A Court of Inquiry Part 14

"This is a crowd," he commented. "This certainly is a crowd! Men of millions, and men who don't know how they're going to meet the next note due, but bluffing it through. Somebodies and n.o.bodies. Kingfish and minnows--and some of the kingfish are going to swallow the minnows at the next gulp----What in the name of time is this we're eating now?"

I expressed my ignorance.

"And what's this we're to have with it?" he pursued. "Look out!"

He had known I would thank him for the warning. I s.h.i.+elded my gla.s.s from an imminent bottle. It was the third time already, and the dinner was not far on its way. I saw Hepatica s.h.i.+eld hers--also for the third time.

A tiny flush was beginning to creep up Althea's cheeks. She had refused only the first offering of the waiter.

The Promoter turned and viewed my empty gla.s.ses with ill-disguised contempt. "We'll have to get you to stay in town long enough to overcome those notions of yours," said he. "Look around you. I'll wager there's not another in the room."

If I flushed it was not for either of the reasons which caused the brilliant cheeks I saw all about me. "I think you are quite right," said I, as I looked. I saw a garrulous lady at the table on my right, whose high laughter was beginning to carry far; I observed a sleepy one at my left, who had spilled champagne down the front of her elaborate corsage and was nodding over her ices. I glanced at Hepatica. Her pretty head was held high; her eyes, too, sparkled, but not with wine.

The Promoter began to talk of investments, telling stories of great _coups_ made by men who had the daring.

"Not necessary for them to have the money, I suppose?" queried the Philosopher.

"Not at all," agreed the Promoter. "Life's a game of poker. If you're not afraid to sit in, and have the nerve to bluff it through, you can win out with a hand that would make a quitter commit suicide."

Althea listened with pride to her husband's discourse. "He's a man of the world," one could see she was thinking, "who is making the eyes drop out of the heads of these simple people."

"I'm so impressed," said the Skeptic to me, "that I can hardly eat.

Think of living in a place like this--having this every day--common, like the dust under your feet. Can I ever eat creamed codfish and johnny-cake again, think you? Hepatica must name the hash by a French name and serve me grape juice with it, or I can't condescend to eat it.

I say--the smoke is getting a bit thick here for you ladies, isn't it?"

We had been late in coming down, and at many tables people were nearing the end of the dinner. For some time the odour of expensive cigars had been growing heavier throughout the room; a blue haze hung over the more distant tables.

"I don't think my lungs mind it so much as my feelings," I answered. "I shall never be able to make it seem to me just--just----"

"Try to subdue the expression which dominates your countenance at the present moment," counselled the Skeptic gently, "or you will be quietly led away from the scene as dangerous to your fellow-men."

After what seemed like many hours we reached the end of the dinner. I felt that I should be glad to reach the quiet and comparative purity of air to be found in the room in which our hosts had received us--a private drawing-room. But this was not to be. We were taken from place to place about the hotel, to look in on this or that scene of entertainment, of banqueting, of revelry. Gorgeousness upon gorgeousness was revealed to us. Althea, now very gay and sparkling in manner, her carefully dressed hair a little loosened, her mind full of schemes for our diversion, took the lead, showing off everything with that air of personal possession I have often observed in the frequenters of hostelries like the Amazon.

Hepatica, in spite of evident effort to maintain her part, grew a trifle silent. As I regarded her I was reminded of a white dove in the company of a pair of peac.o.c.ks. The Philosopher adjusted his eyegla.s.ses from time to time as if they did not fit well; he seemed to feel his vision growing distorted. I became intensely fatigued with it all, and found myself longing for a quiet corner and a book. As for the Skeptic--but the Skeptic was incorrigible.

"How much does it cost, do you say," he inquired of the Promoter, "to buy a postage stamp at the desk here? I want to put one on a letter I have in my pocket. May I slip it into the post-box myself, or do I have to call a flunkey, present him with a dollar, and respectfully request him to insert it in the slit for me?"

The Promoter smiled. "Oh, people make a joke of the Amazon," said he.

"But I notice they're the same ones who breathe deep when they go by it, hoping to inhale the atmosphere free of charge."

The Skeptic inflated his lungs. "I'm going to do it here, inside," said he, "where it's more highly charged."

At length they took us to their own rooms. I have forgotten how many floors up they were, but it didn't matter, in a luxurious elevator, padded and mirrored. In one of the mirrors I caught the Philosopher's eye regarding me so steadily that I felt a sudden sense of relief at the realization that some time we should be out and away together in the fresh air again. It seemed to me a long while since I had been able to see things from the Philosopher's point of view.

We looked at our hosts' private apartments with interest. As the Skeptic pa.s.sed me on his way to inspect a system of electrical devices on the wall, to which the Promoter was calling his attention, he was softly humming an air. It was, "_Be it ever so humble_," again.

The rooms were very elaborately furnished; the hangings were heavy and sumptuous. A ma.s.sive oak mantelpiece harboured a fire of gas-logs.

There were a few--not many--apparently personal belongings about the rooms; _bric-a-brac_ and photographs--the latter mostly of actors and opera singers. In Althea's bedroom we came upon a dressing-table which reminded me of my own, upon the occasion of Althea's visit to me, a few years before. Althea calmly stirred over everything upon it in the effort to find a small jewel-case whose contents she wished to show me.

She found it in the end, although for a time the task seemed hopeless.

We sat down in the outer room and listened again to the Promoter's tales of the great strokes of business he had brought off--"deals," he called them. The stories contained much food for thought in the shape of revelations of character in this or that man of prominence. What we should have talked about if he had not thus held the floor I could not guess. I had noted that there were upon a ponderous table six popular novels, as many magazines, and piles of the great dailies. Nowhere could I descry even a small collection of books of the sort which may furnish material for conversation. I tried to imagine the Philosopher drawing a certain beloved book of essays from his pocket, settling himself comfortably with his back to the drop-light, and beginning to read aloud to us, as he is accustomed to do in the Skeptic's little rooms. Here was not even a drop-light for him to do it by, only electric sconces set high upon the walls, and a fanciful centre electrolier. He must, perforce--for he needs a strong light for reading--have stood close under one of the sconces to read from his book of essays. I tried to fancy Althea and the Promoter politely listening--or appearing to listen. This really drew too heavily upon my imagination, and I gave it up.

At a late hour we escaped. I learned afterward that before we left the Promoter took our men aside and offered them one more thing to drink.

This really seemed superfluous, and--judging by the straightforward gait of our escorts, to say nothing of my knowledge of their habits--there is no doubt that it was.

Outside the hotel the Philosopher, looking away from it and from the other great buildings which surrounded us on every side, sent his gaze upward to the starry winter's sky. He drew in deep breaths of the frosty air.

"Getting the Amazon out of your blood?" inquired the Skeptic. "Amazon's a mighty good name for it. It thinks it's sophisticated and refined--but it isn't. It's a great, blowsy, milkmaid of a hotel, with all her best clothes on, perpetually going to a fair."

"I'm not so much re-filling my insulted lungs," said the Philosopher, "as drawing breaths of relief that I got away without buying a block of stock in something, or putting my name down to be one of a company for the development of something else."

"Oh, we were safe enough," the Skeptic declared. "This was a private dinner with ladies present; the Promoter gave us only a delicate sample of what he could do. Wait till he gets you at luncheon with him in the grill-room, all by yourself--then you can find out what he is when he's after game. Unless you're tied to the mast, so to speak, with your ears stopped with wax, you'll land on the sh.o.r.e of the enchanted country he pictures for you. He's deadly, I a.s.sure you. That's why he can afford to live at the Amazon."

"I wonder how Althea likes it?" speculated Hepatica.

"Likes it down to the ground--and up to the roof," a.s.serted the Skeptic.

"That's plain enough. It saves housekeeping--and picking up her room,"

he added softly to Hepatica--but I heard him. Hepatica did not reply.

"Let's not stop at this station," proposed the Skeptic as we walked on, "but keep on up to the next. A fast walk will do us all good after that feast of porpoises."

"I suppose they call that living," said the Philosopher, as we turned aside into quieter streets.

"Of course they do, and so does everybody else at those tables to-night--with four exceptions."

"Oh, come," demurred the Philosopher, "possibly there were a few other wise men in that company besides ourselves. Who would have known from your appearance as you sat there gorging with the rest, that you were inwardly protesting, and greatly preferred the simple life? Don't flatter yourself that you had the aspect of an ascetic. There were moments during that meal when any unprejudiced observer who didn't know you would have sworn that you were deeply gratified that no other engagement had prevented you from dining in your favourite haunt."

"Don't throw stones," retorted the Skeptic. "I saw you when you caught sight of some particularly prosperous looking people at another table and bowed convivially to them as one who says, 'You here, too? Of course. Our set, you know!'"

"Quits!" admitted the Philosopher. "Well then--it's the ladies who did succeed in looking like visitants from another world."

This was rather poetical for the Philosopher, and of course it led us to wonder wherein he thought we differed. Hepatica asked anxiously if she really had looked so very old-fas.h.i.+oned in the white evening frock which had been three times made over.

"Hopelessly old-fas.h.i.+oned," a.s.sented the Philosopher. "Hopelessly old-fas.h.i.+oned. But not so much in the matter of the frock as in some other things. Heaven forbid that it should be otherwise!"

"Amen!" responded the Skeptic fervently.

V

RHODORA AND THE PREACHER

When the fight begins within himself A man's worth something.

--_Robert Browning._

The Skeptic brought up the letter with him as he came home to dinner; it had arrived in the last mail. The Philosopher happened to be dining with us that night, so we four were together when the news came upon us. As Hepatica read it aloud we stared at one another, astonished.