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 his 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 discomfit 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.
Moreover, he and his uncle had understood each other from the start. They had seen each other only once, a year ago, in England, and immediately a great and edifying rapport had sprung up betwen them. This was the son I should have had!
Mr. Gorth had contemplated some difficulty in the person of the young lady who had married his nephew. She had a mother, it was reported to him, a sufferer from some sort of some obscure ailment. She might not desire to live in America, away from friends and family, and so might persuade Andrew to return. Young English ladies were notoriously disdainful of America, and coolly amused at its roughness and uproar. But to Mr. Gorth’s amazed and delighted gratitude, young Mrs. Bollister had expressed her considered opinion that she would like to remain in this new land, and her quiet approval, calm and toneless, conferred a compliment upon America which Mr. Gorth sardonically told himself ought to be received with humble and adoring gratitude by that country. Though he was proud of his English ancestry and birth, he secretly loathed and despised and ridiculed the English for a race of people who had a delusion of superiority, a delusion shared with their cousins, the Germans. He admired his countrymen for their ruthlessness, but derided them for covering this ruthlessness with a polite and moral polish, as if Biblical texts and noble sentiments uttered in measured tones would deceive others as to the underlying exigency and greed. “Be a scoundrel, but don’t be a damned hypocrite about it,” he would say. “Stand on your sins, and be proud of them, and damned to the rest of the world.” It was the Englishman’s refined aversion to admitting his rascality which so annoyed Mr. Gorth, who had no such reticence himself.
He had quickly taken the measure of young Mrs. Bollister. Ah, a ruthless piece, cold, authoritative, determined, inflexible and relentless! And a lass with a mind, and with hard sharp thoughts of her own, too. An excellent wife for Andrew, one of his own kidney. Mr. Gorth was gratified at the strange resemblance between the young man and his bride. A fine pair. He had soon discerned that Andrew, despite his reserve, was overwhelmingly in love with his young wife, and for some mysterious reason, seemed to be constantly amused by her.
Mr. Gorth, even while he conversed with his nephew tonight, kept glancing furtively at his newly acquired niece. Not pretty or buxom, perhaps, not of any obvious or startling loveliness. But he was a connoisseur, and the blatant never appealed to him. He admired her hauteur, the cool disdainful curve of her mouth, the tilt of her small gleaming head, the large chill brilliance of her gray eyes. This was a lady, and Mr. Gorth excessively admired ladies. Their control and repression hinted of delightful things when the icy barrier was broken down. There was no opulence about them, no obviousness, and Mr. Gorth loved the subtle.
Though so small, she had an admirable and perfect figure, he thought. Her taste was perfect. Clad tonight in rich wine-dark silk, the bodice a waterfall of deep creamy lace, her neck and little white shoulders revealed in their dainty perfection, her smooth brown hair parted and rolled with simplicity and decorated by one or two dark red rosebuds, he could find no fault in her. About her neck she wore a slender chain of garnets, and there was a bracelet of the same stones upon her wrist. When she breathed, so quietly and slowly, little jets of crimson flame danced over her white skin. She sat with grace and silence in her armless chair, the voluminous hoops belling about her, and her whole attitude expressed compact control, authority and pride.
Her manners, too, were exquisite, perfectly suited to every occasion. No wonder she made poor Mrs. Gorth look like an elderly spinster servant despite the new French gown of vivid blue velvet which the lady had donned this evening. For Mrs. Gorth had no taste at all. The blue velvet, with the immense hoops, the lace and bows and intricacy of her toilette, were grotesque on that large masculine frame, enhanced the yellowish cast of her coarse skin which no emollients could soften, and increased the sallowness of her big lean arms and leathery neck. Mrs. Gorth had never been a beauty. Her fortune had been her chief attraction, but until the scheming Mr. Gorth had chanced by, no suitor, however indigent, had been able to overlook that furtive cavernous countenance, those little muddy brown eyes, that hawklike nose, that mean tight expression full of piety, envy and spite, that little puckered mouth pursed so primly into a look of chronic meanness. Her dull brown hair was coquetishly dressed this evening in a coiffure of lank curls, utterly unsuitable.
Even her hatreds were not strong, though constant and poisonous. When she saw her husband’s affection for his nephew, she hated Andrew with a vitriolic detestation quite unusual for one of her monotonous temperament. She hated Eugenia for her youth and delicate breeding and exquisite manners. She regarded both as interlopers, but was helpless to destroy them. Since their coming, she prayed nightly that they might remove themselves, or die.
She sat on a love-seat of buttercup satin with Eugenia, her jaundiced long face set in an expression of prim politeness, apparently listening to the girl’s quiet and even voice. But her sluggish little brown eyes were fixed upon her husband, as usual. She tried to listen to everything that was said everywhere, for she was suspicious by nature, and either hoped to hear a derogatory remark about herself or a vicious remark about an absent acquaintance. She fingered the greasy curls at her ears and at the yellow nape of her furrowed and oily neck, and occasionally, as Eugenia paused, she pursed her dry and puckered lips in a mechanical smile. Mrs. Gorth exhaled an odour of musk, for she was lavish with scent as if to hide the stench of her own spirit. Eugenia found the odour unbearable whenever Mrs. Gorth would lift her fan of blue ostrich feathers to create a restless breeze about herself. Then would Eugenia lift her own fan, of white lace, and create a gentle counter-wind.
Andrew had expressed himself with frank surprise that evening that America was far more agreeable than he had expected. With smiling candour he informed his uncle that he had not expected such genteel and civil gentlemen and ladies in New York, but rather bluff coarse traders and buxom peasant wives. Richard Gorth smiled. “You were not really mistaken, Andy,” he said. “Your first impression was quite right. But they are slowly acquiring a gloss.”
Mrs. Gorth broke feverishly into speech, in the middle of some remark of Eugenia’s, which indicated that she had not been listening to the girl at all:
“Oh, these Americans are so unrefined, Andrew! You have no idea! It is a great trial to entertain them!”
Her voice, uneven and cracked, made Andrew wince. He raised his blond brows courteously. “But you are an American, are you not, Aunt Arabella?”
A rough flush rose under her yellowed skin and she tossed her head uneasily. “I never was, at heart, Andrew. Not at heart, even though I was born here. And now I am an English subject, through your uncle.”
Andrew’s brows remained elevated, though he said nothing. But Richard Gorth scowled, and his pale eyes, so like Andrew’s, shot a baleful gleam at his wife.
Because he found looking at his wife so oppressive, he glanced at Eugenia for refreshment. Andy was a lucky dog to be able to sleep with this formidable young creature and conquer her. Mrs. Gorth, seeing his glance, gave Eugenia one of her own, furtively malefic. She whined, after a titter: “O Mr. G., you know you really find Americans odious! You’ve said so, yourself.”
Mr. Gorth looked at her with bland brutality. “Only to you, my dear,” he said, smoothly. “And only when I mean it.”
This passed completely by Mrs. Gorth, who looked blankly baffled as usual whenever her husband made one of his ambiguous remarks. But Andrew touched his delicate lips with the tips of his fingers to hide his smile, and looked swiftly at his young wife. She had lifted her fan swiftly to cover the lower half of her face, and her eyes met Andrew’s. Before she could control herself she had exchanged a look of complete accord and discreet and mirthful understanding with him. Then as if she remembered that she disliked him, that she truly loathed him, she cast down her lashes, dropped her fan, and allowed him to see that her face was stern and withdrawn. For some reason this amused Andrew.
As if she felt his thought, she looked at him straightly with intense coldness, and lifted her head with bitter hauteur. This further amused Andrew. He bit his lip. Only last night she had clung to him with wild grief, weeping in his arms, and then as his tenderness deepened to passion, she had thrust his arms from her and had fled from him. But he remembered how soft and misty her gray eyes had appeared for an instant or two, how bewildered, how shamed and lost. He felt that she was one of those who, once convinced of a thing, once set upon a thing, must, to maintain their own confidence and self-pride, cling to it grimly, and would pursue it until exhausted.
Since she had known that John was to come that evening, she had displayed a hard repressed restlessness that day. She seemed to lose flesh even in a few hours. There were mauve shadows in her cheeks, and her eyes were over-brilliant. Her emotions communicated themselves to Andrew, in spite of his self-control.
It was then that Richard Gorth, who had spoken often to his nephew about John Turnbull, made his remark that he trusted his new secretary. Andrew had replied in his languid and sardonic tones, but he watched Eugenia as he spoke. Her lips had parted, pale and dried.
Andrew had not yet told his uncle of his last meeting with John, but now he did so, with so much wit and vivid detail that Mr. Gorth listened with delight. But Eugenia’s small pointed face became transfixed as though she tasted immense sickness in her mouth. As for Mrs. Gorth, she smiled with sly pleasure, and licked her lips furtively.
“He appeared to think,” said Andrew, with a lift of his bloodless hand, “that I had something to do with his marrying that impossible barmaid. A plot, sir, nothing less than a plot. Of course, I did not struggle with him. That would have been quite beneath me. The strange thing is that I had no real animosity towards him at any time, though I always considered him a boor—” He inclined his head towards his wife apologetically. “Please forgive me, my dear, I often forget he is your cousin.” He resumed: “Because he was so loud and boisterous, he had few friends at Carruthers’. He always seemed excessively uphappy, too, and I was quite sorry for him. I had the impression that he was lonely and bewildered, so tried to be a friend to him.”
At this, a strange dark gleam passed over Eugenia’s face. It was a brief and evil light, and seeing it, Andrew was sincerely disturbed. He frowned momentarily.
He continued, with less assurance, and more incisively: “I repeat, uncle, that I have no animosity towards him, and am pleased that he has obtained a post in your firm. I only hope that he has become less violent and unreasonable, and that he will realize that I do not intend to come into conflict with him. I hope, too, that he has not forgotten that it was I who recommended that he approach you for a post before we had our—disagreement. I even suggested that I correspond with you on the matter. Apparently, though, by some fortuitous circumstances connected with your Mr. Bob Wilkins, this was not necessary.”
“Wilkins,” said Mr. Gorth meditatively, “says he has a ‘nose,’ and that that worthy organ detected Johnnie long before he actually saw him.”
“A mystic,” commented Andrew with a smile, but with an uneasy eye on his wife, who seemed to have sunken into some deep apathetic meditation of her own.
Mr. Gorth laughed. “A fat rosy mystic, then, if he is. But you’d go far before you’d find a more subtle and useful man. By the way, he is dining with us tonight, also.”
At this, Mrs. Gorth broke out into a flutter. “Dear me, Mr. G., I did not know this! You never condescend to inform me about my own guests, and I find this very distracting. Is it not bad enough to entertain a—a creature who served liquor to coarse gentlemen without being afflicted by Mr. Wilkins, who is no gentleman, and has no gentility?”
“I take exception to your remarks, ma’am,” replied her husband. “Mr. Wilkins has my highest respect. He has a great heart. He has assured me of that, himself,” he added, with a wink at his nephew.
Ignoring his wife, then, and her whining flutters, he continued to discuss Mr. Wilkins with his nephew. “A rascal, Andy, if there ever was one. A mountebank, malefactor, and blackguard and thief. But a very useful man. And quite delightful to converse with, his remarks always distinguished by shrewd wit and pungent observations.”
“I found him very interesting, when he visited me in England,” said Andrew, abstractedly. He was filled with a cold and wandering apprehension as he gazed at Eugenia out of the corner of his eye. Now he acknowledged to himself frankly that he had believed that upon meeting her cousin and his wife, upon hearing this conversation about him and observing Mr. Gorth’s faintly contemptuous if indulgent attitude towards his new secretary, she would be embarrassed, her pride aroused, her native inexorability awakened and strengthened. But nothing that had been said about John had caused a flush to appear upon her cheek, an embarrassment to make her lips uncertain. She seemed to be congealing into a statue of ice. For the first time he guessed the full depths of her strength and implacability and pride. And, he thought, her vengefulness. For now, she suddenly lifted her eyes to his, and he saw her naked hatred, her wild and frozen antagonism for him, and her despair.