniture, entranced him. The cloth was of the finest lace, the silver thin and fragile, the china pure white and delicately embossed. Moreover, the dinners served to him were distinguished by the most subtle flavours, the service impeccable.
Mr. Gorth had been readily accepted into New York’s budding but tight society. This was partly due to his wife’s unassailable position, and partly because it was well-known that Mr. Gorth himself came of an excellent upper class English family, if one somewhat impoverished. Now that the Irish, and other “lesser breeds” were invading New York, it was more necessary than ever to narrow the confines of true society in order not to admit one who had the slightest taint in his ancestry. The rich Mr. Gorth, therefore, with his Quaker wife, his lovely home, his excellent cook, his reputation as a host, his irrefutable taste, found every desirable door open to him. The great leaders in trade and finance came here freely, pressed invitations upon him, and plotted their skullduggeries and impressive thefts with him in his gracious library panelled with white wood. He had a faintly patronizing air towards them, for, after all, they were of Dutch ancestry, and not to be considered in the same class with an Englishman. Moreover, their origins in America were not of the most savoury, and in spite of their mansions and their wealth, one could not forget fur caps, leather coats and the pungent odour of Northern trade. So, Mr. Gorth was not above playing pranks upon them, to lower their dignity, and so he would often invite an obscure little trader to dine with more august company, or include such as Mr. Wilkins for their discomfiture. He knew that new aristocracy was very sensitive, that a lady whose grandmother had dwelt in a logcabin or had scrubbed the floors of her betters was easily bruised in her sensibilities, and that a gentleman whose father had cleaned his own trapped skins with a dull knife, and had used raucous and illiterate speech, could not bear the presence of any one who was not of the most refined and irreproachable family. Mr. Gorth, whose own family was truly ancient and cultured, if of the smaller gentry and nobility, found all this diverting and amusing. The portraits in his drawing-rooms were authentic, which could not be said of the portraits in the other mansions in New York, and he could point to a painting of a fine lady of the sixteenth or seventeenth century and say: “This was my great-grandmother, or my great-great-grandmother, Lady Elizabeth Cowles-Broughton.” He had no particular pride in ancestry, and found it somewhat foolish and ridiculous, but it delighted him to see awe and furtive discomfiture on the faces of his New York visitors who had secretly purchased old portraits in Holland, England or France, and now palmed them off as representing illustrious forebears. “You see, I have the Astor nose,” a lady would languidly say, indicating the cracked dim countenance of some female who doubtless would have expressed horror at this infamy and sudden relationship had she been aware of it. So, Mr. Gorth found his dinners very diverting and extremely amusing, as he found all pretense and falseness and shallow mean lies.
“These Americans,” he would say to his wife, observing her wincing and dull flush, “are all the descendants of gaol rats, petty criminals, drabs and harlots, incompetents and little adventurers. It does me good to discomfi
t them.”
In a way, however, Mr. Gorth was a true democrat. He did not truly estimate a man on the basis of his ancestry, but on the firmer ground of his ability, his superior genius in the field of larceny, his rascality which might approach the point of genius, and his machinations. Let a man reveal these admirable traits, and he had all Mr. Gorth’s admiration, and was assured of a frequent chair in his dining-room. Especially, if he could increase Mr. Gorth’s fortune by a hint here and there. Therefore, Mr. Gorth was indeed a real democrat, the forerunner of those who would build America to the highest eminence in world affairs.
They were awaiting the arrival of their dinner guests, seated in the airy drawing-room. Mr. Gorth allowed his satisfied eye to dwell upon his nephew, of whom he was more fond than he would admit. Andrew was at home here in this mansion, seemed more fitted to it than his uncle, himself. That suave urbanity, that cold malicious amusement, that slender elegance, completed the effect of distinguished and flawless perfection. Even his neutral voice, considered and cold, enhanced the air of civilized completeness.
He had listened to his uncle’s cautious if enthusiastic approach with utter smiling impassivity. He was properly grateful, attentive and respectful. He showed no resistiveness, no superiority. Mr. Gorth again was satisfied. As the days had passed since Andrew’s arrival, he became more and more certain that the lad would become a permanent fixture in Richard Gorth, Cotton Exporter. He had not yet entered the offices or the warehouses, but he had shown secretive interest, had asked intelligent questions, had made strangely astute suggestions. Tomorrow, he was to visit the warehouse.