r~ 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 3 1924 074 559 679 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924074559679 
 
In compliance with current 
 
 copyright law, Cornell University 
 
 Library produced this 
 
 replacement volume on paper 
 
 that meets the ANSI Standard 
 
 Z39.48-1984 to replace the 
 
 irreparably deteriorated original. 
 
 1995 
 
THE 
 
 MONEY-MAKERS 
 
 
 / . k- 
 
 I 
 
 CC-i 
 
 t^^-J 1 
 
 '* It jHay be said that the millionaire is the romantic figure par excellence 
 o/ the nineteenth cetttury. The heroes 'who put to flighty by their uTtaided 
 proivess^ ivhole armies o_f enemies^ have ceased to interest us. JVe give our 
 adiuiraiion to the 77tarvelous being zvho^ /rom the retirement of his sanctum^ 
 controls the commerce of the world^ and makes the clothing and food of man- 
 kind cheapo or^ by preference^ dear" — English Review. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON A1^^;D, COMPANY, 
 
 I, 3, AND 5 BpjN>n ,&:^REET. [ \ '■ 
 1885.' 
 
 <10 
 
Copyright, 1884, 
 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
 [AU rights reserved^ 
 
TO 
 
 A TESTIMONY OF AFFECTIONATE HOMAGE, 
 BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 " The Money-Makers " was written a year ago — or, 
 to be exact, the story was begun, in the early days of 
 February, and ended in the latter days of March, 1884. 
 Had the book come at once before the public, its specific 
 purpose would have been more manifest, and its machin- 
 ery more transparent. As it is written rather to embalm 
 permanent conditions than to perpetuate controversy, the 
 time lost has made a prefatory word essential. While the 
 delay in publication distorts the realism of fiction into the 
 grossness of the actual, the essence of romance into reve- 
 lation, the reader who bears the date of writing in mind 
 can not confuse the personages, or misconstrue the inci- 
 dents, with those of a more recent date to which they bear 
 a whimsical resemblance. The critic, quick to seize sali- 
 ent faults in execution, would in such misconception not 
 only lose the basis and purpose of the parable, but ani- 
 madvert, not unjustifiably, on the work as a satire upon 
 men and measures, never contemplated in the author's 
 design. While to a certain extent the purpose of the 
 
vi NOTE. 
 
 Story constrained its form and diminished the interplay 
 of its incidents, the laws that govern fiction have been 
 observed, and though dramatic denouement has been to 
 some degree sacrificed, the story in the main has super- 
 seded every other interest. 
 New York, January, 18S3. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. — The Nettle-Danger 
 II. — The Jingling of the Guinea . 
 III. — The Cup found in Benjamin's Sack 
 IV. — ^A Chapter from Chesterfield 
 V. — A Golden Mean 
 VI. — Novum Organum . 
 VII. — A Woman scorned 
 VIII. — Lessons in High Life . 
 IX — Clodius captures the Bona Dea 
 X — The Genesis of a Money-Maker 
 XI. — Propaganda Fides 
 XII. — ^The Wings of Icarus . 
 XIII. — My Ducats or my Daughter ? 
 XIV. — "Love took up the Harp of Life" 
 XV. — " Be but sworn, my Love " 
 XVI. — " De l'Audace ; toujours de l'Audace et encore de 
 
 l'Audace" 
 XVII. — ^Absalom and Achitophel ! 
 XVIIL— A Winter's Tale 
 XIX. — ^Apocalypse I . . . 
 
 XX. — All Things to all Men 
 
 XXI. — The Hand of Croesus and the Voice of Anarch, 
 XXIL— The Guinea's Stamp 
 XXIII. — Crcesus on the Pyre 
 XXIV. — "The Revolt of Caliban" 
 XXV. — A Masque of Horror . 
 XXVI. — "As the Husband is, the Wife is 
 XXVII. — So runs the World away 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 13 
 28 
 
 45 
 61 
 76 
 90 
 102 
 117 
 132 
 140 
 
 IS4 
 167 
 178 
 191 
 
 204 
 219 
 228 
 238 
 249 
 260 
 270 
 279 
 291 
 301 
 315 
 327 
 
*'®:i)C« mas a time tnljcn mortala lioeb like brittca 
 Iti cams axib nnsnnnelt IjoUoros of tlje gartl), 
 SxJt ncitljcr \)oast nor citg flankclJ roitl) toroera 
 jpttb tijen been reareb ; no plomsi^att rut tl)e dob 
 9Co make it gi^l^ « bonnteons l)ttn)est, nor 
 tocre tlje cines rankeb onb trimmeb mitl) prnning- 
 
 knitjea, 
 Snt frnitless birtlja tl)c sterile cart!) bib bear. 
 iHen on cacl) otljcr fcb tnitl) mntool slangljter, 
 iror ^am mas feeble, biolence entl)roneb, 
 <a.nb to tl)e strong tlje weaker fell a preg. 
 Bttt soon as QTime tljat bears anb nnrtures all 
 toro«gl]t out anotljer cljange in l)nman life, 
 tol)etl)er some rapt }3romctl)can utterance 
 ®r strong Ji'cressitg or Nature's tcacljing 
 SCljrongl) long experience tljcir bcUtJcroncc brougljt, 
 
 anb tl)C cartl) 
 
 Hnsoron before roas ploroeb roitl) oxen; cities ll)en 
 9i;i)eB girt toitl) toroers anb sljcltcring Rouses raiseb, 
 <^nb turneb tljeir sauage life to cioil toags ; 
 ^nb after tljat iLaro babe entomb tl)e iedb 
 2lnb measure out to eocl) l)is sl]are of bust, 
 JTor leaue unburieb anb exposcb to 6igl)t 
 ©l)astl2 reminbcrs of t!)eir former feasts." 
 
THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NETTLE-DANGER. 
 
 At that point of time in the month of July, and the year 1871, 
 when the processes of the planets and the revolutions of the earth 
 brought the Island of Manhattan directly beneath the sun's fierce 
 eye, the Eighth Avenue between Twenty-seventh and Twenty- 
 eighth Streets was dense with an agitated multitude. The saga- 
 cious few who had by timely coming secured shelter under the 
 slatternly awnings, mopped the exuding water from their faces, and 
 craned their necks to catch the first symptom of the expected out- 
 break. The sun, as if interested in the spectacle, hung in exact 
 meridian, sending down scorching, blistering darts that penetrat- 
 ed like needles wherever they fell. From curb to curb the gray 
 cobble-stones glimmered under the fiery atmosphere as if they 
 had burned out and were ashen effigies of stone emitting the ra- 
 diating pulsations of caloric that follow flame. Violet waves of 
 vaporous density rose in the air, stifling and mephitic, through 
 which the crowd panted and wrestled like figures in a transparent 
 mirage. Still higher air-currents danced and undulated Hke the 
 hot atmospheres that follow the molten metal plunged into the 
 furnace. The scraggy trees, that offered neither vernal shade nor 
 suggested decoration, stretched their brown and palpitating arms 
 upward as if a breath would send their burned substance over the 
 pavement. The sweltering leaves of the ailantus curled moist 
 and pungent with a nauseous odor around the twisted stems of 
 their branchlets, or hung in flabby dejection from their oozing 
 
2 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 twigs. Everything that the season meant to be green was faded 
 and scorched like paper burned to a crisp, which still holds out- 
 lines of the original substance. Among these wan and withered 
 specters of foliage hovered bevies of voiceless and trailing-winged 
 sparrows, their red gorges open to catch the breath of air that 
 did not come. A prowling cat, disturbed in her mouse-quest in 
 the green-grocer's at the corner, coming out cautiously, took the 
 distended wings and general languor exhibited in the attitude of 
 the birds as a promise of a fat breakfast ; but she skurried abjectly 
 under the ice-box at sight of their open mouths, they looked so 
 large and fierce ! 
 
 Whoever among the crowd had the courage to examine the 
 lurid line of red brick forming the fronts of the long rows of 
 irregular buildings, would have been curiously surprised at the 
 grotesque effects \vrought by the refluent waves of heat. The soUd 
 walls seemed to wave, to obtrude, and shrink in the pulsating 
 breath of the escaping heat. The mortar-lines between stretched 
 and quivered like slender cords, the brick squares forming an illu- 
 minated lattice-work through which were seen spectral faces, wan 
 and terror-stricken. In the thick haze of the hot air, even the 
 parched offal piled in the gutters, emitting putrescent and phos- 
 phorescent stenches, visible to the eye as to the smell, faded into 
 fantastic cleanliness in the magic breath of the scorching light. 
 A dog, limp and gasping, stood quite erect on his four paws under- 
 neath a motionless butcher-cart, as if comprehending that his toes 
 presented less surface to the burning stones, and kept his body at 
 a lower temperature ! A small boy, clinging to his mother's skirts, 
 catching sight of the protruding tongue and bloodshot eyes of the 
 beast, pulled the maternal garment and asked in wonder : 
 
 " Is doggy turning inside out to keep cool } " 
 
 These phenomena, and much that must go unrecorded, would 
 have struck the observant person on that 12th of July, 1871, and 
 would have perhaps been correlated by a curious Darwin as part of 
 the painful phasis of the social evolution that was going on. He 
 would have been, however, a very self-contained person who could 
 have taken these details into account that terrible morning. A 
 thrilling movement engrossed the eyes and ears of ten thousand 
 
THE NETTLE-DANGER. 3 
 
 men, women, and children sweltering in the torrid air, massed on 
 the avenue between Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Streets. 
 Under the grocer's awning, and standing quite at the edge of the 
 curb, there were two young men in this multitude who scrutinized 
 the movements of the mass vnth a self-possession singularly in 
 contrast with the agitation of the crowd about them. The taller 
 by an inch or two, whose carefully gloved hand kept hold of the 
 iron post, would have fixed attention anywhere as a personage. 
 His face was a florid, ruddy brown, his eyes a penetrating hazel 
 that looked at you full and unshrinking, beautifully instinct of life 
 and feeling. The second figure, a trifle less pronounced, was al- 
 most equally attractive. His earnest gray eyes were clear and 
 frank ; his complexion colorless ; his mouth well cut and decisive 
 in its lines. He was perhaps a year or two younger than his 
 companion, but his boyish straw hat gave him a still more youth- 
 ful appearance in contrast with the other whose sweltering tem- 
 ples bulged out beneath that evidence of the omnipotence of con- 
 vention — a tall silk hat ! 
 
 " I say, Carew,'' the elder said in a humorously serious tone, 
 " if good Americans go to Paris when they die, the wicked must 
 come to New York, Hell is an iceberg compared to this ! " 
 
 Carew laughed, and mopped his forehead, over which brown 
 curls fell in moist profusion as he held his hat in his hand. 
 
 " That would make a popular leading article if j'ou would set 
 it forth with your usual vivid touch. Suppose you propound it to 
 the readers of the ' Atlas ' to-morrow ? " 
 
 " By Heaven ! " suddenly exclaimed the other, " there are the 
 militia, and they look as if they mean business. There will be 
 trouble after all — ^look!" 
 
 The police had driven back the crowd, and the glistening bayo- 
 nets of a regiment could be seen spanning the avenue, the crowd 
 yielding sullenly, and jeering before the leveled muskets. 
 
 " My infatuated young friend, I'm going to leave you, if," 
 continued the same speaker, " as I am reluctant to believe, you 
 mean what you say, to remain and report it all. This scene lacks 
 two things that, as I grow older, I think of more — repose and se- 
 curity. What would my friends think should my name appear 
 
4 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 among the killed to-morrow morning ? I don't mind taking risks 
 when the case demands it, but death, which, to a well-regulated 
 mind, has no distinct horror, would be appalling, I am free to say, 
 when met ignobly, as it would be in a preposterous shindy like 
 this. I'm off — come on ! " 
 
 " But, Hilliard, I'm obliged to be here ; I'm assigned to do the 
 work. If I lose sight of a single movement that the other papers 
 print, I would be dismissed." 
 
 ,\ r ."Here, fall back behind this wagon, a trifle out of range, as it 
 were ; there, now we are secure for the moment. Your conscience 
 is creditable to you, very, but the 'Atlas ' doesn't intend, in or- 
 dering you here, that you should lose your life — first, because 
 your taking off would be apt to entail some outlay on its ex- 
 chequer; second, because that lurid mosaic which is to adorn its 
 broad columns to-morrow would lack your fine Florentine touches. 
 Now let me tell you what to do. You've seen the dramatis per- 
 sons, and you have the scenarium well in mind. Begin your re- 
 port in this way : 
 
 '"Through" sloping banks of such green as the eyes of Erin's 
 sons alone reflect, ran a shallow stream of limpid water eastward 
 to the sea. On the left bank facing the sun twenty thousand 
 men were hustling themselves into harness — ^aligned under the 
 Bourbon lilies, the blood-red Cross of St. George, and the green 
 flag of Ireland. On a hillock commanding the field, an old man, 
 with clear eye and trembling hand, sat upon a sumptuously accou- 
 tred steed. Surrounded by a splendid cortege of captains, he was 
 studying through his glass a group on the right bank a gun-shot 
 to the northeastward. The center of that mass was a gaunt figure 
 bestriding a shining white horse, not quite so showily caparisoned 
 as that on the left bank. He, too, was the center of a multitude 
 whose ranks were here and there marked by standards as varied 
 but not so gaudy as the white, red, and g^een, hanging limply on 
 their poles on the southern side. These- were the royal St, 
 George ; the orange of the house of Holland ; the black and yellow 
 of Brunswick, and the green of Erin. 
 
 " ' The sun was hardly above the distant Wicklow Hills, but the 
 tranquil valley was alive with arming soldiery. As the forces on 
 
THE NETTLE-DANGER. 5 
 
 the right bank began to take shape, a cannon-ball fell at the feet 
 of the man on the white horse. 
 
 " ' " Sire, your father-in-law sends you a morning greeting," 
 says a stalwart soldier next to him of the white horse. 
 
 " ' " Ah, Ginkel, the poor man will send a more pacific messen- 
 ger before the day is done — we shall beat them ! " 
 
 " ' On the other side, at the same moment, a soldier in the uni- 
 form of a French marshal rides up to the elderly person and sa- 
 lutes respectfully, saying : 
 
 ." ' " Sire, the rascals mean to fight ; we shall have them in the 
 hollow of our hand. I can congratulate your Majesty on such a 
 chance ; to-night Monsieur d'Orange will ask nothing better than 
 to go back with a whole neck to his tulips at La Haye.'' 
 
 " ' " Very good, Lauzun — the rebels are moving. Can't you 
 give Orange a compliment from your battery yonder ? " 
 
 " ' The general sends an aide to the battery. As the group on 
 the opposite side spring to the saddle, the white horse is left con- 
 spicuous. The fire of the artillerists scatters them, and presently 
 he on the south bank ejaculates piously: 
 
 " ' " Now, pr^se be to God, the villain's down ! " 
 
 " ' It was true — the cavalier under the orange flag reels from his 
 saddle, is caught and helped behind the knoU. A great shout rolls 
 from the southern bank. Then the soldiery of Orange appear, on 
 the, head of each a sprig of green ; they march down the hill-side ; 
 enter the roseate water — rush with a shout toward the low banks, 
 and in twenty minutes they have planted themselves where their 
 enemies had been. The green flags disappear, and all that is seen 
 on the dewy hillocks are the golden lilies of France. In an hour 
 they, too, have gone from the field. By noon James Stuart is in 
 flight, and WilUam of Orange has chased his father-in-law from 
 Ireland as he had the year before chased him from England.' " 
 
 " But," asks Hilliard's companion, keeping his eye attentively 
 on another body of militia just then debouching into the wdde 
 avenue, " what has Boyne water to do with this milief " 
 
 " Bring a little imagination to bear on this point, my son : that 
 incident is the historical perspective of this. Having ingenuously 
 fastened the reader's attention upon the event of two hundred 
 
6 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 years ago, from which this idiotic fantasia tal^es its rise, you can 
 denounce both sides as imbeciles, and denunciation is the forte of 
 the press of to-day. You can point out adroitly how the Orange- 
 men are celebrating a victory of the Dutch Ginkel and his sturdy 
 troopers over the French king and his Bourbon cavaliers — for, as 
 a matter of fact, few Irish and no English came into action that 
 day of the Boyne." 
 
 At that instant there was a sudden movement of the crowd. 
 As the young men talked, the avenue had filled with a mass driven 
 from the cross-street above by the militia, which had formed in 
 platoons across the roadway. The space vacated by the crowd 
 was immediately filled by ranks of men with orange cockades on 
 their hats and orange scarfs across their breasts. The sight of 
 these, and a dozen marshals on horseback beplumed and berib- 
 boned, elicited a howl of derisive scorn from the mob. 
 
 " There, Carew, the fun will soon begin. I don't propose to 
 give my blood to dye the orange. When soldiery are called in, all 
 who are not in uniform are the mob. I am off ! " 
 
 As he spoke, a cordon of police swept down from the square 
 where the Orangemen were massed, clearingthe crowd wdth clubs." 
 
 " You see, it is insane — come ! " 
 
 The two were hustled into the dense mass and forced onward 
 at a run. At the next cross-street Hilliard and Carew pushed out 
 of the crowded thoroughfare. The mob kept in the avenue, and 
 the two found themselves in an excellent point of vantage — to see 
 the flying multitude. 
 
 " It's going to be a farce instead of a tragedy," said Hilliard, 
 standing on the lower step of a house midway between the two 
 avenues. " Take my word for it, the historical touch, neatly elab- 
 orated, will give your report just the tone the * Atlas ' likes." 
 
 "It's not over yet," exclaimed Carew, excitedly. "Do you 
 hear that ? Good God ! see there ! " 
 
 As he spoke, a single sharp volley roared out above the clamor 
 of the crowd. To escape the fire of the soldiery, some of the 
 throng turned into the street in which the young men had taken 
 refuge. A confused outcry of command and exhortation could be 
 heard around the corner in the avenue. One platoon of the mili- 
 
THE NETTLE-DANGER. 
 
 7 
 
 tia coming abreast of the street made a haU-wheel, halted, leveled 
 their muskets, and sent a volley among the straggling groups fly- 
 ing toward Hilliard and Carew. The balls hurtled against the 
 stone balustrades, sent the leaves in a shower from the trees, and 
 whistled viciously through the almost empty street. The people 
 in flight had for the most part darted into the area-ways. A few, 
 however, were in the center and on the sidewalks. Three, of 
 these fell just before our friends. At the instant the volley.was 
 fired a coupS, driven at frantic speed, turned in from the Seventh' 
 Avenue, the driver apparently unaware of the danger he was run- 
 ning. He stopped his horses when he saw the crowd, but, before 
 he could get their heads to the eastward, he threw up his arms 
 convulsively and fell limply from the seat to the pavement. Hil- 
 liard, marking that the soldiery had wheeled back in the avenue, 
 ran forward, seized the animals' heads, grasped the lines, mounted 
 the box and drove the vehicle into Seventh Avenue, and, when the 
 sounds of the mob were far in the rear, halted. As he leaped 
 dovim, a man's head was thrust out of the window. Hilliard, call- 
 ing a youth standing idly at the curb, as if awaiting a job, bade 
 him hold the horses' heads, and leaped down to let his protdgh 
 know the danger was over. To his great surprise, an elderly per- 
 son got out and hastened to close the door, as if to keep Hilliard 
 from catching sight of the other occupant. 
 
 -"That was a pretty close shave, sir," he said, scrutinizing the 
 other closely. " What has become of my man ? He wasn't seri- 
 ously hurt, was he? " 
 
 Hilliard, stupefied by the man's composure under the circum- 
 stances, answered dryly that the driver must have been hit seri- 
 ously. 
 
 " Well, I'll see that he is attended to. May I ask your name, sir ? 
 You have done me a gallant service. I— I — must see that you — " 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir ; my name is of no interest to you — 
 the service you speak of any one would have done. Good-day ! " 
 and, bowing haughtily, Hilliard set out for Twenty-seventh Street. 
 As he passed the coupS, however, he caught a glimpse of a lady's 
 face. She was looking at him intently, and he remarked that she 
 was well-favored. Continuing at a rapid pace, he reached Twenty- 
 
8 TBE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 seventh Street. He could see the militia drawn up at the lower 
 end of the street and facing southward. There was now no sig^ 
 of disturbance. The street had been cleared of the wounded. 
 Reaching the house upon whose steps he had taken refuge, he 
 saw Carew in the basement, and entered. He found that the driver 
 had been carried in and cared for. The ball had struck him in 
 the left shoulder, inflicting but a slight wound. The man was 
 lying on a table, and a surgeon was stanching the blood. As the 
 two friends were about to go, the physician, turning to Carew, said : 
 
 "As there will probably be an investigation into this affair, you 
 must leave me your address. This man can collect a handsome 
 sum in damages from the city,'' 
 
 Hilliard and Carew gave their cards, and took leave of the vic- 
 tim. 
 
 " Well, I suppose you have the laurels of the hero who snatch- 
 es beauty from peril," said Carew, as the two walked out under 
 the doonvay. " Was it beauty in distress — or trembling age 1 " 
 -'.- " It was a beast ! " and Hilliard's tone grew hard, and his eyes 
 sparkled with rage. The old vulgarian — ^he was going to offer me 
 money — ^like a common lackey ! " and then he recounted the scene. 
 
 " But there was beauty in the case .'' " 
 
 " She wasn't bad — " Hilliard checked himself suddenly, and 
 continued dtj'ly: "There was no romance or the seed of a sen- 
 timental denoH-ment in the business. But what has become of 
 our croppies ? Is the riot over .' " 
 
 " It looks like it." 
 
 The young men found it no difficult matter to penetrate to the 
 soldiery now. The colonel of the militia regiment was known to 
 HiUiard, and, introducing Carew, they learned that the trouble was 
 at an end. There had been no riot, nor need there have been a 
 shot fired. The vivacity of a squad of young militiamen had 
 brought about the firing. There had been a scuffle between two 
 over-emphatic supporters of the orange and the green. The 
 crowd had taken sides, and the soldiers, ordered to disperse them, 
 had fired without command. Perhaps twenty had been killed, 
 and a fevsf score wounded. 
 
 Among the florid narratives that adorned the columns of the 
 
THE NETTLE-DANGER. g 
 
 journals the next day, it was remarked generally that the account 
 of the scene published in the " Atlas " was the most picturesque 
 and original. Both sides in the contest found something to soothe 
 their amour propre. The humorous prologue of King James and 
 the Prince of Orange at the Boyne reconciled the CathoUcs to the 
 severely comminatory comments of the editor, who, in pointing 
 out the unchristian rancor of a sect that, after two hundred 
 years, gave vent to its passions on such childish provocation, was 
 only a shade more blamable " than the disciples of a creed that 
 transported to these peaceful shores the symbols and sentiments 
 of a feud that no good man could approve, and no wise man seek 
 to perpetuate." 
 
 When Hilliard and Carew reached the office in the afternoon, 
 they found unexpected results from their day's work. Opening 
 their letters, each found a note from the editor. Hilliard's ran : 
 
 "The 'Atlas,' July 13, 1871. 
 " Dear Mr. Hilliard : Your value to this journal, which 
 has always been warmly appreciated by the directors as well as 
 myself, was never so signally proved as in your leader of this 
 morning, which, as a literary performance, takes rank with the 
 best journalistic writing of the time, and enables the 'Atlas' 
 easily to maintain its rank as the leading newspaper of the day. 
 Of course, this is just the sort of work we want, and, to secure it. 
 we are willing to pay largely. I have, therefore, the pleasure of 
 informing you that twenty dollars per week will be added to your 
 salary from Saturday next. 
 
 " Cordially yours, 
 
 " Horatio Blackdaw. 
 " Mr. Archibald Hilliard." 
 
 Opening a second note in an unknown hand, marked with the 
 seal of the Cunard Company, Hilliard read with mingled sensa- 
 tions : „ .„ . „ 
 
 " Steamship Bothnia, Jersey City, July 12, 1871. 
 
 " Dear Sir : I leam from my coachman your name and ad- 
 dress. If my passage were not taken oh this ship, I would call 
 in person to thank you fittingly for your gallant conduct this 
 
lo THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 morning. On behalf of my daughter and myself, I beg you to 
 accept the inclosed as the only way, for the moment, I am able 
 to reward your heroic act. 
 
 " Very gratefuUy yours, 
 
 " Aaron Grimstone." 
 
 As Hilltard unfolded the check drawn for five thousand dol- 
 lars, Carew rushed in from another room, crying eagerly : 
 
 " There, look at that ! Say now that we're in an age of greed 
 and thanklessness ! " He held out a letter, and Hilliard read : 
 
 "The 'Atlas,' City Department, July 13, 1871. 
 " My Dear Carew : I am directed by the managing editor 
 to inform you that your report of yesterday's riot eclipses those of 
 all our rivals, and that you are henceforth to serve as a member 
 of the editorial staff at a salary of thirty dollars per week. I need 
 not say that I am sorry to lose you from my department ; but, as 
 the promotion is a compliment to my corps, I heartily rejoice in 
 your well-won good fortune. 
 
 " Fraternally yours, 
 
 " Myron McCosh, 
 
 " City Editor" 
 
 " I congratulate )'ou heartily," said Hilliard. " I knew — " 
 " But that isn't all. Look at this ! " and he handed him an 
 
 open note, with the Cunard seal, identical with Hilliard's, which 
 
 said: 
 
 "Dear Sir: Permit me to acknowledge your humanity in 
 rescuing my coachman this morning, and, by accepting the in- 
 closed check, oblige, 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 " Aaron Grimstone." 
 
 " Now, what do you think of that .' " cried Carew, flourishing 
 a check for one thousand dollars before the eyes of the other. 
 
 " I think just what I said yesterday. The man's a brute, with 
 a brute's fiber in every molecule of his vulgar old carcass ! " and he 
 handed the other the letter he had received. 
 
THE NETTLE-DANGER. n 
 
 " Whew ! five thousand ! Well, that is princely. Why, you're 
 rich. You can live like a nabob, and, by George, you can marry ! " 
 
 "Don't be a simpleton. Do you suppose I'm going to keep 
 money flung at me in this way ? It's perfectly proper for you," 
 he added, as the other flushed. " You risked your life for an in- 
 ferior, while it so happened that it fell to me to carry the man and 
 his daughter out of harm's way. If he were a man of breeding, 
 he would not take this odious way to express his recog^tion. I 
 am not surprised, now that I know his name." 
 
 " Why, who is he ? " asked Carev/, sinking into a chair, the 
 notes crumpled in his hands. 
 
 " He is a Western railway magnate — ^kings, I believe you call 
 
 them now. He made his money in Valedo through all sorts of 
 
 sharp practices, and controls the whole State of Appalachia. I 
 
 , saw his family abroad some years ago, when I was in the legation 
 
 in Belgium." 
 
 " But I don't understand what's wrong in his sending you the 
 money. I'm sure it's munificent. What would you have him do ? 
 Invite you to his house and ask you to take his daughter, and g^ve 
 you a paternal blessing ? " 
 
 " Well, we won't talk about it," said Hilliard, coldly, seating 
 himself by the window, and looking toward the clock on St. Paul's. 
 " These are things that, as the French say, ne se fait pas, ne se 
 dit pas. If you do not see the bearing of the affair, all the expla- 
 nation I could give wouldn't help you. You keep your money — 
 you can do so with dignity. I will send this check back, and teach 
 the coarse-grained old egotist a lesson in manners that all his 
 money hasn't given him." 
 
 " But 'pon my soul, Hilliard, I can't see the distinction. If it 
 is degrading for you to accept the check, it is degrading for me. 
 As a matter of fact, you risked your life in getting on the coupi, 
 and I didn't, for the firing was over when I got to the coach- 
 man. Why shouldn't a man be generous where another has ex- 
 posed his limbs to get him out of danger .' " 
 
 " Don't you see, you purblind Jack ! that the very reasons you 
 give admit of no other action 1 Before the peril of life all men 
 are equal. Grimstone's life was in danger ; you say mine was 
 
12 TBE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 when I drove his horses out of range of the fire. That makes us 
 equals — and equals can't send each other money when acci- 
 dents put it in the power of one to serve the other. He might 
 very properly reward a footman in this way — never a gentle- 
 man." 
 
 " Very good : if the ordeal of common danger makes equality, 
 the coachman was my equal, and I am degrading myself in accept- 
 ing money for putting myself on an equality with him. Isn't that 
 the inference from your equality axiom ? " 
 
 " By no means. You acted on a generous, humane impulse. 
 You were for the moment an agent of law and order, and such 
 agencies may decently receive reward from those who are bene- 
 fited. The coachman was a victim, and you rescued him from 
 imminent peril of being trampled under foot. Nine in ten in your 
 case would have quit him where he fell, leaving him to the care of . 
 the paid agents of public security. A man of delicacy wouldn't 
 put an act that rescues his bones from danger at a money value, 
 though I'm sure Grimstone wouldn't bring five thousand dollars in 
 the market. He is consistent, however ; that's the rate paid on his 
 railway for maiming and killing ! " and Hilliard laughed immod- 
 erately at the gibe. 
 
 " I am free to say I can't understand the subtile distinctions 
 you draw. Grimstone evidently means to be generous in my case, 
 and I'm going to write and thank him for the money. It may be 
 degrading, but I'm blessed if I can so construe it ! Let's drop the 
 point. That was a splendid leader of yours in the ' Atlas,' and 
 the allusion to the scene on the Boyne made my report seem just 
 the thing. Has the chief said anything about it ? " 
 
 " Yes, I've had my wages raised," said Hilliard, carelessly, but 
 making no offer to show the other the chief's congratulatory 
 letter. 
 
 " By George, it was a good day's work ! I wouldn't mind riots 
 every day if they brought such luck ! " 
 
 " Let us hope that the city has more fools to display red rags 
 for the encouragement of riots — if honest men profit by it," added 
 the other, cynically, and the young men turned to their desks — 
 Hilliard to construct another " leader,'' adding to the moral of the 
 
THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 13 
 
 first ; and Carew, in the exaltation of a soldier, signalized on the 
 battle-field, taking his first intoxicating plunge into the sublimated 
 atmosphere of editorial composition. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 
 
 Finding that Grimstone had sailed, Archibald Milliard did 
 not inclose the check to Valedo, as he had first meditated doing. 
 There was no hurry, and perhaps, to make the sting sharper, it 
 would be better to wait until he could find out his foreign address. 
 Still, the money in his possession gave him a sense of humiliating 
 dependence that grew more and more irksome the longer he 
 thought of the event. Hilliard had not been quite frank in the 
 reasons he alleged to his friend Carew in his purpose of returning 
 Grimstone's gift. He was not withheld from its acceptance wholly 
 by the transcendental motives he had urged. The temptation to 
 keep it was strong. He was poor, and after many vicissitudes had 
 recently joined the corps of the " Atlas " as an experiment — a 
 type of thousands of young men whose restlessness bring them 
 finally to this fateful mart of brains, energies, and craft. He was 
 conscious of an equality with those whose successes had g^ven 
 them precedence in the higher range of commercial activity. He 
 had been trained in a varied school. Educated at a Western col- 
 lege, he had settled down to the study of law in Valedo. From 
 law he was diverted by the election of his patron. Judge Killgore, 
 to the governorship of Appalachia. Serving four years as his sec- 
 retary, he accompanied him to Washington, when, at the end of 
 the great man's term, Killgore was sent to the Senate. In Wash- 
 ington the callow country boy found with dismay that he was not 
 schooled at all. Thrown among the sharp intellects drawn to the 
 capital in the closing scenes of the civil war, he soon conceived a 
 profound disgust for the commonplace career he had aspired to. 
 As to education, he found that the four years he had passed in the 
 
14 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 rural rubric was no education at all. Contrasting the boorish self- 
 sufficiency of his patron with the easy manners and varied refine- 
 ments of the foreigners and Eastern men, with whom his official post 
 brought him in relation, he resolved to make himself one of this 
 newly discovered type. He enlarged the horizon of his ambition, 
 and set new bounds for his goal. He went resolutely and system- 
 atically to work to prepare for this ideal existence and fit himself 
 for high office and distinguished parts. 
 
 Holding a tight rein on his impulses, which were all for pleas- 
 ure and luxurj', he devoted himself to a severe classical training. 
 He mastered the three modem tongues in vogue. In time he 
 began to shine in the exclusive drawing-rooms of the capital, 
 where the wits of the day were to be met. 
 
 The six years of his patron's senatorial term formed him into 
 a man of the world. It was the epoch of scandal and riot follow- 
 ing the war, and in these putrescent congeries the young secre- 
 tary kept himself free from odious alliances, or the suspicion of 
 trafficking in the congressional mysteries, which, as the trusted 
 confidsmt of Senator Killgore, he knew to be the ruling means for 
 self-advancement in Washington. 
 
 But he adopted honesty as a policy ; not that he particularly 
 hated the forms of corruption by which he saw the Congressmen 
 and their coteries growing rich. He had read Chesterfield and 
 Walpole, and, deeply impressed by the subtle immorality of these 
 teachers, he resolved that while he would make no scruple in 
 dealing with men by the means that molded them most surely, 
 he would not grow rich by the ignoble methods practiced among 
 them. It was his most inebriating moment when he saw himself 
 mentioned in the local fashion gossip as " the elegant and refined 
 secretary of Senator Killgore." It was an equal joy when, at the 
 White House, he could relieve the dullness of the evening for the 
 German, French, or Italian diplomates by talking vnth them in 
 their o^vn tongue. His crowning triumph was when the Secre- 
 tary of State sent for him to make out a French treaty that had 
 puzzled the Ollendorff acquirements of the official personnel. For 
 he had studied French thoroughly, and lived in a French family 
 to acquire the maddening measures of that maddening tongue. 
 
THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 15 
 
 Nor was his amour propre less flattered that he was pointed out 
 as the only' young man of his opportunities in Washington that 
 had not grown rich in the traffic of legislative secrets. 
 
 But the time came when this passive attitude was no longer 
 a shield. The corruption he saw about him he felt must be 
 brought to light sooner or later, and he resolved to fly from the 
 contamination. It was while in this frame of mind that his patron 
 laid before him a scheme whereby both were to be made rich be- 
 yond their wildest dreams. There was a proposal before Congress 
 for an Alaska railway charter. Stock was offered both in the rail- 
 way and the construction company to those who could bring 
 influence in their favor in the House. Now, the Senator could 
 control all the members of his party in his State delegation in the 
 House, and, besides his own vote, could influence others in the 
 Senate. He could not, however, negotiate personally with the 
 managers of the scheme, and the secretary was charged with the 
 conduct of the affair. 
 
 "Are there other Senators in the secret ?" asked the young 
 man, regarding the Senator curiously. 
 
 " All of our party — except a few who pose as refortaers — are 
 helping the bill. But, as I have more influence, I'm offered a 
 bigger share." 
 
 " Are any of the Ultracrats working with you ? " 
 
 " Yes, but we only want to Jet in just enough to make the bill 
 seem a public rather than a party measure." 
 
 The young man paced the room in deep study. It was in the 
 Senate wing of the Capitol, his patron's committee-room. The 
 House had adjourned for the day, and the place was restful and 
 tranquilizing. 
 
 HUliard came to a pause in one of the deep embrasures of a 
 richly curtained vidndow looking out upon the green terraces of 
 the Capitol park. His eyes wandered far off to the soft lines of 
 Arlington, and the lovely sweep ending at the White House. 
 The Senator, who had been lolling at ease in one of the luxu- 
 riously cushioned chairs, arose and followed the young man. 
 Tapping him familiarly on the shoulder, he exclaimed : 
 
 " It takes your breath away, does it, Archy ? " 
 
1 6 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Yes, Senator, it frightens me, and I wish you had not trusted 
 the secret to me. I — " 
 
 " What ! you don't mean to say that you have doubts of its 
 being all right, and the money sure ? " 
 
 " I know it's not right," the young man interrupted. " As for 
 the money— look there, Senator "—he pointed to the White House 
 
 " your heart is set on that." The Senator colored. " You have 
 
 a right to aspire to it. The man that is there was put there by 
 you. The scores of letters that come daily, telling you of the 
 purpose of your friends to put you there, justify me in speaking 
 of your ambition. But, Senator, the man who sells his vote to a 
 ring will never occupy that house by an honest vote.'' 
 
 The Senator turned abruptly and sank back deep into the 
 leather cushion. Archy came to the table, waiting for a response. 
 But his patron sat quite still, his head buried in his hands. The 
 silence grew painful. The young man passed softly to the door, 
 but before he reached it the voice of the other arrested him. 
 
 "You are right. I had not thought of the matter in that 
 light. You must, however, help me out of the scrape. Write a 
 note for me and deliver it yourself. Say this — " The statesman 
 reflected a moment : 
 
 " ' Senator Killgore desires me to say that he can not, as at 
 present informed, give any opinion on the merits of the bill, but 
 win deal with it as he believes the public good demands when it 
 comes before him for consideration.' 
 
 " Now hand that to General Macomber as you pass Willard's, 
 and, if he makes any inquiry, simply tell him that I wish to hear 
 no more on the subject." 
 
 No remark was made when the letter was delivered ; but when a 
 few weeks later the bill came before the Senate, and his patron gave 
 it hearty support — as his friends had in the House — Archy knew 
 that the note was written to mislead him. He instantly resigned 
 his place, and viithout a question he was allowed to go. He was 
 offered a lucrative post in Arizona by the Senator ; but he laugh- 
 ingly declared that he had no mind to undertake evangelizing for 
 the party in the West. Without employ, he lingered in Washing- 
 
THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 17 
 
 ton some weeks, when one day a Cabinet officer, who had often re- 
 marked the young man's address, questioned him as to his future. 
 He was the omnipotent minister of the epoch, and a day or two 
 later Milliard's name was sent into the Senate as chargd d'affaires 
 at Athens. To the great astonishment of everybody, the nomina- 
 tion was rejected. The minister sent for Hilliard, and said : 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me you had quarreled with Killgore 1 • 
 Of course, you ought to have known that no name can succeed in 
 the Senate unless he approves." 
 
 Archy found it difficult to explain his reasons for quitting his 
 late patron without alluding to the railway bills, and merely an- 
 swered that he supposed the Senator resented his resignation. 
 
 " Well, we must do something for you — the party needs metal 
 of your sort " ; and the great man, turning to the papers before him, 
 brought the interview to an end. A few days later, as Archy was 
 on the point of leaving the city, a messenger from the State De- 
 partment handed him an envelope containing his appointment to 
 a consulship in the south of France. He passed three years in 
 that post, devoting himself to study and travel, the office being a 
 mere sinecure ; an agent, in fact, managing its affairs. At the 
 end of the third year he was turned out of this place by the ap- 
 pointment of a kinsman of Senator Killgore. The young diplomate 
 was given a temporary place in the legation in Belgium, and in 
 1870 settled down in New York to begin life with unusual equip- 
 ments. For months he waited, casting about without much pros- 
 pect of striking the career for which he felt his training was best 
 fitted to give him the rank he courted. Carew, whom he had met 
 in Valedo, when the two were boys, at last gave him the chance. 
 
 New York was agog for the moment over the production of 
 Offenbach's operas by a troupe of French players, among whom 
 figured a remarkable soubrette. To Carew was assigned the duty 
 of writing them up. As he could not speak the French tongue, he 
 implored the diplomate to help him out. Hilliard asked nothing 
 better. He had met the French beauty in Paris, and made no 
 scruple of leaving a card. He was invited to call, and, having laid 
 the case before the complaisant comedienne, his friend Carew was 
 invited to breakfast with the ladies of the troupe. The result was 
 2 
 
1 8 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 a sketch so enchantingly redolent of the French esprit, and so cap- 
 tivatingly descriptive of the piquante personality of the soubrette, 
 that the matter became the talk of the town. A score of letters 
 came to the editor, to acquaint him with the pleasure the article 
 had given ; and the country papers copied it far and wide. Carew 
 w-as sent for by the editor and congratulated ; but, when he frankly 
 confessed that the work was from another hand, he was requested 
 to send for the author. The result was an engagement ; and when 
 the editor asked his new recruit if forty dollars a week would sat- 
 isfy him, the young man turned pale with emotion. At first he 
 thought he had made a mistake, and that it was forty dollars a 
 month ; but he dared not ask. When, on the Saturday following, 
 the cashier gave him an envelope with four crisp ten-dollar notes 
 in it, he almost shouted with relief and rapture. But he was not 
 yet at ease. Journalism is not learned in a day ; even the appar- 
 ently simple business of writing a " leader" is not within the capa- 
 city of the best informed or most learned. He could not sit down, 
 as he saw his experienced associates, take up a telegram, put his 
 information and his inspiration down on paper, sending the sheets 
 as fast as ^\Titten to the printers w^aiting up-stairs. At first, in the 
 solitude of his own room, he wrote graceful essays on abstract 
 themes, and having handed them in waited wth sinking heart for 
 their appearance in the proofs. He found that not a line, so care- 
 fully labored at home, ever reached the types. He had been a 
 month on the " Atlas," and confided to Carew, as they lunched in 
 Mouquin's, then a characteristic estaminei in a basement in Nas- 
 sau Street, that he was a failure — that his copy was never used, 
 and that the editor would not very long fancy paying such a sal- 
 ary to a man who didn't average a column a week. When, at last, 
 one day the editor sent for him, he drew a long breath, and made 
 up his mind to bear the expected humiliation with dignity. 
 
 Horatio Blackdaw was one of the phenomenal journalistic suc- 
 cesses of the day. A few years before he had come to New York 
 much in the condition of Hilli'ard himself. He had through influ- 
 ential political association gained a place on the " Atlas," and soon 
 became virtual manager, though not nominally chief. Archy had 
 never been wjthin the sacred penetralia of the autocrat's cabinet 
 
THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 
 
 19 
 
 but once. It was not calculated to give him confidence. The 
 fittings were of the same meager, time-worn sort we have seen in 
 the editorial anteroom. The " Atlas," in those days, made a cult 
 of homeliness in its entourage. It had begun as an echo of the 
 plain people. It preserved the tradition by a severity in appoint- 
 ments as much in contrast with its \a.ttT parvenu sumptuousness 
 as the cell of a Philip II with the ensemble of the Escurial. Its 
 editors and writers were explicitly cautioned against anything 
 florid in style, or snobbish in sentiment. The roturier Phari- 
 sees were the objects of its acrid satire and homely persiflage. 
 Though " the best " were not exactly its abhorrence, that vast, pre- 
 ponderating common-sense class of the country that confirm the 
 true popular initiation in socialism and politics relished the sturdy 
 vigor with which the " Atlas " dealt with sham and hypocrisy. 
 
 The editor, fresh in his potent ministry, worked heart and soul 
 to maintain the journal's ancient traditions, and ruled his lieuten- 
 ants with a martinet rigor, tempered by simplicity. He was him- 
 self the slave of the lamp as well as its master. He exacted no 
 more than he gladly gave. His word was law ; but, like law, it 
 was as often injustice. A self-made man, he secretly adored the 
 conditions and hereditaments that no genius, no efforts, can attain. 
 
 He worshiped money, and panted for the precedence it gives 
 in a new society, where character is slow in producing its due in- 
 fluence. Though some time in the city, he had not mixed enough 
 with men to wear out the garment of narrowness and provincial- 
 ism that is woven of the lineal prejudices and dogmatic perversity 
 of small societies. Wholly uneducated in the philosophical sense 
 of the word, he took his place at the head of the " Atlas " with the 
 aplomb of Gulliver and the confidence of Sir Pertinax. When the 
 trembling Hilliard came into the dismal attic where this potentate 
 directed the forces of the journal, he was asked very affably to be 
 seated. The editor finished the page before him, and then, turn- 
 ing in his chair, said in a discursive, reasoning way, " I'm going 
 to find a little good-natured fault with you — not because you 
 don't do good work or enough, but because you do too much, 
 and too good." 
 
 Archy thought he must be dreaming, and stared helplessly. 
 
20 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " What I mean is, that the essays you have been writing are 
 not pitched in the key that the newspaper requires. They are 
 perfect in their way, and will do admirably in the periodicals. I 
 have shown them to the editor of one of the most popular in the 
 country, and he offers to take all you can write. Now, what we 
 want is more in the style of your admirable French interview ; 
 you must guard against the tendency to dilettanteism. It doesn't 
 do in a daily. That you can do just such work as we want, your 
 shorter paragraphs prove. Now, I want to-night an article on 
 the Credit Mobilier exposure, and I know you can do it." 
 
 He gave the young man explicit directions, and dismissed him 
 with friendly hints for the future. Stimulated by what he regarded 
 as the amazing indulgence of the editor, Archy sat down, and in a 
 short time wrote a column that an hour later he was reading with 
 feverish eagerness in the proof. He found that not a word had 
 been erased, not a comma changed. The next day he was felici- 
 tated by all the corps. " Such brilliancy, such humor, such irony 
 no man in the New York press could command," he was told as 
 he sat glowing and faint with secret triumph. " The Revolt of 
 Caliban," as the article was entitled, went the rounds of the coun- 
 try papers ; even those opposed in politics copied it, as the animtts 
 was agjunst the men in power, and represented the ruling party 
 as a Caliban brutalized by an unholy sorcerer accepting helot 
 service only to debase the people and enrich the " rings " infest- 
 ing every public place in Washington and throughout the national 
 civil service. The effect was instantaneous at the capital. The 
 leader of the reform group in the Optimate party, a man of spot- 
 less purity and admired learning, \vrote to the "Atlas" that the 
 article " had smitten like a scorpion-lash on the naked backs of the 
 Sybarite revelers ; that it was plainly from the pen of a publicist 
 who had probed the ulcers of the party, and knew both the dis- 
 ease and the remedy ; that the diagnosis had touched but one 
 part of the putrefying body, and the same hand should push the 
 scalpel to even the head and heart of the party." It was not until 
 long afterward that Archy was sho\vn these evidences of the tri- 
 umph he had achieved, for it was the policy of the " Atlas " to 
 measure praise sparingly. But the curiosity of his fellow-journal- 
 
THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 21 
 
 ists, and gradually the talk in the clubs and literary gatherings, to 
 which the new writer was invited, let him see enough of the effect 
 of his work to give him confidence in himself, and master that 
 difficult faculty which distinguishes the journalist from the dis- 
 tinctively literary worker. " The Revolt of Caliban " was followed 
 by a series of vitriolic screeds based upon the intimate knowledge 
 of men, methods, and morals Archy had learned during his four 
 years in Washington. The echo of outside consideration gave 
 the new writer high standing in the office. It was noticed that 
 Blackdaw invited him three or four times a week to dine, and 
 that in the office he was consulted on the policy of the journal in 
 social and political matters. Profoundly prudent, and schooled 
 in the susceptibilities of men, the recent neophjle avoided ex- 
 citing jealousy, the rock on which the ardent drift and are wrecked 
 in the calling; and, though he grew less companionable with 
 the younger members of the force, there was no angry alienation 
 such as follows the good fortune of ability not supported by 
 tact and address, or the mere beneficiary of favoritism. Always 
 a delightful companion, the less lucky writers missed his droll 
 stories in the dingy attic, in the intervals of vmting, but no one 
 thought of ascribing his reserve to taciturnity, or a self-conscious- 
 ness of his new rSle. 
 
 The merry feasts at Nolan's, when, at three o'clock in the 
 morning, the paper was put to press, were never again enlivened 
 by Archy 's reminiscences of Washington and foreign life. It soon 
 became recognized in the office that he was part of the governing 
 hierarchy, and the other writers — some of them grown gray at 
 the desks where Archy had been but a year — unmurmuringly con- 
 ceded him the pas. Of course, such prowess did not pass unre- 
 warded, where, after all, the most aesthetic toilers best appreciate 
 praise — ^the exchequer. When he had been a year in the office 
 he was allowed one hundred dollars a week, with a flattering 
 letter from the president of the board of directors. To this was 
 presently added a share of the stock of the " Atlas," when it was 
 found that rival journals were ready to give the young man his 
 own terms. 
 
 The testimony to his power which gave him the deepest sense 
 
2 2 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 of his hold on the future came from his old friend, the astute 
 Cabinet minister in Washington. That adroit politician wrote 
 him confidentially that there were three foreign missions open 
 from which he might choose ; that his name had been presented 
 to the President for one of them by Senator Killgore (who deeply 
 lamented the loss of such brilliant ability to the state), whom it 
 was the President's delight to gratify ; that whenever he (Hilliard) 
 • was ready, his commission as envoy to Denmark, Belgium, or Port- 
 ugal would be made out ; and that he was privately authorized to 
 assure him that so soon as the incumbent at Vienna could be de- 
 cently set aside, he (Hilliard) should be promoted to the vacancy. 
 
 When this characteristic ruse of the enemy was shown the 
 editor of the " Atlas," he was a very happy man. That was an 
 evidence that his journal was making itself felt ; that the party 
 Goliath himself was ready to lay down his arms to avert impale- 
 ment. In a reply addressed to the Cabinet minister, so worded 
 as to be sho\vn to Killgore, Archy wrote declining the honor, 
 declaring that he had a duty to perform for the state infinitely 
 more important than any he could render abroad, and that the 
 work he had set himself to do was only begun ; that the money- 
 changers must be driven from the temple, as well as exposed. 
 Thus, in the summer of 1871, Archy was not only at the head of 
 his profession in influence and consideration, he was what most 
 men would call successful. 
 
 He was the life of the literary clubs, to the most exclusive of 
 which he had been elected in advance of applicants whose names 
 had been posted for years ; his own chief, indeed, gained admit- 
 tance only through the potent influence of his subordinate. In 
 society, thanks to his Washington experience, he soon found all 
 doors open — doors that few journalists in New York had ever seen, 
 save from the outside. Singularly enough, this dangerous facility 
 in ascending did not turn his head. He never looked the spoiled 
 darling of that most capricious of all worlds — the literary. His 
 manner was always that of a contained, rather dissatisfied man. 
 
 He was given to diverting the most jocose conversation with 
 some grave abstraction that puzzled the listener. At first this 
 was regarded as subtile raillery on the part of the favorite ; but in 
 
THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 23 
 
 time the young man was accepted as a creature of whims. The 
 truth was, he was dissatisfied. His most brilliant achievements 
 in journalism palled on him. " What are they.? " he was given to 
 asking himself. " Mere ephemerides, that are seen for a moment 
 by the public eye and then obUterated." He became timid as his 
 career became confirmed. At best he could never command the 
 riches which, from the first, he held to be necessary to anything 
 like freedom. He was fond of luxury, fond of easy living — of 
 sen'ants, horses, the play, the opera, books, and pictures. 
 
 The best reward in journalism could never give him these. The 
 limitations of the profession were marked in scores of noble wrecks 
 about him. Veterans, who created the colossal power the press 
 had then become, he could see about him, toiling in the dingy 
 garrets the newspaper corporations in those days allotted the 
 craftsmen of the pen. He felt with tumultuous joy the recogni- 
 tion g^ven his abilities, and cherished the adulation paid him by 
 such sobriquets as the " Rupert of the Pen," and the " Prince 
 of the Third Estate." But he knew that scores of men now toil- 
 ing on a mere stipend had filled the public eye as conspicuously, 
 had been asf^ted and adored, and in their old age had descended 
 to the rewards they had won as striplings. As he considered this 
 phase, and looked forward to a long career of toil, the prospect 
 sobered him in the wildest transports of his rapture. It was at 
 this juncture the Grimstone incident came to pass. He had en- 
 countered Grimstone in Washington when Killgore was little 
 more than the millionaire's political agent and instrument. 
 
 He had known of the family in his student-days in Killgore's 
 office in Valedo, and had resented Grimstone's supercilious ignor- 
 ing of his presence when in Washington Archy happened to be in 
 the Senator's room. In New York, too, he had heard much of the 
 millionaire. The father's wealth and the daughter's beauty made 
 the subject of conversation in many of the exclusive drawing- 
 rooms in which Hilliard was a personage. They came to the city 
 every winter ; but, unlike most rich men, Grimstone was content 
 to live at an hotel, and always chose the Clarendon — society 
 people said, wickedly, because it was the rendezvous of the Eng- 
 lish nobility who passed any time in the city. 
 
24 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 He had been on the point of meeting the daughter a dozen 
 times, but something had ahvays intervened. Some one had 
 jocosely said to him that Grimstone's daughter was a strong- 
 minded young woman, fond of literary men, and that his destiny 
 lay in that direction. The saying had, in spite of him, lingered in 
 his memory, and" he had waited with an unconquerable assurance 
 in his heart that he should meet Grimstone, and that he should 
 test the merits of the daughter. Beyond this he had resolutely 
 kept his mind from going. But to this hmit it went very often at 
 the most unexpected conjunctures. 
 
 When he reflected on the strange chance that had finally 
 brought Grimstone to him, he vyas filled with bitter mortification. 
 He had counted on the iclat of a drawing-room, where he should 
 have been pointed out first as the generally admired " Rupert of 
 the Pen." On such conditions he felt sure that he could have im- 
 pressed even Grimstone, who was best known for his utter indif- 
 ference to any form of social distinction save money. But, to meet 
 him as his beneficiary ! — Archy grew hot with wounded pride, 
 and he felt like cursing honest Carew, who had wheedled him 
 into that luckless adventure. Poor Carew saw very little of his an- 
 cient friend after Archy became the lion of the office. His duties 
 were of an humbler order. He was a reporter — the brilliant Archy 
 was an editor — and the distinction is as clearly defined in the pro- 
 fession as that between the soldier and the officer in the army. 
 
 Even after his translation to the editorial cinacle, Carew saw 
 but little of his friend. Their lines diverged socially — or rather 
 Carew, sociall)-, had no lines. Beyond a few friends among 
 his associates he had no acquaintances in town, except a liter- 
 ary lady who gave monthly soiries. To this symposium, which 
 the artless lad believed the height of social distinction, he had 
 in the old daj-s once taken Hilliard. Madame Leandre was a 
 woman of impulsive cordiality. She was fond of young men in 
 " the guild," as she used to call it, and, when Archy had talked a 
 half-hour in the little circle where she was enthroned, she raptur- 
 ously prophesied that he would some day be a power. Carew 
 tried to get him to go again, but Archy declined. When at 
 length, pressed by his importunate friend to tell why he never 
 
THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 25 
 
 accepted Madame Leandre's hospitable bidding, he shocked the 
 simple-minded worshiper by saying that madame was an " old 
 cat," and the tone of her drawing-room "vulgar and middle- 
 bred." Carew never discovered exactly what " middle-bred " 
 meant, but vulgar, he protested, the kindly circle never was. So, 
 in a measure, the friendliness between the young men became a 
 mere acquaintanceship, Carew understanding perfectly that the 
 brilliant Rupert was of another mold than his own. Archy pa- 
 tronized him in a cheery, taking sort of a way that offered no pre- 
 text for resentment, and when in the office manifested keen in- 
 terest in his whilom friend's welfare. Now, however, he felt the 
 young man's existence an annoyance. He had brought him into 
 this hateful dilemma. His self-sufficiency, too, had betrayed him 
 into disclosing Grimstone's insulting proffer of money. It was 
 even through his bungling kindness that Grimstone had found 
 out the name and address. Had this last been lacking, with 
 what freezing hauteur he could some time in the future en- 
 counter the disdainful old money-bags ! While in this frame of 
 mind one day he was accosted by a club acquaintance, who came 
 to him to learn the meaning of some rumors in Wall Street about 
 the railway-wrecker. Dorr, being compelled to give up the Ontario 
 Railway — a great corporation that had been before the country 
 as a bouffe investment for a year or two. Archy said he knew 
 nothing of the matter ; at which his companion looked incredu- 
 lous. 
 
 "You newspaper-men know all that is going on, ancj what 
 surprises me is that you don't make use of your knowledge. I 
 could gain a million in short order with such chances." 
 
 Archy lost his listlessness ; he was all attention. He asked the 
 other to explain. 
 
 " Simple enough. It is rumored that some change is impend- 
 ing in the management of Ontario. The English stockholders 
 have sent an agent to oust the bouffe managers. Risk and Fould. 
 If any man can find that out positively twelve hours in advance, 
 and has a few thousands to put upon a margin, he can clear from 
 one hundred thousand to twice that sum." 
 
 Archy's heart began to thump against his ribs. He did know 
 
26 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the very thing alluded to. His friend General Winkles had 
 come from London that very vi'eek, and had confided the fact that 
 he was to seize the Ontario the next day by a coup de main. The 
 w^ords " a few thousand dollars, two hundred thousand dollars," 
 began to rise in starry pinnacles, sparkling and golden, in his 
 brain. He quitted his acquaintance abruptly and hurried to his 
 room. Each step seemed measured in rhythmical unison to 
 "thousands, thousands,'' and then the refrain, "two hundred 
 thousand ! " He might use the five-thousand-dollar check ! 
 Why not .' It would be but a day, and at the worst he could raise 
 the sum on his " Atlas " stock if he lost ! 
 
 But the money was Grimstone's, the gain would be Grim- 
 stone's, and he should owe him his good fortune? Once gained, 
 however, how much freer he should be ! With such a sum he 
 could easily become rich — rich as the insufferable flunkeys who 
 presumed to tolerate him half curiously, half admiringly, with 
 something of the impertinent adoration the golden youth lavish 
 upon the ballet or the prima donna ! — if to his intellectual con- 
 quest he could add the solidity of money in hand, money not sub- 
 ject to the caprice of other people's whims, money that by lying 
 in the dark would be his slave, his benefactor, his magnet potent 
 in every eye ! An hour later he had invested the five-thousand- 
 dollar check, and another thousand dollars he had saved. It was 
 a night of fever and anguish. No sooner was the money in the 
 hands of the broker, than he repented ; but he could not with- 
 draw it. He quit the office almost as soon as he reached it. 
 There was no work possible to him that night. Work ! — ^how he 
 hated the word ! He stood by his ragged desk and ran his eye 
 over the dozen night-editors, writing, erasing, clipping, reading 
 manuscript, preparing telegraph copy on oiled tissue-paper, inevi- 
 table destruction to the eye in a given time — the thought of being 
 one of these maddened him. He was not bom for it ; he must 
 write at ease. It must be a diversion, not a toil. He hurried 
 away. He set out to go up-town — home. In spite of himself, he 
 plunged into the narrow, lane-like thoroughfares leading to Wall 
 Street, and, as the bell on Trinity rang out nine, he found himself 
 before the darkened window where his treasure lay. 
 
THE JINGLING OF THE GUINEA. 27 
 
 The thirst for gold, never wholly dormant in him, from that 
 moment became a mastering passion. He walked down to the 
 river, and, closing his eyes, saw pyramids of golden coin overtop- 
 ping the houses. He reached to the water, and saw platings of 
 gold covering the creeping waves. He made a circuit afar to the 
 Battery : the waters that rolled in crested folds under the moon 
 and stars were one vast plain of gold — all his. He reached 
 home, jaded, feverish, insane, at midnight. He slept fitfully, and 
 in his dreams he penetrated the hills near Valedo, and found the 
 heart of the earth serried strata of molten gold. He seized the 
 jutting bowlders, caressed them, kissed them, fondled them. He 
 laid his head upon the veined pavement of yellow gold, and 
 dreamed that he dreamed. Then hunger came, and he looked 
 about for food ; he laughed over handfuls of the god-like metal, 
 for he could satisfy that hunger ! As he wandered on, the gold 
 grew brighter, but the way he came was lost. As he was fainting 
 with the shock, he woke. It was broad day. For a moment the 
 density of the yellow sunbeams made his familiar surroundings a 
 phantasm, and he shivered as it flashed upon him that he was 
 waking, but in the vaults of gold ! It was noon : he was still in 
 bed, reading the morning papers, when a messenger from the 
 broker announced the coup in Ontario, and the stock gone up 
 fifty points, and still rising ! An hour later he was in Wall Street, 
 and his six thousand dollars transformed into one hundred and 
 sixty thousand dollars ! 
 
 At that point, against the advice of his broker, he drew out. 
 So, after all, Grimstone had made his fortune. That day the 
 check deposited as collateral for the five-thousand-dollar loan 
 was returned to Archy, and at once remitted to Grimstone's 
 address in Valedo. 
 
28 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK. 
 
 Grimstone'S honorarium wrought no such moral perturba- 
 tion in Alfred Carew as we have seen in Hilliard's struggle with 
 conscience and final surrender. Before the check had been two 
 hours in his hands Fred sent five hundred dollars to his mother 
 in Valedo. It was to be considered a fund for schooling Jack, 
 his brother, unless there were more pressing needs. The death 
 of his father, and the business of bread-getting, had cut off Fred's 
 keen desire for a university training, and he made a vow to him- 
 self that, before-he did anything looking to his own future in life, 
 he would secure a university career for his brother. The thou- 
 sand dollars would go far toward that. His own pay now en- 
 abled him to put aside a sum each week ample for his own sup- 
 port, and for help to the home when needed. Though five years 
 in New York, he had not yet fallen into the improvidence of his 
 profession. His means, though small and for years precarious, 
 had fed, clothed, and housed him, not luxuriously, or in Hilliard's 
 eyes even decently, but Fred had found his poverty no hardship. 
 
 Reporting gave him plenty of open air ; often the chance to 
 meet agreeable, even remarkable, people. Though the art of in- 
 terviewing was not then known by that name, the practice was 
 followed. In this part of his calling Fred had been brought into 
 relations with most of the notable personages of the war era ; and 
 while the discipline showed him his deficiencies in mental training, 
 the experience taught him that universities alone do not make men 
 of capacity or available acquirements. He loved journalism, and 
 he was filled with the resolution to fit himself for its highest ex- 
 pression. He wrote the repulsive routine of the police-courts 
 with as much conscientious fervor as he brought into the most 
 aesthetic topic assigned him. His first promotion had come 
 through a humorously pathetic sketch of a little victim of a 
 tragedy in the slums. He had until then worked precariously, 
 handing in " copy " to such journals as would take it— saliencies 
 of city life that struck his quick eye in his walks about the me- 
 
THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMINS SACK. 29 
 
 tropolis. The sketch referred to elicited a shower of approving 
 letters to the journal, and the city editor was directed to give the 
 writer a permanent place. He was paid fifteen dollars a week as a 
 recognition of the excellence of his work, and he was a proud and 
 happy fellow indeed in such a haven, and with such ample 
 means ! His letters to Valedo were dithyrambs of his new de- 
 light. They must have given his unimaginative mother the 
 vaguest sort of a notion of his surroundings, for it was his fancy 
 that colored the Gradgrind details. For in these letters the honest 
 lad gave such a wonderful picture of the editorial interior, that 
 Mrs. Carew must have believed him in an Arabian palace, so 
 transformed was the dingy " Atlas " garret, with its rat-eaten 
 floors, its brown plank ceilings, its rickety and defaced desks, its 
 leather-patched chairs, its grimy windows, less for illumination 
 than air, where the gas always burned when the editors were at 
 work, and where no man came unless forced, so formidable were 
 the flights of tortuous and broken stairs leading to it. But to 
 our happy novice it was a section of Aladdin's palace, ready at 
 any moment for Balroubdour ! To him every inch of its dingy 
 space was sacred. Consecrated by a half-century of the work 
 of men who had molded public thought, he mentally kissed its 
 sacred portals every time he entered, and wondered when his 
 less impressionable comrades broke into desecrating hilarity, or 
 the city chief relieved his impatience by an outbreak of pro- 
 fanity. And when, at five o'clock each afternoon, Fred sitting 
 hot and happy under the flaring gas-jets composing his local 
 Iliads, the great editor passed majestically through the room, 
 distraught and oblivious, the young worshiper mentally prostrated 
 himself, as the slaves, to the supernal vwzard of the lamp. To 
 him there was no dinginess, narrowness, low ceiling, swarming 
 cockroaches [so big that, in a moment's relaxation, the night- 
 editors labeled and trained them], nor murkiness in the twilight 
 that illumined this Mansard of the gods ! 
 
 He was only twenty. The world was all truth, and tirpe was 
 all May-day to him, as it is all sham and purple and fine linen to 
 youth of another sort. Ah ! blissful twenty, when the visible 
 horizon of the guileless heart is the happy limit of young desire; 
 
30 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 when the future is a dream, and the present a moonlit path over 
 curling waves ; when there is no " dare not " to wait upon " I 
 would " ; when the waters of the river of life flow limpid and 
 untroubled; when the conscience is not yet coward before the 
 specter of its own sin ; when the heart is light as the foam of the 
 ocean, and pure as the deeps that roll below its waves. 
 
 The city corps of the " Atlas " was made up for the most part 
 of young men of Fred's own age. Kept constantly at work, they 
 had little time for dissipation, or the excesses that impair less 
 confining trades. If the antechamber of journalism, as Hilliard 
 would have called the city work, was thus idealized into a sort of 
 Pantheon by the enthusiastic devotee, words fail to paint his awe, 
 his reverence, his exaltation, when the moment of his translation 
 beyond the glass partition came, and he was given a seat among 
 the sanctified souvenirs of the editorial room. Such editorial 
 quarters are no longer known in New York — indeed, they are 
 unknown even in the remotest cities of the Union. Now, though 
 the apartments of the press are nearest the sky, the rooms are 
 lighted, airy, and commodious. The " Atlas " itself is like Ten- 
 nyson's eagle, and has the .stellar bodies alone to reverence its 
 wonderful advance in " sweetness and light." 
 
 In Carew's day a dozen writers, from the patriarch of the 
 book reviews to the dramatic Bayard, sat in the same room. The 
 editors who toiled in the daytime were replaced by another squad, 
 who wrought from seven in the evening until three in the morn- 
 ing. Common proprietorship in the desks gave rise to a great 
 deal of good-natured friction ; but they were philosophic and 
 kindly souls, and the "Atlas " menagerie, as its rivals were fond 
 of calling these workers, lived in an amity tempered by fine sar- 
 casm and alert raillery. Fred's desk by day was the property of 
 a veteran who had witnessed the birth of nearly every journal- 
 istic bantling in the city. He was more of a pensioner than work- 
 man in those days, and his presence in the gathering was regarded 
 as fatal to that fine flower of composition which the " Atlas " ex- 
 acted from its young lions. When the office-boy, "Tony," led 
 Fred majestically to the decrepit piece of furniture upon which, 
 as one of his associates sarcastically reminded him, he was to 
 
THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK. 31 
 
 "trim the lamps of the Muses," even the devotee was forced to 
 admit that the want of a leg, and the yawning chasm where the 
 drawer had been in some remote past, was an inconvenience, if 
 not a mitigation of the awe-provoking. It was not until he had 
 sat there for many months, and ruined his only summer suit, that 
 he ventured to suggest some needed cobbling. He proposed it 
 to the boy, inwardly quaking lest he had invited penalties of a 
 dire sort by such presumption. Tony's answer was reassuring. 
 If he wanted a better desk, he might buy one ; the " Atlas " had 
 no objection. So Fred had a new desk in the dismalest comer of 
 the room, and thereafter trimmed his lamps in the effulgence of 
 the serene inward light, which glows brightest at twenty, and 
 the flame is a radiance to the sense rather than a light to the 
 feet. 
 
 There was at first a shade of jealousy among the younger 
 members of the corps when Fred passed into the editorial group. 
 It was known that he had been the means of introducing Hilliard 
 on the ■' Atlas," and it was taken for granted that the favorite had 
 made use of his influence to push his friend. Archy, however, 
 rarely noticed Fred in the office now, and never asked him to join 
 him outside, when the lunch-hour came, or on the Saturday holi- 
 days, as in the old time. He fell into a habit of satirizing Fred's 
 boyish enthusiasms, and was the first to point out the lad's im- 
 pulsive flaraboyancies in style and statement, as if to mark his 
 distinct superiority in the editorial hierarchy. 
 
 The office made its own comment, and, though everybody 
 admitted " Rupert's " brilliancy, there was one sentiment — he was 
 worldly and ingrate. As a matter of fact, the idea of close in- 
 timacy between the young men had very markedly favored Fred. 
 Blackdaw was but a year or two the elder of Hilliard. His circle 
 in New York was limited to politicians, and that class by itself 
 that makes much of journalists and writers. So soon as he dis- 
 covered that his brilliant subordinate was the lion of the most 
 fastidious social salons, his admiration for Archy's literary address 
 changed to reverence for his social potentialities. Fred, as the 
 supposed intimate, of course, came in for some of the editor's 
 consideration, and for a time his duties were very fascinating by 
 
32 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 an indulgence and confidential intimacy that spurred him to days 
 and nights of conscientiously gratuitous labor, which confirmed 
 him in his place as an indispensable man, even after the segis of the 
 favorite no longer covered him. One day, while he sat writing, a 
 boy announced a visitor, and Fred, looking up, saw a stranger 
 standing — bending humbly, almost abjectly. 
 
 "You don't remember me, Mr. Carew. I'm the man you 
 picked up in the street the day of the Orange riots. Gleason — 
 Mr. Grimstone's coachman." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I am glad to see you. Have you got over all 
 effects of the shot ? " 
 
 " That's just it, sir ; I've lost the use of my right hand for 
 driving. I tried it once after I got well; but when the horses 
 pulled hard I couldn't manage them, and I lost my place." 
 
 " What ! Grimstone discharged you ? " 
 
 "Oh, no, sir; I had to give up with him when I was hurt. 
 He gave me a recommendation to one of his friends, and, as I 
 say, I lost that place. I'm quite low now, sir. I've earned noth- 
 ing steady for nine months, and odd jobs are poor pay. I've 
 come to ask you, sir, if you can do anything to get me something 
 to do where my fingers won't interfere — perhaps in the custom- 
 house, or on the police-force. If you knew how miserable my 
 wife and children was, you'd not think it bold of me to trouble 
 you." Here the man quite broke down. 
 
 Fred placed a chair for him, and asked, " Do you mean that 
 you are in actual want ? " 
 
 " We've had nothing in the house but oatmeal for months, 
 and not enough of that for growing boys and girls." 
 
 Fred gave the man all the money he had in his purse, took 
 his address, and urged him to keep up a good heart. Fred could 
 do no more work that day. The inhumanity of Grimstone, and 
 the misery of his cast-off workman, rose before him like a sort of 
 mute reproach. What right had he to be prosperous, and with- 
 out care, when this unfortunate father found himself crippled and 
 penniless.' The money Grimstone had given him and Hilliard 
 would make Gleason comfortable. He cast the problem over in 
 his jnind, reflecting on the best way of extricating the victim from 
 
THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK. 33 
 
 his plight. He made inquiries as to the possibility of getting the 
 man a post in the custom-house. When he broached the matter 
 to the political editor, that veteran showed him at once the futility 
 of attempting to obtain anything in that direction. 
 
 " Blackdaw," he said, " is flooded with such applications. 
 His secretary, on an average, answers forty or more a day. Now 
 office is given only to people who can control political influence, 
 ward-workers, rich men who can contribute to election-funds. 
 The ' Atlas,' of course, has influence, but the editor is cautious 
 about entangling himself with men that he may have to oppose. 
 Unless you can get a strong recommendation from Blackdaw — 
 which is virtually a command — you have no chance for your man. 
 The custom-house, and all the Federal service, are already over- 
 flowing vidth men who draw salaries and do nothing. The chiefs 
 of these wouldn't object to adding others ; but to do it they must 
 have such backing as will guarantee them against exposure. Try 
 Blackdaw, if you like, but you won't succeed." 
 
 When Fred laid the case before Blackdaw, it was exactly as 
 the veteran had warned him. The editor heard the young man 
 with polite impatience, never remitting his work for a moment, 
 though when Fred entered he found him walldng up and down 
 the room, laughing and chatting with Hilliard. For answer he 
 pointed the philanthropist to a heap of letters on his desk : 
 
 " These are all of the same nature — men come to sudden and 
 pitiful misfortune. I can do nothing for them. The ' Atlas " can 
 not be turned into a help-bureau." 
 
 Fred retired abashed. He determined, however, to try the 
 collector. With his name written on his card, and the " Atlas " 
 on one comer to compel consideration, he went down to the 
 custom-house and asked for General Archer. He was immediately 
 g^ven precedence of a score of anxious people waiting wearily in 
 the uncomfortable antechamber. The collector was a stout, red- 
 faced Hercules, reputed to be the chief pillar of the ruling power 
 in Washington. He was surrounded by a group of flashily dressed 
 men, from whose bosoms glittered diamonds of various degrees 
 of size and brilliancy. 
 
 The room was thick with smoke, and a half-dozen empty 
 
34 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 champagne and brandy bottles stood on the sideboard, from 
 which a waiter in a white apron was administering these bever- 
 ages. Fred was confused by this spectacle, and fancied he had 
 been shown into the wrong room. He was relieved, however, of 
 his doubt ; but his embarrassment was increased when the stout, 
 red-faced man, holding his glass on his knee, said : 
 
 " Well, Mr. Carew, what can we do for the • Atlas ' to-day ? " 
 
 Fred said he wanted just a moment's speech with the col- 
 lector, and, declining the glass and cigar that the waiter was 
 directed to give him, he laid his request before the official in a 
 remote comer of the room, or rather he told half his story, for, 
 so soon as the import was plain, the collector interrupted him : 
 " Out of the question, my son. Bless your heart, we have thou- 
 sands on the lists now, all spoken for by the best workers in the 
 party ! Why, the whole State has to be provided for here ; and 
 how could we ask men to work for the party if we did not give 
 them what they ask .' Then, when you think of it, we're under 
 no compliment to the ' Atlas.' What has it been doing all these 
 years? Scandalizing, sir — yes, you may tell Horatio Blackdaw 
 that I say it — knifing the benefactors of the party, and hurting 
 us — yes, sir, hurting the nation — by giving the Ultrocrats arms 
 to fight the nation's liberators — the great Optimate party ! " 
 
 " But, general — " Fred's cheeks were tingling as the clink- 
 ing of the glasses, under cover of which the first part of the gen- 
 eral's apostrophe had passed unheard, ceased, and the whole 
 party broke into lusty applause. 
 
 " That's it, general. No favor to the traitor that would destroy 
 the great party ! More power to ye ! " 
 
 Fred retreated, confused and bewildered. He gave up the 
 attempt to procure a place in the Government service for his 
 frotegL But he did not give up his efforts. He wrote home to 
 his brother Jack to look about, and, at the end of a fortnight, that 
 faithful agent replied that Gleason could get a place as tally- 
 man in an iron-foundry at twenty dollars per month. Fred drew 
 the remaining five hundred dollars of Grimstone's gift, and, after 
 paying the transportation to Valedo, there was enough to furnish 
 a modest home for the family. So that, by different channels. 
 
THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK. 35 
 
 and by suggestively contradictory impulses, Grimstone's money 
 was doing its work in the world. It had given the brilliant 
 Hilliard the entering-wedge into the society and life he loved, and 
 it had given Fred Carew the chance to do a good deed. It was 
 destined to do much more in the fortunes of both before their 
 destinies were rounded to their ultimate development. 
 
 About this time an event happened which changed Fred's for- 
 tunes, and taught him how precarious are the rewards of journal- 
 ism. A condition of anarchy had grown up in the Appalachia 
 coal-region. At the beginning of winter the operators had closed 
 the mines and suspended work until spring. This was done on 
 the plea of over-production and lack of market. In many places 
 the starving miners had formed leagues, and, it was charged, for 
 the purpose of pillage. Fred was detailed to go to the scene of 
 the outbreak and report impartially. He spent weeks in the 
 anthracite regions; informed himself exactly of the productive 
 limits of the mines at full time ; then, possessing himself of the 
 published statistics of the markets, found that coal was dearer at 
 that moment than it had ever been known to be ; that, in spite of 
 a heavy duty, the New England States were compelled to get 
 their coal from Canada, and that in the West there was almost a 
 coal-famine ; that, in spite of the canals and abundant and cheap 
 railway transportation, small towns on the lines of transportation 
 in Illinois and Iowa were reduced to burning com on the cob for 
 fuel ! 
 
 Mystified by such a showing, he plied diligently among the 
 operators, but got no enlightenment. They protested that they 
 could not pay for getting the coal out because the market was 
 glutted. The matter was carried to the State Legislature, and 
 militia was sent into the disturbed districts, pending the inquiry. 
 The operators charged that the attitude of the miners was mere 
 reckless coercion; that they earned good wages nine months in 
 the year, and that if provident they need suffer no hardship dur- 
 ing the temporary suspension of work. They alleged that the 
 outbreaks were bred by restless agitators and self-seeking dema- 
 gogues who were paid by political leaders to disturb public peace 
 in order that the Optimate party, then in power, might be made 
 
36 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 odious. Journalists from all over the country were present watch- 
 ing the affair. For those who would accept them, quarters were 
 provided in the residence of an opulent railway president, and their 
 days and nights were passed in riotous debauchery. Fred re- 
 fused this ominous hospitality, and alluded to it in his correspond- 
 ence as indecent and degrading. He was thereafter afforded 
 scant courtesy in the committee-rooms, and began to be avoided 
 by his fellow-joumalists. He did not let that disturb him at all. 
 His faculties were wholly absorbed in getting at the truth of the 
 problem involved in the contest, and his reports were read with 
 profound interest. So soon as the workmen found that they could 
 trust him as a friend, he had no difficulty in penetrating the plot. 
 It was ascertained that certain railway speculators wanted to ruin 
 the stock of a stubborn rival which had monopolized the coal and 
 carrying traffic. In order to do this, the operators had been paid 
 to suspend work. The legislators were asked to grant a com- 
 prehensive system of charters which would henceforth put all the 
 coal products of Appalachia and Transylvania into the hands of a 
 syndicate operating from New York and Pennadelphia. 
 
 In the struggle the welfare of the workmen was a matter of 
 no importance. But the legislators were slower or less easily 
 convinced than the syndicate had contemplated. Hence it was 
 necessarj' to spur them on. Pretended leaders of the miners were 
 hired in the principal places of discontent to goad the men on to 
 overt violence, and then the Legislature must act. Adroit dema- 
 gogues were found in abundance; outbreaks came to pass at 
 several points. The committee in charge of the matter, with all 
 these facts in hand, made a report justifjing the operators, and 
 the law passed. Fred narrated the scheme step by step ; he gave 
 day, date, and name ; he even produced vouchers for the sums 
 paid the incendiary leaders. In spite of all, the bill was passed. 
 But he was taught how difficult as well as dangerous it is to 
 tell the truth. One of. the most influential leaders of the working- 
 men, trusted implicitly by them, came to the young man's room 
 the night that the bill was passed, and, laying an envelope on 
 the table before him, said, in a confidential tone : 
 
 " There, Mr. Carew, is the sum that it was agreed should be 
 
THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK. 37 
 
 yours for your work. We've failed, but we'll have more money 
 next time, and we'll beat ! We are going to reorganize open war 
 in the mountains, and, if you stand by us as you have done, we'll 
 see that you lose nothing." 
 
 "Why, Birch, what are you talking about.' Reward me.' 
 Whoever gave you such a notion ? No, sir, I have written the 
 truth about the miners. If you, as head of the league, have 
 money, you should employ it to relieve the miserable fellows in 
 the mountains. Furthermore" — Fred arose as he spoke, and 
 came within arm's reach of the man — " if I supposed you really 
 quite understood the meaning of this business, I would thrash you 
 until you went on your knees in contrition. Don't you know, 
 man, that Buch an act as this' justifies all that the syndicate 
 charges on your league: that you have plenty of money; that 
 your revolt is purely political and black-mailing; and that your 
 men are simply intractable because they are overpaid and idle .' " 
 
 Birch had retreated from the indignant moralist, and held the 
 door partly open as he said, in a loud voice : 
 
 " There's the money that was agreed on. If you're not satis- 
 fied with it, you must ask the council for more." 
 
 With an execration of ungovernable wrath Fred sprang at the 
 man ; but, as he reached the door, several people were between 
 him and Birch. One was a journalist that Fred knew to be in 
 the employ of the syndicate, a man that he had cordially befriended 
 in New York. Another was the chief lobbyist, and another a 
 member of the committee Fred had denounced as receiving a 
 bribe. 
 
 " What's the row, Carew .' " asked his rival. " Friends fallen 
 out, eh .>■ " 
 
 " Bring that scoundrel in here ! I've a score to settle with 
 him," and Fred pointed to Birch, who stood protected by the 
 lobbyist. 
 
 "It isn't my fault," he shouted above Fred's angry voice, 
 " that the sum isn't as much as you bargained for ! " 
 
 " You infernal ruffian, I'll throttle the truth from you ! " roared 
 Fred, as with a mighty rush he pushed the human rampart aside, 
 and clutched the leaguer by the throat. The man was twofold 
 
38 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 his build, and, compared to him, as an ox to a deer. But the 
 onslaught was so sudden that Fred had pushed him against the 
 window-sill, the slender frame gave way, and the two men were 
 almost out, when the stupefied group collected their wits and 
 their strength, haled them into the hall-way by main force, and 
 separated them. 
 
 "Well, you are a muscular Christian, sure enough!" said the 
 rival journalist, as Fred, panting and choking, glared at the burly 
 leader of the working-men. " You strike right out, just as you 
 write. But explain ; what does it all mean ? I thought you were 
 the apostle-in-chief of Birch's proselytes .' " 
 
 Fred looked from one to the other of the group. The true 
 meaning of the incident had not yet flashed on him. Addressing 
 himself to the journalist, he said : 
 
 " Sanders, I call you to witness. This scoundrel came to me 
 a few moments ago with a bribe — or what he says is a bribe. It 
 is in an envelope on my table there. I want you to take it before 
 these witnesses, and deliver it to the hotel-clerk to be at the dis- 
 posal of the legislative committee." 
 
 " Ah ! all right," said Sanders, laughing cynically. " Let us 
 see how high they rate you ! " 
 
 He went to the table and took up the envelope addressed in a 
 sprawling hand to " Mr. Alfred Carew, Esq., of the ' Atlas.' " As 
 he was about to break it open, Fred seized his hand. " No, sir, 
 that envelope shall not be opened in my room. You must deliver 
 it at the desk just as it is, or not at all ! " 
 
 He waited a moment. Sanders fumbled it in his hand, and 
 looked questioningly at the lobbyist. After an instant's pause he 
 threw it back on the table, declining to be made responsible for 
 the delivery. Fred, without a reply, walked to the bell-rope and 
 pulled it. Suddenly the group, as if with one impulse, made for 
 the door ; but before Sanders reached it Fred was ahead of him. 
 Placing himself against it, he turned appealingly, and held his 
 arm out with a gesture of entreaty. 
 
 " No, Sanders — my reputation is at stake ; you have knov.n 
 me five years ; you know that I never hesitated when trouble came 
 upon you ; that I held your place when you were down with fever ;. 
 
THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK. 39 
 
 that I saved you from dismissal and disgrace. I don't ask much. 
 I want you to be able to beai- witness that this is an odious plot. 
 That is all ! " 
 
 Sanders walked to the window and looked out intently, then 
 came back to Fred — opened the door and looked into the hall. 
 
 " Don't be alarmed — I don't want to get away ; you couldn't 
 detain me if I did," he added with a laugh. He looked down the 
 hall, and Fred, over his shoulder, saw that there was no one there ; 
 but he remained with his back to the door when Sanders again 
 entered the room. 
 
 " Now Usten, Carew. You're very young and very green, and 
 I am going to tell you something of value. You've seen how 
 much good your denunciations of the syndicate have done? 
 Their report was taken by the committee ; the committee's report 
 was adopted by the Legislature, and their law will be in force 
 before the session ends. It's a mere question of money. The 
 men who are running this country just now are not groping in the 
 dark ; you have found that out. I compliment you on the sagacity 
 that discovered their tracks in the league. It may flatter you to 
 know that it gave them a very disagreeable quarter of an hour. 
 What you have seen of their methods ought to have taught you 
 that they are not men to be balked by one newspaper, or a dozen. 
 When a newspaper opposes them they find means of buying it 
 out. Ah! you -needn't assume that the 'Atlas' is none such. In 
 less than twelve months from this the • Atlas ' will be the property 
 of one of the members of the sjmdicate, and your cream-clabber 
 johnny-cake, Blackdaw, will be the ductile medium of its n<:w 
 faith. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I was as deeply smitten with revolt as you, when, two 
 years ago, I uncovered the condition of the miners ; but it isn't the 
 miners alone that bear the screws. I tell you we're come to a 
 new doctrine of forces — ^money is literally king ! Its possessors, 
 and those who want to possess it, are banded together to get it, 
 not in mere cent per cent, like the Jews, but in streams — in cart- 
 loads. Can't you see it yourself, man ? You said you saved me 
 from disgrace, because I missed a bit of news, and if I had gone 
 to the office I would have been dismissed. You're painfully green ; 
 
40 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 I was disgraced long before that. Like you, I went to Washington, 
 fired with the generous impulse to tell the truth. I began it. I 
 saw Congressmen selling their votes daily. I saw the confidants 
 of the Cabinet trafficking on their relations; I saw Senators 
 bartering almost openly in the lobby — I saw — you remember 
 Voltaire's catalogue of what he saw before he was twenty "i Well, 
 I saw all this, yet so insidiously, so dexterously done, that the most 
 upright men, without a suspicion, were compromised in schemes 
 that robbed the Treasury of millions. I was offered bribes right 
 and left ; I was threatened at first for talking about what I saw. 
 Voltaire went to the Bastile to cool his ardor. They were more 
 adroit who had to deal with me ! " 
 
 ' He stopped and, again going to the window, looked out 
 intently — ^then standing at the side, pulled the shade down — to the 
 inexpressible astonishment of his stupefied listener. 
 - " Why do I pull it down ? Because, my friends opposite, who 
 have their glasses fixed on this room, and who have done you the 
 honor of watching you every instant since you have been here^ 
 may conceive a doubt of my address, or a suspicion of my fidelity. 
 For you must know I am expected to make you see reason, and 
 before I get through I know I shall. I wiU tell you my own story, 
 as it will best illustrate your fix at this moment. I wrote all I saw 
 to the home office. All the routine news was faithfully printed ; 
 but after the first week not a line of my exposures of corruption 
 saw print. But I received no hint to stop ; on the contrary, when 
 I saw at the end of the Christmas recess that all the real work 
 worth publishing was flung away, I wrote asking the meaning of 
 it. I was on the 'Janus,' as you may remember, then. In due 
 time I received a letter from Levison himself, commending my 
 industry, approving my work, and commanding me not to omit a 
 line of the disclosxu-es I had been making. It wound up by 
 increasing my salary. Of course I was amazed, amazed as you 
 Avill be before I get through. At first I couldn't conjecture what 
 it meant. I went to a friend — a leading Senator — and told him 
 the story. He had helped me in penetrating some of the deviltry 
 of the committee-rooms, and wondered like mj'self why nothing 
 appeared in my paper. I think he began to suspect that I was 
 
THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK. 41 
 
 playing double, and I showed him my chief's letter as a vindica- 
 tion. 
 
 " He thought over the matter some time, and then told me that 
 Levison vsfas holding my disclosures to black-mail the culprits. He 
 pointed out certain editorial references during the month that con- 
 firmed the conjecture. He advised me to go to the telegfraph- 
 office and get copies of all my dispatches, and in future to make 
 duplicates. It was sound advice, but it brought me to ruin. You 
 don't happen to have a drop of brandy ? Well, we can ring for 
 some. I went to the telegraph people," he continued, as he gave 
 the bell-rope a vigorous pull ; ;" the superintendent : said he would 
 have the copy looked up and sent to me. A day or two later he 
 sent for me and declared that the' copy had been asked for by the 
 New York office as fast as it went over the wires, and that I must 
 apply there. "I did apply there,, but received an evasive note, 
 referring me to Levison. ■ I dropped the matter, but thenceforth 
 preserved copy, and so far as I could rewrote the substance of all 
 I had sent at first. I incautiously spoke of "what I was doing to a 
 fellow-journalist, and of my purpose of publishing a book when 
 the session closed. . .; . - ; ■ " ■ 
 
 "One morning, as I was going up to the House gallery, Joe 
 Blind, the king of the lobby, tapped" me oji the shoulder and 
 asked me to go into the Speaker's room a moment. It was empty. 
 He pushed a chair toward me and sat down on the Speaker's 
 chair. He narrated all that I have gone over, and wound up by 
 offering me five thousand dollars, or ap appointment to any' con- 
 sulship I might name, with a thousand dollars' outfit ! I rejected 
 it indignantly. He smiled, and warned me that I couldn't fight 
 the men behind him. That very night my office was broken open 
 and all my manuscript carried off. A few days later I was called 
 into the war-claims room as I was passing from the House res- 
 taurant — you know it is quite dark. As 1 entered the room, an 
 envelope was thrust into my hand, and a voice said : ' There, San- 
 ders, is news that will make you famous ; but I don't want to be 
 known.' Unsuspicious of a trick, I went to the window and 
 opened the envelope. There were in it a number of papers and a 
 five-hundred-dollar greenback. 
 
42 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Confounded, I turned to catch the man, and was confronted 
 by a detective of the secret service, and a member of the war- 
 claims committee. In my agitation I thrust the envelope into my 
 pocket. ' Mr. Sanders, it is alleged that you have made this 
 room a lobbyist reception rendezvous, and, further, that you have 
 the wages of the lobby in your possession at this moment. In 
 the interests of your own reputation, I ask to see that package 
 that this officer saw you receive.' 
 
 : , . " Wasn't that handsomely done ? " asked Sanders, as Fred 
 pulled a chair over and sat down by the door, amazed and inter- 
 ested. " It's like a Minerva novel ; but it is true " — " and," he 
 added after a pause, " I am not sure that it wasn't just as well, 
 for, from what I've since learned, I should have met the same fate 
 some other time and some other way, for I'm not the only one 
 money has found the means of making an ally. Indeed, I dare 
 say that you are almost the only one I know that has not ground- 
 ed arms. Of course, I could not make an explanation that would 
 hold water; not only the facts were against me, but my judges 
 were the paid agents of the men interested. I was disgraced. 
 The ' Janus ' dismissed me by telegraph. My place was taken by 
 a man who has regularly drawn five thousand dollars a year 
 since from the lobby fund. Now, how does the situation strike 
 you ? " he asked, jocularly ; " do you beg^n to see just where you 
 are ? " 
 
 " No, I don't see what earthly resemblance there is between 
 my situation and the awful wrong you describe. I — " 
 , " My unchastened, ferocious lamb, don't you see that Birch 
 is in the pay of the syndicate ; that there are witnesses to the fact 
 that the money of the league is in your possession ; that one of 
 the trusted leaders of the league was heard disputing with j'ou 
 as to the amount, and that as a conscientious journalist seeking 
 to oppose knavery, I shall be obliged to write the occurrence to 
 my -paper ; that the agent of the associated press, who is like- 
 wise in the councils of the syndicate, will send it to every journal 
 in the Union ; and that to-morrow, dismissed from the ' Atlas.' 
 you can't get employment for your pen in the country ? " 
 
 The whole story was told with a humorous suggestion, in ac- 
 
THE CUP FOUND IN BENJAMIN'S SACK. 43 
 
 cent and gesture, that made the effect infinitely more impressive 
 than the mere words can convey any idea of. 
 
 Fred Carew stared with a comic stupefaction that elicited a 
 roar of laughter from the other. Before Sanders had ended the 
 story, the brandy came, and he threw off a copious draught, 
 washing it down with a thimbleful of water. As Fred sat quite 
 overpowered, Sanders, reaching over the brandy-glass, picked up 
 the envelope, and, holding it up to the light, asked suddenly : 
 
 " ' The woman who hesitates is lost ' — the man likewise ; how 
 much do you suppose they rate you at ? By George, it's rather 
 flattering to a fledgling like you — not yet twenty-five ! I was a 
 veteran of thirty when they rated me at five hundred dollars." 
 He got up and held the envelope under Fred's nose. " A thou- 
 sand dollars, my boy, a cool thousand, to secure you to the cause 
 of progress and great moral ideas ! Come, open it — or shall I ? " 
 
 " No, I won't open it ; and you sha'n't until a witness is present." 
 
 He went to the rope and rang the bell ; then, placing his back 
 against the door, he held out his hand appealingly as the other 
 made as if to go out. 
 
 " No, Sanders ; you don't leave this room until that accursed 
 envelope is gone. Oh, you may thrash me," he added, as he saw 
 the other clinching his fists, " but you shall not leave the room 
 unless you leave me dead ! " 
 
 Sanders measured the slight frame before him, and stretched 
 out an athlete's arm to pulverize him. At that very moment a 
 knock was heard at the door. Fred, without moving from his 
 place, called out : " Get the key and come through the next room. 
 This door can't be opened. Hurry !" he shouted ; " there is a life 
 in danger ! " With this he turned the key in the door and slipped it 
 into his pocket. Now, as it happened, his table was against the 
 door of the adjoining room, and no one could pass in or out, even 
 were the door open, without leaping over or going under it. 
 Sanders noticed the circumstance, and went toward the table as 
 if to move it. Among the paper, scattered in confusion, lay a 
 glittering Spanish blade, beautifully chiseled and sharp-pointed. 
 The eyes of both rested on it at the same moment, but, as Fred 
 Was nearest, he seized it, and said determinedly : 
 
44 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 "If you molest me, or touch the table, I will use this! 
 Ah!"— 
 
 The sound of a key and the murmur of excited voices were 
 heard, and the door was suddenly flung open. The landlord and 
 a half-dozen people blocked the crowded space visible through 
 the door. Sanders was as effectually hemmed in as if there had 
 been no door. Pointing to the envelope on the table, Fred said, 
 in clear, defiant tones : 
 
 " There, Mr. Taney, is an envelope the contents of which are 
 "unknown to me. It was placed there by a miscreant who says 
 it contains money. It is not my money, and I ask you to take it 
 and hold it subject to its owner, or do with it what seems proper, 
 and I ask you all to be witness that the envelope is unbroken ! " 
 s The landlord, all of a tremble, picked up the packet, read the 
 address, weighed it reflectively, held it to the light, and said : 
 
 - " It is addressed to you, as you see, Mr. Carew. Suppose you 
 write what you have just said on it? " 
 
 ;- " No, I wrill not touch it ! But I will write what you want on 
 a separate slip of paper. — Meanwhile, Sanders, if your friends 
 are waiting, you can get out," Fred couldn't help saying a little 
 sardonically, as his rival stood wrathfuUy eying the crowded 
 doorway. As the crowd cleared away, Sanders was the last to 
 leave the room. As he passed the threshold, he turned : 
 
 " You are not a very long-headed young man for a reformer. 
 You'd better take lessons before you go out again, or ask Black- 
 daw to send a guardian with you to watch over your virtue ! " 
 '- The next day Fred found to his cost what this meant. The 
 story of his encounter, with the labor leader was set forth in full. 
 It was made to appear, however, that the guilty correspondent 
 and leaguer had been surprised — the former receiving, and the 
 latter paying, the bribe-money. All the circumstances were in- 
 geniously made to corroborate the charge, and when Fred ap- 
 peared on the street he knew, before reading the local papers, that 
 something had come to pass. 
 
 People looked at him curiously, and men who had been help- 
 ful and profuse in courtesies to the representative of the " Atlas," 
 affected to be busy or preoccupied when he spoke to them. It 
 
A CHAPTER FROM CHESTERFIELD. 45 
 
 was all explained when he saw the accounts, and he recognized 
 the handiwork of Sanders as the originator of the fabrication. 
 He looked for him all day ; but he was not to be found. He 
 learned later that he had gone on a trip to the mines with several 
 members of the interested corporation. He resolved to follow, 
 and packed his portmanteau in hot haste. As he left his room, a 
 telegram was handed him. It contained four words : " Come 
 to New York^Blackdaw." 
 
 His business with Sanders must be postponed. That was his 
 first thought. Well, it didn't matter. He would have abundant . 
 chance to settle wdth him in the future. Tortured by vague fears 
 of something sinister, he spent a miserable day in the train, and 
 at midnight, entering the office, told Tony to tell Mr. Black- 
 daw that he was come. The atmosphere struck him with chill 
 apprehension. The looks of his comrades told the story. . They 
 never alluded to the scandalous concoction in the morning papers. 
 The " Atlas " had not, of course, published it, but his heart froze 
 as he saw in the averted faces of his associates that they believed 
 it. He sat buried in a sort of stupor awaiting the summons to the 
 inner room. The City-Hall clock was striking three when Tony 
 tapped him on the shoulder, and told him Mr. Blackdaw would 
 see him. It was four o'clock when, all being said and summed 
 up, Blackdaw concluded, in a not unkindly tone, " I believe you, 
 as I say, but the ' Atlas ' must be like the wife of Csesar, and, 
 though I am reluctant to lose your undisputed abilities, I dare not 
 retain you on the force." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A CHAPTER FROM CHESTERFIELD. 
 
 In May, one morning, as Archy ran his eye over the steamship 
 arrivals, he saw the names of Grimstone and daughter among 
 the passengers by the Scythia. "Rupert," as he was" almost 
 universally called, had changed his way of living a good deal 
 
46 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 since Grimstone's check had given a money value. He removed 
 from the faded gentility of Waverley Place to a charming suite on 
 the second floor of a handsome house, given up wholly to bachelor 
 quarters, on Madison Square. It was the very dream of an ap- 
 partement degarqon, and its French flavor created a fury of imi- 
 tation, which soon found a hundred of his rich friends similarly 
 lodged. Here he gave the most fascinating breakfasts, and some- 
 times, after the opera, petits soupers, enlivened by the gayest sou- 
 brettes en vogue. 
 
 ■ ' On Sunday evenings he invited an exclusive few to musicales, 
 where the most sensuous of classic music was interluded by airi- 
 ly piquant conversazione. Rupert was not only the Amphitryon 
 of these symposia, he was the magnet of every reserve of wit or 
 talent in those he brought about him. Prodigious as his social 
 and literary triumphs had been before, he became the regent of 
 elegance and taste — ^when the town read one morning that " his 
 Imperial Highness the Archduke Alexis " had breakfasted in the 
 Madison Square cenacle, and had returned at midnight and joined 
 in a delicious duet from the godless opira-bouffes distracting the 
 town at the Grand Opera-House. That riveted the social cachet 
 of the most imperial ton upon the adored publicist. Thereafter, 
 New York was at his feet, as the saying is. He could pick his 
 preserves without a grimace. But the world doesn't give its 
 whole heart to the ravisher of its favors. Accession by revolu- 
 tion, or favor, implies abdication, and there are always some sen- 
 sibilities to wound, no matter how trivial the triumph. The 
 Cavaliers of Charles didn't relish the glories of Monk ; the tatter- 
 demalion heroes of the Revolution resented the young Bonaparte's 
 leap to leadership. I dare say there were plenty besides the 
 fatuous Mrs. Potiphar who relished Joseph's translation from 
 the splendors of the palace to the tripod of the prison ! 
 
 There was an envious wonder, faintly expressed by some as to 
 the source of such magnificence, as threw the prodigalities of the 
 heirs-apparent of the most opulent in the shade. Everybody knew 
 that the " Atlas " couldn't afford him the means to rival the sons 
 of the Castors and the Statendykes. He had been seen in Wall 
 Street, it was rumored, and then he was set down as a speculator ; 
 
A CHAPTER FROM CHESTERFIELD. 
 
 47 
 
 and the sagacious set a limit to this Sardanapalian splendor. But 
 the truth was that Rupert made no such expenditure as his fites 
 implied. He knew perfectly the value of money. His whole 
 training had taught him that. He had been a keen observer 
 abroad, and brought back with him a method in expenditure that 
 gave him fourfold the value of his money that those without his 
 faculty got. His wines,. which were incomparable in flavor, 
 bouquet, and variety, were sent him through the agency of an 
 energetic consul in France, who, while serving the Government/ 
 maintained his interest in a wine-trade in Baltimore. - His feasts 
 were prepared by his own cook in the kitchen of a modest restau- 
 rant in Union Square. ' ' , ;;!.';i: ; 
 
 His equipages were rather artistic than sumptuous, and the 
 most costly of the assemblies, that struck his millionaire guests' 
 with wonder, really cost less than a noisy dinner at Delmanzio's, 
 served to a dozen. The grand air became him, that every one 
 owned. If he loved fine things, it was always remarked that he 
 was well and properly placed when surrounded by them. He 
 could put on a glove with such grace that the women who saw him 
 would have kissed his hand. He could present a gentleman to a 
 lady with an^ease that gave the man a peculiar standing and appre- 
 ciation in the eyes of the lady. He could say " thank you " with 
 an inflection that made the commonplace like the condensation of a 
 sonnet. Above all, he could look the person he permitted to become 
 intimate squarely and serenely in the eye. He was, as you may see, 
 a man for whom time had no terrors ! When he went to the " Atlas '' 
 now, which was very rare, he drove in an insinuatingly modest 
 coupi — ^rigidly devoid of that snare to the weak, a coat-of-arms; or 
 any paneled pretense to a past for which he didn't care a fig. 
 His stay in the " abhorred barrack," as he called the venerable 
 rats' nest, where his glories came to blossom, was only long 
 enough to get his flattered chief and cany him off to a dainty 
 dinner to meet some personage in the day's renovra. 
 
 He wrote with scrupulous regularity for the journal still, but 
 sent the " copy " down by messenger. It was " to keep his 'hand 
 in," he explained to his sauntering friends, from whom he often 
 excused himself "to keep the press going." His bibelots, bric-a- 
 
48 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 brae, statuary, and paintings were the despair of the art-collectors, 
 who strove in vain to discover the mines whence they had been 
 drawn. He thus drew a select audience of artists, eager to study 
 the taste which the town approved. He still persisted, to those 
 who rallied him on the waste of his genius, that he was a journalist, 
 and nothing else ; that he hadn't the imagination for fiction, or 
 the aptitude for construction, even if he could narrate well. He 
 gave out that some day he proposed writing a philosophical novel 
 to point out the dangers of the ballot ; but this was taken as a 
 joke. : His leaders in the " Atlas '' showed no signs of losing the 
 vigor and delicate literary flavor that had won public delight. His 
 audacity in attack grew, as the sense of independence derived from 
 his lucky speculation became confirmed. It was the policy of the 
 " Atlas " at that time to defeat the aspirations of the leaders of the 
 Optimate party, which had become corrupt from long possession 
 of place. Archy's attacks, based on his intimacy with the leading 
 Optimate and their methods, aroused public attention, generally 
 indifferent to poUtical issues, and interested mostiy in men. 
 ; For some years it had been requisite to a citizen's standing that 
 he should uphold the Optimate, and, when the elegant young HiU- 
 iard took up the lance against them, there was an interregnum of 
 social chaos. The other party, the Ultrocrats, a sort of Adullamite 
 Schwarmeri, had long been socially ostracized. Their leaders, 
 though for the most part men of great learning, illustrious parts, 
 and unblemished lives, were regarded as doctrinaires. They were 
 beUeved to be advocates of dangerous and subversive theories. 
 :. -They had been suspected of a leaning for the rebels during 
 the civU war, though they claimed, and the statistics showed, 
 that, when the war began, the Ultrocrats were the ruling party 
 in the country, and both the rank and file of the army went 
 forth from the distinctively Ultrocratic States. The attitude of 
 the "Atlas" and the intrepid truths of its free-lance gradually 
 modified public opinion, and there were many of the Optimate 
 who secretly began to doubt if their party were really the elect, 
 after all. This status of parties contributed to " Rupert's " per- 
 sonal importance. The Optimate leaders in New York and 
 Washington soon discovered the identity of this masked David, 
 
A CHAPTER FROM CHESTERFIELD. 49 
 
 whose sling was gouging the eyes from their head. The Sybarite 
 retreat in Madison Square was often invaded by the trusted and 
 potent manipulators of the party, come to wrestle with the rebel- 
 lious Saul, and lead him to the voice and the light of the Covenant 
 on the Potomac- But the young man dismissed them with some 
 pleasantry so subtile that it was not until they repeated his phrases 
 to the more penetrating chief at the capital, that the aptness and 
 irony were discovered. 
 
 This morning, as Grimstone's name recalled the past, the young 
 man approved of himself thoroughly. He glanced at the mirror, 
 covering the whole wall between the mantel arid the ceiling, and 
 smiled complacently at his rosy cheeks, his clear hazel eyes, and 
 graceful tawny mustache, falling in a golden sweep over the cor- 
 ners of his decisive mouth. He exulted in the sense of youth, the 
 consciousness of power, the assurance of a beginning of the 
 wealth he dreamed, and the certainty that he knew how, and had 
 the ability, to realize it. The Grimstones had come upon the scene 
 at just the time he would have ordered had he been master of 
 their movements. Every one was talking of him ; every one was 
 quoting him ; his handsome, dreamy face was in the current illus- 
 trated periodicals. He felt as tranquilly master of the destinies 
 hovering between him and his aims as Richelieu when he. held 
 the threads of the feudal treasons in his hands. While these 
 grandiose reflections were passing through his mind, Fred Carew's 
 card was handed him. He had not seen his quondam friend 
 since his dismissal, and, curious to learn his doings and where- 
 abouts, he bade the domestic show him in. 
 
 . The luckless Fred was much thiimer, and pitiably care-worn. 
 Archy almost blushed as the poor boy's eyes wandered from the 
 luxurious trappings of the breakfast-room to his own. He dropped 
 his first indolent intent, and went a step forward to g^ve the lad 
 his hand, expressing sincere pleasure at seeing him. Fred, to 
 divert the conversation from himself, plunged into the object of 
 his visit. 
 
 " I came in only to say that I had seen the Grimstones. They 
 are charming. I got a note yesterday inviting me to dine with 
 them at the Clarendon. I went last night. Miss Grimstone is 
 
5° 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 delightful, simple — no pretense, no lady-loftiness nor fuss. The 
 old lady is very reserved, but must be a saint — at least she looks 
 it. Indeed, unless she were, I don't see how she could endure 
 Grimstone. He did his best to be agreeable to me, but I could 
 fancy all the time that he was wondering at my right to live with- 
 out the possession of a milhon. They spoke of you — Miss Grim- 
 stone did, that is. Old Grim never alluded to you. She said — Miss 
 Grim — ^that she would be happy to have you call." 
 
 Archy lifted his eyebrows : " I'm just sitting down to break- 
 fast ; join me. Let us demolish the Grims with a bird." 
 
 " Oh, dear, no ! I couldn't think of intruding on such grand- 
 eur. I don't think I should know how to manage your articles 
 de luxe. Isn't that the way you'd speak of them in French ? " 
 and Fred, half laughing, half sighing, sank down in the place con- 
 secrated by Prince Rupert himself, as he afterward described it. 
 
 "Don't be silly, gentle boy, whom wisdom vidll never make 
 knowing, nor the world a help to himself. Sit there, sip your 
 coffee, and mingle, with the mastication of R^n6's best-cooked 
 bird, your finest phrase to paint the gracious Grim person. Come, 
 tell me — ^is she pretty? Is she comme il fautf " 
 
 Fred held the fragrant cup to his lips, and said, meditatively : 
 " No, she is not pretty. Her figure is awkward, her arms long. 
 I was going to say her feet are large, but I didn't see them ; how- 
 ever, as her hands are large and honest, her feet must follow the 
 rule in anatomy. But her eyes — well, I never saw a gazelle, so I 
 can't say they are like a gazelle's ; but I can say they are like a 
 cow's." 
 
 Archy found his seat too contracted to contain the explosion 
 of laughter this naive comparison eUcited. 
 
 " You needn't laugh. If you had ever been on a farm and 
 looked into the eye of a contemplative cow — " 
 
 Another outburst of laughter brought Fred's original descrip- 
 tion to a halt. 
 
 " Don't mind me, my unconquerable child of nature. I don't 
 know much about cows' eyes, it is true, but, in all my catholic 
 range of reading, I never before heard a maid's eyes compared 
 with the bovine's." (Archy had evidently forgotten his Homer— 
 
A CHAPTER FROM CHESTERFIELD. 51 
 
 ^oujTif iroTvm 'Hp7 — or was, perhaps, testing Fred's familiarity 
 with the classics.) 
 
 " The more's the pity. I can tell you, from a long study of 
 them, there's nothing in the way of eyes so solemnly beautiful as 
 the eyes of a contented cow." 
 
 " Let us hope that content may be the lot of the cow for the 
 sake of the eye. But go on ; the Grim has other artless charms, 
 no doubt." 
 
 " Well, her eyes, as I was going to say, are hazel, soft, deep, 
 and large — so large, that they seem to hide the upper part of their 
 circle under the most shapely curve of the brow." 
 
 "Poor thing, what "trouble she must have with them! We 
 must invent a plan to get her forehead raised." 
 
 " Well, I won't go on. You're in a derisive mood, and I won't 
 have such sweetness and goodness made a mock through my 
 blundering. Just wait till you see her : you'll adore her — mark 
 the prediction ! If I had a million, I'd make love to her " — and 
 Fred poured out and swallowed a bumper of Burgundy as a pres- 
 ent compensation for the unattainable bliss which the lack of a 
 million ent^ed. 
 
 " Yes," said Archy, pensively, " millions mate with millions. I 
 know of many who have scuttled the bark of love on that rock." 
 
 " Grimstone ? ", 
 
 "Yes; he rules his daughter as he rules his railways. He 
 holds the string of the house-latch, and pulls only when millions 
 knock. Heigh-ho ! " Archy paced the small space between the 
 window and the table abstractedly, but, suddenly reminded that 
 he was not alone, he sat down again, asking : 
 
 " Now tell me about yourself : what have you been doing since 
 you quit the ' Atlas ' ? " 
 
 " I have done no regular work " — there was a gulping sound 
 in the poor lad's throat, and he grew very white. " I have done 
 pretty well with sketches for the periodicals, and space-work for 
 the dailies. I'm thinking of going to Valedo soon. I have a pro- 
 posal to edit the ' Eagle ' there, and I fancy I shall accept." 
 
 " I think it would be an excellent thing for you.- In this city 
 journalism is overcrowded, as well, as overworked. The rewards 
 
52 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 are small, because the really desirable places are few. But the best 
 of them aren't worth holding. There's Blackdaw : he gets seven 
 thousand a year. For the same labor and anxiety, with the same 
 talents and acquirements, he could easily make fifty thousand, and 
 give up labor at a. reasonable age. To-morrow, if the ' Atlas ' 
 - happened to miss some important news, the stockholders would 
 kick him out, as they have kicked out a half-dozen of his prede- 
 cessors. A man must own his own journal to take true joy in the 
 profession. ,'Then he is really what the world believes him, the 
 master of his pen, the independent reflex of the approved senti- 
 ments of the society he admires. As it is, the editor has no more 
 to do with making the opinion of his paper than the printer who 
 sets up the type. Wall Street, Washington, social coteries, the 
 manipulating few — these really control the pens and administer 
 the brains of the brilliant men who make up the majority of the 
 workers on the New York press. I wouldn't take the editorship 
 of the most influential journal in the Union unless I owned it, or 
 controlled it indisputably." 
 
 Fred was about to add his own testimony to this gloomy view, 
 but wisely halted on second thought. He would only be con- 
 demning Blackdaw by exposing his own wrongs, and he knew 
 that Archy was sword and shield vyith him. 
 
 " Yes, I think I shall go in a few weeks. I shall be at home, 
 you know? Valedo has a great future, I am told." ■ 
 
 " Besides, you'll be a neighbor to our damosel with the won- 
 drous eyes — eh?" 
 
 " Oh, as for that, I shall trouble myself very little about her." 
 
 " By-the-way, what are the politics of the ' Eagle ' ? " 
 
 " Ultrocrat, when I take hold." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! you can't stand that — it would damn you ; you 
 couldn't enter a decent door in Valedo. Here it is different ; most 
 of the old families were brought up in the traditions of that party, 
 and the portraits of Jefferson and Jackson are the only works of 
 art that adorn their ancient halls. But in a community like Valedo, 
 settled by Western New-Yorkers and New-Englanders, the party 
 is only another name for the ruff-scuff, the foreigners, and all 
 manner of objectionable folk. No, no, my boy, you must decline 
 
A CHAPTER FROM CHESTERFIELD. 53 
 
 that ; with your capacities and energy you can find congenial 
 employment where you: may be identified with the Optimate. 
 That is bound to be the party for this country for the next fifty 
 years. It. has all the money, all the churches, all the elan of 
 assured caste." ; ; ; 
 
 "It is partly because it has much of these that I fear and 
 loathe it. I wouldn't be a member of that party any more than I 
 would be a Bonapaitist in France, a Junker in Germany, or a. 
 Tory in England. Why, Hilliard, if half you've written in the 
 'Atlas' be true, the. party is led by a gang of moral lepers — not a 
 man among them honest, virtuous, decent, or sincere. Most of the 
 great patriots, we revered as young men have turned into the 
 Ultrocrat ranks as the only hope for the future. It was your ovsti 
 exposure of the odious means by which the party has held and 
 is holding itself in power, that first shook my faith in it. My own 
 experience," he added quietly, "has shown me that you have not 
 told half its turpitude." : \. ;. 1 _; ,. 
 
 " Hey-day, young man ! it is to correct not to kill, the party that 
 we are leeching it. You will see it reformed by-and-by. You must 
 not take politics in earnest ; much of the hectoring we do is only 
 ^o«r r?>»,ias they^say.in France."_ _ .. , :.: -r- 
 
 " They^ are true words, spoken in jest if they are pour rire, 
 and I will never;again uphold- a party that I know to be ruled 
 by secret, sinister, and anti-American methods and principles." 
 
 At this moment the waiter handed his master a card. 
 
 "Say that lAvill be with him presently," and Archy bade Fred 
 to be in no hurry ; but the young man arose,, saying : 
 
 . " I may as well say good-by now, as I shall not probably see 
 you again. When you hear of me next it will be as editor of 
 the 'Eagle.'" 
 
 " Well, good luck to you, and bad luck to the ' Eagle,' though 
 you're just the man to make it scream loud enough for the whole 
 continent to grow familiar with its music." Leading the way, 
 laughing, the youthful sage bade the friend, that had given him 
 the chance for fame and fortune, a gay and careless adieu, neither 
 thinking nor caring whether they should ever meet again. Fred 
 crossed over under the shimmering foliage of the park, caring as 
 
54 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 little. He felt like cursing himself for breaking bread and salt 
 with the " insolent parvenu," as he called Archy between his teeth. 
 But Fred, no more than the favored who came in contact with that 
 gay, masterful, insidiously domineering personality, thought of 
 prepossessions when Archy 's syllabub seductions were in his ears, 
 and the irresistible manner exerted even in the slightest. He had 
 really consented to cany Miss Grimstone's message, as a sort of 
 . final assertion of equality with the eagle he had known wingless. 
 But instead of a messenger of greatness, he had been turned into 
 a creature of ridicule, a booby flung between the ermine of beauty 
 and the purple of power. He had one satisfaction — he had told 
 the upstart but half the story. He had withheld Miss Grimstone's 
 kind apology for her father's brusquerie, and her hope that Mr. 
 Hilliard would give her a chance to show him that his admirable 
 conduct was sympathetically appreciated by her, before the world 
 found that from him anything else would be impossible ! Fred sat 
 under the trees and exulted in this artless treason, as he saw the 
 victim of it trip down the brovm-stone steps with Blackdaw and 
 saunter toward Fifth Avenue. 
 
 He had grown graver and paler since we saw him last. His 
 loss of place was a continual nightmare. At first he thought 
 people stared at him in the street, with intention, to mark the man 
 disgraced for bribery ; for even had the " Atlas " been loyal, the 
 charge was taken up with malignant delight in the columns of all 
 the " Atlas's " rivals, and flaccid sarcasm poured upon the " aesthetic 
 organ of purity and reform," as the medium of Fred's downfall 
 was derisively styled. 
 
 Levison, the editor of the "Janus," the chief rival of the 
 " Atlas," who hated Blackdaw with passionate hatred, wrote the 
 miserable young man to call on him : he had something to propose. 
 Fred resolved to reject any offer of employment on the journal, but 
 went nevertheless. He had never met this editor, but in common 
 with the craft had greatly admired him, until Sanders's scorch- 
 ing daylight had revealed his vicious methods. Levison was adored 
 in his journal. His manners were in strong contrast with his rival 
 Blackdaw's. The latter was a disciplinarian, carrying his autocracy 
 to the most capricious, martinetism. Levison practiced the faux 
 
A CHAPTER PROM CHESTERFIELD. 55 
 
 bonhomme. He was affable, equal, and in no sense impersonal. 
 He was as familiar with the humble reporters in the city room as 
 he was condescendingly confidential in the editorial council. He 
 welcomed Fred with effusive warmth, talked lightly of the " Janus " 
 and its destinies, and then added, when he thought the young man 
 captivated : 
 
 " I have sent for you, Mr. Carew to offer you an engagement. 
 Of course, until this unlucky scrape has blown over, you can't be 
 openly placed on the corps. That, however, need make no differ- 
 ence either in pay or appreciation. What I propose is this : we 
 want to expose the hollowness of the ' Atlas ' fellows, and show 
 the country that the present attitude of the paper is a black- 
 mailing scheme, craftily calculated to intimidate General ;Ajax, 
 who, being no politician, may have made some mistakes, as we 
 were the first to point out, in the interests of the party, not our 
 own. Now, what we want from you, and what I'm convinced 
 3-ou can do better than any other man in the profession, is to write 
 a series of scorching sketches of the • Atlas ' editor and his inspiring 
 influences. You must have seen the rabble of self-seekers that 
 haunt the place. To your own observation I can add. copious 
 notes, for we have had Blackdaw, Hilliard, and the Chief writers 
 under close espionage for months. We have already enough 
 verified data to damn the influence of the journal, and destroy 
 Blackdaw's standing as a man. Hilliard^, however, harder to 
 get at. I am told that you were his sponsor on the 'Atlas.' Now, 
 if we could lay our hands on the -source of his present puzzling 
 prosperity, we should spike his guns. He seems to have gp-own 
 rich in a week. Senator Killgore declares that his people are 
 merely well to do, and that, the four years Hilliard was his secre- 
 tary, he lived on his wages, fifty dollars per month. There is a 
 future for you, and after the election an assurance of a consulship 
 abroad ! if you prefer that to give time for the scandal to blow 
 over." 
 
 Fred had learned something from his late miserable experience, 
 and he had sufficient address to conceal his abhorrence of the man, 
 as, leaning back in his revolving-chair, he waved a colossal ivory 
 paper-cutter to an inaudible strain : 
 
56 THE MONEY-MAKERS^ 
 
 " You are immensely kind, Mr. Levison, but I'm not at liberty 
 to accept the proposition. I have about concluded arrangements 
 to go to Valedo. I am offered charge of the 'Eagle.' The pay 
 is good, the work congenial, and my folks live there." 
 
 " But the paper is Ultrocratic in politics. Surely you don't 
 belong to that detestable party ? " exclaimed the editor in ungov- 
 ernable astonishment. Fred laughed. 
 
 " Yes, sir, I'm a convert to that faith, and shall do my best to 
 make its candidates win, and its principles the conviction of the 
 people." 
 
 " Ah ! well, in that case, of course, we could make no arrange- 
 ment. The ' Janus ' couldn't have any one of that faith nourished 
 on its revenues," and the moralist resumed his pen as a signal that 
 the conference was closed. Fred laughed softly to himself as he 
 groped his way dowm the dark stairs. Only a few years before, 
 Levison had been an Ultrocrat, and taken part in the councils of 
 its candidates ! 
 
 The young man began to conceive a shuddering fear of this 
 rapacious, malign power that he had but a few months before 
 regarded as the safeguard of morals, religion, and order. His 
 own reputation had been blasted by a man steeped, on his own 
 confession, in the very helotry of vice ; he had just been shown 
 the artifices by which reputation might be smirched by whole- 
 sale, and the victims helpless as himself to rectify or mitigate the 
 wrong. As he was turning into Broadway, some one slapped 
 him familiarly on the shoulder, while a hearty and kindly voice 
 said: 
 
 " Carew, my dear fellow, why haven't you been to see me ? I 
 never knew you had left us until a week after you had gone. I 
 would have hunted you up, but I have been busy getting out my 
 book, revising proofs, and )rielding myself supinely to the tyranny 
 of the press." 
 
 " Ah ! Rivers, you're the first man that's given me a hand-shake 
 in the old way. God bless you ! " and Fred became speechless 
 under the reaction. Rivers took his arm and said jovially : 
 
 " It's about lunch-time ; come into Mouquin's, and let us talk 
 over our troubles." He led the way, and, entering the restaurant 
 
A CHAPTER. FROM CHESTERFIELD. 
 
 57 
 
 from the Ann Street side, mounted to one of the more secluded 
 tables on the second floor, i I , ; - ; '_: : -. :- 
 
 " You loolc pale and depressed ; we'll try some wine while; the 
 quails are browning. \X\%Titenrigle according;to the rubric i of 
 iht gourmets, but when the heart is heavy the wits are duUj we'll 
 try what ameliorating effect some white Chambertin will have on 
 us." „ . ■_.. u ...;,■, L-'.v ; .! ,•■:-;.:/ _-^ :;. - -;'-:!75:r.-,r 
 
 Rivers was in those , days, as he is still, one of the. prominent 
 
 jnenjn, hisiprofession.r.>cHe,was.fortyrfive, hale, and unmarried." 
 Until.Hilliard's .novel audacity, sparkling epigrams, and lucid illus- 
 trations:blazed.out inthe .columns. of Jhe'':JVtlas,"Rivers's, was the 
 most conspicuous iworfcionthe New York.'press.^-.iHis attainments 
 were remarkablCiHe added to them a varied and wide .observation; 
 He had been a correspondent during the campaigns of ithe civil 
 war, . and. for ajtime, confidential, ,secret4ry. of.the foremost states^ 
 man of.the epoch.-rHe. Ifliew .men and ^parties intimately,; and 
 could have .been, had there been a fiber of infidelity in iiis: robust ■ 
 manliness, rich, and officially high placed, r; He was.a patriarch in 
 appearance, as compared with the yoUnger men then .universally 
 employed in journalism. ., 'He was the helper.of the' unfortunate, 
 the friend of the'friendless,3the purseiof the!needy, the guide of 
 the stumbling.i^tHis,.mildiblue.,eyes were the-:joy,'of;the work- 
 room, sand his Jieartymonotone.gave reassurance to many -a timid 
 novice, sweltering. iin; the agony .of untrained and unrecogiiized 
 aptitudes. :-,He.had;Come .to the:" Atlas" some time after 'Fred's 
 engagement there, and had taken pains to find him but, arid comr 
 pliment his report concerning a notorious criminal in the interior of 
 the State. ^ -He was tireless in good; offices of this sort, and many 
 a,.man, now enjo3ring the best rewards of the profession, owes to 
 Rivers's solicitous insight his first recognition in journalism. He 
 had known Blackdaw in the West when he was a local reporter, 
 
 . and the two, though 'not intimate in their new relations, were on 
 very cordial terms. : ,..-•, ' - ..■ ;'. 
 
 Thesucch/(>u.wonhy.HWiardha.d rather eclipsed the com- 
 manding rank Rivers had held in .the office, but he was a far better 
 journalist than his rival, and ^his work, though not so dazzling, was 
 more indispensable in the conduct of such a journal as the "Atlas." 
 
58 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Let me begin, my son,'' he broke out cheerily, as the two 
 sipped their wine, •' by saying that I consider your treatment das- 
 tardly. I told Blackdaw so ; you know his answer ? To that I 
 said, it was the duty of the powerful to protect the weak, doubly a 
 duty when the weak have been borne down in their employ. I 
 offered to get him testimony, proving the venality and untrust- 
 worthiness of Sanders, on whose word alone the charges against 
 you rest. But he declared that while he believed the facts as you 
 set them forth were true, the ' Atlas ' couldn't afford to assume 
 any new burdens. The fight against it issomething unheard of 
 ■^^the Administration is bound to break it down. Its mail edition 
 is almost ^mnihUated. The postmasters throw the copies passing 
 through their hands into the furnace bylons. The office in New 
 York has permitted the 'Janus' to station forces of clerks in the 
 distributing bureau at night, who copy the addresses from the 
 ' Atlas ' virrappers, clap them on the ' Janus,' and send them to our 
 subscribers. Gradgrind's journal, vtrith the odious caricatures of 
 that clever scamp Schmtitz, is substituted in the same way for our 
 weekly edition. We only found it out when hundreds of inquir- 
 ies came to the office, asking why the • Atlas ' was no longer re- 
 ceived. It is a fight of two hundred thousand office-holders 
 and two hundred millions of corporation money against one jour- 
 nal ; if Blackdaw pulls through he vnSH be the greatest man since 
 Mirabeau, for the same influences are opposing him that con- 
 fronted the French anarch : you can see he is forced into this 
 cowardice and chicane." 
 
 10 ■" It's vvorse than that," interrupted Fred, hotly; " it is aiding 
 and upholding black-maiUng ; it is stamping out the honor of 
 journalism; and, mark my words, the crime will return upon 
 Blackdaw.himself." 
 
 - " Oh, as for that, all you can say I agree to. Blackdaw is a 
 man of profound calculation. He is, I think, without exception, 
 the most self-engrossed nature I ever saw. He has set his heart 
 on money and power, and he will have them, just as surely as 
 you or I will never have them. No man or woman that can't 
 help his ambition is of interest to him. Thanks to Hilliard, he is 
 gradually solidif jing his relations with the clique that controls the 
 
A CHAPTER FROM CHESTERFIELD. 59 
 
 fortunes of this country, and before ten years he will own the 
 ' Atlas,' and use the executive chair at Washington as a footstool. 
 
 However, these are abstractions that don't concern us. I want- 
 ed to see you to tell you that young Morton has broken down at 
 the night-desk on the ' Tomahawk,' and is going on a vacation. ■ I 
 wrote to Magnan, the editor, so soon as 1 heard it, asking him to 
 give you the place until Morton can build up. Night editors are 
 killed on an average of one every two years, and, of course, you 
 would only accept it temporarily. ■ But it would bring you under 
 the eye of Magnan, whom I regard as the ablest manager and 
 most accomplished man in the profession. He will see you ; land 
 he is an unerring judge of men. He is chivalrous, as he. is 'an-' 
 trepid. He will see the inhuman cruelty that has been done you, 
 and he will fly full tilt at all the millions in Wall Street until you 
 have been vindicated. He has the reputation of unscrupulousness, 
 and the ' Tomahawk ' is hated as much as it is feared. - But he. 
 is a man of conscientious conviction^,' and an ineztinguishable-ha- .: 
 tred of shams and the oppr^sions of the weak. His hearty con- 
 tempt for Blackdaw, and his perpetual i<ulleiy of the 'Adas,' are 
 proof that he won't be slow in seizing this opportunity to disclose 
 the hjrpocrisy of the one and the cowardice'of the other." 1" b ,Tfr.. 
 
 Straightway after this conversation, Fred,- armed with a let- 
 ter from 'Rivers, presented himself to the mighty Magnan. ' ,He 
 found him partitioned off in the comer of a vast upper floor in a' 
 16ft that covered the whole building. There was none of the cere- 
 monial observed in other offices,-and the young man was ushered 
 into the editorial presence on' the mere presentation of his card.' 
 Magnan, did not look up at first, but plunged into the business 
 without preliminaty. He asked the applicant what he had done 
 on the "Atlas," what he could do for the "Tomahawk," and, 
 being briefly answered, finally leaned back, studying Fred from 
 under shaggy, reddish eyebrows ; apparently satisfied •with the 
 scrutiny, he said, rather abruptly: !> . -i! : 
 
 " Very good ; go out in the street and write us a column ";on 
 the first thing that interests you — no adjectives, no parentheses, 
 no fine writing, no gush, no sentiment, just the thing that inter- 
 ests you as you see it Hand the copy to Mr. Pine, in the next 
 
6o THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 room. Good-day.'' As Fred reached the door, he was arrested 
 by this final admonition : 
 
 " Don't forget, young man, that a joke sticks longer than a 
 curse ; this is an age of jokes," and, with a roar of laughter, the 
 grisly Democritus plunged into his papers again. : - 
 
 i;i Fredas contributions to the "Tomahawk" were received and 
 printed without emendation or alteration ; a fact Squeeze, the sub- 
 editor, informed him, hitherto unknown in the annals of the journal. 
 • The pay was handsome, and the work less exacting than office- 
 writing. So far as money went, Fred's fortunes were greatly bet- 
 tered:by the change from the " Atlas.'.' Instead of the thirty dol- 
 lars'; salary per week, he now averaged sixty and seventy-five dol- 
 lars.^ ■ He wrote with amazing facility, and flooded the periodicals 
 with sketches arid short stories.' His humorous vignettes in the 
 '.'-Tomahawk " achieved a success hardly less striking than Hil- 
 Batd's'work in tlie " Atlas "; but he could not reap any personal 
 gloiy from them, as Magnan insisted on the profoundest anonymity, 
 until his agents at<work unraveling' the plot that had ruined 
 Fred had -made ready their report. It was not, he knew very 
 well, any Quixotic purpose of restoring his reputation that influ- 
 enced Magnan. I The incident would expose the men ruling the 
 Optimate, and incidentally illustrate the shaUowmess of the "At- 
 las's ■'. pretensions to sincerity. The young man's cleverness, 
 however, gained him the strong good- will of the editor; and what 
 was begun as a journalistic enterprise was in the end directed to 
 compelling restitution to the victim. Magnan was as generous in 
 his praise of -his new collaborator as he had been nigged in prom- 
 ises; and Fred deserved all the praise he got He had a shrewd 
 humor and quick wit . He had read a great deal, and needed 
 observation only to give his work balance. His style lacked the 
 ample and pregnant illustrations that illumined Hilliard's impetu- 
 ous periods. Nor could his work compare in the delicate aroma 
 of humor and learning displayed in Hilliard's ; but in vigor and 
 force he often eclipsed him. New York, however, was intolerable 
 to him. He felt miserably alone even in Broadway. His lodg- 
 ings grevir. hateful. He resented the kindly-meant inquiries of 
 friends as covert allusions to his disgrace. His old friend. Ma- 
 
A GOLDEN MEAN. 6l 
 
 dame Leandre, pleaded with him in vain to come to her ; she 
 knew his misery, and believed with all her kind-heartedness in his 
 spotlessness. She forbade her salons to one of the potentialities 
 of the press who casually alluded to Fred's downfall as an ex- 
 ample of the lengths to which the reigning thirst for sudden 
 wealth was cairymg the younger generation. She wrote a letter 
 of ten pathetic pages to Blackdaw, vindicating her darling, of 
 which, alas ! that great man took note only of the lurid underscor- 
 ing and frenzied punctuation. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 A GOLDEN MEAN. 
 
 Whatever her motive. Miss Grimstone was plainly bent on 
 impressing Fred that she counted the July incident as a claim upon 
 her good-will. The day after he had delivered her indirect mes- 
 sage to the journalistic Autochthon, a pretty note, crested and 
 perfumed, came, bidding, him to dinner enfamille, and the opera 
 afterward. His first impulse was to refuse, as he was in no frame 
 of mind for gayety or the conspicuity such association would 
 give him in the polite world. He knew of no decent pretext for 
 refusal, however, and reluctantly obeyed. He was welcomed with 
 puzzling graciousness by the mother and daughter. Even Grim- 
 stone — the head of the house, who came in while the soup was 
 serving — gave him the clammy ends of four fingers, in sign of 
 toleration, if not welcome. There was another guest, evidently 
 unexpected by the ladies, and whose person was unmistakably 
 antipathetic to Miss Grimstone. Fred was startled by this pres- 
 ence when he heard the name McKay Dorr, for, though the most 
 audacious captain in the army of money-makers, his name was 
 held up to public hatred and abhorrence for the methods he had 
 invented to amass his millions. 
 
 He was a man whose age was difficult to guess, but he was 
 generally set down as forty-eight or fifty. Sometimes he looked 
 
62 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 five years less, when his affairs went well ; at others he would 
 have passed for Salathiel. His small gray eyes were absolutely 
 expressionless, and it was only by the wrinkling of the loose folds 
 of flesh rolled under his eyebrows that any emotion could be dis- 
 covered, whether of pleasure or of pain. It would be impossible, 
 however, to associate pain with that passionless face, and Dorr 
 passed as a. sphinx in whose brain reposed the secret of trans- 
 muting bankrupt railways and white paper into gold. He was 
 sometimes called a " railway-wrecker "; but it was observed that 
 the wrecks were magically rehabilitated when the controlling 
 shares passed into his hands. He had come to New York, no one 
 knew exactly when, nor distinctly how long before. He was at 
 first identified with a picturesque steamboat enterprise, intended to 
 rival the railway lines to Iberia. His associate in this venture 
 was, in his day, the joy of the comic caricaturists and the delight 
 of journalistic satirists. His preternatural address in manipulating 
 men, stocks, law-makers, and courts brought him the alliance of 
 the financial interests of the land — partly because his peculiar 
 genius was needed to further the stupendous schemes contem- 
 plated, and partly because he was a ruinous enemy. Grimstone, 
 whose vast interests were more and more centering in New York, 
 found this impassive tactician blocking him at nearly every vital 
 point, and, finding that he could not be frightened, bullied, or 
 cajoled, he had frankly joined forces. A stupendous scheme for 
 a third rail to the Rocky Mountains was at that time resolved on 
 by Grimstone. His recent trip to Europe had been on that busi- 
 ness, while Dorr, potent in Congress and Legfislature, had been 
 arranging and manipulating franchises. 
 
 In spite of Miss Grimstone's vivacities, the dinner was not gay ; 
 Moloch doesn't count the festive amenities among the versatilities 
 conferred by opulence. 
 
 The crude display which follows as the first token of self-made 
 wealth had not at that time been worn down by the attrition of 
 foreign travel and aristocratic imitation. That reflux of English 
 repose and French ease, which now mark the opulent interior of 
 New York, were then just in the bud of their present fine flower. 
 Newport was then a watering-place, not a Mecca of the social 
 
A GOLDEN MEAN. 
 
 63 
 
 elect. Very tolerable people could pass the summer in the hotels, 
 and suffer no mark of being diclassi. After the introductory nod 
 at Fred, Dorr never addressed him a word, and his attentions to 
 Mrs. and Miss Grimstone were of the most perfunctory brevity. 
 The conversation divided the two parties as completely as if they 
 had been a casual company at a public table d'ASte. 
 
 Dorr and his host talked in low, half-whispered monosyllables 
 on the pending enterprise, using initials when it became necessary 
 to mention names, quite as if the others at the table were irksome 
 impediments to unrestrained talk. ' s- . 
 
 Eleanor and her mother, however, masked this unmeant, rude- 
 ness by assiduoxis attention and friendly cordiality. They -made 
 Fred feel himself a personage at the board, in spite of his exclu- 
 sion from the conversation of the host and the preoccupation of the 
 millionaire. It didn't need much tact to distract Fred from the 
 engrossed financiers ; both men were repellent to him. The ladies, 
 on the other hand, won him completely. , Mother and daughter 
 bore a striking resemblance. Mrs. Grimstone was the counterpart 
 of her daughter, whose physical and mental heritage, it could be 
 seen at a glance, was all from the maternal side. The high cheek- 
 bones, brilliant -color, tall form, and willowy outlines of ■ the 
 daughter, were exaggerated in the somewhat faded face, sunken 
 eyes, and attenuated figure of the mother. The eye had the same 
 kindly hazel softness and luminous ;depth; the mouth, the same 
 irregular largeness and piquancy of curve ; the lips, the same ripe 
 redness ;' the teeth, the same definite regularity and whiteness. 
 Mrs. Grimstone was over fifty; and the velvet scarlet of her 
 daughter's cheek had intensified into an almost hectic biilliancy. 
 It was generally believed that she rouged ; this, however, was 
 owing- to her Southern training, where it is popularly held that 
 all women employ the artifices of the toilet, until recently used 
 only in enhancing the charms of the beauties of the stage. 
 Mother and daughter exhibited markedly their adored Kentucky 
 origin by the seductive and familiar friendliness of manner pecul- 
 iar to that region. ■ " 
 
 Mrs. Gnmstone's voice was pitched in an irregular key — 
 in the artificial tones remarked in Southern people. She was 
 
64 THE. MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 adorned, too, in the taste of her girlhood. A profusion of jewels 
 sparkled upon her large- jointed, lemon-colored fingers, and shone 
 out of the still massy tresses of her deeply black hair. The gems 
 were remarkable rather for the lack of aesthetic congruity than 
 beauty. Garnets were predominant. They glistened :with a dull 
 luster on her throat, corsage, wrists, and hair, vividly. suggestive 
 of an oriental sultana, emphasizing her fading charms under a 
 mask of precious amulets. Her gown was of the same rococo 
 taste — deep wine-color, smothered in billows of fragile Spanish 
 lace. Elea'nor's apparel preserved the same tone, less the exag- 
 geration. Diamond and sapphire vied with the glistening of garnets 
 in her hair, on her white bodice, on her bare arms, in the twisted 
 folds of the black Spanish lace, that fell in irregular breadths from 
 her shoulders to her feet. The shimmer of her shining white 
 gown, under the exquisite fabrics, gave her the effect of an 
 odalisque, transplanted from the harem, to figure as a fine lady 
 for an hour ! . It would not have been surprising, at any moment, 
 to see the encumbering lace slip off, and the voluptuous figure, 
 poised in the middle of the room, moving to the sensuous strain of 
 the dulcimer. - . ' ■ 
 
 "Daughter, you must excuse Dorr; we have a directors'. meet- 
 ing at eight o'clock,"; said Mr. Grimstone, as the coffee came. 
 Fred thought that neither of the ladies looked severely discon- 
 certed at this announcement ; and when, a few minutes afterward, 
 the two financiers withdrew, the access of gayety in Miss 
 Grimstone's tone and manners convinced him that Dorr was 
 peciiliarly odious to her. 
 
 "Since you are left alone, Mr. Carew, we shall insist on 
 remaining while you sip your liqueur and smoke. I wouldn't 
 mind a cigarette myself, but mamma pretends to be scandalized 
 at the idea of a girl smoking ; though, I'm sure, in our own dear 
 old Louisville, I know the most charming old grand-dames who 
 smoke. Indeed, smoking is very common among old ladies, at 
 least in the South." 
 
 " I shouldn't mind the smoking at all, Mr. Carew," rejoined 
 Mrs. Grimstone ; " but the habit isn't one that refined ladies in 
 this country approve. One of the first recollections I have was 
 
A GOLDEN MEAN. 
 
 6S 
 
 my gp-andmother in the chimney-comer, in the old plantation 
 days, with a long pipe ; possibly I shall smoke myself when I'm 
 old ; for you must know, sir, that I don't regard myself as an old 
 woman, even with such a big girl as Nell by my side." 
 
 " Oh ! dear, no, Mr. Carew ; if you want to hold mamma's good 
 graces, you must pay homage to her charms, not her virtues ; she- 
 is my only rival — ^that is, the only one that gives me concern "; and 
 Nell took her mother's hand and kissed it. 
 
 " I spoil my children. By-and-by, when Nell forgets herself, 
 you'll hear her calling me ' Dick.' When she was a child she 
 heard my sister calling me Delia, and as she lisped the name it 
 settled into Dick, and Dick she calls me to this day." 
 
 " I didn't know you had other children, Mrs. Grimstone," said 
 Fred, flattered by the intimacy into which he was so familiarly 
 admitted. 
 
 " Yes ; I have a son younger than Nell — ^Herbert. He gradu- 
 ates at Harvard this year." 
 
 ■" And he's a very charming fellow, Mr. Carew, and you and 
 he shall become great friends. He's coming to-morrow," said 
 Nell,. as she rose; and, taking down an imperial photograph from 
 its rest, handed it to the visitor. " There's a family resemblance, 
 doti'tyou think; in everything but the eyes, which are steel-gray, 
 like papa's.? He favors our side of the house— the Kentucky 
 blood,' that is." 
 
 " Yes, I think I should know him for your brother, and your 
 mother's son ; he has the same contour of face." 
 
 " Our large bones ? No ; his hands are beautifully small, and 
 he can wear my shoes, though he is as tall as I am ; and you'd 
 never mistrust he wasn't an aristocrat. He takes after our Puri- 
 tan ancestors, "^ said Nell, laughing mischievously at her mother, 
 who looked comically, shocked. 
 
 " A Grimstone can dispense with lineage in these days of self- 
 made princes," said Fred, unconscious of any satiric signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 " That's what Mr. Grimstone says," rejoined the elder lady, 
 with an approving, swan-like inclination of the head, regarding 
 Fred with interest. 
 4 
 
66 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " There, Mr. Carew, you've touched the bolt of the door that 
 hides this family's skeleton ! " 
 
 " Nell ! " There was a shade of reprimand in the tone. 
 
 "Yes, mamma; I'm indiscreet before a stranger. Never 
 inind, you may put me on bread and wrater as a penance. — But, 
 you know, Mr. Carew, I don't look on you as a stranger. I've 
 known you a year." 
 
 " You're a sadly indulged girl, and no end of worry to your 
 mother," interrupted the elder lady. " Come and get ready — ^we 
 shall be late as it is. — Mr. Carew, you can have your cigar to your- 
 self for a few minutes. You'll find the magazines and illustrated 
 journals on the shelves ; and, pray, make yourself comfortable." 
 
 When the ladies returned, Fred's eyes looked the approval he 
 did not feel at liberty to openly express. 
 
 " Shall we do } " asked Eleanor, with a pretty affectation of 
 demureness. " Shall you feel like a city cavalier with two ouiri 
 country cousins ? " 
 
 f - " You are ravishing. Miss Grimstone ; you will ruin Nilsson's 
 • Mignon ' by your sultana splendor," said Fred, quite sincerely. 
 
 " And, mamma, isn't she the ideal of a duchess ? Did you ever 
 see such an air ? " 
 
 "You wicked girl, mocking your own mother! Unnatural 
 child!" 
 
 " Indeed, Miss Nell's quite right," said Fred ; " I shall feel 
 that the audience is speculating on you as royalty incognito," and 
 Fred's eyes attested that he was willing to believe that she was a 
 veritable duchess ; though, as he had never seen a duchess, the 
 concession was not so flattering as it seemed to the elder beauty, 
 who, however, was plainly very well satisfied. 
 
 That his hostess was no stranger in the city, the incessant 
 salutations from all over the house, so soon as she was seated in 
 the box, proved. Both ladies began to compare notes, and Fred 
 heard the names of many of the people who figured at the charity- 
 balls and social events, requiring adventitious methods to give 
 them the sort of iclat requisite to captivate the coteries more en 
 hiidence socially. It was Nilsson's first season, and " Mignon's " 
 first night. Besides the critical thousands who filled the great 
 
A GOLDEN mean: 
 
 67 
 
 hemicycle, intent more on the music than the fashion, the boxes 
 were crowded with the well-bred mob, who seize the opera as an 
 occasion for display and social conquest. There was a tumult of 
 rapturous whispering that drowned the overture until the curtain 
 arose on Ambrose Thomas's masterpiece. So soon as the etiir- 
 acte came, a score of young men appeared in the box to pay 
 homage to the " Western Rose," as Miss Grimstone was nick- 
 named at the clubs. . Fred watched the interchange of compli- 
 ments and rather callow banter, wondering if vapidity and' lan- 
 guid inanity were really the highest expression of wealth and 
 refined surrounding^. He was particularly amused at the utter 
 ignoring of his own presence by the groups that came and went. 
 The stare bestowed upon him was saved from superciliousness 
 only by its fleeting brevity. He wondered if the ladies remarked 
 it ; but he couldn't decide. They were kept constantly in conver- 
 sation, and he was glad when the crash of the music preluded the 
 rising curtain ag^n. He had not given mother or daughter credit 
 for the finesse shown in keeping each group in movement, and he 
 began to suspect that Nell was not the artless child of nature her 
 naiveti at the dinner had led him to believe her to be. 
 
 The change that came over her on the withdrawal of her fathet 
 recurred to him. One thing he was sure of: Miss Eleanor was 
 more natural and unreserved when the cold eye of papa was no 
 longer scrutinizing her ; for his absorbed study of the girl gave the 
 impression of something more than mere paternal complacency. 
 When the curtain fell again, the renewal of the imposing train of the 
 society men most in vogue made the box the focus of all the opposite: 
 circles of glasses. The talk was intolerable to Fred, and he was 
 amazed at the patience of the lady in suggesting an interest she 
 did not feel in the commonplaces of her languid adorers. She 
 had asked him to point out Hilliard early in the evening, and he 
 observed that, to whatever point her glasses were directed, they 
 were sure in the end to rest on that group in the segjment of the 
 glittering circle where the social regent sat. He knew that she 
 was waiting for him to propose bringing Hilliard to the box, and 
 he suspected that he had been invited to join the party to do it. 
 But he resolved that, if it were done, his hostess should command 
 
68 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 it unequivocally. Many of the callers mentioned Hilliard's name ; 
 indeed, after the opera and the diva, his extraordinary advent in 
 society was the topic of the time. Escalandre was not yet the 
 staple of small talk even between married persons in public, and 
 the egotistic inanities of the day were not marked by the florid 
 maturity we have since attained. The world of blasi connoisseurs 
 and unfledged petits mattres was confined to the traveled few. 
 German was not an unknown tongue ; but, as now, it was more 
 an inheritance than an accomplishment among the most pushing 
 and dominant in the opulent world. The well-dressed phalanx that 
 pendulates between the Fourteenth Street temple of the Philistines 
 and the Fortieth Street cinack of ^& parvenu were not then to 
 be depended on by the directors to make the gala-night " a go " ; 
 nor could the worried impresario depend upon such an agency 
 to play the part of claque, when fashion, absorbed in itself, neg- 
 lected the stage. We had not in those days so universally sent our 
 sons to England to acquire " form," nor our daughters to France 
 to get chic, and the operatic art was like another — accepted on its 
 merits. 
 
 " Has ' Rupert ' been presented to you. Miss Grimstone ? " 
 asked one of the callers, an artist in renown. 
 
 " No ; I'm dying to meet him. Do you know him ? " 
 
 " I know him very welL ' May I bring him ? " 
 
 " I shall be charmed." She turned to Fred as the artist quit- 
 ted the box, and whispered, archly : " You must help me with that 
 formidable person ; I'm afraid I sha'n't know what to say to a 
 person so clever. Is each phrase an epigram "i " 
 
 Before Fred could reply, the artist appeared, ushering Hilliard. 
 If Miss Grimstone was at all embarrassed, she did not show it. 
 To Fred's great surprise, Archy was unaccountably self-con- 
 scious, or ill at ease. He touched on the common topics like any 
 other worldling — the opera, the weather — ^alluded to the recent 
 return from Europe, and then led the conversation to details of 
 travel on the Continent. He rose to go as the orchestra com- 
 menced, hoping that this was not the last chance he should have 
 to renew the subject. Eleanor inclined her head politely, and 
 turned with a strange light in her eye to watch the stage. 
 
A GOLDEN MEAN. 
 
 69 
 
 " When Herbert comes, Mr. Carew," Nell said, as Fred bade 
 her good-night at the Clarendon, " you must take a friendly inter- 
 est in him. He has but few acquaintances in New York, and he 
 will prize such a man as you." 
 
 Fred was completely mystified. He saw that the girl was 
 perfectly indifferent to him — treated him, in fact, as a cousin, or 
 very familiar friend — but why? He went home perplexed ; and 
 ■was not less amazed when the next day Miss Grimstone's com- 
 pliments came,' with an invitation to drive in the park. She was 
 resolved ito be friendly ; and when, in the course of the drive, Fred 
 tmthinldngly let slip his meditated change to Valedo, she was 
 quite effusive in her delight. 
 
 " It is such a dull place ; nothing but business, no literary 
 men, no artists, notMng but stocks, iron, com, and money-mak- 
 ing. If papa would consent, we should never see the place 
 again." 
 
 " And still you rejoice that my lines are to be cast there? " 
 
 " Oh, you know the adage about misery. Then, when you are 
 there we shall have a literary beginning. You know I have a 
 great idea of your genius, and I expect wonderful things of you." 
 
 " Where did your idea — Surely you know nothing of my 
 writing." 
 
 " Ah ! that's a secret I will tell you, though. I know Madame 
 Leandre, and, before I leave town, I'm going to invite her to dinner 
 with you. She adores you, I suppose you know." 
 
 " I know that she is too indulgent and too kind to me, and that 
 is the only blemish that I know in her," said Fred, laughing. 
 
 " Well, she has commanded me to be good to you, and I am 
 doing my best. Am I succeeding? " 
 
 " Perfectly ; if I were your brother, you could not have been 
 more considerate." 
 
 " By-the-way, Herbert comes to-morrow, and you must come 
 to dinner. I'll send the carriage for you ; no refusal, no excuse. 
 I know your time's your own, and for the present, and because I 
 command it — ^mine." 
 
 She looked at him archly, her cheeks glowing with health, and 
 the most perfect honesty in her hazel eyes. Fred was confounded. 
 
■JO THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 This, then, was the secret — Madame Leandre had busied herself 
 in his behalf. He did not know whether to feel vexed or amused. 
 He was decidedly "taken up " by the Grimstones. Herbert's com- 
 ing was signalized, not by a feast enfamille, as Miss Grimstone 
 had said, but by an elaborate dinner-party, at which Fred met for 
 the first time many of the conspicuous personages of the metro- 
 politan court circle. Herbert exhibited all the exterior resem- 
 blance to his sister his photograph promised; but all that was ex- 
 plicitly frank and obtrusively seductive in her manner took a cast 
 of underbred aplomb in the young man. His high color bordered 
 on the hectic ; and his mouth, which combined the coarse lines of 
 his sister's vi-ith the indeterminate twitching of the mother's, left the 
 impression of profligacy and a selfishness that might be aggressive 
 cruelty. He was perfectly formed for his physique, and moved 
 with the easy and assured grace of the ballet-master. His famil- 
 iarity was effusive and condescending, in contrast vdth the artless 
 indiscretion of his sister. He had a habit of looking any one 
 with whom he was talking obliquely in the face, even when squarely 
 in front of him. His manner with women was the. refinement of 
 libertine self-confidence— what the French describe in the word 
 fat, which defines at once a coxcomb, a witling, and a man 
 falsely at ease in his environments. He wjis evidently fond of his 
 sister, and for her sake repressed his more exasperating condescen- 
 sion to Fred ; but the latter could not help remarking them in the 
 young man's dealing with others of his own age in the company. 
 To his mother he was disrespectful to vulgarity, and made no 
 more of her adoring, partiality than if she had been the favraing 
 mastiff in the vestibule. Before the company were seated. Miss 
 Grimstone, taking Fred's arm, whispered : 
 
 " I am anxious you should malce your best impression on Mrs. 
 Albion Circester, whom you are to take in to dinner. She is the 
 sister-in-law of Governor Mapes — ^you know her ? " 
 
 " I have never met her, but I know of her. She was the best- 
 known woman in Valedo when I was a youngster. I remember 
 hearing of her breakfasts and dinners as something incredible in 
 luxury and expense." 
 
 "Yes, poor thing! she bankrupted Circester before he died, 
 
A GOLDEN MEAN. ^^ 
 
 and now has barely income enough to live in a style that is a con- 
 stant misery to her. She adores literary people, artists, singers, 
 and the like, and still maintains a certain social authority. She 
 has heard of you through Madame Leandre. But here she is." 
 
 Fred was presented to a lady so superb in dress, grace, and 
 manner, that he could hardly realize that she was the mother of a 
 son and daughter nearly as old as. himself. She looked young as 
 Miss Grimstone in the brightness of the eye, clarity of complex- 
 ion,- arid elastic buoyancy of movement — a. slight tendency to embon- 
 point was an added charm ; the arms round, white, and perfectly 
 molded, the neck lustrously white, the rare head poised "oa a 
 throat exquisitely firm; her hands, Fred thought, would have per- 
 fectly replaced the missing palms of the Venus de Milo, an idea 
 that, later in the evening, he confided to Miss Grimstone, who 
 straightway repeated it to the mature beauty, and you may be sure 
 the young man's place in Mrs. Circester's esteem was thereafter 
 defined and secured ! Her voice, too, matched the physical splen- 
 dor of her person. I know no terras that describe it better than 
 one at that time provoking public mirth, " vocal velvet," in its soft, 
 pervasive,, lingering sweetness. Her most commonplace phi-ase 
 was caressingly tender, virith the single blemish, common to most 
 of our country-women, a metallic harshness in the upper register, 
 which, vdth curious unconsciousness, she habitually fell into when 
 talking with women, but rarely with men. 
 
 She had lived in Europe since her widowhood, to be near her 
 boy and girl at school, and came home m that piquant aroma 
 of whispered scandal that gives an added charm to th& personnel 
 of the group that leads in societies confirmed by traditions and ma- 
 terial guarantees. She had been made an Egeria in the gay little 
 court of Fritzhoff, where the godless grand-duke had scandalized 
 his elderly and ugly consort by flagrant adoration of die schone 
 Amerikanerin. She had broken the grand-ducal heart by laugh- 
 ingly refusing the patent of a Grafin at the price of a morganatic 
 union after the facile morals of the Serene Highnesses of the Vater- 
 land. Inability to pay dovm a dot of fifty thousand thalers had 
 stood between her and the coronet of a legitimate countess — the 
 Graf von Schoenberg having formally offered his holy Roman 
 
72 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 parchment of nobility, his baronial ruins on the Moselle, and a 
 prematurely decrepit person that bore marks of thirty years' de- 
 bauchery, as an offset for her radiant charms, and the dot. It was 
 asserted that she had made fruitless efforts to raise the money, 
 imploring her kinsmen to advance it, and holding up the glory of 
 a princely connection as being well worth the outlay. 
 
 But her kinsmen had refused. No one, however, believed that 
 she had given up the purpose of wearing the Schoenberg coronet, 
 for had she not, while in Paris, ordered cards in which the German 
 name was translated into the imposing title of Countess de Beau- 
 mont ? She still corresponded with her complaisant suitor, and 
 bets were offered that she would raise the stake and take Hcntpas 
 over her rivals as the Countess de Beaumont. She was discreetly 
 gracious to Fred, reminding him after each little effusive outbreak 
 of the interest that she felt, " quite like a mother, having a great 
 boy and gfirl of my own almost as big as yourself." Her daugh- 
 ter, in order to maintain the condition she was bom in, lived most 
 of the time with her aunt Mapes, while her son was finishing in 
 Columbia College. 
 
 " You journalists are so clever and so powerful, that I mean to 
 ask your interest for my Walter when he enters his uncle's law- 
 ofSce— you can do so much to help men in their profession, can't 
 you ? " she said, artlessly, as they sat at the table. 
 
 " I don't know where you get the idea, Mrs. Circester. I think 
 journalists the most helpless workers in the whole range of pro- 
 fessional life. There are a few, at the head of the craft, who can 
 bear directly upon men in high place and the means by which 
 they get there. But even these compromise that occult force 
 that really great men in journalism prize most when they let poli- 
 ticians know that there is a reciprocity of powers. There is, how- 
 ever," he added, glancing at Miss Grimstone, who sat next to him, 
 "a man who is not influenced by these considerations, who could 
 advance your son's fortunes in diplomacy — Archibald Hilliard." 
 
 " Oh, I know Mr. Hilliard— Prince Rupert, as he is called. He 
 dines with the Governor when he g^ves men's parties. I rather 
 think I sha'n't like him. He's too much the vogue for a man. Such 
 adulation is due only to a pretty woman.'' 
 
A GOLDEN MEAN. y^ 
 
 " Not like Mr. Hilliard ! Dear me ! Mrs. Circester, you can't help 
 it. He's like a sentiment of Byron, embodied in the most perfect 
 shape a man can take. 1 don't see how any one can help liking 
 him," expostulated Miss Grimstone, warmly. 
 
 " Ah, ma chirie, I might think so too if I had your belle jeu- 
 nesse. But an old woman like me must be content with less soar- 
 ing eagles than this Knickerbocker Alclbiades.'' 
 
 This was said, in tones nearing protest, with a glance of such 
 delicate homage for the younger beauty, as a woman sure of her 
 own charms and her own place is alone magnanimous enough to 
 display, openly, in the presence of men who may be called on 
 to play tenderer parts than mere devotees. 
 
 " I don't wonder you are the despmr of the maidens, and eclipse 
 us with the other sex, if you bring the same spells to bear on 
 them," said Eleanor, blushing prettily. 
 
 " You learned flattery too, I see, while you were in the land of 
 fine phrases," said the mature siren, softly stealing a glance at 
 Fred. 
 
 " Who, I ? " he asked, innocently, his attention having been for 
 a moment diverted. 
 
 " No, this witch here, who would have me forget my years and 
 sorrows." 
 
 " If your sorrows are to be counted by your years, Mrs. Cir- 
 cester, you must have fallen asleep in your first happiness, and Time 
 forgot you ; or your years are like rich relations — ^they have kept 
 you in mind, but neglected to visit you." 
 
 " How clever you are ! I knew I should like you ; we really 
 must be very close friends — I fed that we are going to be," and 
 she abstractedly laid her dainty, jeweled fingers confidingly on 
 Fred's large hand, which at the moment happened to be on the 
 table, in the act of balancing a rose-leaf fallen from a mass of 
 flowers before his plate. Fred blushed and looked foolish ; but, 
 strong in her platonic impulse, Mrs. Circester gave the young 
 man's hand an affectionate pressure, and laughed quite at ease 
 as she withdrew her own. 
 
 " At my age I may adopt friends, if I please, and I do adopt 
 you." 
 
74 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 \ "I. think I may pledge myself to be a friend," said Fred, a 
 little awkwardly, stealing a glance at Miss Nell, to see if she gave 
 signs of remarking his foolish look. But she was interested in the 
 conversation of the personage next her, and had evidently missed 
 the tender episode. When presently the ladies withdrew, Fred 
 was about to go with them, as he didn't care to smoke, not know- 
 ing any of the persons present save Herbert, who was at the other 
 end of the table. But, before he reached the door, the young man 
 wa? at his. side, and begged him to smoke a cigarette with him. 
 He took a little case from his pocket and handed it to his g^est, 
 saying;.: . 
 
 "The fellows smoke nothing but these at Cambridge now; 
 we import them ourselves from London, but they are made of 
 Turkish tobacco, and leave none of theheat and thirst of cigars." 
 
 Fred found them delicious, and. settled down under their mild 
 influence with a sense of indolent enjoyment he had never experi- 
 enced -before from tobacco. Cigarettes were at that time hardly 
 known in this country, and the imported varieties were as unlike 
 the nauseous stuff now passing under the name as real tea from 
 the almond-leaves from which half of the contemporary tea is 
 brewed. Soothed by the insidious aroma and gentle narcotic in- 
 fluence of the cigarette, Fred listened to the artless prattle of the 
 collegian, wondering not a little at the family's evident partiality 
 for himself. Herbert was talking to him within ten minutes as 
 if they had known each other for years, with a good deal more 
 than the unreserve of a boy. 
 
 " Nell has told me all about you, Carew," he exclaimed sud- 
 denly, "and I'm dying, to have you introduce me to the news- 
 paper men. You will show me about New York, won't you? 
 I want to see life. It matures a fellow to see it. I want you, 
 first of all, to take, me behind the scenes and introduce me to the 
 pretty actresses. Of course, you know them all, don't you ? " and 
 he looked with evident admiration at the astonished listener quite 
 as a susceptible novice might at the favored of the Muses ; but, with- 
 out waiting to hear Fred's indigfnant protest, he continued, eagerly : 
 
 " I'm clean gone on ' Beauxjambes.' The troupe are playing 
 at the Grand Opera, and, between you and me, that is the reason I 
 
A GOLDEN MEAN. yj 
 
 came on. They were in Boston last -week, but I never could get 
 an answer to my notes. I spent a hundred dollars in flowers. I 
 know she got them, for I saw them on her in the ballet If you 
 can manage an introduction, I'll give a fizz supper, and we'll have 
 a gray time. What ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid you have an exaggerated notion of the functions 
 of a journalist ; you've certainly got the wrong impression of their 
 standing with theatrical people. I've never seen the green-room 
 of a theatre, and never to my knowledge saw an actress oS the 
 stage." 
 
 " Oh, that's all right," continued Herbert, with lively incre- 
 dulity. " I know how you all talk. I know two or three reporters 
 in Boston. They were always on the stage, always receiving 
 notes from the women, and always feasting after the play. They 
 used to take the fellows behind too, and introduce them right and 
 left." 
 
 " No, I assure you I know none of them. I don't mean to pay 
 that it would be impossible. . Many of our men are brought into 
 relations with the theatres, and if you covet the thing so much I will 
 present you to a dramatic editor. , There's Milliard, by-the-way. 
 He entertains the actresses at fine suppers. He's just your man. 
 You know him, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No," said Herbert, his face lighting up, " but Nell does, and 
 I can know him if I want to ; but you'll be much better — ^you're 
 nearer my own age,'' and he added, ingenuously, "you won't 
 try to cut me out ? " 
 
 Fred laughed. " No, you can depend on that ; I'll leave you a 
 clear field among the houris ; I'm a poor hand in gallantry." 
 
 Herbert looked admiringly skeptical, as if he thought that this 
 stoicism was merely the sign of a satiety that filled him with 
 unspeakable envy. When they rejoined the ladies, Mrs. Circester 
 was singing, to her own accompaniment, one of the little German 
 songs that had worked on the tender sensibilities of her ducal 
 adorer ; and, as Fred neared the piano, she gave him a kind look 
 of welcome, as much as to say she was playing for his approval, 
 and only awaited his presence for the resJ inspiration of her art. 
 
76 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 NOVUM ORGANUM. 
 
 One morning the " Tomahawk " came out with a broadside, 
 narrating the plot by which Fred Carew's professional reputation 
 had been blasted. The account took up six columns on the first 
 page of the paper, " displayed " and sub-headed in the fashion first 
 adopted by that journal. The story was made all the more 
 effective in rehabilitating the victim, as his appearance and justifi- 
 cation were apparently subsidiary to a most damaging exposure of 
 the methods of the ruling cabal in the Optimate, arid their servile 
 obedience to the money power. Six columns of any one subject 
 was a very rare event in the " Tomahawk,'' which had been 
 founded and was conducted on the principle of condensation. 
 There was nothing left to hypothesis ; step by step the conspiracy 
 was unfolded, from the bargain with the mine operators, months 
 before the strike, to the terms of the agreement, whereby the 
 Optimate majority in the Legislature bound themselves to pass 
 the laws demanded by the syndicate. The receipts of some of 
 the bribed members, and the acknowledgment of the faithless 
 leaguer, were set forth in a form so explicit that there wasn't a 
 pretext for quibble or evasion. The effect of the exposi was 
 heightened by the capriciously humorous and severely unadorned 
 form in which the story was told. Not an adjective, not an 
 expression of sentiment — a bald, brutal narrative of fact, so con- 
 vincing that it read Uke the summing up of a learned and impartial 
 judge. On the editorial page, however, the master-hand accom- 
 panied the work of his reporters by one of those sardonically 
 fanciful leaders which reduced the whole to the marrow. He 
 pointed out the mingled hypocrisy and heartlessness of the 
 " Atlas," which, while conscious of the cruel wrong done its own 
 agent, for the basest of motives, remained silent, adding to the 
 wrong done the public by crime done the man. Among the letters 
 printed was one from a political personage in the interior to a 
 great official, ending up with the line : " They call us thieves, 
 because we run things for our own profit ; for my part, I believe 
 
NOVUM ORGANUM. yy 
 
 in the motto that to the thieves belong the spoils." Quoting this, the 
 editor exclaims : " It is, no doubt, true that to the thieves belong 
 the spoils ; but the cracksman and the sneak-thief are more manly 
 than you ; they are content with the victim's purse ; they do not 
 rob him of his good name." The event made what the journals 
 call a profound sensation. The gist of the article was copied and 
 commented on in some of the" Optimate papers, vdth grudging 
 admissions of its truth. 
 
 The "Atlcis" and the "Janus" never referred to it in any 
 way ; and as soon as the Ultrocratic prints took it up, the Opti- 
 mate, as in duty bound, sneered at the story as a campaign lie. 
 In one sense, it vindicated Fred. Some of the profession, who 
 had heard only one side of the affair, saw that he had been 
 atrociously wronged, and the members at once drew up a paper, 
 signed, irrespective of party, recognizing his blamelessness, and 
 restoring him to his standing as one of the honored in the ranks. 
 This paper contained the names of every journalist in the city, 
 save Blackdaw, Hilliard, Sanders, and Levison ; and Fred drew 
 his own inferences when he noted these omissions. But while his 
 innocence was thus accepted by his fellow-craftsmen, the public 
 earned him up or down, according to their partisan sympathies. 
 The Optimate put no trust in anything appearing in the " Toma- 
 hawk," and the Ultrocrats could not hear anything too vile to 
 believe of their adversaries. A single word from the " Atlas " 
 would have completed the work of the " Tomahawk ; '' but that 
 word was never spoken. Rivers, with most of the force on the 
 paper, gave a little "dinner of expiation," as he facetiously put it, 
 at Mouquin's, in which there was a good deal of veiled sarcasm 
 and expressive innuendo at the expense of Blackdaw, and the An- 
 tinous of the tripod, Hilliard — one vivacious rebel declaring that 
 journalism would be more destructive than war, if such things went 
 on unrebuked ; for, while you took your life in your hands entering 
 one, you put your character into the hands of pusillanimity on 
 entering the other ! What further picturesque paradoxes might 
 have been inspired by the wine were drowned in a timely chorus, 
 which enabled the company to break up without the general 
 revolt and burning of bridges prompted by the first exhilarating 
 
78 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 effects of the wine. As they were leaving, Fred drew Rivers's 
 arm in his own and turned up Ann Street. He could not control 
 himself sufficiently to speak until the two stood in front of St. 
 Paul's. 
 
 " Rivers, God bless you ! I owe everything to you ; you are a 
 man aihpng men. When will it ever happen that I can show you 
 what I feel, how much I owe you ? " 
 
 "You'rea very silly fellow," protested Rivers, pretending not 
 to see the tears welling softly in the other's eyes. " You're sillier 
 than- silly. . You must learn more worldliness. Have you been to 
 see Magnan to thank him 1 What ! " as the other ihook his 
 head. -"Well, you are too much for patience ! Go to-morrow 
 morning and tell him you appreciate his good turn. He'll be 
 gruff and cynical, but he likes honesty and innocence, and he'll 
 secretly chuckle, while you think he's wishing you ' further,' as we 
 say in California." 
 
 Fred cbuld only vmng'the honest fellow's hand, as the other 
 quitted him abruptly, to pass the next six hours in the editorial 
 attic. The next morning, when Fred presented himself dubiously 
 before Magnan, and murmured his grateful sense of/his interven- 
 tion, he was saluted with an uproarious "Ha!" so prolonged 
 that he fancied it was the prelude of a stentorian solo. 
 
 " It was mighty interesting reading, wasn't it ? I wish they'd 
 rape the character of some other innocent — ^ha! " — and he chuckled 
 with a colossal sense of enjoyment that left Fred speechless. 
 
 " Young man, you owe me no thanks ; but I'm glad you've a 
 sense of the fitness of things, and make them. I'm at work for 
 the ' Tomahawk,' and the truth, which is without price elsewhere, 
 has a fixed value here. We never turn it away ; and when we 
 get it, we share it with the world. That's the difference between 
 us and our esteemed contemporaries. They have the foolish 
 notion that truth is at the bottom of a well, and they let it lie 
 there ; or they leave it there, and put the lie in their columns — 
 ha ! " — and again a Boanerges laugh marked the sage's sense of 
 his own playful humor. " Young man, you're doing first-rate 
 work. Get the truth, tell the truth, and tell it with a laugh. Truth 
 likes good company, and fades when buried in words and silly 
 
NO VUM ORGAN UM. jg 
 
 sentiment." He turned to his desk, as if he had forgotten his 
 work, and Fred knew that the conference was at an end. 
 
 Broadway seemed to take a new physiognomy as he walked 
 homeward. The dapper clerk and the hurrying merchant had a 
 kindlier look. He could meet the eyes of all of them, now the 
 blot had been bumeci from' his scutcheon ; .and though the fire had 
 singed the persons of a good many that the country held in es- 
 teem, he f dt that he was not over-vindictive in his vicarious office 
 of inquisitor. He was at Union Square, when Herbert , Qrim- 
 stone's voice hailed him from a coupi. It was standing before -a 
 fashionable silversmith's. [Herbert besought him to .wait until 
 Nell and Mrs. Circester returned. .They were in the shop, .and 
 he was pestered to death attending them. -■. ; .. 
 
 " When the ladies come out, we will go into Rejmaud's. I've 
 got the most stunning plan I want to talk to you about. .1 — " . .; 
 
 At that moment Nell and Mrs. Circester came tripping to the 
 coupi, and he stopped wdth a portentous wink, expressive of.sir 
 lence and prudence against any confidence in that direction. - So 
 soon as the ladies came within earshot, both began effusive felici- 
 tations to the hero of the " Tomahawk's " zxa\x€va.%feuilUton, as 
 Mrs. Circester, with her fondness for Gallic substantives, called it. 
 He was the talk of; the town, they vivaciously assured him, and 
 he must give them the chance of gathering the homage every- 
 body was dying to pay him. Mrs. Circester was arranging for a 
 " little affair,'' that would bring just the right sort of people to- 
 gether, and then he should see how every one adored the heroic 
 qualities he had shown himself possessed of. 
 
 These flamboyant testimonies, delivered in staccato outbursts, 
 confused Fred, and left him quite speechless, Herbert looking on 
 the while with a grin of impatience. They thought it odious in 
 Herbert to monopolize the hero, when, if he waited an hour until 
 they had ended their commissions, they would take them both to 
 luncheon, and then to the park for a drive. But Herbert was ob^ 
 stinate, and Nell did not persist when his sovereign pleasure was 
 expressed. He compromised by engaging to bring Fred at five 
 o'clock for the drive. The young despot carried him off, leaving 
 the ladies at the door of. a florid bazaar on the square. On one 
 
8b THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 of the side-streets Herbert entered a demure, unpretending, high- 
 stooped house, where a very genteel waiter received them with 
 deferential empressement. He addressed the young man as " Mon- 
 sieur Herbert," and on a word from him conducted them to a small 
 room on the second floor, in which a half-dozen square tables 
 were spread with silky linen and glittering plate. 
 
 " This is the nearest thing to a Parisian restaurant in this 
 country," said Herbert, seating himself at a table near the win- 
 dow, and, when the discreet waiter had taken the hats and 
 canes, he .continued : " We have stupendous times here — the fel- 
 lows ; and the beauty of it is, everything is orderly and quiet. 
 You may take your pleasure here, as Mrs. Circester would say, 
 en cachet. I was going to your rooms for you if I had not 
 met you. I'm in the gjreatest luck. That note you gave me 
 to Summers has done the work splendidly. I gave him a wine- 
 supper after the play, and he has opened every stage-door in 
 the city to me. I've captured Beauxjambes's manager by get- 
 ting the fellows to take all the boxes and half the parquet for 
 her benefit. It costs — but it's worth it ; for I want to pay off 
 some old scores on some of my set who carried the day when the 
 troupe was in Boston." 
 
 Fred laughed, as the youth's confidence laid bare his double 
 motive — self-indulgence and the revenge of wounded social amour 
 propre. Herbert's familiarity with the place, and his standing 
 as a liberal patron, could be guessed from the alacrity of the 
 waiters, all of whom he addressed by name. His favorite wine 
 came upon the table without the trouble of ordering it. Indeed, 
 beyond a question or two, the young man gave himself no con- 
 cern to order the dainty feast that was presently served. He 
 prattled incessantly of himself, and the uproariously good time he 
 had been enjoying. He had been to the theatre every night, and 
 supped with the fellows afterward. He had not been in bed be- 
 fore three or four o'clock a single morning since he came ! His 
 adored Beauxjambes still remained obdurate ; but she was to be 
 at a little supper he had arranged after her benefit. Her manager 
 had consented to bring her, in consideration of the tickets taken. 
 He depended on Fred to bring two or three journalists of the 
 
NOVUM ORGAN UM. 81 
 
 right sort to impress the manager with the influence of the Amphi- 
 tryon ; for money alone " can't awe those fellows," he added, with 
 a touch of pensive wonder in his voice. 
 
 " But, it's money, after all, that brings about things, you see ! " 
 said Fred. " All the press influences in the country couldn't help 
 schemes like yours, if you didn't have a bank account. The 
 manager would have laughed at me, or any journalist audacious 
 enough to suggest this bacchanal, if there hadn't been cash in 
 hand first ! " 
 
 " Yes, I think I know the value of money," said Herbert, with 
 solemn deliberation. " It's a mighty good thing in every way. 
 I've found it my best friend, and I mean to be faithful to it." 
 
 At this moment three or four heavy-eyed, dissipated young 
 men entered, and, spying Herbert, came to the table, saluting him 
 under various titles, all more or less descriptive, though fancifuL 
 They carried on a loud conversation in syllables and phrases, the 
 import of which Fred could not at first understand. He gathered, 
 however, that they were financiers, as they dwelt a good deal on 
 " checks," and " runs," and " breaking the bank." "When the 
 conversation had gone on for ten minutes, Herbert suddenly re- 
 membered his g^est, and presented the new-comers as alumni of 
 Harvard, Ralph Raikes, Reginald Romeyn, and Philip Van Dyck. 
 They looked a little puzzled as Fred's name was mentioned, and 
 Herbert, enjojring their mystification, asked : 
 
 "You've heard Carew's name, haven't you? But I'll bet a 
 ' Pom ' not one of you can tell where." 
 
 " You've lost, Bertie, my boy," said Van Dyck ; " Mr. Carew's 
 the hero of the ' Tomahawk " romance. Bring on your ' Pom ' ! " 
 
 The three looked curiously at Fred, now under cover of the 
 laugh raised by Herbert's discomfiture, as the champagne, of the 
 Pommery brand, was ordered. 
 
 " I've great respect for a head that can hold facts over a 
 stomach filled with as much liquor as you've sampled during the 
 last forty-eight hours," said Herbert, as the wine was poured out. 
 
 A great deal of wine was drunk, considerably out of proportion 
 to the eating, the trio indulging liberally to arouse their flagging 
 spirits. Fred gathered, from the disjointedly hiljuious talk that 
 
82 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 followed, that the young men had been passing the previous 
 night in pleasure, and were now breakfasting. There were vague 
 allusions to losses at cards, and rapacious divinities, whose com- 
 bined exactions left the money-makers "strapped." Bertie 
 magnificently offered to act as banker, and expansive demonstra- 
 tions of fraternal fidelity followed. Bertie quite captivated the 
 new-comers with his master-stroke apropos Beauxjambes. They 
 were to be presented as Boston journalists, and their rSle was to 
 be purely platonic. 
 
 " But there are to be more of the company than Beauxjambes ? " 
 Ralph asked, upbraidingly. 
 
 " Well, I hadn't thought of that ; but, if you like, I will have 
 Legerpied, Nudos, and Cr^vecour invited. Come to think, that will 
 be jollier. Carew is to act as host ; so, whatever deference is paid, 
 must be shown him '' — whereat the others laughed uproariously. 
 
 It was five o'clock when Fred got up to go ; the others gave 
 no sign of ending the feast, though Herbert had half promised to 
 join his sister in the drive. Fred reminded him of this, as the other 
 accompanied him to the door, but the young man's flushed face 
 and unsteady step were not likely to make him fit company for 
 ladies. Herbert had not accepted the invitation to drive, but he 
 made it a point of good-fellowship that Fred should go and tell 
 Nell that he had been detained by college friends. 
 
 Eleanor was ready and waiting when Fred sent up his name, 
 and she came down so suddenly to the reception-room, that the 
 delinquent was caught adjusting his cravat. She did not seem 
 to be annoyed by Bertie's faithlessness, and hurried her cavalier 
 out to a pretty Victoria, which she insisted on driving herself, 
 without even a footman. Her cheeks were aflame with health 
 and enjoyment, and Fred thought her very beautiful, in spite of 
 the bizarre feather in her hat, and the somewhat prononci tone 
 of her gown, her favorite colors, deep crimson, with lavish mingling 
 of dead gold, and black lace twisted about the shoulders in thick 
 folds. Outside the long gauntlet gloves of undressed kid, a large 
 cluster diamond ring glittered in a setting of rubies, which, giving 
 her some trouble' as she held the reins, she handed to Fred to 
 hold. She laughed cheerily as he slipped it on his little finger. 
 
NOVUM ORGANUM. 
 
 83 
 
 " I have thoroughly plebeian hands, you see ; you could put 
 that ring on your middle finger ; you thought it would mortify me, 
 didn't you, if you had ? " 
 
 " No, I hadn't thought about it. 1 think your hands are very 
 shapely ; I don't see why size should control the standard of 
 beauty. I'm sure one's hands ought to be in proportion to one's 
 frame. You are very tall, but all your outlines are symmetrical ; 
 you would fire a sculptor at work on the Aphrodite of intellect 
 and action,'' rejoined Fred, gallantly. 
 
 She looked at him in a sad, wistful way an instant, and then 
 said, pensively, as the horses shot past an equipage from which 
 she received a deferential salute : 
 
 " Only a man of imagination, like yourself, looks at such things 
 in that poetic way. I am generally thought large and clumsy," 
 she added, quite simply, as if.it were a criticism against which she 
 had nothing to urge. 
 
 " The opinion of the man, who can't see you as I see you, 
 would, I should think, make little difference to you." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; but I meet so few like you ! All the men I know 
 are bent on money, and social standing, and that sort of thing. 
 Most of them are very tiresome, but one must be like. them, 
 or quit the world, and, I own, I like the world vjery much. I'm 
 thoroughly frivolous ; I like the admiration of even the men whose 
 shallowness amuses me. There is Mr. Hilliard " — and she bowed, 
 with a brighter crimson on her cheeks, as Hilliard, in a plain Til- 
 bury, whirled by — ^"now, he is a man \ know I shall like." 
 
 " Yes, I think you will," said Fred, but without any warmth 
 in the assent. "He differs radically from the worldly school of 
 men you describe ; yet he is as thorough a. worldling as lives." 
 I. _ "That's just what I like — a man whose brains give him rank, 
 and yet who can outshine those who have only money or family 
 to give them precedence ; that's the sort of man a woman can 
 interest herself in, .without the .risk of being sneered at for trying 
 to force herself into social spheres that claim superior birth and 
 place." ,. :~. ., . ; . 
 
 "I. shouldn't fancy ,-that;considerations of this. sort, weighed 
 much in this country, where we are all on the sanje plane, so far 
 
84 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 as birth goes, and differ from each other only in degrees of means. 
 So far as I can see, money gives its possessor all that birth and 
 aristocratic tradition imply in other countries. I don't see wherein 
 the self-made man of our day differs from the descendant of the 
 self-made barons of William the Conqueror. I'm sure our barons 
 deal more humanely with their serfs than the Normans did with 
 their yeomen. Our barons rarely take life in their pillage of the 
 ■weak." Fred was going to inveigh further, but suddenly recollected 
 that he was talking to the daughter of one of the most hated of the 
 " barons " he had in mind. Nell drove on pensively. They were 
 in the leafy recesses of the park, far from the crowd, meeting only 
 an occasional carriage. She drove as far as the Aqueduct and 
 turned back, when the level rays of the sun brought out the 
 shadows on the greensward like lace-work, wrought in fantastic 
 forms by elfin hands. Fred declined the cordial invitation to re- 
 main and dine when they reached the hotel, alleging his promise 
 to take Mrs. Albion Circester to Madame Leandre's soir6e, and the 
 necessity of finishing some work before he went. 
 
 As he accompanied that lady late in the evening from \\sx petit 
 nid, as she called the luxurious apartment on Fifth Avenue near 
 Eighteenth Street, to Forty-fifth Street, she was full of animation 
 and confidences. She asked him the names of the friends Herbert 
 had presented. When he mentioned Romejrn, Van Dyck, and 
 Raikes, she laughed softly. 
 
 " You must be careful how you become involved with that set. 
 I don't say intimate, for without money they will never permit 
 that, but they will make use of you." 
 
 " How could they make use of me ? " asked Fred, laughing. 
 
 " You silly boy, you know nothing of the devouring world you 
 are living in ! These three young men are types of scores that you 
 will meet on the lines you are now cast in. The Romeyns are a 
 very old family ; they lost most of their property in the bankrupt- 
 cies in which half New York was involved by the war. They still 
 hold up their heads in an exclusive coterie, that, while affecting to 
 frown upon the parvenu element now at the front, secretly do all 
 they can to bring their sons into relations with young women who 
 can give them money in exchange for family distinction. These 
 
NOVUM ORGAN UM. 
 
 85 
 
 three young men, on leaving college, were pennUess. To go into 
 trade would have ruined the family standing. All of them have 
 nominal offices in great law-firms, but in fact gain their living and 
 maintain their families by shopkeeping." 
 
 " By shopkeeping ! " exclaimed Fred in astonishment. 
 
 "Yes, by shopkeeping. They manage it in this way; The 
 Roraeyns owned some property on the Bowery. It had long been 
 rented as a pawn-shop. Reginald observed that his tenant was 
 rich, and studied his methods awhile. The man's lease was out, 
 and a renewal was refused unless he would consent to a partner- 
 ship. > The business was large, long established, and to move 
 would be risky and perhaps disastrous, since Rex, as he is called, 
 assured his tenant that the shop would be opened by some one 
 else for the same business. 
 
 " The Romeyns now draw their revenues from this pawn-shop, 
 and hardly any one is the wiser. Van Dyck is partner with Raikes 
 in millinery-shops in Sixth Avenue and in Grand Street. They 
 hold the property, ignoble, tumble-down old shells, which their es- 
 tate owned in common, but, owing to the cotton crisis in i860, 
 they were unable to build up, as they had long intended. Oh, if I 
 were a writer, as you are, I could tell some pretty tales of the 
 means by which the flame of the sacred lamp of high life is kept 
 burning. Beware of these young men, and dozens more that you 
 will meet, whose means come from even more questionable enter- 
 prises. But keep on terms with them, penetrate beneath the su- 
 percilious mask they assume, and you will discover heart-burnings, 
 envy, and discontent, to which your experience is as the plucking of 
 rose-leaves. Now, in Madame Leandre's we shall meet another 
 tribe of the same race, the social nomads, all eager to enter the 
 Brahmin caste I have just sketched, and in their way as hollow and 
 viciously sham. There are young architects, young painters, young 
 and old journalists, women who edit fashion journals, women who 
 do painting on china, and others who gain handsome douceurs by 
 coaching the swell retail and bric-h-brac shops in matters of taste. 
 It is money from the beginning to the end of the chapter. There 
 won't be a smile given you to-night, that the person giving it does 
 not count on gaining a percentage for the amiability shown." 
 
86 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Good Heavens ! my dear Mrs. Circester, don't go any farther ; 
 let us go home ; I should stifle in such a loathsome atmosphere — 
 I shouldn't be able to disguise my disgust. You must exaggerate ; 
 it can't be true ! " 
 
 " Simple fellow, you ought to know all this better than I. Where 
 are the keen observation and omniscience that I have heard the 
 journalist possesses ? You may thank me for putting you in the 
 way of making your talents available." 
 
 Madame Leandre arose when she saw them. She was sitting 
 enthroned at the farther end of a long, artistically arrayed ja&« in 
 which the modem French taste prevailed. The pa:nels of the 
 walls were covered with charming originals, mostly foreign. It 
 was more like the studio of a painter than the drawing-room of a 
 lady of fashion, though that name would have exasperated the 
 mature deity of all this esthetic splendor. Madame Leandre was 
 by birth French. She had lived the greater part of her life in 
 Montreal, but her husband, a Frenchman, had begun life anew in 
 New York, when the opening of the war brought his business in 
 Canada to a ruinous suspension. He had prospered during the 
 war in enterprises of a hazardous nature (many asserted blockade- 
 running), and had left his widow in comfortable though riot lavish 
 circumstances in 1867. Madame Leandre was of a literary race. 
 She was of the noble blood of the De Vigny, and the crest of the 
 family marked all her maiden possessions. A manuscript of the 
 poet was sacredly preserved in an exquisite cabinet, the shrine of 
 her charming salon. She was small, dark, vivacious, and kindly, 
 shrewdly penetrating as to character, but grotesquely blind in con- 
 jecturing motives ; in other respects dealing with all who came 
 within her range with the subjective instinct rather than the repul- 
 sive objective hinted by Mrs. Circester. 
 
 "You wicked boy, not to have come near me for a month ! you 
 don't deserve that I love you," she protested, as she shook hands 
 rapturously with her chere " Albione," the name by which she 
 insisted on calling Mrs. Circester, as she could not master that 
 with sufficient volubility. — " And you have become the hero of 
 the town, nUckant gargon. But I love you all the same ; I shall 
 make the world adore you ! " 
 
NOVUM ORGANUM. gy 
 
 There was an awkward moment of general presentation, the 
 company not exceeding a dozen ; and then a young girl, whose 
 voice had been discovered by a reigning prima donna, took her 
 place at the piano, and began in painful self-consciousness the 
 jewel-song in " Faust." Fred took the opportunity to look again 
 at the people, wondering if their faces were masked to the ignoble 
 motives which his cynical friend had outlined. 
 
 But, in spite of his repugnance to crediting the degrading clew 
 given him by his worldly patron, the possibility of its truth fixed 
 itself on his mind as he watched the manoeuvres of the company, 
 now grown to forty or more. What had formerly mystified him, 
 the disparate conditions of the people visiting the gay little host- 
 ess, received a solution ; for, while the greater number were usually 
 young men in journalism, rising politicians, and eminent person- 
 ages of the stage, there were always a few social magnates min- 
 gled with these active minds, like gold-quartz imbedded in crys- 
 tals. It was easy to detect the personages of this sort Their 
 vicinage was one of monosyllabic tribute, as the nearest expres- 
 sion of the dullness which the children of esprit imj^ned the nor- 
 mal condition of the opulent and the socially omnipotent. 
 
 Mrs. Circester came to his side as he stood watching the 
 diversion, which had suddenly assumed a new meaning to him. 
 
 " You are a horribly imprudent confidant, mon cher. If Mrs. 
 Van Bourseman had seen your face as I saw it a moment ago, she 
 could have read exactly what you were thinking ; that she was dull, 
 supercilious, purse-proud, and desigfning, and that she was meanly 
 pretending an interest in poor Madame Leandre's piebald com- 
 pany because she expected some advantage in some occult way." 
 
 " She would have read pretty closely, I must say ; but what 
 benefit can she derive other than amusement here ? " 
 
 " Delicious unsophistication," said the philosopher, taking his 
 arm and walking into a retired comer where their voices could not 
 be heard. " Her husband was my brother-in-law's rival for the 
 governorship. He was beaten in the convention, because it was 
 shown that certain delegations had been ' fixed ' — that is to say, 
 the primaries had been bought up. The newspapers exploited 
 the affair against him, and he is now courting them. Madame 
 
88 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 Leandre has friends on every journal in the city, as you know, and 
 if you watch the papers you will observe that of late they have 
 been explaining how the worthy Van Bourseman was made the 
 victim of a ' ring ' of low politicians who inculpated his pure name 
 in their own venality." 
 
 •• And does Madame Leandre know the motives that inspire her 
 guests ? " 
 
 " Ah ! madame is a woman of the world. She likes to study 
 human nature. It is from people that she gathers about her that 
 she gleans material for the books she writes. She probably knows 
 that she couldn't make the oil of wit and the water of dullness mix 
 unless there were an ingredient that reconciled these chemical 
 opposites. She doesn't trouble herself about their motives. She 
 is content to have a ' distingud salon,' as she calls it.,-r-voil& tout. 
 I'm going to present you to Mrs. Van Bourseman presently, after 
 I have had a chance to tell her who you are, and you will be able 
 to verify what I've said. Before the evening's over you will re- 
 ceive other evidences more amusing. I'll wager a pair of gloves 
 that the singer's patron, young Abeille, will make up to you, and 
 ask your aid in giving Miss Hermit the influence of your pen 
 when she makes her dibut" 
 
 Even while she was speaking, Madame Leandre, scattering gay 
 epigrams right and left as she approached, came up, leaning on the 
 arm of Abeille. 
 
 " I want you two bright people to know each other, enfant ter- 
 rible," tapping Fred with her fan ; " this is, after yourself, the bright- 
 est and best boy in New York : Mr. Leon Abeille — ^Mr. Carew." 
 
 " I'm afraid I . shall have to depend on Madame Leandre for 
 my good qualities, as I'm sure I shall have to for my brightness," 
 siud Abeille, meeting Fred's somewhat distant bow with a frank 
 smile ; " Madame Leandre is Hke Cuvier, she can reconstruct wit 
 in others from the echo of her own." 
 
 " You see, Mr. Carew, you journalists do not monopolize all 
 the spirit of the day." 
 
 " Oh, no, we are the shallow medium to make knovra the wit 
 of others ; the journalist is a mere photographist ; he can't claim 
 even the original function of the painter — he is the empty echo of 
 
NOVUM ORGANUM. 89 
 
 the voice of his social surroundings. Let society furnish the wit, 
 and we'll embalm it," said Fred, abstractedly. 
 
 " Very well turned. Come, ma chire," Madame Leandre said, 
 good-naturedly, carrying o5 Mrs. Circester, and leaving " the 
 wits," as she said, " to fight it out with undivided mind." 
 
 Abeille proved himself well informed, well bred, and fairly en- 
 tertaining. Fred chuckled when, at the end of ten minutes, his 
 mentor returned, and not a word had been said about the debutante. 
 
 " The evening's not over yet," she said, in answer to his signifi- 
 cant look of amused triumph ; " the gloves will be mine." r 
 
 " I am afraid those lovely hands wrill get sunburned, if they are 
 your only dependence," he laughed. 
 
 Madame Leandre presented a half-dozen more of her favorites 
 during the evening, endowing each vdth some rare gfift in the same 
 winning exuberance of spirit in which she had introduced Abeille. 
 
 Just as the company, which had been gradually thinning, broke 
 up, Fred, who stood in the hall waiting for Mrs. Circester to re- 
 ceive the final embrace of the series of caresses that madame 
 bestowed on her intimates, felt a hand on his arm, and, turning, 
 Abeille stood fumbling in his card-case. Handing him a bit of 
 pasteboard, he said, eagerly : 
 
 " I'm enchanted to have met you. There's my card ; won't 
 you give me yours ? I should like very much to see more of you." 
 
 " I want them with six buttons ; you can get them -only at 
 Stewart's," said the triumphant cynic, who had observed the in- 
 terchange of cards, and thus explained its meaning, as they walked 
 to the coup6. 
 
 " You think that's what it means ? " asked Fred, incredulously. 
 
 " I don't think anything about it — I know." 
 
 When she banded Fred the latch-key to open the door, she 
 said, as she stood on the inside : 
 
 " Now you are wondering why, if all these people have axes to 
 grind, I am among them ? You needn't deny it — truth is your best 
 rSle. It makes you very attractive. You have almost a monopoly 
 of it among men with your advantages. I had determined to tell 
 you something else ; some time I vsdll. Good-night — be a good 
 boy," and he heard a soft, musical laugh as the door closed. 
 
90 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A WOMAN SCORNED. 
 
 It would be impossible, in these sober pages, to attempt to 
 rival the grandiose and pre-Raphaelite phrases in which the so- 
 ciety columns set forth the magnificence of the Grimstone ball 
 at Delmanzio's. Balls at that famous maison were then not so 
 frequent nor so elaborate as they have since become. But as the 
 great Grimstone house, that now spreads over four lots, fronting 
 the park, was not then built, and as "good form " demanded a 
 return for years of hospitality in New York, the Grimstones de- 
 cided to pay their social debts in one colossal entertainment. The 
 reader, curious in the exact details of that aristocratic (?) episode, 
 can find the grandeurs of it blazoned, as I said before, in the jour- 
 nals of the day, where he vrill see that the names alone comprised 
 two long columns, while the description of the raiment adorning 
 the beautiful women present covered a page ! Among the names, 
 the curious antiquarian will note the Vice-President and a score 
 of Senators, the most distinguished statesmen of the lower House, 
 and three Governors; the plenipotentiaries of England and 
 France, with three marquises and a duke's son in their suites. 
 
 Among the women honored by, or honoring the event, were 
 the wife of the President, Mrs. Ajax, and her beautiful daughter, 
 with the wrives of half the Cabinet. One serious omission will be 
 found in the realistic record of the dressing : new to the high life of 
 the metropolis, neither Eleanor nor her mother had taken thought 
 to send a description of their govms and jewels to the hard-worked 
 vmters, who reproduce for the million, after the//C«, the grandeurs 
 of the proud. It was remarked, however, by those who were 
 present, that Eleanor had subdued her fondness for the lurid 
 hues that signalized her at other assemblages, and made a pro- 
 nounced impression in a quite simple govra. Mrs. Grimstone 
 stood by her colors, and enjoyed the sensation her youthful matur- 
 ity created among those who had never seen her. Though the jour- 
 nals declared the guests in rapture vath the splendid hospitality of 
 the opulent host, Eleanor secretly pronounced it a dismal affair. 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. gj 
 
 The supper, served from twelve o'clock until four in the morn- 
 ing (there were a score of reprobates found about and under the 
 table at six), specially annoyed her ; though we read in the report 
 that "it was an idealized epicureanism that had created the feast, 
 whose component parts had been gathered by a wizard hand from 
 every quarter of the globe," the young lady pronounced it unen- 
 durable. What Eleanor found annoying was the prolonged delay 
 ,of,the young men in the supper-room, and a perplexing inability 
 to join -the dancers when their hunger was allayed. Bazars of 
 <:hanning dresses were wedged between the thin frames or stout 
 frames of elderly fellows, whose dancing days were over, and 
 whose eyes were not to be dazzled by the ravishing furbelows 
 that mind and money had been devoted to for weeks. Nor could 
 Eleanor induce Herbert to discipline the tipsy brigade that came 
 on his invitation, some of them undergraduates. She would have 
 been wholly miserable if Fred and Hilliard had not helped her out. 
 HQliard rallied scores from the banquet-room, where the incessant 
 explosions of popping corks denoted serious work of some sort. 
 She repaid her aides with the kindest glances. 
 
 " Is it really quite proper for me to dance with you three times 
 in succession, Mr. Hilliard ? " she asked, as they moved to the 
 slow, sensuous rise and fall of Strauss's "Wine, Women, and 
 Song." She was quite his own height ; her eyes were even with 
 his own as he glanced into them ; her lips, intense in color as the 
 heart of the pomegranate, were near lus own ; her breath inebriated 
 him. • ' 
 
 "Anything is proper that you do ; you can afford to be a law 
 to yourself," he panted, whether from exertion or emotion is hard 
 to say; then added, in a low tone that he strove to make passion- 
 less, " The queen, by her rank, is forced to show preference be- 
 fore a loyal suitor may even lift his eyes." 
 
 He felt her body suddenly tremble, and a moment later she 
 begged him to take her from the floor. At first he was shocked at 
 his own saying, which, when he uttered it, had no ulterior mean- 
 ing beyond the idle gallantry of the instant; but he saw that she 
 construed it sentimentally, and with an imagination which he 
 hadn't given her credit for. He was accustomed to picturesque 
 
92 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 improvisations of this sort in ball-room talk, and had never before 
 bethought himself of a hteral construction of \a& persiflage. But, 
 whatever was her appreciation of its meaning, Nell showed no 
 further sign of its effect. She resumed her gayety in a moment, 
 and the dance went on. A few minutes later, as Fred sat in the 
 deep recess of one of the windows, Hilliard and Blackdaw, 
 without remarking him, took seats just in front of him. The 
 music was playing softly, and drowned their voices, so that he did 
 not feel that he was a listener. Presently a lady, remarkable even 
 in the lavish magnificence of the scene, was whirled past the spot 
 in the arms of one of the diplomates, just as the last bar of the 
 waltz sounded. 
 
 " There's the ruler of our country," Fred heard Hilliard say to 
 Blackdaw, as the lady seated herself a few steps from them. 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked Blackdaw, turning to look at 
 the woman. 
 
 " That is Mrs. Doming^ez las Vedas, the Aspasia of Killgore, 
 " the master of the Administration. That woman has more power 
 in Congress than the majority, for she can combine the votes of 
 more than half of the minority and majority, and that's more than 
 any Cabinet minister can do. It is she who has brought about the 
 San Domingo scheme ; it is she who got the French arms knavery 
 carried out. It is she who makes the lobby omnipotent. Killgore 
 is madly in love vnth her, and his wife has gone home to Valedo, 
 and a great scandal is threatened. 
 
 Fred looked at the woman attentively. She was not what he 
 would have called beautiful ; but he could see by the adoration in 
 the eyes and actions of the marquis seated slightly in front of her, 
 -that she must possess some charm, aside from her beauty. She 
 was not so large in figure as Nell, but she had the same predomi- 
 nance of color on cheek and lips. Her eyes were a quick black, 
 scintillant and restless, darting alternating roguishness and tender 
 interest in her adorer of the moment. Her arms and neck 
 were ravishingly bare, but her costume was so perfect, her move- 
 ments so sensuously agile, her manner so irresistible, that it was 
 the ensemble the observer marked — no detail had sufficient promi- 
 nence to obtrude. 
 
A WOMAN scorned: 5,3 
 
 "Do you know her?" asked Blackdaw, suddenly, without 
 removing his eyes from the attractive figure. 
 
 " Very well ; I might say intimately, only, under the circum- 
 stances, that would imply what I do not mean." 
 
 " Present me." They sauntered over to where the marquis 
 sat, holding the beauty with an anecdote in the French tongue, 
 which seemed funny, for both were laughing immoderately. The 
 journalists halted a step or two away until she caught sight of 
 them. She inclined her head graciously to Hilliard, and he took 
 it as a sign to approach. She consented with a show of interest 
 to "have Blackdaw presented, and made a place for him, by driving 
 the marquis off to get her fan, on the mantel, across the room. 
 The cold face of Blackdaw, Fred could see, was soon in a glow. 
 He was plainly fascinated, and she as plainly was bent on making 
 a deep and lasting impression. As she caught sight of the 
 marquis returning, she arose and, taking Blackdaw's arm, saun- 
 tered around the ball-room and out into the hall of reception, 
 where she again seated herself. She was full of resources. She 
 enchanted the young men with the drollest stories of Washington 
 scandal ; the rage of the foreign ministers at the free speech of the 
 press, and the free ways of the politicians ; of her own battles with 
 the Cabinet ladies for precedence and political preferment. She 
 told how she had secured a foreign ministry for one, a territorial 
 governorship for another, and how she was then bent upon secur- 
 ing the place of Supreme Judge for the " kindest and best of men." 
 She was hardly fairly launched on these memoirs of fragile man- 
 ners when, espying the marquis, she said, with a look of annoy- 
 ance: 
 
 " Hilliard " (she always called friends of a certain intimacy by 
 their family name), " you made a bad mistake in breaking with Kill- 
 gore ; he is the strongest man in the country, and he'll be Presi- 
 dent after General Ajax has stepped aside. I'm at the Clarendon 
 — come, both of you, whenever you like ; I shall be here a month." 
 
 Walking through the crush presently with Herbert, Fred came 
 upon Aspasia again. Herbert stopped as they met : 
 
 " Madame Dominguez, you haven't given me a dance, and 
 you know I have your name for one," he said, in mock reproach. 
 
94 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " I'm ready this instant, my child ; come." 
 
 As they whirled around the room, she said, suddenly: 
 
 " That was young Carew you were with, was it not ? " 
 
 " Yes. Do you know him ? " 
 
 " No. I saw him dancing with fair Eleanor, and I asked his 
 name. You must present him." 
 
 " He won't interest you ; he's only a journalist, and jolly green." 
 
 " How do you know he won't interest me, Mr. Scapegrace ? 
 How do you know but I like green, even when it's jolly ? I want 
 to know him. I have use for him." 
 
 " Oh, ho ! I see — he has a useful pen and the run of the 
 'Tomahawk.' I hadn't thought of that." 
 
 " No ; I read that account in the ' Tomahawk,' and I want 
 to know a man that resisted making money through such an old- 
 fashioned and ridiculous scruple as conscience. But, tell me, has 
 he met your father? " 
 
 " Yes ; he dines at our place quite often. Nell has taken him 
 up." 
 
 " You don't mean it ! Does he know — does Nell know — the 
 part papa had in the affair 1 " 
 
 "Of course not. Father's name was not mentioned in the 
 article." 
 
 " Anything serious in Nell's penchant? " 
 
 " Of course not ; what nonsense — a beggar like that ! " and 
 Herbert's eye flashed with noble scorn, as if a cycle of patrician 
 blood boiled at the suggestion of such plebeian misalliance, 
 
 " Let me prophesy something to you, my young Duke of Dev- 
 iltry. I'm the scion of the seventh son of a seventh son, you 
 know ; whomsoever Mistress Nell makes up her mind to marry 
 she'll marry. She hasn't got all Aaron Grimstone's blood in her 
 rosy cheeks, and " — she added, as she stopped suddenly, " she'll 
 marry one of t\vo men in this room." 
 
 " Well, never mind her ; she can take care of herself ! " said 
 Herbert, irritably. 
 
 " Don't be cross, my child ; anger is poor armor for a man of 
 pleasure. Only vulgar people show anger — it's very bad form. 
 There's Carew ; go and fetch him." 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. ^^ 
 
 Herbert moved off sulkily, and asked Fred to go to Aspasia. 
 To his unutterable surprise, that person revealed a deeper shade 
 of his jolly greenness by refusing. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Simply because I don't care to know her, and she would be 
 equally indifferent about knowing me." 
 
 " But if I should tell you that she asked me to present you ? " 
 
 " I shouldn't believe it." 
 
 " Well, then, I tell you that Madame Dominguez las Vedas 
 requests that Mr. Alfred Carew shall be presented to her." 
 
 " Then Mr. Alfred Carew declines^" 
 
 " Good God ! you don't mean it. Why, man, that woman can 
 bring the highest dignitary in the United States to her feet She 
 can control millions of money. A word from her can make 
 your fortune, and a word from her can ruin you ! " 
 
 " I know something of her power, but I don't imagine she will 
 care enough to say the one word to bring about one or the 
 other; at all events, I don't want to know her.'' As he spoke, 
 Nell came up, looking at her card. 
 
 " I came to apologize for missing the last dance wdth you. If 
 you'll forgive me, and take this square dance, I shall feel that I 
 have not sinned so much," she said, gayly, as she took his arm. 
 Fred said, in Herbert's ear : 
 
 " If she really asked it, this vdll be your excuse." 
 
 " So virtue refuses the palm of vice ? " said Aspasia, as Her- 
 bert came back alone. " I see an ingenious fib on die end of 
 your tongue, so to speak ; you needn't utter it. I saw his man- 
 ner, and I know he refused to be presented." 
 
 " Eleanor carried him oft, or he would have come." 
 
 " Tut-tut, my child ! that's one of the rare secrets of this life 
 you have yet to learn. Never waste a lie — it is too valuable — 
 there is not enough material for artistic lying, and people like you 
 and me should learn to draw sparingly on our capital. Do you 
 know I rather like the simpleton ? It's refreshing to know that 
 there is some of that sort left. Heavens! the happiness of a 
 woman that gets a man like that — a man that thinks more of his 
 conscience than money or place ! " She took Herbert's arm, and 
 
^6 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 turned in a direction where she could keep Nell and Fred in view. 
 " No ! " she exclaimed, after a long scrutiny, " no ! he will never 
 fall in love with Nell, lean see that; if there is a likelihood on 
 either side, Nell will love him, and love him in vain." 
 
 Herbert shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. This was trying 
 the patrician blood beyond bounds; he felt that he should say 
 something vindictive if the subject were pursued further. Both 
 had stopped opposite the set in which Nell and Fred were danc- 
 ing. It ended almost as they came to a halt, and in a moment 
 Hilliard was in Fred's place. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Aspasia, tightening her hold on Herbert's arm, 
 " there is the man. It requires no prophet to tell that." 
 
 " Come, let me take you to the marquis ; I'm neglecting my 
 friends," Herbert said, almost savagely, as he fairly dragged the 
 seeress from the spot. She laughed a little musical laugh, like the 
 warble of a bird. 
 
 "What does my Lord Grimstone want for his daughter — a 
 prince ? In ten years from now that man may be the master of 
 princes, and the woman who marries him a sovereign. Mark the 
 prediction, my son," she said, maliciously, as they came up with 
 the marquis. Mrs. Albion Circester was talking to the nobleman, 
 and the three sat down in the rear of the dancers. 
 
 " Oh, there's a young man I want to present to you ! " ex- 
 claimed Mrs. Circester, as she directed Madame Dominguez's 
 glance to Fred, who stood at some distance. The latter, looking 
 around, complained of a draught, and, as the marquis went to draw 
 the curtain, she said : 
 
 " My dear, you needn't attempt it. He has already been of- 
 fered the boon, and refused it." 
 
 " What do you mean ? You're joking ! " 
 
 " I'm serious as a congressional joker," and she told the epi- 
 sode in a few jocose words before the marquis resumed his place. 
 
 Fred's patron fairly collapsed with horror. She was so visi- 
 bly shocked that the solicitous nobleman suggested a sip of 
 wine. She asked him to take her to Fred ; and, when she had led 
 that unsuspecting innocent into discreet seclusion, she gasped : 
 
 " In Heaven's name, what do you mean by such madness ? 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. 57 
 
 Why, don't you know " — she went on, as the astonished young 
 man looked at her in bewildered helplessness — " that woman can 
 close the door of every house in New York in your face, and you 
 have agronted her, absolutely insulted her ; she will kill you, and 
 you deserve it ! " 
 
 " Who told you I had refused to be presented ? " cried Fred, 
 hot with the conviction of Herbert's treason. " Did Herbert tell 
 her ? If he did, he's an unmanly scamp ! " 
 
 In his excitement he spoke louder than he intended, and Her- 
 bert, who had just come within ear-shot, heard the closing words, 
 coupled with his own name. 
 
 "You are perfectly justified, Carew, in thinking that, though 
 this is hardly the place to say it. If it were true that I had be- 
 trayed your folly, I should be just what you say. I didn't tell her ; 
 she stood watching us, for she had sent me expressly to bring you. 
 I knew that you didn't believe that she had, but she assumed that 
 you did, and guessed that you had refused." 
 
 Fred looked from the troubled face of Mrs. Circester to the 
 indifferent face of Herbert, and then, in the conviction that he was 
 wronging Herbert, exclaimed, impulsively : 
 
 " Forgive me, Herbert. I jumped to the conclusion, and you 
 can see that, since but we two knew what was said, I was justi-; 
 fied, wasn't I } " 
 
 " Yes, you were, but you're an impracticable fellow, and you'll 
 find your road a pretty rough one if you keep on in this way. 
 Of course, I bear no ill-will, and the matter is ended." He left 
 them composedly, and Mrs. Circester, bidding Fred sit down, 
 asked, in piteous incredulity : " What does it mean ? You couldn't 
 have been in your senses. I am quite dazed ; I never heard of such 
 a thing ! " 
 
 " It's simple enough. This lady is — " Fred hesitated, and 
 colored, evidently conscious for the first time that the ground of 
 his objection to knowing Madame Dominguez couldn't be ex- 
 plained to a lady. 
 
 " I know all that, everybody knows Jill that ; but do you sup- 
 pose society is an evangelizing mission ? So long as she behaves 
 herself irreproachably in a drawing-room, and rumor alone takes 
 
98 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 note of her private life, what has society to do with her conduct? 
 Do you imagine that there are not scores like her in this city, in 
 this room ? You amaze me ! Where have you lived ; where are 
 your eyes ; where that keen observation of the journalist ? On 
 the same score that you decline knowing this lady, you would shut 
 yourself from some of the most brilliant drawing-rooms of this 
 city." 
 
 " I can't believe it, I won't believe it. You are deceived by the 
 vulgar reports in black-mailing papers." 
 
 "When I tell you that I know of my own knowledge a dozen 
 women courted and considered in the most pretentious places one 
 visits in this city, who are all that you can imagine Madame Do- 
 minguez to be, you can hardly hold that I am talking hearsay. 
 But this is all wide of the question. I am really interested in you, 
 I like you — I like you very much — ^and it is because I respect you 
 that I like you. Now, what I propose is this : you must let me 
 make your peace with this justly offended lady ; for, remember, in 
 any event, if "she had a brother or husband, you as a man of honor 
 couldn't refuse a challenge for such an affront. It isn't your busi- 
 ness to keep the world's conscience ; all you have to do is to meet 
 people on the terms the world accords them, and ask no ques- 
 tions." 
 
 " I ask no questions — I say nothing of this woman ; surely I 
 have a right to say whom I shall and whom I will not know," 
 cried Fred. 
 
 " By no means ; you have committed a rudeness as well as an 
 unpardonable offense, and I don't know but the gaucherie is as 
 bad as the offense. As the guest of the Grimstones you have no 
 right to refuse to meet any one you find under their roof. You in- 
 sult them as well as the lady by your conduct. All that is left for 
 you now is humble apology to Herbert, and to adopt a conciliatory 
 course toward La Doming^ez, which will clear her mind of this 
 dreadful faux pas. Let me manage : we're very good friends, and 
 I can convince her that you meant nothing. She can be made to 
 believe that it was the diffidence of a young man unaccustomed to 
 such dazzling beings as she is : that will be sure to flatter her." 
 
 " You're wonderfully kind to take so much interest in me, Mrs. 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. pp 
 
 Circester, and I am grateful, on my soul I am ; but I know I am 
 right, I know that I should be doing wrong to do what you sug- 
 gest — I beg you not to think of the matter again. If I have in- 
 curred the malignity of the woman that I can not honor, I can bear 
 it rather than blush when I meet my mother's eye, with the bur- 
 den of this woman's tainted patronage in my mind." 
 
 " You are a headstrong and dangerous fellow," said the dis- 
 comfited Mentor, sighing, and rising to go, while she regarded 
 him queerly and scrutinizingly, " I don't take this for an answer, 
 and I shall tell my friend that it was mauvaise honte that over- 
 came you. Good-night," But as she rode home she secretly ad- 
 mired the foolish obstinacy of the young Puritan, as she called him 
 thereafter, and she wondered in a lazy way if her boy would ever 
 let the vague sentiment of home teaching stand between him and 
 fortune visibly beckoning toward its most coveted prizes. 
 
 Meeting Rivers a few minutes after, Fred went with him to 
 take leave of Eleanor and Mrs. Grimstone. He observed closely 
 to see if they knew anything of the affsur, but their cordial tone 
 made his mind easy. 
 
 As they walked across Madison Square, Fred told Rivers the 
 adventure, and asked him if he had not acted right Rivers roared 
 until Fred feared the burly policeman behind would arrest them 
 for desecrating with plebeian noise the solemn peace of this court 
 quarter. When the other had recovered his gravity, which was 
 even then but a truce, as he continued to explode as he talked. 
 Rivers said :, 
 
 " My wingless cherub ! of course you're wrong, madly, wildly, 
 maniacally wrong. You've no more right to r^ulate the morals 
 of Grimstone's guests, or know that they have morals, or haven't 
 morals, than you have to know that you are sharing a pew with 
 an atheist in church, or the seat with an alderman in the theatre 
 or the street-car ! Society regulates collectively the morals of its 
 members. Individual judgment is as useless and illegitimate to 
 affect an issue as the vote of a minority in an election. But let 
 me bring the matter home to you : until the other day, half the 
 people who knew you believed that you had been exposed in tak- 
 ing a bribe. Suppose that some one at Grimstone's had, on the 
 
loo THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 strength of the common belief, declined your acquaintance. The 
 fact that you were innocent doesn't enter into the matter. Grim- 
 stone would have been compelled to refuse you further admittance 
 to his house, or deprive himself of the pleasure of receiving the 
 persons objecting to you. No, my boy, you ought to have met the 
 lady, and cut her afterward, if you objected to knowing her. You 
 have done an elephantine folly, and I'm sorely afraid you'll pay 
 dearly for the right of shovdng a pretty women that you place 
 virtue above beauty. That's a thing no pretty woman ever for- 
 gives." 
 
 " Well, you haven't given me any valid reason yet that I can 
 see as such," says Obstinacy, staring upward at the stars. 
 
 " If you knew the woman as I do, you'd require no reasoning, 
 my son." 
 
 " Who is she ? I know that she is Senator Killgore's intimate, 
 and that's all." 
 
 " Her story is a romance. She came to this country from the 
 West Indies, Barbadoes, in 1863, I think. She was then, though 
 a girl of seventeen, the Wife of an English army officer. He was 
 at first an attachi of the British legation in Washington, but later 
 went on a mission to Richmond, caught yellow fever in Charles- 
 ton, where he had gone to see about blockade-running, and died 
 within a week. The wife remained in Washington, and did not 
 leam for months that her husband was dead. She wasn't heart- 
 broken. He was the younger son of an earl, and had a very small 
 allowance from his brother. The news of his death came from 
 this brother, who curtly informed her that, beyond the sum neces- 
 sary to take her back to Barbadoes, she could expect no further 
 aid or recognition from him ; that, if she had a son, he would 
 adopt him, but only on condition that she executed a paper at the 
 legation, relinquishing maternal right or title in his government or 
 rearing. In that event he would settle one hundred and fifty 
 guineas a year upon her until she married again. She had a boy 
 three months old, but the earl's letter so enraged her that she 
 never answered it. At the legation she met the Marquis Dominguez 
 las Vedas, a rich grandee who was interested in mines in Mexico, 
 who passed his winters in Washington, and disappeared no one 
 
A WOMAN SCORNED. - ,01 
 
 knew where in summer. When the year of her widowhood was 
 over, she married the marquis, and put her boy in the college at 
 Georgetown. The couple lived for years in Washington ; the 
 marquis, who talked English badly, making use of his wife in lob- 
 bying schemes, looking to aggression of some sort in St. Do- 
 mingo, in which he had large plantations. How successful she was 
 in those you may remember ; the island would have been bought 
 by the ring of which Killgofe was the real head if such an outcry 
 had not been raised by the newspapers after the bargain was 
 concluded. 
 
 "After that they came to New York, where their title gave 
 them the highest standing. They lived for some time in great 
 afHuence at one of the fashionable hotels, and became as well 
 known as the oldest families. The marquis, who was a gour- 
 met, was suddenly stricken with paralsyis and softening of the 
 brain. He was sent to an asylum, where he has been ever since, 
 unless he is dead. The wife then returned to Washington, 
 where she became the Egeria of Killgore. Her passion for in- 
 trigfue was probably as much the motive of the liaison at first as 
 anything else. Killgore had seen her craft in dozens of schemes, 
 and he became her slave. Once he attempted to deceive her, and 
 she taught him a lesson that has kept him constant, if not faithful, 
 ever since. Young Talboy had just brought his wife to Washing- 
 ton ; she was the daughter of Governor Fleece, one of the Conti- 
 nental families. Talboy was an assistant secretary in one of the 
 departments, and used to take his wife to the office every after- 
 noon. Killgore had a g^eat deal of business in that department, 
 and used to meet Mrs. Talboy whenever he went. He fell madly 
 in love with her, and went to every reception and public place she 
 visited ; he neglected la marquise openly. She took her meas- 
 ures, set a watch on his movements, and learned who her rival 
 was. She waited her time, and, when the blow was ready, struck. 
 One day a messenger ran into Talboy's office, and informed him 
 that his wife, who had complained of ailing, was dangerously ill, 
 and that a coupe was at the door to take him home. He ran 
 down, jumped in, and drove straight home, rushed to the sick- 
 room, and found Killgore there 1 The scandal was pretty closely 
 
102 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 kept. Talboy is ambitious, and preferred the influence of Killgore 
 to blood or vengeance. He is living peacefully with his wife, and 
 Killgore plays his mistress no more treasons. Now, that is the 
 sort of woman you have made a relentless enemy. You can draw 
 your own inferences as to the policy of what you have done, leav- 
 ing the question of right or wrong out of consideration." 
 
 " It's a horrible story, and she's worse than I thought ; and I'm 
 heartily glad I acted as I did." 
 
 " That's the Irish in you, Dfiy son — pig-headed in right as well 
 as virrong. The Celt has a bad name in this country, and you 
 might just as well enjoy the game as the name. You'll get "no 
 credit for right-doing ; you're like a suspected woman — ^you may 
 be pure as snow, but no one v^dll believe you.'' 
 
 " But I shall believe myself, and that's a good deal, I am be- 
 ginning to think " — and the two friends separated, the loud voice 
 of Rivers breaking into roars of laughter until he turned the 
 comer of the square. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 LESSONS IN HIGH LIFE. 
 
 On opening the newspapers the day after the ball (" all of which 
 I saw, and part of which I was," Fred said to himself, in jocose 
 _ paraphrase), he was not less amazed than the observant apostle 
 to learn the importance and the magnitude of the festivity. It re- 
 quired from three to sue columns of the smallest type to set forth 
 its splendors. Even the " Tomahawk " gave a column and a half 
 of its precious pages to a sardonic sketch of the spirit of the scene 
 set forth in the tone of good-humored raillery, that made its com- 
 mentaries the most effective satire of the times. 
 
 "By Geoi^e!" Fred exclaimed, as he opened each of the 
 journals in turn, "I had no idea I was taking part in such a 
 momentous event. I should have reported the affair in ten lines, 
 and then considered I had wasted space on^ a thing so triv- 
 ial. But obviously I am mistaken, for here are a dozen lines 
 
ZESSOJV^S IN HIGH LIFE. 103 
 
 in each of the papers, to describe a fight with the Indians, where «i 
 hundred men were killed; a dozen lines about the Scientific 
 Convention, attended by all the learned men in this country, 
 and some from abroad ; five lines, to tell of the mass-meeting in 
 favor of purifying politics ; a half-column, to tell the objects of 
 a working-man's convention in Columbus ; a third of a column, 
 describing the uprising of harassed settlers in California, demand- 
 ing redress from the courts against the monopolists destroying 
 land and crops by an inundation of slag ; half a dozen lines, an- 
 nouncing an electrical mechanism that will enable telegraph com- 
 panies to send four messages over one wire simultaneously ; a 
 mere mention of anew book by Emerson; a 'personal 'to tell 
 that the Woman's Suffrage Association met in Washington. 
 
 " By Heaven ! I can't understand iL Here is matter, rivaling 
 the data of an encyclopaedia, dismissed in a column or two, while a 
 frivolous gathering of a few hundred idle people is emblazoned in 
 pages. Here is a country of forty-five millions of people, forty-four 
 millions of whom are incessantly at woric producing such things as 
 make the marvels of the Arabian Nights commonplace, and the 
 history of the day dismisses them in a few lines, while the danc- 
 ing and feeding of a few hundred of them take up more space 
 than an essay of Bacon, or the whole of Johnson's-' Lives of the 
 Poets.' What can it mean ? Am I mad ; or is this the real 
 mission of the press ? Who reads such stuff ? Obviously it must 
 be read, or such sharp people as the publishers would not waste 
 their space with it." 
 
 Meeting Rivers at breakfast, he propounded this sociological 
 problem to that philosopher, demanding the rationale of it. Riv- 
 ers laughed — he loved laughing, you see, this kindly cynic. 
 
 " It's money, my son ; big money for the publishers. How } 
 You ought, by this time, to know. First, every one, or nearly 
 every one whose name is printed, buys from fifty to a hundred 
 copies ; people who have wide social relations buy as high as a 
 thousand copies. I have known demands for issues like this morn- 
 ing's to continue for years after the event. That, of course, means 
 money, for the papers are sold at retail rate over the counter. 
 Then, again, you will observe that every dress described is traced 
 
104 
 
 THE money-makers. 
 
 to the firm that sold the material ; the modiste that constructed 
 it, the artist who designed it, the jeweler that crowned it with the 
 gems matching its colors and character. 
 
 " Then, if you will turn to the advertising columns, you will re- 
 mark that the amount and enthusiasm expended on each of these 
 are in proportion to the space taken up by the firm's advertisements. 
 In many cases, the paragraphs, describing the fineries, decorations, 
 and- the like, which make the reader wonder at the universality 
 of journalistic information, are furnished by the firms, most of 
 whom now keep writers engaged for such work alone. This is 
 all paid for at so much a line, generally not less than a dollar. 
 Where this is not the rule, that is, where the text is not supplied 
 by the jeweler, the merchant, or the modiste, the ladies themselves 
 call in adepts and send the paragraph describing their houses, 
 dresses, and parties, to each office. 
 
 " There is. 111 venture to say, not a line in all these reports, 
 except in rare instances, that is not paid for, directly or indirectly, 
 three or four times over. Nearly every line of the matter has been 
 in type in the various newspaper offices for days, and in many cases 
 proofs have been submitted to those paying most largely. Even 
 the reporters receive douceurs, such of them as will accept them ! " 
 
 " But why publish all the names ? I see yours and mine, for 
 example. We don't order copies." 
 
 " No, but these lists are of value to the retail trade ; for the 
 next month you -will receive circulars daily — that makes a demand 
 for the journal ; and it is safe to estimate that the extra issues 
 printed to-day will reach thousands of copies, all clear profit to 
 the publishers. I have only hinted at some of the interpenetra- 
 tions by which this golden chain takes in all the money-yielding 
 factors of a rich community like New York. Remark the amount 
 of advertising this morning : there are three columns on pages 
 where generally you find but one. These are inserted at greatly ad- 
 vanced rates. It all means money — money, my boy ! Everything 
 means money to-day. Do you reihark the modest line in each 
 report, that there were over one hundred millions represented by 
 Grimstone and four of his guests .' " 
 
 " Yes, I wondered at that ; why was such a vulgar thing printed 
 
LESSONS IN HIGH LIFE. 105 
 
 in all the reports ? How could it be known, even if it were true ; 
 and of what pertinence is it, if it be true ? " 
 
 " The point was unquestionably given out by Grimstone's 
 authority, through some adroit lictor of the house. Money is the 
 fascination of gatherings like this, where in old times it was good 
 feeling and neighborly interest. 
 
 " The newspapers are merely taking advantage of their market 
 in ' pandering,' as you call it, to this diseased demand. They 
 print these columns, that shock you, as a purely business outlay, 
 and on the whole it is justifiable, for it helps scatter a moiety 
 of ill-got millions, in a handsome percentage, among all sorts of 
 craftsmen, from florists and hackmen to vmters and artists ; for 
 what is only told in the dailies will be illustrated in the weeklies, 
 and then the photographers will come in for a share in the golden 
 shower. So in a sense, you see, Grimstone is a public benefac- 
 tor in this instance ; he not only spends his own money, but 
 causes thousands of other dollars to be put in circulation. Hcbc 
 fabula docet — put money in thy purse, my son, if you would win 
 beauty, wear laurels, or have consideration in any manner what- 
 soever. 
 
 " I suppose people were always the same, but I think the sordid 
 side of humanity was never shown in such frank unloveliness as 
 in the society and life of this day. Now let me instill the essence 
 of all this wisdom into your mind, my impetuous Loyola ; there 
 let it crystallize as dew into diamonds. Journalism offers the 
 widest scope for men of brains. Write books ? No one will read 
 them, unless you have claqueurs in the press, or a sympathizing 
 coterie in the monthlies. I know a novel, written by the brightest 
 mind in New York, and, because the author would not descend to 
 the literary artifices that pique curiosity, it lies on the shelves of 
 the fashionable publisher in Pirate Row, unread, these five years. 
 Write for the monthlies ? They are nepotic groups into which a 
 new-comer can no more penetrate than a monk into masonry. 
 No, my son, don't look too seriously at the worldly phases of 
 journalism. Don't mind them plying the cap and bells to the rich. 
 They do it cynically, and enjoy satirizing, where they seem to adu- 
 late. They are the Swifts of the social Yahoos, the Cervantes of 
 
io6 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the social chivalry, the Vohaires to icrasez the infame of polit- 
 ical and social superstition." 
 
 "A prodigious rSle, truly ! " laughed Fred. 
 
 " Yes, there's no sentiment in these flamboyant reproductions of 
 parvenu ostentation. If it didn't pay, such routs would be dis- 
 missed in a paragraph. The lesson of it all is — put money in thy 
 purse-^honesdy, of course, if you can, some other way if you 
 must ! " 
 
 " Yet you are a poor man. At your age, and gifted with all 
 this worldly knowledge, your practice doesn't consist with your 
 advice." 
 
 ■ • " Oh, I'm too old to get over the superstitions of my youth. I 
 don't know how it might be if I were as young as you are. Fur- 
 thermore, when I was a youngster, money was a mere incident in 
 the lives of most young men. It didn't bring the finest g^rls in 
 marriage, the homage of place, or the consideration of mind. If 
 I were young as you are, I don't know but I should regard the 
 teachings of my youth as abstractions, and be what everybody 
 about me seems to be, and is not ashamed of being. However, you 
 must wait till you marry before you decide on joining Belial. A 
 wife of the right kind is a perfect Solomon in matters of this sort, 
 and one beauty about women is that, however frivolous, however 
 misdirected, in the secondary objects of life, none of them care to 
 be won by confessed money-getters, who crave money for itself. 
 For I've never known it to fail that the passion for money-getting 
 claims an undivided allegiance. Therefore, though women like 
 what money brings, they rarely like the money-makers. Then, 
 too, just as literary women detest literary men, and marry clods, 
 rich women turn to sentimental beggars like you. I shall not be 
 surprised to see you leading Miss Van Staten to the altar one of 
 these da}rs. When that bonanza time comes, don't forget this 
 Rivers of the waters of life !" and, vnth this joke, he wound up the 
 homily. 
 
 During the afternoon Fred received a visit from Abeille. The 
 young man asked him at once about the great event of the even- 
 ing before ; he had seen Fred's name in the hst of guests, and his 
 manner was now as deferentially winning as before it had been 
 
LESSONS IN HIGH LIFE. 107 
 
 confiding and gracious. He envied his luck, but did not wonder 
 at it, for merit and parts like Fred's were sure to hold their own 
 even against such odds as money. Then he led the conversation 
 adroitly to his protigee, epilogued vaguely on the indifference of 
 managers, the inappreciation of the critics, and the glory of men 
 who identified themselves with rising genius. 
 
 Miss Hermit was such a one. - Her voice had been pro- 
 nounced perfect by Nilsson; she had carried all the prizes in 
 the Conservatoire. She only needed an opportunity to become 
 famous. " Now, I will say fraiikly that I want your help," he 
 continued, softly. " You can make her career by a slight effort, or 
 you can let the poor thing struggle on, unheard and unrecognized." 
 
 '• I don't in the least see how I can help or hurt Miss Hermit 
 I'm sure, if she has the voice and training you say, she is inde- 
 pendent of the individual, and may appeal confidently to the 
 public." 
 
 "Ah, yes, that's just it! Don't you know that a Grisi or 
 Ficcolomini might come to New York, unknown, and sing to 
 empty benches, if the press did not take her up ? Now, here is 
 what you can do. You know all the writers on the press. Ask 
 them to come to a dibut we are going to gjive presently. They 
 will refuse, of course, but we are going to have a little banquet, 
 after the concert, at Delmanzio's. The money has been raised. 
 Of course, many of the writers are poorly paid ; they naturally 
 can't be asked to g^ve their time and work for nothing. Now, 
 here is what I propose. A few good preliminary notices in each 
 paper will assure us a good house. We can count on fifteen hun- 
 dred dollars above expenses. Now, I vdll put one thousand dol- 
 lars of that in your hands to do with as you like, knowing that 
 you are too much of a gentleman to bring odium on us by neg- 
 lecting to divide it with your confrkres ; but of course you will be 
 justly entitled to a larger sum than the others. You are shocked 
 at the idea ? " 
 
 " I confess I think it a very unworthy way to begin such a 
 career as you prophesy for this lady, to say nothing of what I 
 think of your — ^let us say courage, in counting on my support in 
 such equivocal methods." 
 
io8 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Pray don't misunderstand me. It is a pure matter of busi- 
 ness. It is done every day. I came to you simply because I had 
 the pleasure of knowing you through our mutual friend Madame 
 Leandre, who felt confident that you would not refuse to aid a 
 girl so worthy and so friendless as Miss Hermit. We are willing 
 and glad to devote the gains of the dibui to those who help us ; it 
 is a common practice — indeed, it is the only way in which an 
 unknown singer has ever won her way in this country." 
 
 "Very well, Mr. AbeiUe, you seem to me far too fine a fellow 
 to be part of this ignoble way of doing things. I will help Miss 
 Hermit so far as I can. I will speak to all the fellows I know, 
 but you must never breathe money to me, or I shall avoid you 
 and her as I avoid a plague." 
 
 " Ah ! Mr. Carew, I wish all the men in your profession were 
 of the same mold : the stage wouldn't be the mockery it is to- 
 day ! " 
 
 "You may be sure that the majority of the men in my pro- 
 fession would act just as I do ; the few who disgrace it by bri- 
 bery can be counted on the fingers of your hand." 
 
 " I wish I could believe it," sighed the gratified amateur, as 
 he bowed himself out, protesting his delight to have " such a rock 
 of rectitude in a man already known for his brilliancy." 
 
 Fred sat down with a sickening sensation of disgust and 
 despair. Of what avail were effort and conscience, if this were 
 the reckoning in which his adored life-work was summed up? 
 Better, far better, a carpenter's bench, a blacksmith's forge, or 
 the tranquil labors of the field, " far from the madding crowd's 
 ignoble strife." But he would not believe it. He would try the 
 fellows, and see if they didn't respond as heartily, with motives as 
 high-minded as his own ! On his way to the " Tomahawk " he 
 stopped at the office of a very brilliant and able writer, whose 
 dramatic critiques were the delight of the town. Fred explained 
 the situation in a few words, the other nodding encouragingly as 
 the project was laid bare. 
 
 "Yes, I've heard of her; she's the protigie of Miss St. Ogg, 
 our greatest singer, and, as things go, her word alone would 
 crowd the house, but it won't. Who is running the affair? " 
 
LESSONS IN HIGH LIFE. 109 
 
 " How running ? I don't understand you, Mr. Hagar." 
 
 " I mean who handles the money, pays the bills ; opera houses 
 and incidentals are not thrown in, even for fine voices and fine 
 eyes. Before I commit myself, I must know that there is an 
 assured backer ; I have known these affairs to fizzle out the very 
 hour announced for the performance ? " 
 
 " I believe Mr. Abeille is managing the concert," and Fred's 
 face flushed and his heart beat. 
 
 " Ah ! yes, I know of him — 2. smart fellow." He mused a 
 moment, and then said, writh an air of magnanimous conversion 
 to a sentiment : " Well, say to him he may come and see me. I 
 can't tell what to do until I learn what he proposes." 
 
 He looked carelessly at Fred as he said this, but the latter, 
 taking the words literally, rose to go, thanking him for his good- 
 nature, and assuring him that it was " just what he expected." 
 Hagar's eyes rested on him as he closed the door, and ian 
 amused smile stole over his face. 
 
 " Is he green or greedy? I will soon see." 
 
 That evening Fred was enabled to inform Abeille that he had 
 secured promises from all the men he knew, and inclosed their 
 addresses, where Abeille was to visit them, and himself explain 
 his purposes and what he desired. He vvrote in the coldest tone, 
 swelling with the sense of Abeille's humiliation, when he found 
 that what he had regarded as conditional on money Fred had 
 secured without such a thing even being hinted ! Had he been 
 gifted with an eye observant enough to read human emotion, and 
 had he been near enough to bring it to bear upon Abeille when 
 that diplomate read his note, Fred would have felt less compla- 
 cent triumph in the virtue of his friends. The amateur whistled 
 softly, looked lugfubriously at the sheet of estimates, and mut- 
 tered : 
 
 " Hagar, of all men ! This means big money ; and, the worst 
 of all, in advance. I know what that curt ' call and see me ' in- 
 volves ! " 
 
 An hour or two later, Mrs. Albion Circester received a packet 
 and note, as she was seated with la marquise, that created quite a 
 contrary effect: 
 
no THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 Dear Mrs. Circester : You've won the gloves. I've lost 
 an illusion. I shouldn't regret it if there had not been a heavy run 
 on my stock of late. They remained too long with me, however, 
 to leave a place congenial to infidelity. I will put charity in their 
 stead, and, like the good St. Augustine believe, where I can not 
 prove. Men are, at best, as at worst, perverse. The conscience 
 of Loyola brought about as much bloodshed as the greed of Alva ; 
 but the one thought he was serving his race, and the other knew 
 he was corrupting it. I refuse to believe that women are not an 
 inspiration to manliness, and men less guided by their better 
 impulses than they ever were, because I find some women that 
 are not pure, and some men that are not good. I shall persist in 
 believing refinement a flower of the heart. I had hoped to console 
 you for losing your wager vdth a sonnet on faith ; but, as you have 
 won it, accept this sermon as an expression of the conviction that, 
 while on your hands, these gloves, though a souvenir of your 
 cynicism, will never be clasped by one more unworthy than 
 Your grateful and sincere friend, 
 
 Alfred Carew. 
 
 " What an extraordinary young fool it is ! " cried Madame 
 Doming^ez, as Mrs. Circester, having first read the note, handed 
 it to her. " He writes like a college boy, just introduced to the 
 maunderings of Kant. I expected the true, the good, and the 
 beautiful in every phrase. He must be a poet, a madman, or 
 both." 
 
 " He's certainly a poet," murmured Mrs. Circester, dreamily, 
 her eyes vaguely wandering upward, with a far-away look. 
 
 "Do you believe him — ^that is, do you think he knows what he 
 means ? If I didn't know something of him, I'm sure I couldn't 
 tell what he meant by that fantastic note." 
 
 " Believe ? Of course, I believe ; there was a time " — and she 
 opened the gloves and contrasted them with the azure in the veins 
 of her dainty hands — " there was a time when I felt just as he 
 says — when I believed in women and trusted men." 
 
 " But you've been married since, my dear ; no illusion after 
 that ! " and the marquise laughed in a gay, bantering way, that 
 
LESSOATS IN HIGH XIFJE. m 
 
 brought a flush to the other's cheeks. " However, we will not go 
 back to odious things. I mean to test this paragon of yours. I've 
 yet to meet the creature, in male form, that can carry resistance 
 beyond fine words." 
 
 " My dear, you're not going to mind the silly act of the other 
 night ? Believe me, if you knew him, you would forgive him ; 
 yes, you would like him the better for it. Remember, he's a mere 
 boy, and probably grew up at his mother's apron-strings ; and his 
 head is still full of the absurdities country mothers teach their 
 boys.'' 
 
 " Tiens — tiens, quelle idde — ^give me another cigarette— one 
 needs brain stimulant in talking to you, ' absolutemente,' as my af- 
 flicted lord marquis says, when he has nothing else to say; you 
 make me feel Kke a Borgia or BrinviUiers, with poison in my fingerr 
 nails, to scratch an enemy to death, or ointment in my hair to drug 
 those who are de trap. I tell you that I am really interested in this 
 phenomenon, and, so far from meaning him harm, I am bent , on 
 setting him up as a rival to that fatuous donkey Hilliard. ,.The 
 poet is not so distingui as the prosateur ; but he's not bad look- 
 ing, and if you, or some one who understands things, could keep 
 him in hand for a season or two, he'd make a succh fou, marry 
 a million, and keep it in circulation, which is more than that 
 selfish beggar Hilliard will do, when he divides old man Grim- 
 stone." 
 
 " Do you really think he'll get Eleanor .' " 
 
 "Get her! why, the idiot fairly invited him the other night at 
 the ball — she couldn't keep her eyes from him ; he'll get her if he 
 wants her ; but he don't v^rant her if he can get a girl with the 
 same amount of money plus fine manners, securer social relations, 
 and a better pedigree. He winces every time he comes near 
 Mother Grimstone ; her flamboyant laces and flame-colored bijoux 
 reminded him of the lurid illustrations of the martyrs in Fox's 
 thrilling narrative. I could read it as plainly in his furtive eye as 
 I could his equable sentiment for Miss Nellie." 
 
 " But I suspect Nell cares for Carew ; they are much to- 
 gether, and she has been strangely kind and interested in him ? " 
 
 " He's what the French call a chandelle for her just at this 
 
112 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 time. Grimstone is bent on marrying her to Dorr, and she loathes 
 him, as she well may ; for, to say nothing of a left-handed wife 
 and a family of children already, he's not an attractive sort of a 
 person to choose when one is young and rich. One thing, Grim^ 
 stone, with all his astuteness, don't count on. Nell is capable of 
 killing herself before she consents to the match." 
 
 " But why on earth does Grimstone want it ? He is set down 
 as worth anywhere from ten to twenty millions ; I shouldn't be 
 surprised if it were nearer fifty." 
 
 " I know it is nearer fifty. In one job with Killgore they 
 cleared, or he cleared, over five millions, or will when they have 
 perfected some missing links. As to the marriage, he has that 
 curious passion of men who get in love with money. He wants 
 to round his millions out and make the sum so colossal that he 
 can bear down rivalry by the mere weight of his wealth. He is, 
 by-the-way, one of the most extraordinary men in the country, and 
 Killgore says that, if he ever takes the notion to go into politics, 
 he will make himself President for life, or declare a monarchy, so 
 domineering is his nature. His interest in politics so far has only 
 been shown in giving money to get the right sort of men elected. 
 No one ever knows what ticket he votes, or whether he votes at 
 all." 
 
 "As his family are from Kentucky, he probably is an Ultrocrat. 
 I know Herbert is." 
 
 " His family or relations wouldn't make any difference with 
 him ; besides, he's a Vermont man — his ' father was a tailor at 
 Bennington. The sign is said to be there still. Mark my words ! " 
 added madame, rising, " you'll hear queer things from that family 
 one of these days. Unless Herbert takes a sharp turn, he'll not 
 perpetuate the old man's fortune ; and as for Nell, it's an open 
 question whether she cuts her throat or marries her coachman. 
 One of the family made away with himself ; and where the trick is 
 once tried it often proves catching," and as she uttered the last 
 feeling sentiment la marquise put out her cheek in the French 
 fashion to receive the perfunctory salute of her hostess. 
 
 As she drove off, she murmured, smiling to herself : " She's 
 rusi, is my dear Adeline ; she thinks of throwing over the count 
 
LESSONS IN HIGH LIFE. ji^ 
 
 and taking this young Saint Anthony to her arms. Can it be 
 true ? Could she be such a fool at her age ? With her expensive 
 tastes, and his poverty, 'twould be a pretty romance. I must all 
 the more be the good fairy of this youth, and crown the idyl with a 
 shower of gdd. And yet they call me a revengeful, wicked 
 woman. The world is so full of sinners that a saint isn't recog- 
 nized when she comes among the unregenerate," and she laughed 
 softly at her own grotesque conceit." 
 
 " I believe Dominguez is in love with Carew," and, full of the 
 conviction, Mrs. Circester stood before the mirror, studying the 
 mature charms that refused to admit age, wear or tear, or any other 
 sign that they were not the flower of youth and easy conscience. 
 " What can she want of him ; why should she want him pre- 
 sented to her? She knows he is poor, and she knows now that 
 he won't intrigue, and has nothing of the libertine — what test 
 does she mean to put him to ? Good heavens ! " and she left the 
 room and ran up to her boudoir, and seated herself to write. . But 
 she seemed out of a writing vein, or found composing less facile 
 than talking ; finally, however, with evident reluctance, she read over 
 and sealed the sheets she had written, and addressing the envel- 
 ope to Mr. Alfred Carew, University Building, sent her maid with 
 it, directing her to make haste. When the girl was gone, she en- 
 tered her dressing-room, and presently reappeared in a dazzling 
 loose robe of soft ermine-like fabric, falling in a sweep to the 
 floor, and displajdng, as she walked, two ravishing slippered feet, 
 that might have been' placed on the pedestal of Toledo for the 
 worship of the devout — that is, if the devout were males ! 
 
 She carefully smoothed the rosettes at the fastenings, studied 
 the effect of the drapery reclining on a wide divan ; then rising, went 
 before the mirror, and, removing the combs and pins from her hair, 
 let it fall in naiad-like tresses over her shining shoulders. This, too, 
 she studied in many bewitching coilings and twisting^, leaning her 
 head on the side of the mirror to catch each effect. Then she ex- 
 amined her hands, went into the inner room, and, pouring a liquid 
 of delicious perfume from a large flagon, bathed the upper part 
 of her face and hands; then taking a crystal vase filled with a 
 pinkish pomade, dipped a brush into the substance, and, inserting 
 6 
 
114 "^^^ MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 it under the nail of each finger until quite satisfied with the re- 
 sult, replaced it, and applied another ingredient to the upper part 
 of the cheeks. She smiled with justifiable complacency, as she 
 bent close to the mirror to test the efficacy and at the same time 
 the invisibility of the borrowed details. 
 
 - "I never looked younger; there isn't a girl in New- York with 
 a fresher complexion," she said to herself. " I believe I shall 
 never grow old," and she stood quite transfigured with an exultant 
 sense of her beauty and its imperishability. " I shall never let 
 myself grow old — what a fool I should be after all the enjoyment 
 my beauty has given me ! It has put me above women vsrith mil- 
 lions ; it has given me as much as money can give, and I'll stick 
 to it — won't I, dear.'" and she caressed herself fondly, smiling 
 the while at the lovely face the mirror made to smile back at her. 
 ■ "I wonder if he'll come? It's such a strange being; he is 
 capable of sending back word that his business keeps him." Then 
 she fixed herself in a new pose, her hands hanging down, and the 
 fingers lightly interlaced behind her. But the mirror told the 
 same story — radiant beauty, sensuous grace, and enchanting con- 
 tour. " Ah ! if the silly boy only knew that a prince would have 
 given his rank, his name, for the privilege that is offered him 
 unasked ! Dominguez can't compare with me, though she's 
 younger. Ah me, if I only had money ! If I could only find the 
 right hand to work my plans, I could be rich, and free, and always 
 beautiful, always beautiful. Why can't I be as clever as Domin- 
 guez ? Why ? She can help me to money ! How is it that I never 
 thought of that ? Ah ! I know very well : who cares to owe any- 
 thing to a woman ? How do I know the minute she may be an 
 enemy? She will hardly venture to be an open one! "and the 
 beauty in the glass laughed until ever so many exquisite teeth shone 
 out between the rose-leaves that seemed lips. " She'd fare poorly 
 if I found it my part to warn our set against her ; though I don't 
 know many in our set that would fare much better, if the world 
 vvere made up of such St. Sebastians as this ridiculous Carew 
 hoy ! " 
 
 Elbe started, still looking over her shoulder at the face in the 
 mirror ; the door, outside, had opened and closed, she heard a 
 
LESSONS JN HIGH LIFE. nj 
 
 quick, noisy step, and pulling a low embroidered screen to the 
 head of the divan, she placed herself negligently in an attitude, 
 half reclining, half sitting. " Walter ! " she called, tenderness and 
 ~ inquiry in the accent. " Yes ; it's I ! " A slim, willowy figure 
 appeared in the door, and answered the appeal of the extended 
 arms by going to the couch and bending down to let himself be 
 kissed. 
 
 The handsome face, soft eyes, and repose of manner, re- 
 vealed the relationship, not less than the good-humored restive- 
 ness with which, boy-like, he endured the maternal caresses, as, 
 drawing his head toward her, the mother stroked his hair away 
 from the forehead, touched her lips lingeringly to his eyes, his 
 brow, and mouth. He broke away as the process seemed on the 
 point of beginning again, and the mother laughed sofdy as she 
 thought that boys of this youth's age kissed and were kissed by 
 feminine relations with such reluctance ; though she had remarked 
 that, when the tie of kinship had decreased to cousin-kin, the most 
 obstinate boys found it less irksome, or less subversive of the 
 dignity that sits with such weight of responsibility upon the. lad 
 between seventeen and twenty-three. The maternal tribute paid, 
 Walter bestowed himself discontentedly in a chair by the window. 
 Neither spoke for some time, the mother lost in reveries that car- 
 ried her far from her son. 
 
 " I say, mother, am I to have anything extra this month ? You 
 know I have spent all my money already. I am behind in the 
 boat-fund, in the polo club, and in the dancing-class." 
 
 " Ah, my boy, my extravagant child ! where am I to get money 
 to keep you going ? Your bills were three hundred dollars last 
 month ; I don't see where I'm to get money to live, if these ex- 
 penses are absolutely needful ; and I suppose they are, or you 
 wouldn't make them. I must devise a way of making money. I 
 can't starve along on a miserable five thousand a year any longer ; 
 now that you're becoming a young man you must be able to hold 
 your head with the fellows of your rank; I know that, I see it. To 
 do anything else would throw you out of sight, and you might as 
 well be a tailor's or a carpenter's son, if you can't keep in with the 
 families that were your father's friends and are mine." 
 
Ii6 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 The boy, who was swinging the heavy tassel of the window- 
 shade, left off suddenly, and, slipping over to the couch, took one 
 of her shapely hands and kissed it caressingly. Then, as if en- 
 couraged by the liberal sentiment just uttered, he cleared his 
 throat, and said, a Uttle timidly : 
 
 " You know, Miltterchen, that the fellows are getting up a fund 
 for a class-yacht ; I am one of the crew,--and I can't stay in the 
 club unless I pay my share." 
 
 - .Hehiesitated, got up, and walked on the narrow edge of the 
 Turkey rug, keeping his feet on the outer line of arabesque, like a 
 Moslem performing the rubric of the holy carpet. His mother 
 watched, w^ting to hear the amount demanded, but he seemed to 
 have given his mind quite up to this dilatory manoeuvre ? 
 
 " Well, Hertzchen, and how much is this pillage to be ? " 
 
 " I don't think you ought to talk like that, mother. I'm sure 
 it's pretty hard lines for me. You want me to go with none but 
 the swell fellows ; I'm sure I'd just as soon be with the others. 
 They have a good deal more fun, and don't spend half as much 
 money. But you complain when I go to the Boweiy— where a 
 fellow can pass a whole evening, and be as jolly as you please on 
 beer and Schweitzer-kase, and the whole shot isn't five dollars." 
 
 " O Walter, don't talk of those horrid places ! I'd rather sell 
 my diamonds than have you forced into such haunts. It breaks 
 my heart to hear you say there is any pleasure in them for you. 
 Ugh ! Horrid socialists and communists ; it would be your ruin. 
 No, you shall have all the money you need. How much do you 
 want for the yacht-fund ? " 
 
 '.' Well, the amount now is five hundred dollars ; and, perhaps, 
 if we win, there will be no more ; if we don't, there will be another 
 five hundred called for." 
 
 " Heavens, Walter ! how can we stand it ? I shall have to 
 give up this apartment and go into the country." 
 
 " Oh, well, don't let us talk, of the affair any more. I will 
 drop the last year, and go into uncle's office." 
 
 " My son, you know I won't hear of such a thing. You must 
 finish your college course, graduate high, and go into uncle's 
 office with eclat. Give me my check-book." 
 
CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA. uy 
 
 She wrote out the check and handed it to him ; he kissed her 
 passionately, whispering endearing diminutives expressive of the 
 goodness of his adored little ipother, and, with the trophy in his 
 pocket, hurried away. She rose and examined in the mirror the 
 havoc made by her boy's embraces, readjusted her hair, studied 
 her changing expressions, then, with a sigh, half-triumphant, half- 
 disconsolate, resumed her odalisque attitude on the couch. " Dear 
 fellow ! " she murmured, holding her hands up where the light 
 shone through the transparent fingers. " He shall not be humili- 
 ated before his comrades ! But it's curious, too, he's only four 
 years younger than Carew, who has been earning handsome 
 wages for years. I wonder how it is ? " she asked herself in lan- 
 guid surprise. " None of the coUege fellows that I know ever 
 earn anything ; or, if they do, it is not before thirty ! How do 
 such people as Carew get an education, when they begin their 
 career so young? " 
 
 Presently her msud returned, saying that Mr. Carew wasn't in 
 his rooms, but was expected at six o'clock, and she had left the 
 note. 
 
 " Very well, my good Lucie ; have dinner delayed until half- 
 past seven, and set the table for three. Go to the florist's and 
 get some flowers. We'll drink Burgundy to-night, my imported 
 cru — you understand ? " 
 
 " Oui, madame." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA. 
 
 Since the Grimstone ball, Fred's letters had become numer- 
 ous and edifying. Scores of people, many of whom he had never 
 seen or known, wrote to congratulate him on his noble conduct, 
 and the triumphant vindication he had received. Shopkeepers 
 vyrote him of their readiness to supply him at the lowest rate — 
 percentage off for journalists — everything conceivable from a 
 patent horse-brush to a miraculous pomade. With these came 
 circulars requesting as a deep favor his personal inspection of 
 
Il8 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 imported stock, crowned with the seal of highest fashion abroad, 
 and recognized as "tony," "nobby," and indispensable t6 a man 
 moving in the distinguished and fastidious circles in which his 
 name was found. 
 
 . ; The editor of a weekly fashion journal informed him, in the 
 most flattering terms, that, if he were not already in the employ 
 of a rival in making use of his enviable opportunities, an engjage- 
 ment would be offered him at once on the most advantageous 
 terms. It was among a heap of these reminders of the worldli- 
 ness of his fellow-men that he found the note from Mrs. Albion 
 
 Circester: ' - 
 
 . - - , " The ' Castlemarke,' Friday. 
 
 -- . " Dear Mr. Carew : Your lovely note is so like you ; while I 
 
 don't believe in all men, I believe myou. I won't say what else I 
 
 think, but I will tell you when you come. Come and dine with 
 
 Walter and myself this evening, ' toute en famille,' you see. I 
 
 want particularly to see you, as I have something very important 
 
 to tell you, which I can not write. J shall expect you, and dinner 
 
 will not be served until you come. 
 
 " Your attached friend, 
 
 "Adeline Circester. 
 " Mr. Alfred Carew." 
 
 Herbert's supper was set for that night, and Fred had counted 
 on working until late. But the invitation could not be put off. 
 He was dressed and in the lady's bower before the clock struck 
 seven. He found her in the boudoir, even more radiant under 
 the dim splendors of the crimson-shrouded candelabra set on the 
 mantel above her, and the lights in the chandelier ttimed low. 
 She did not rise when he entered, but, stretching out her hand, 
 revealing whiteness, plumpness, and beauty above the elbow, 
 said, in a caressing apology : 
 
 . "I'm quite worn out with worry and fatigue. I know you'll 
 excuse my desJiaiille, but I didn't feel equal to dressing, and I 
 couldn't postpone a talk with you to-night. Bring that ottoman 
 and sit there," she said, as Fred sank down so that his head was 
 on a level Hvith her own as she lay propped up by the tapestried 
 pillows. "Now I can talk." But she seemed in no hurry to 
 
CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA, ug 
 
 begin, and the young man sat looking a little surprised and con- 
 strained. His eye fell on the slender hand lying invitingly near 
 him, and almost unconsciously he took it in his own, quite as 
 he. would have taken any perfect object lying within his reach. 
 She made no pretense of reluctance, nor did she misunderstand 
 the guileless lad's ignorance in the act. But it gratified her, and 
 she watched in languorous enjoyment as he held it up where the 
 light showed the crimson color through the white texture. 
 
 " I'm going to talk to you about.yourself." 
 , .< That ought to be an agreeable theme if Byron is .right, as he 
 says the most interesting subject to a man is himself." 
 
 " I've seen Madame Dominguez to-day, and, while sheis not 
 furious, as I fancied she would be, she is bent on playing- you a 
 trick. I don't know what it will be, but I can imagine. Do you 
 drink?" ... 
 
 " I drink wine at the table, but never elsewhere." 
 
 "I suspect that she means to get you tipsy through some of 
 her friends, and then, adroitly, put you in a compromising po- 
 sition. I've heard of ruses of the sort, so. you must' be on your 
 guard ; and, above all, in the company of Herbert Grimstone and 
 Hilliard." . . . i r ... 
 
 "You'll make me think I am a personage pretty soon, if you 
 continue these startlingj^ surmises. Why, in Heaven's name, should 
 Madame Dominguez concern herself with me — z. woman who has 
 the whole world to fetch and carry at her command ? Don't you 
 think you are just a little sentimental, even in your cynicisms ? I 
 shall never meet this woman again ; our lines in life lie in widely 
 different directions. It was a whim that moved her to ask Her- 
 bert to bring me to her. Probably- she was curious to see the 
 hero, or the ninny, of the ' Tomahawk's ' story. ; She will have 
 forgotten my existence in a week." 
 
 " Well, you shall see that you have not done with her ; but, if you 
 are not given to young men's dissipation, you have nothing imme- 
 diate to fear. Now, another point. Remember, I am old enough 
 to be your mother, and I may take the liberty of advising you and 
 aiding you," and the hand he held gave his own a little motherly 
 pressure. " I want you to get rich. There are various ways. You 
 
I20 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 will never get rich in journalism, unless you have rich backers. 
 These you haven't, and it is not likely that you ever will with such 
 a nature as yours. I wish you were more like Hilliard, for a time, 
 though you wouldn't be nearly so charming. Do you know, young 
 man, half the girls in society would give a year's income to blush 
 as you are now blushing?" and she looked admiringly at the 
 rising and receding color, as Fred turned his head away, with a 
 half-vexed grin. " Yes, you must make money ; we are all money- 
 makers in modem life, and those who don't make money sink 
 out of sight. Now, you have the brains to adorn money, and I'm 
 determined you shall be rich. You can be that very easily, do you 
 know it ? " 
 
 " Obviously, I don't, or I should be rich now. I don't care so 
 much for riches in themselves, but I'm beginning to see what they 
 can do. But I'm dying to know the transmuting agent within my 
 reach. I am feverish even, don't you see ? " and he looked at her 
 quite composedly, still caressing her hand. 
 
 " You can marry a girl with untold millions, if you will resolve 
 to do it ! " The hand was dropped as unceremoniously as a thistle- 
 branch seized by the vrrong end, and Fred got up precipitately. 
 
 " It is not fair to make sport of a fellow like this, Mrs. Circes- 
 ter. Surely you do not think me really a simpleton ; come, now — 
 confess that you think me what the French call a fat, self-con- 
 ceited, empty-headed ninny, who believes the world a fool's para- 
 dise, because he looks at it through a fool's eyes ? " 
 
 " Come back here and sit down ; I can't talk if you don't ; 
 come — come — there, now — sit still, and don't be stupid. I do think 
 you monstrously silly, but I don't think you a fool this time." It 
 was the white hand that reached out and took the brown. " I 
 have a magnetic current in my blood under favorable conditions ; 
 sit still and you will see " ; and she laughed a gay, musical peal 
 that went adorably with the seductive pose ; " yes, you can marry 
 Eleanor Grimstone, if you will go to work in the right way.'' 
 
 " I beg, Mrs. Circester, that you won't talk in this way. It is 
 not fair to that generous young woman ; she is a very good friend, 
 and I am sure she likes me, because she respects me. What 
 would she think if she heard such cold-blooded, mercenary traf- 
 
CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA. x2\ 
 
 ficking as this ? Imagine your own daughter, Bella, the subject 
 of such a conversation ! I'm sure it would revolt you," and Fred 
 looked quite hot and angry. 
 
 -- " Indeed, I hope the day may come when Bella's prospects 
 may make her the subject of such a conversation. Poor child ! 
 there isn't much promise of it now. Let me finish : if you want 
 to many Nell Grimstone, nothing human can prevent you ; there 
 — ^there — ^sit still— I will say no more. Now, it isn't because of 
 your beaux yeux that I am going over these things. I want to 
 make you rich, because I want you to help me to get riches. I have 
 another plan, which I am not ready to tell you just yet ; but, en 
 attendant, think of Nell, and ask yourself how near the truth I am 
 the next time you are with her." 
 
 " I can settle that now. I don't love her. I never could love 
 her as a man ought to love the woman he makes his wife ; and 
 where I don't love, I shall never marry ; and I have told her this." 
 
 " You have told her that ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have told her that in so many words.'' 
 
 " And, pray, how did you come to be talking with her on such 
 a subject ? " and Mrs. Circester now sat upright, her face animated, 
 and her eyes eagerly fixed on the young man. : 
 
 " As we were driving in the park, something broi^ht up the 
 subject of marriage — ^ah, yes — ^it was h- fropos of a grand match 
 announced in the morning papers. The man was a poor bank- 
 clerk, though of a highly considered family, and the giri very rich. 
 I believe that I said I didn't envy him the life he must lead, point- 
 ed out as his wife's pensioner, and probably accused of marrying 
 her solely for her means. Miss Grimstone took issue with me 
 vehemently, and made the argument that it was rather a hard 
 case for a rich girl that she couldn't marry the man of her choice 
 because he shrank from envious gossip and scandal-mongering.'' 
 
 " She said that.?" - 
 
 " Yes ; she grew eloquent on the subject, and we became warm 
 in the discussion. I was purposely more explicit than I should 
 have been, because I wanted her to understand that I was no 
 Fortune-hunter." 
 
 " And what was the end of this charming talk ? " 
 
.122 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 - "She vowed that if she loved a man, and saw that he was 
 hesitating on such grounds, she would propose to him before wit- 
 nesses ; and I declare I believe she is capable of doing even that 
 mad thing! " 
 
 . "JVnd when she proposes to you, what will you say ? " 
 : ■. : " Ah ! I shall have an unexceptionable answer ready when 
 that happens," and Fred got up, laughing boisterously. 
 i i :" Madame, est servie," s^A Lucie, holding the portilre aside 
 ior the mistress to pass out on the arm of her g^est. 
 i';;; " Isn't Mr. Walter come in yet ? " 
 
 '• •- ." No, madame ; he left word that dinner shouldn't wait, as he 
 had some work to finish at the college." 
 
 " My poor, overworked boy ! " sighed the mother ; -" that's why 
 I must make some money. He must begin life with the same 
 advantages as his set. You've no idea what a drain the education 
 of that boy is. — ^Ah, Walter ! " she exclaimed, as the young man 
 entered, " I was afraid you were going to spend the night over 
 your examination tasks again." 
 
 "I am going back to them,'' said the student, as he shook 
 hands with Fred ; " but I couldn't resist the pleasure of dining 
 with my mamma ; and now I am rewarded with such good com- 
 pany as the great journalist. — Do you know, Mr. Carew, our class 
 think you a hero, and if you were a college man they would enroll 
 you in the club." 
 
 •• Ah, Walter ! Mr. Carew is a busy man, a brain-worker, and 
 •has no time for such follies as take up yours." 
 
 " I'm afraid you give me credit I don't deserve. I should de- 
 light in ' these follies ' if I had the means." 
 
 The dinner went on very gayly. After it was over, all three 
 smoked cig^ettes and drank coffee Turkish-fashion. Guiridcns 
 for each were placed on the rug, where the three sat luxuriously 
 sipping the fragrant cup. Mrs. Circester was fond of foreign 
 ways, and blew the smoke of her cigarette languidly in the 
 air, as she sipped chartreuse, or coffee, just as she had done 
 in Paris, Berlin, or St. Petersburg. She was at her best with 
 these gentle stimulants, and talked gayly of her European adven- 
 tures, ridiculing my lord duke and the serene state of his little 
 
CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA. 123 
 
 le court, until Fred thought he stood in danger of an apo- 
 ic stroke, he laughed so much. A little after nine, Walter, 
 an expression of marked reluctance, said he must go. He 
 a hideous cram for a conditional examination, and he was 
 :d to put in every hour. 
 
 'red dreaded a return to the discussion of himself, and boldly 
 d the Caudine Forks and held the position warily, by inter- 
 g the lady in talking about her son. That was a topic she 
 no signs of exhausting her interest in. He was the best and 
 test boy; a diligent student, always at his studies, and not 
 laturely "fast," like the sons' of; so many of her friends that, 
 lown to them, were on the Way to ruin.. Fred quitted the 
 lus union of worldliness and honesty shortly after ten, pleased 
 her aspirations for her son, and her evident unselfish devotion 
 e boy's interests. He was ashamed of his own cavalier way of 
 ving her expressions of generous concern about himself, and 
 rendered whether he were a fraud, fool, or imbecile, to be 
 ;ed to own his repugnance at her intervention in his destiny. 
 )ondered how he could be so coldly critical, not to say. antipa- 
 c, to such genuine sensibility as the lady showed in her solici- 
 for his future, and the danger he ran from the wrath of "a 
 an scorned." . 
 
 Kind as her heart is, her counsels are dangerous; let us 
 ire of Circe, even if the flowers of youth, have faded on her 
 ous form.". 
 
 'hough Herbert's chief gfuests, the Demoiselles- Beauxjambes, 
 OS, Cassecceur, and-Legerpied, were not expected until quite 
 light, Reynaud's large Mansard supper-room was animated 
 dozen young men, in the fading flower of full dress that had 
 through the vicissitudes of afternoon receptions, early danc- 
 and the theatre. To Fred's immeasurable surprise, almost 
 irst familiar face was that of the student Walter. The boy 
 ;d up and blushed when he noticed Fred's eyes fixed on him 
 hurried to him, and, in an awkward attempt to be uncon- 
 :d and jocose, hoped that Fred would keep the fact of his 
 Iter's) presence dark at the Castlemarre. - Fred reassured 
 and the youth went back to where a group were engaged, at 
 
124 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 a round green table, in a game of cards. Heaps of bills lay in 
 front of Herbert, beside a small ledger of I. O. U's. So immersed 
 was the young man in his play that he only took time to nod to 
 Fred, as Raikes, who faced the door, whispered in his ear : 
 
 " There's the poor young man of the romance." 
 
 Herbert said, over his shoulder: "Amuse yourself, Carew; 
 you know everybody; if you don't, the kid here," nodding to 
 Walter, " will make you all known." 
 
 There were three or four journalists whom Fred knew ; the rest 
 were the men of Herbert's set, both in Cambridge and New York. 
 The room was stiflingly hot, and Fred, going to the antechamber, 
 sat down in the alcove to breathe a store of pure air, to keep his 
 head clear for the ordeal of the supper. While he sat there, he 
 heard a movement as of the breaking up of the card-party, and 
 the loud greeting of new-comers. In a moment he distinguished 
 Herbert's voice : 
 
 " Here, we can fix it in a second. Here's ink. You just in- 
 dorse the note to me, and I will give you my I. O. U. for the 
 change. As you see, I haven't a penny left." 
 
 " But I must use the two hundred in the morning,'' sjiid a 
 voice that Fred. recognized as Walter's. 
 
 " You can do that ; my name is good an)rwhere that you are 
 in debt. This is just the same as a check." There was a mo- 
 ment's delay, and then, without further comment, the two went 
 back to the supper-room, and Fred followed. There were a score 
 or more in the room now — ^the manager, Victorien Wange ; young 
 Abeille, who came forward in delight and deference to salute his 
 quondam benefactor ; the group we met vnth Herbert the other 
 day; and seven or eight, whom Fred merely knew by name, sons 
 of rich men, addicted to pleasure, and passing their time wholly in 
 search of it. All were in that condition brought about by a gener- 
 ous but not excessive use of wine, which inspires the democracy 
 of conviviality. 
 
 Before the bottle all men are equal ; and the young men, who 
 would have stared with haughty surprise at some of Herbert's 
 motley_of merry-makers, in the first stages of intercourse, were not 
 only affably intimate, but obtrusively, boresomely so. When the 
 
CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA. 125 
 
 ladies finally arrived, ushered in by the manager, Victorien Wange, 
 there was a loud burst of cheers. Beauxjambes and her train 
 appeared, just as they had quit the scene in the magnificence of 
 " La Grande Duchesse." " La Duchesse," as she was universally 
 called, was a woman of perhaps twenty-three, with an embon- 
 point not yet marked enough to destroy the matchless lines of a 
 perfect figure. Her eyes were a dazzling black, mischievous, rol- 
 licking, restless, and engaging. Her face was singularly attractive, 
 without being distinctly beautiful. Her lips were like the petals 
 of a rose before it opens ; her teeth dazzling ; her hair a mysterious 
 mass of many colors, never presenting the same effect twice. -V ■ 
 
 Beauxjambes had suddenly sprung into popularity in a London 
 concert-hall. - She was the daughter of an English army officer, 
 banished to Boulogfne for debt and sharp practice in play. The 
 girl grew from the age of seven until she. was twenty in France, 
 and was in tastes and aspect a Frenchwoman. Her English 
 retained the most betwitching little accent, more particularly 
 when her sententious phrases were followed by the lively actions 
 which form part of the speech of the Gaul. She was the con- 
 ceded queen of the Bottff'ers after her voice had been heard in 
 Paris. But it was not her voice which had given her eminence. 
 
 It was an indescribable abandon of gesture, accompanied at cer- 
 tain comic parts in her song by a movement which was something 
 between a kick and a courtesy. It was never seen without a roar 
 of delight in the theatre, and a score of repetitions. Beauxjambes 
 had won a dangerous success in Paris, and when a wild young 
 marquis, whom the Empress had selected for a match of her own, 
 offered the bouffe queen his hand and violet coronet, the minister 
 of police secured an engagement for the lady over the sea. Her 
 success was not less marked in New York, where for two years 
 she had been the adored queen of such feasts as we are now to 
 sit dowm to. At her feet was laid the homage of all that segment 
 of young New York that cared to be thought " in the svidm." 
 
 When a little after midnight Fred took his place at the head of 
 Herbert's table, flanked by over twenty noisily jovial merry-mak- 
 ers, he would have given a great deal to be anywhere else. With 
 the vaguest sort of a notion of what the banquet meant, he had 
 
126 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 good-humoredly. consented to serve as Herbert's master of cere- 
 monies, and it was not until the company came in, the young men 
 tipsily demonstrative, and the actresses a little cross and petulant, 
 that he realized what he had done. But he was in for it, and 
 determined to carry out his part. To his unspeakable relief, he 
 fpund his duties quite perfunctory. Re)'naud himself-stood at the 
 buffet, and directed the service of the supper, while Herbert intro- 
 duced the guests to each other. To his still greater relief, Herbert 
 (took the foot of the table, which became virtually the head, as the 
 /our ladies, in honor of whom the feast was given, were seated 
 near -their entertainer. Champagne had been flowing freely for 
 an; hour before they sat dovsm, but Fred remarked that those who 
 drankjdid none the less justice to the exquisite supper, which 
 Reynaud took care to make known to the journalists of the group 
 was a chef d'ceuvre beyond the rivalry of any other establishment 
 in tovinn. _ 
 
 ,'■,. On a hint from Herbert, Fred rapped the company to order. 
 As there were ladies, and these ladies the guests of the. evening, 
 in a sense, the toasts would begin early, the chairman said, signifi- 
 cantly, as, perhaps, later in the evening, many of those who felt 
 called upon to express their admiration for the charming artistes 
 might encounter inattentive ears ! Furthermore, by having the 
 toasts before ,the dessert, brevity, if not wit, would be assured. 
 There was a general laugh ; and when Fred, in a few but grace- 
 ful-phrases, called for the tributes to the ladies, all arose, bowing 
 to the queen of the group, and with a cheer. While the uproar 
 was at its loudest, a card was handed Herbert, and he left the 
 room, returning in a moment with Hilliard and Rivers, who apolo- 
 gized for their tardiness by alleging a reception near Central Park. 
 To Hilliard was at once assigned the office of responding to 
 "the ladies." He fortified himself with great calmness, swallow- 
 ing a brimming goblet of champagne. He was already famous as 
 one of the most amusing after-dinner talkers of the town, and he 
 maintained his reputation that night. There was, as there must 
 be in such efforts, much more in the manner than in the phrase- 
 ology or. ideas.; for whoever read an after-dinner triumph, that 
 had set the table in a roar, that bore out the impression of its de- 
 
CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA. 127 
 
 livery? Even Hamlet wisely refrained from giving the quips 
 .wherewith Yorick had overcome the feasters of his time. Hilliard 
 began with a humorous apotheosis of the dramatic profession. 
 " Its mission was to hold the mirror up to nature," he said, "and 
 let the enlightened see what was best worth keeping in morals 
 and conventions." (Derisive laughter from the plutocratic group.) 
 — ^Yes," he continued, with mock gravity, " Beauty is a cult ; those 
 ■who minister on her altar ' — and by accident his eye rested on 
 Beauxjambes — "must carry away some of the sweetness that 
 even the wasp -gathers from the petal that opens for the more 
 kindly bee.'% , - 
 
 '■ " Voila un calembour bien.faitt" cries Beauxjambes, clap- 
 ping two rosy hands glistening with diamonds. "Monsieur 
 AbeiUe—c'est a vous de repondre gentiment — n'est-ce pas? " 
 
 " Mats qui done sent des guipesf " cries Abeille, with a fat- 
 uous look of complacency. 
 
 " We are all wasps who do not minister to the beauties whose 
 fragrance sweetens our labors," continued Hilliard, - regarding 
 Abeille with mock severity ; " the bee, too, has a sting as well as 
 the wasp, and his sting is ingratitude." 
 
 "Mais, trks bien, c'est done un poete celui-la f " cries the de- 
 lighted Beauxjambes. " Monsieur. Je poiteje tefais tnes compli- 
 ments," and she wafted a kiss to the intrepid moralist. Hilliard 
 " touched that part of the lapel of his coat which is supposed to cover 
 the heart, and bowed very low. He continued his theme, growing 
 broader as he touched the conditions of love and the kinship be- 
 tween the motive of the drama and the evolution of social life. , ■ He 
 satirized the fragile pursuits of the golden youth upon whose fa- 
 vor the stage, of the day depended for support, with an ironic 
 grace and humor that drew tears from the eyes of all whose wits 
 were sober enough to catch the meaning of the fanciful imagery 
 that played through the satire, like sunlight through spring foliage. 
 By a delicate periphrasis, & propos of the recent great ball, he 
 reminded the fair guests that, though the company assembled in 
 their honor was smaller than a recent great gathering, he couldn't 
 resist the piquant indiscretion of informing them that the heirs 
 of fifty millions were sitting at this table — ^worshipers -at a more 
 
128 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 seductive shrine — consecrated by the devotion of mind and heart 
 and intellect ! — that while it had taken thousands to make up the 
 mass of millions represented at the father's feast, a score of the 
 youthful elect laid the tribute of Croesus at the feet of the beauty 
 honoring the banquet of the son, the " Amphitryon of this sym- 
 posium." 
 
 Whereupon frantic shouts, with confused calls, arose for 
 " Grimy ! " " Grims ! " and " Grimstone ! " in various degrees of 
 maudlin unsteadiness. 
 
 But Herbert, bowing and blushing, with his hand clasped in 
 Beauxjambes's, stammered something that couldn't be heard ; and 
 Raikes, after a good deal of uncertainty as to whether he should 
 take the table, the chair, or the floor, as a rostrum, finally com- 
 promised by holding himself erect by the back of one braced 
 against the other, poured out a ratchety but vehement panegjiic of 
 his illustrious and honored friend Grimstone. He had known him 
 intimately for years ; they had visited the country of the adorable 
 Beauxjambes together, and had learned the art of making merry 
 in that city of the senses — Paris. He could, he declared, or was 
 understood to declare, match Bertie Grimstone against any man 
 in New York as a man and gentleman. He evinced a willingness 
 to fight any one disputing this ingenuous tribute. No one felt 
 called on to dispute Herbert's claim to the virtues assigned him, 
 and Raikes proceeded to confide further remarks to the table-leg, 
 .some one haWng removed the fortuitous piece of furniture that 
 had supported him in his opening remarks. 
 
 Then it was rapturously agreed to that the divine Beauxjambes 
 should sing, since she could not be called on to speak. Hilliard 
 seated himself at the piano, and the rest formed a circle around 
 the diva. He struck the notes of the song in " Madame Angot " : 
 
 "Quand on conspire, quand sans frayenr 
 On pent se dire conspirateur, 
 Pour tout le monde il faut avoir, 
 Pemique blonde, pemique blonde et collet noir." 
 
 Half of the company joined the chorus, portraying with more or 
 less tipsy humor the exaggerated buffoonery of the scene. Then 
 
CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA. 129 
 
 Beauxjambes was forced to mount the table, bare now save as to 
 glasses and cigarettes, and in an instant she was singing the con- 
 vulsing duet in the same opera with Nudes, also pirouetting on 
 the table, both dexterously avoiding the empty bottles that stood 
 like extinguished foot-lights on the outer edge. Those who were 
 able to keep their feet formed a line round the table, accompany- . 
 ing the chorus with a wild carmagnole, the movement varying from 
 the extravagance of the cancan to the Shaker-like solemnity of 
 the " walk around." When fatigue brought this dainty interlude 
 to an end, it was proposed to read a poem in honor of Beaux- 
 jambes, which Van Dyck had extemporized. Mesdames were 
 given chairs, and, seated on the table, the pyramids of bouquets 
 banked on the mantel were strewed at their feet, and the company 
 sat dov^m in a Bacchanalian circle, their glasses filled, and their 
 eyes fixed on the blushing goddesses. 
 
 Philip apologized for the lack of finish that an audience so 
 critical would discover in his verses, but, as they were strophes in 
 prmse of one so beautiful, they would, if turned with Virgilian 
 grace, seem crude and inconsequent in her presence. 
 
 " Hear, hear ! bravo ! Allans voyons ! " 
 
 As he read, the company became accustomed to the refrain 
 " Beauxjambes," which rang loud and long between each distich : 
 
 *' I sing the goddess fair and free, 
 
 With pleasure as her ministry ; 
 
 Not Leda with a single Jove 
 , In guise of swan to rape her love ; 
 
 But all the nymphs in beauty blent, 
 
 Who wins our heart in sacrament, 
 
 A dulcet deess throned on stars, 
 
 ^Vhose glances heal the hearts she scars." 
 
 *' Who is it proves the town's delight, 
 And makes the hours seem lead till night ? 
 Beauxjambes ! 
 
 " Who is it in the fairy bower 
 Adds mirth to music, grace to power ? 
 
 Beauxjambes 1 
 
130 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Who is it, in the mimic scene, 
 In peasant role is still the queen ? 
 
 Beauxjambes I 
 
 " Who is it turns the words to fire, 
 And piques the town to mad desire ? 
 
 Beauxjambes 1 
 
 " What siren's voice is sweet'st 'mong 
 The nymphs of beauty, wit, and song ? 
 
 Beauxjambes 1 
 
 " ^Vhose grace enchants from toe to lips, 
 Like Venus in the Apocalypse ? 
 
 Beauxjambes ! 
 
 " Who holds in fief the hearts of men. 
 And transmutes love to life as when 
 Prometheus stole the fire ? 
 
 Beauxjambes 1 
 
 " Whose laugh is music — music mirth 
 That brings Elysia back to earth ? 
 
 Beauxjeimbes I 
 
 " Then brim the nectar-cup alone^ 
 To drink to such a paragon ! 
 
 Beauxjambes ! " 
 Etc., etc., etc. 
 
 These halting rhymes captivated the company, and were pro- 
 nounced Anacreontic in derisive gravity by the literary gfroup. 
 Beauxjambes, bending from her throne, bestovsred a chaste em- 
 brace on Van Dyck's head, which was in convenient propinquity, 
 and the rest applauded uproariously. Herbert alone looked hos- 
 tile disapproval, and, as she took the sheets on which the verses 
 were written, he came close to her, whispering : 
 
 " Here is my poem, but you mustn't read it now," and he 
 handed Walter's check for five hundred dollars to the enchantress. 
 She looked at it a moment and her eyes sparkled, and, bending 
 over him, rewarded him with an emphasized embrace, whereat 
 the company applauded again a little enviously, and innumerable 
 healths were drunk. 
 
CLODIUS CAPTURES THE BONA DEA. 131 
 
 Fred at this sight made up his mind that he had seen enough, 
 and, seeking out Rivers, asked him if he were ready to go. 
 
 " Of course not. The fun is only beg^ning. It isn't three 
 o'clock yet — I will go at four. You will do well to stay. You 
 ought to know something of this side of the life of the day — ^it will 
 help you when you come to write your books. You might as well 
 refuse to stand at the dissection-table in the study of physiology 
 as refuse to benefit by such opportunities as this. Furthermore, 
 to go now would mortally offend Grimstone, and would do you 
 no good with the others. Stay where you are; we will go pres- 
 ently. . Be careful not to play, when it is proposed. I see that it 
 is not necessary to warn you to go shy with the champagne ; it 
 is a brutal tipple, and makes one pay next day for the things of 
 wonder and delight it puts in one's -brain at night. Beware of it ! 
 The Burgundy has no treason in it, and is, besides, a gentlemanly 
 beverage, eclipsed by the vulgar sparkle of the fizz, one half of 
 which now is doctored cider." 
 
 " But tell me. Rivers, are these— what shall I call them-rSatT 
 umalia — common ? Who keeps them up— what is the object ? ". 
 
 " They are going on every night, here and elsewhere. They 
 are kept up by rich men's sons ; fortunately, none others could 
 stand the expense. They are, as a consequence, a reflex of the 
 taste of the best-bred and most favored youth of the town. I 
 have seen the sons of bishops here, acting the. Lovdace rdle of 
 that hard-headed young Clodius, Grimstone — z. fellow who lives 
 only for his own pleasure, and has no more heart than a peanut. 
 Read Suetonius and Virgil, and you will comprehend the mean- 
 ing of these Eleusinian revels. We are ripening to decay .as a 
 community. To deal with the subject you must know it. -Sci 
 keep your eyes open and your head clear, and mark the world as 
 it runs away,'' and the sage moved off and began a merry war 
 with one of the dames who, with her spoil of the floral throne, 
 had taken her seat in a comer. 
 
 The sun was shining when Fred finally slipped out, no one 
 remarking his exit. Herbert was giving an order for breakfast, 
 and the tipsy revelers showed no signs of going home. 
 
132 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF A MONEY-MAKER. 
 
 Aaron Grimstone, as a type of that consummate product 
 of the survival of the social fittest, the self-made man, requires a 
 retrospective glimpse, not only for the better understanding of a 
 very curious personality, but to enable us, by beginning at the 
 outset, to comprehend the complex traits that lead to the catas- 
 trophe. Not only this, but, at a time when the world is emulous 
 of winning wealth by the arts that make the Grimstones the ar- 
 biters of our destinies, no detail can be too trivial, no incident too 
 banal. When, in 1847, Aaron, then a stalwart lad of twenty-one, 
 set up his anvil in Valedo, that slatternly hamlet gave no promise 
 of the urban wonder it is to-day. Fixed upon as an Indian trad- 
 ing-post in 181 2, the oldest inhabitant, thirty years later, looked 
 forward to no better fortune for the place than a red-brick custom- 
 house, and a post-office, that should outshine the rival Canadian 
 edifices on the opposite shore. Contrasted with the shifty New 
 England quarry he had been starved out in, Aaron looked upon 
 the careless abundance of his new home as the promise of a sub- 
 sistence at least. When later he found work for his brawny arms 
 twelve hours a day, and excellent pay for his toil, he was sure 
 that he had done well, and that the future need have no terrors 
 for him. 
 
 Early rising was not general in Valedo in those days. Beyond 
 the publican who gave his sleepy countenance to the trim break- 
 fast-room, as he speeded the parting guest, and the lad who sat 
 in the lighthouse, waiting the sun as a signal to go to bed, there 
 were few stirring in Valedo's windy street. But these few were 
 sure to see the red glow in Aaron's smithy, and hear the cheery 
 clangor of his hammer as he wrought the shoon that soon became 
 the wonder of the country-side. The latest loiterer at night, too, 
 was sure to see the smithy's glowing flame, and it soon became as 
 natural to look for Grimstone's fire as the village-clock. For years 
 his was the only anvil in Valedo, and, though the grimy comer 
 behind the bellows became presently the village rostrum, it was 
 
THE GENESIS OF A MONEY-MAKER. 133 
 
 remarked that Aaron never remitted a blow to give an opinion, 
 nor stifled a blaze to hear the momentous whisper in which some 
 vicinage scandal was breathed. The fame of his handiwork 
 brought him custom from all the neighboring towns, where the 
 rich farmers set store by their horses. He had become as much 
 a part of the vital energies of the town as the doctor, the preacher, 
 or the town-clock, when an event came to pass that gave him the 
 hearts of his fellow-citizens, and opened the way to that wonder- 
 ful career which finally made him a power in the councils of the 
 nation. A company, chartered to connect two great lakes by 
 water, had reached Valedo in its operations ; but, as the town was 
 small, and its political ambition dormant, the contractors care- 
 lessly ignored its existence, both in buying stores and employing 
 the idle. Worse than that, however, to bear, as I gather from 
 the archives, was the insolence with which the company landed in 
 the very streets of Valedo stores and munitions shipped to the 
 neighboring and rival port of Carleo, whose harbor and docks 
 were absurdly inferior to the capacious curves upon which Valedo 
 clustered its scattered tenements. For weeks the town bore the 
 indignity of seeing the contractors' stores dragged from Carleo 
 and dumped along the outlined channel of the canal, and then 
 actually carted through the town and stacked beyond the surveyed 
 line. 
 
 Nor was this all, as the vivacious records of the time tell it ; 
 while the autumn was at hand, and hundreds of fanners were 
 idle, the contractors' gangs " swarmed with foreigners, imported 
 into the country by these canal monopolies to crush the natives 
 to beggary, by reducing wages. These impoverished aliens, used 
 to starvation at home, were content to take a mere pittance, to 
 live on com and pork, sleep under a mud hut, and work sixteen 
 hours a day." The whole country about was in deep anger. 
 The Valedoans took prompt action. A public meeting was called 
 in the blacksmith's shop. Aaron was chosen " moderator," and 
 the wrongs of the tovimship were recited in a very imposing list 
 of whereases, which were in due time presented by a committee, 
 of which Aaron was one, to the contractors and the manager 
 of the Valedo section of the canal. The company paid no heed 
 
134 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 to the remonstrances. Valedo had held out longer than any of 
 the other towns when the charter was before the Legislature, and 
 had exacted high rates when the survey was made ; as a conse- 
 quence, the company, foreseeing that the canal was to greatly 
 benefit the town, were quite indifferent to the outcry. 
 ," ; The season advanced, the winter came late and light, and 
 work was pushed on vigorously, as, under their stipulations, the 
 contractors were obliged to have the cut a mile or more through 
 and beyond Valedo by the first of May. Now, it had not been 
 supposed that the work could be kept on in all its branches so 
 late . Hence the horses, having worn their shoes out, were use- 
 less, and the company was forced to call in such smiths as could 
 be found about the neighboring villages. Aaron, so soon as he 
 learned this condition of things, made a swift journey to Carleo. 
 The company's stores of ready-made shoes, and the iron and 
 nails for others, were in luggers lying at the wharf. Aaron bought 
 up every ounce of iron and nails in the town, and at dark mounted - 
 his horse to return to Valedo. There was a fierce November wind 
 during the night, and the next morning, when the canal contract- 
 ors reached the wharf, the boats with their precious stores of iron 
 had disappeared. Search was made for miles about in the lake, but 
 they could not be found. It was not until the next spring that boys, 
 di\ing in the water, came upon them a few yards from the wharf, 
 in the deepest channel of the harbor. There was no suspicion at 
 the time that the heavy scows had not drifted away from the 
 shore, their fastenings being found worn away near the capstans. 
 There was great disgust among the canal people. Work would 
 be brought to a stand unless five hundred horses could be in- 
 stantly shod. Not a shoe or nail was to be obtained in Carleo. 
 
 Grimstone had paid in advance for every vestige of shoeing in 
 the town. It would take six weeks to send to Pittsburg or Troy, 
 where, in those days, such work was supplied. Before noon the 
 chief contractor was in Grimstone's shop. Aaron listened to the 
 tale of disaster, and remarked that it was fortunate that he had 
 just received a cargo from Canada, and besides had a good supply 
 on hand. He was given a contract for shoeing five hundred horses, 
 which he accepted only on condition that the company's stores 
 
THE GElfESIS OF A MONEY-MAKER. 135 
 
 should be landed at Valedo, for that section of the canal, and that, 
 wherever the foreign help gave out, preference should be given the 
 able-bodied men of Valedo County. The contractor listened with 
 surprise. He went out and saw the scow laden with Aaron's Cana- 
 dian cargo, he listened once more to the blacksmith's review of 
 the situation, and then he burst into a loud laugh. That was 
 the only comment he made, but he Scrutinized the phraseology of 
 the paper drawn up for his signature, and went away pensive. 
 '■'„ Whether he suspected the extent of Aaron's handiwork in the 
 ruse, he never said ; but, thereafter, he never took action without 
 consulting the blacksmith. Nor did the company find cause to 
 i^peht their bargain. His work was so honest, rapid, and endur- 
 ing, that it was found an economy to intrust him with that branch 
 of it ; then he Wcis given the whole line, and no objection put in 
 the way when he established the main depot of the company in 
 Valedo. This brought people, the people brought money, and 
 the need for new buildings. Valedo soon began to show signs of 
 its future possibilities. His new enterprise had taken Aaron 
 from Valedo a -good deal ; but when he came back Marcellus 
 retuming'to delivered Rome with the spoils of the Veiintians was 
 not more rapturously welcomed than Aaron, as he surveyed the 
 busy wharves, the extemporized cranes and warehouses, where 
 waste had been but a few months before. This was the wonder 
 the unobtrusive Yankee had wrought. But, in all this effusive 
 "adulation, the blacksmith showed another side of his character 
 that presaged tlie qualities of the self-maker — he kept his own 
 counsels ; he never was surprised or flattered into an admission 
 of his handiwork in the affair that had brought such luck to 
 Valedo. 
 
 I don't know what the Church said of the matter, but it is on 
 record that, so far as the popular sentiment could be ascertained, 
 the end justified the means. There were a few, it seems, who 
 held the sinking of the scovjrs immoral, but these croakers were 
 silenced by the derisive taunts of the town. It was envy, the ma- 
 jority said, that found wrong in a stroke of genius which had 
 despoiled the Philistines of Carleo, and crowned the saints of 
 Valedo with their own. It was the place of the Valedoans to be 
 
136 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 grateful, and trust to Providence: when was Providence ever 
 knovim to repulse the efforts of a long head ? 
 
 Aaron's time became too precious to bestow upon the forge. 
 He had gathered a good deal of money in the canal contracts, and 
 had learned casually that the Eastern railway system was to be ex- 
 tended to Yaledo and thence westward to Bigbrag, then a town 
 not any larger than Valedo, though now the second or third largest 
 city, in the Union. When the surveys for the road-bed were fin- 
 ished, it was found that the blacksmith had bought all the village 
 lands adjacent, as well as miles of farms through which the route 
 lay. This all brought money, and plenty of it. He was set down 
 as a demi-millionaire. In 1848 he married the daughter of one of 
 his associate railway directors in Louisville, and her fortune was 
 considered large for those days. Anecdotes illustrating his fecun- 
 dity in devising means to frustrate rivals were the staple of Valedo 
 gossip for years. But, as he amassed money, Grimstone's reti- 
 cence grew upon him. He was never known to open a conversa- 
 tion first, unless on business requiring his initiative. In 1863 he 
 became a banker, accepting from the Government a larger deposit 
 than any institution out of New York city. When the war broke 
 out, Valedo had grown to be a city of quite one hundred thousand 
 inhabitants. The sudden crash threw everybody into disorder, 
 and it was soon whispered that Grimstone held a third of the 
 realty of the town in mortgages and foreclosures. Mrs. Grim- 
 stone was fond of company. The family occupied an imposing 
 mansion in a pleasant, grassy avenue of Valedo, where the wealth 
 of the town had set its bourns. The edifice was characteristic of 
 the man. He had before his marriage built a white sandstone 
 house, two stories high, and painfully plain. With the growth of 
 their children, and the increasing social demands brought about 
 by the city's rank, more room was found necessary. A house 
 in New York had once impressed him, and sketching the outlines 
 he gave the paper to a builder in Valedo, ordering him to make 
 that cover as much of the old structure as he could. When the 
 work was done the effect was a never-exhausted source of mirth to 
 the Valedoans. The combination was as incongruous as a Cairene 
 dome upon a Gothic temple. Nor was the interior less bizarre. 
 
THE GENESIS OF A MONEY-MAKER. 137 
 
 The new edifice was broken up into spacious salons and re- 
 cesses; while just across the hallway the bewildered stranger 
 stumbled down two awkward steps, and was lost in a labyrinth of 
 low-ceiled rooms and old-fashioned crannies, that made the neigh- 
 boring grandeur grotesque. No one ever remembered seeing 
 Grimstone in the new part of his house. His own room was in 
 the old wing, far from the street, and far from the intrusion of the 
 household. Not a member of the family had ever seen much of 
 the interior of his sanctum. The keeping it in order was intrusted 
 to a gigantic negro, who had been a slave in his youth on the 
 plantation of Mrs. Grimstone's mother. The doors of this cachot 
 were of sheet-iron, the windows were lined with sliding panels of 
 the same ; the floor was of brick, and the walls of g^nite. As 
 the dwelling was far from the settled part of the city, these pre- 
 cautions were not regarded as excessive, when the treasures to be 
 guarded were considered. 
 
 His marriage made no difference in the passion of Aaron Grim- 
 stone's life. The devotion he had shown the forge he lavished 
 upon each enterprise upon which he embarked in turn. He took 
 a notion that he wanted a better hotel in Valedo. He offered a 
 fair price for the existing one. The owner, knowing Grimstone's 
 wealth, refused to sell. 
 
 Grimstone promptly bought ground facing the hotel, called in 
 an architect, named the figures he was willing to expend, and set 
 him to work. But, when the plan was submitted, Grimstone de- 
 clined to pay within one hundred thousand dollars of the sum 
 estimated. The architect explained that it was absolutely essential 
 for the security of the building that this sum should be put in, that 
 is, if Grimstone's idea was to be carried out. It could be done for 
 one hundred thousand dollars less, but it would be unsafe, neither 
 fire-proof nor shock-proof. Cheaper materials would have to be 
 used, and as a man proud of his profession the architect declined 
 to accept the responsibility of putting up such a building. Grim- 
 stone dismissed him coldly, called in another architect, gave him 
 the plan, and told him to build it, and that he, the architect, was 
 to be responsible for every penny over the specified sum. When 
 the edifice was completed, it was given to a Swiss manager rent- 
 7 
 
138 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 free for a year, with the sole condition that the prices should be 
 so low that the other hotel must close its doors. That came to 
 pass within the stipulated year, and the old building came into 
 Grimstone's hands through foreclosure. 
 
 The minister of one of the Valedo churches had, in the course 
 of one of those personal sermons which began to enliven the 
 pulpit at the close of the war, alluded to Grimstone's heartless- 
 ness in money-getting. The church was situated in the center of 
 a square but sparsely built upon. Within a year Grimstone had 
 bought the ground surrounding the church, had reared masses of 
 brick on three sides, and set the hammers of a bolt factory in 
 operation. The body of the church was dark by day, and when 
 the windows were open the fumes from the forges made the place 
 intolerable. The society offered the ground for sale, but no one 
 would buy it. They began negotiations for a dozen sites, but at 
 the last moment found them taken from their hands. In despair, 
 the offending preacher called his flock together, and, refusing to 
 be the cause of their persecution, he quit the place. The society 
 thereafter found not the least difficulty in transferring their ruined 
 site to Grimstone for a far more desirable one under fine trees in 
 the outskirts of the town. 
 
 A reckless little journal, published by a group of flighty col- 
 lege graduates, made sarcastic reference to Grimstone's amours 
 fragiles, known and winked at by all the town. The paper was 
 run to the ground in a month, and Grimstone held the mortgage 
 when the scant property was knocked down. In 1870 Aaron 
 Grimstone could do with the State of Appalachia what a baron 
 under Barbarossa could do with Rittergut. He could, by a word, 
 decide the choice of the men who were to be Governor, Senator, 
 Congressmen, legislators, as in 1872 he was omnipotent in making 
 General Ajax President. His own ambition no one knew ; even 
 his politics were in doubt. Sometimes he favored the Optimate, 
 and sometimes the Ultrocrats. He had made Killgore Senator, 
 causing his election by a Legislature in which the Ultrocrats held 
 a majority on joint ballot. In those days Killgore was a poor 
 man; but he \vas counted worth not less than a million in 1872, 
 six years after his election. 
 
THE GENESIS OF A MONEY-MAKER. 139 
 
 Though one of the earlier settlers of Valedo, Grimstone was, 
 if not a mystery, the least understood personality in the city. 
 His interests were known to exist in every large town of the 
 State of Appalachia. He owned mines in one place, coal-fields 
 in another, blast-furnaces here, machine-shops there. He was 
 director in forty railway lines in 1870, and president of two. He 
 held controlling interests in lake and ocean lines, and had in- 
 vested half a million in exploiting a newly invented watering-place 
 on the sea-shore. He was, in short, one of that extraordinary 
 group of men which has grown up in this country since the war, 
 who, reversing the saying of Thiers, " govern, but do not reign." 
 He was indulgent and undemonstratively affectionate with his 
 son and daughter. Herbert's faults were all knowm to his father, 
 who made no sign. He gave him an ample allowance, which he in- 
 creased under no circumstances. When Herbert's money ran short, 
 which it did every term, it was his mother and sister who slyly 
 made up the deficit. In the evening, while the children were at 
 home, Grimstone would sit with them in the dull, stuffy little sew- 
 ing-room, and, though he said but little, he seemed to enjoy their 
 prattle. If a stranger were announced, he would get up instantly 
 and slip up-stairs by the rear, and be seen no more that night. 
 
 At the table he rarely spoke unless pointedly addressed. He 
 was never knovra to talk to Mrs. Grimstone. When he went to 
 Washington or New York, he never took his wife; and, when 
 she went off for the summer, her husband never formed one of 
 the party. They were not divided, quarrelsome, or unhappy in 
 any way. Mrs. Grimstone was one of the rare women who look on 
 a husband as a poet looks on a publisher — as a necessity ; that is, 
 tolerable, in proportion as he keeps himself at a distance, and 
 holds to his prescriptive functions, claiming no rights ! She was 
 tranquilly happy in the possession of an abundant allowance — the 
 most expensive diamonds in Valedo, the handsomest equipage, 
 the best horses, the most spacious house, the handsomest son, if 
 not the handsomest daughter, in the city. She always said " Mr. 
 Grimstone," in speaking to or of her husband, and would hear 
 details of his enterprises, unknown to her, from callers with per- 
 fect composure. Gossip busied itself industriously with the af- 
 
I40 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 fairs of the family ; but while it was undisputed that Grimstone 
 had neither heart nor scruples, nor his wife any self-assertion, it 
 was admitted that the hearth-stone was a peaceful one ; that if it 
 were true that Grimstone ruled by fear, he managed to give his 
 sway the air of love. The boy and girl were left to grow up 
 under such influences as chance threw them into. What this 
 sort of guidance made of the boy, we have seen ; we shall pres- 
 ently see the remarkable effect in Eleanor's conduct. She was 
 the only member of the family that Valedoans looked in the face 
 frankly, without a sense of treason; for against her the most 
 vivacious gossip had never found it in heart to say a word, beyond 
 gentle satire of the lurid colors that gave her the nickname of 
 " Peony." 
 
 Herbert was counted like his father in secretiveness, selfish- 
 ness, and adoration of money. The problem of making it he was 
 spared learning. He was in training merely to practice the art of 
 keeping it. But his passion for illicit joys, his indifference to the 
 mere show of wealth, and the obligations of its possession, were 
 but variations of his father's most marked traits. Perhaps the 
 next best thing to making money, until the pyramidal million is 
 ready to lean on, is the anatomy of the methods by which millions 
 are made, and a glimpse of the joys that come to those who make 
 the millions .? We shall see all this as Aaron Grimstone pushes 
 his career onward. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PROPAGANDA FIDES. 
 
 During that fantastic social novitiate in which Fred Carew 
 was brought face to face with those imperial conditions where 
 wealth alone dominates in this country, conditions he knew only by 
 report since boyhood, he was in the state of ecstatic wonder de- 
 cribed so piquantly by Voltaire during the salad period of his so- 
 journ at Sans-Souci, where his wit made him the head of the gfreat 
 Frederick's table, and his pen the master of that royal poet's heart ; 
 
PROPAGANDA FIDES. 141 
 
 when his bourgeois hands corrected the royal verses, and were 
 kissed by the royal lips. Where the profound skeptic was merely 
 lulled, Fred was conquered. He apotheosized all he saw; he 
 accepted the social subterfuges as realities ; he believed that the 
 consideration shown him was real ; that the amenities of the draw- 
 ing-room were the expression of genuine sentiment ; that, penni- 
 less, impotent dreamer as he was, society gave him countenance 
 for the integrity in him, and took him on trust for the mere promise 
 of his future ! 
 
 When you are journeying in the realm of that respected mon- 
 arch the Emperor of Morocco, the incident of travel that moves 
 not the least of your wonder is the irksome delay that attends the 
 stranger's admittance to such cities as pleasure, profit, or afT^:^ 
 may lead you, and you are held in long and vexatious parley'at 
 the gate. Sometimes you are asked prying questions, but, once 
 admitted, the whole city is at your caprice. Into every house you 
 may penetrate wnth perfect liberty; you are welcomed by the 
 master, and, if one room alone is closed to you, it is in deference 
 to the sacred law. I am reminded of this Oriental custom when 
 Fred's journal dwells on his social conquests. He had been in 
 New York five years, and beyond the limited social range in which 
 journalists, artists, clergymen, and the like meet in semi-literary, 
 semi-perfunctoiy groups, he had never seen the relaxations of the 
 rich, the gay, and the " well bom." Mystified, deluded, dazzled, 
 he took the new world au sirieux. Within the next three months 
 he found himself considered, if not cordially welcomed, in famihes 
 whose names he had often heard people mention with a respectful 
 lowering of the voice. Though aware of the handiwork of Mrs. 
 Albion Circester and the Grimstone ladies in his behalf, Fred was 
 lost in wonder over the completeness of the social conquest such 
 agencies were enabled to bring about. To his amazement, almost 
 to his terror, he found himself sharing the social vogue of Hilliard 
 in the holy rood of social royalty. He was a good deal more per- 
 plexed than pleased with much of the distinction shown him. 
 
 He found that in proportion as the great people he came to 
 know were uninteresting, even repellent, their consideration was 
 haughty and ignobly condescending. The occult reasons that made 
 
142 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 him seem welcome in the dominant social groups, he only vaguely 
 conjectured. His unsophistication was a great help to him. Un- 
 conscious of the sharp lines and the imperceptible differentiations- 
 in the impinging congeries of the social system, he was saved the 
 gaucherie of playing off families against families, the resource of 
 the social adventurer tenacious of holding the ground he has 
 gained, and bent upon enlarging his ground of action. 
 
 Fred's perplexities, however, increased as the field of his social 
 observation enlarged. His acquaintances were now beyond all 
 keeping track of. He didn't know how he had made many of 
 them, but he found himself expected at houses where he was told 
 only the Hite of New York were admitted. He was vaguely dis- 
 satisfied wdth all he saw, for the experience of one evening was 
 the experience of all other evenings — the same doings, the same 
 dresses, the same posing, the same gossip, the same damning 
 equivocal praises, and annihilating leer. He couldn't believe that 
 he had part in the sacred arcana of New York's " best," even when 
 Mrs. Circester, sauntering through the stately halls of the Cas- 
 tors, said : 
 
 " These are the Vere de Veres of our social system ; of course 
 they are not your friends. In society there is no friendship. 
 These people are an aid to you so long as they face you ; let them 
 turn their back, and you are in the dark." 
 
 Brought together again by the current into which their desti- 
 nies had swirled them, Fred and Hilliard were too disparate in 
 nature to ever meet again as comrades. Fred was helplessly ab- 
 sorbed, watching the phenomena of the stream in which he was 
 swirling onward, he knew not whither; while Hilliard was like a 
 keen pilot, conducting a craft through a channel in which- he 
 expected to make gains of the human flotsam. Hilliard and Ca- 
 rew were learning lessons in the life of these times, as you see, 
 each with identical visual focus construing the same lessons dif- 
 ferently. 
 
 But, while both were receiving impressions in the new world 
 opened to them by their similar destinies, each was assimilat- 
 ing the lessons inversely. While Hilliard was allowing the ex- 
 ternals of his new associations to revolutionize his sensibilities, 
 
PROPAGANDA FIDES. 143 
 
 Carew was becoming more and more devoted to his ideals. Fred 
 believed that the life of the individual was a part of the universal 
 monument of mind. Hilliard believed that the individual was in- 
 determinate, and must attach himself to a group ; the more pow- 
 erful the group the more potential the individuality, as he shared 
 the results of the whole, irrespective of his own particular contri- 
 bution to the forces at work. From the former principle, the 
 Luthers, Savonarolas, Bacons, and Jeffersons came to their work ; 
 from the latter, the Napoleons, Bismarcks, and Tweeds. 
 .. The one sets the serenity of believing before the pride of 
 knovying: the one loves knowledge by caprice, the other by 
 ennui of ignorance alone; the one a naif assimilator, the other 
 a redoubtable analyst, subtile, perspicacious, wrenching the forces 
 of good and evil alike by the roots to discover where the secret of 
 growth lies hidden. 
 
 When we sacrifice sentiment to reason, we g^in a ripened fruit 
 without the seed of reproduction, a piece of perfected handiwork 
 that leaves no trace of the means by which it is fashioned. But 
 Fred's was not the fault of the supine ; his imagination was the 
 factor that carried him over the inertia of that dangerous repose 
 that stupefies the fanatic or devotee. The new life he had begun 
 to lead had unfitted Fred for the sort of work he had adopted. 
 The repose and concentration needed for literary work can not 
 be conjured in the intervals of social diversion. His work had 
 lessened steadily ; that is, his capacity to turn out fresh, striking, 
 original studies of the subjects that were acceptable to the daily 
 and weekly journals, was almost gone. His income had run 
 down, as his expenses increased. Worse than all, he found his 
 desk irksome, and the mere physical part of composition a hateful 
 drudgery. He was falling into that first abysm of the brain- 
 worker, repulsion to patiently study out and then carefully elabo- 
 rate his material. He relied on tours deforce to produce striking 
 effects, and, of course, as his meditations were less and less part 
 of his daily life, such efforts were shallow and rather empty. 
 
 He was frequently mortified by the rejection of manuscript, 
 where a few months before he had met cordial welcome and high 
 pay. It was in vain that he set a limit to his social indulgence. His 
 
144 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 heart was in his pleasure, not his labor ; and day by day his capacity 
 for labor diminished. He resolved to fly the siren, but deferred from 
 day to day, hoping that his old love of the desk would come back. 
 At this crisis he received a very handsome proposal to go to Sara- 
 toga to write letters during the season for a weekly journal of 
 standing. The project seemed to him a stroke of fortune. He 
 knew nothing of watering-place hfe. He saw only that it would 
 wean him from Xkie. faindantise into which he had fallen, and he 
 accepted the engagement with alacrity. He was, however, some- 
 what disconcerted, when on going to tell Mrs. Circester of his pur- 
 pose, to learn that she had taken rooms at Saratoga for the summer, 
 and that the Grimstones were also to be there within a few weeks. 
 
 " It's just what you need, mon cher," cried Mrs. Circester. 
 "You will see society en vilUgiature, and you will make real 
 friends, because people are less artificial, less exacting in con- 
 venances. If you play your points well, you will end the season 
 engaged to a million." 
 
 " Then I shall not play my points well, I can tell you that in 
 advance. I'm glad you're going to be there, but I'm not so glad 
 all the rest of the grand world are going. I've made a sad waste 
 of my time for a year past. I mean to return to my tub, so soon 
 as Saratoga is ended," Fred says, with grave conviction. 
 
 " Well, we shall see. What folly ! You've gained a footing 
 men with millions intrigue for in vain ; your name is on the list of 
 every house in town worth visiting ; you are received as a mill- 
 ionaire, treated as a millionaire, and it is expected that you will 
 be one. Society would never forgive you if you disappointed its 
 estimate of you. I've made a wager that you willmarry a million 
 before Hilliard ; and you know there's one thing the most amiable 
 woman never forgives ! " 
 
 " I think you give me too much credit ; I thought, judging 
 from what I see, that there was nothing an amiable woman 
 couldn't forgive." 
 
 " Ah, ah ! he's training a little racine of skepticism in his gar- 
 den of faith ! It is well, I've more hope of you," and Mrs. Circes- 
 ter laughed a little gratulatory laugh, that vexed Fred — he didn't 
 know why. 
 
PROPAGANDA FIDES. 145 
 
 When, a day or two later, the young man stepped out of the 
 omnibus at Saratoga, and saw the vast outlines of the hotel to 
 which he had been commended by his editor, he instantly made 
 up his mind that he would remain there only long enough to en- 
 able him to find quieter and more workman-like quarters in the 
 village. Abashed by the imperious indecision of the young man 
 at the desk, he modestly waited his turn to make known his want 
 of a quiet room. To his great surprise, the almost disdainful air 
 vanished as soon as he mentioned his name. The lordly young 
 man turned and whispered to another personage seated at a desk. 
 This person arose with alacrity. 
 
 " We have saved a room for you in the most desirable part of 
 the house, Mr. Carew." 
 
 " There must be some mistake," said Fred, in confusion. "I 
 didn't write! " 
 
 " Ah, yes ! we've made no mistake ; Mr. Alfred Carew, of the 
 ' Minerva,' is it not } " 
 
 " Yes, I'm Alfred Carew, and I'm writing for the ' Minerva ; ' 
 but how did you know it ? " 
 
 " Oh, we have a way of finding out people of influence. It's 
 all right. You will be well cau-ed for here, Mr. Carew, I can 
 promise you." 
 
 A good deal mystified, Fred was led to a charming, airy room, 
 commanding a view of the wide, shady street, and, though a good 
 deal troubled by the probable cost, he relinquished himself to the 
 comfort of the place, resolved that he would make his stay very 
 short. The mystery of his welcome was explained after the re- 
 ception of his first letter at the " Minerva " office. The editor 
 wrote, approving his work, and wound up by hoping that the 
 " Marathon " folks had treated him well. They had been apprised 
 that he was coming, and directed to show him every attention. 
 The bills, he added, would be taken care of by the office. Cer- 
 tainly, Fred thought, the " Minerva " was a thoughtful and gen- 
 erous employer. He was, however, sorry that the arrangement 
 had been made, as he would have preferred a more tranquil lodg- 
 ing. When he went into the vast dining-room he was painfully 
 embarrassed. Looking helplessly at the sauntering waiters, whose 
 
146 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 eyes he found it impossible to catch, he wandered farther and 
 farther in search of a place to seat himself. All the chairs were 
 turned up, indicating a previous lien. In one or two places, where 
 they were not thus tilted, he was curtly informed that he could 
 not be accommodated. He was about to turn back to ask the 
 man at the door for a seat, when a waiter knocked against him, 
 then turning, and nodding over his shoulder, pointed out a place 
 near the walL Mortified and indignant, he sat down and waited 
 to be served. At various tables he saw people whom he had met 
 in New York, some of whom he knew quite well, but they didn't 
 seem to recognize him. The tables gradually filled, but no one 
 offered to serve him. The delay became more and more embar- 
 rassing as he saw persons placed at the same table, long after he 
 was seated, served by the waiters. He was just about to rise and 
 leave the room, when one of the clerks entered and handed a let- 
 ter to a gendeman at the same table. Noticing Fred's red and 
 angry face, he bowed deferentially and asked : 
 
 " Are you well served, Mr. Carew ? Wouldn't you rather have 
 an end table?" 
 
 " I'm not served at all, and I don't care a straw what table I 
 sit at, if I can get something to eat," he said, crossly. 
 
 " Oh, it's a mistake ; I'U soon fix that." 
 
 Beckoning one of the waiters, the clerk said something in a 
 low tone, and the attention that followed became almost as 
 irritating as the previous neglect. Fred had been kept so long 
 at the table, without being served, that all his neighbors had fin- 
 ished as his second course came on. When it was brought, the 
 head waiter, arranging the wine-glasses, said, unctuously : 
 
 " We didn't know you, sir, or you should have had a better 
 table ; but we will give you that one, by the v^rindow, to-morrow. 
 Mr. Mauger also wants to know which you prefer, Bordeaux or 
 Burgundy .'' " and he held up a bottle of Larose and Chambertin 
 in each hand. 
 
 Now Fred was so innocent of the ways of hotel life that he 
 had no suspicion that the wdne was not, like the food, included in 
 the menu. He knew that it was the rule at foreign tables d'hote, 
 and at French restaurants in New York. So he tranquilly made 
 
PROPAGANDA FIDES. 147 
 
 choice of the Burgundy, which was regularly served at his plate 
 during his stay. Nearly every night, if he dined alone, came a 
 bottle of champagne/ra///, with the compliments of Mr. Mauger, 
 the proprietor. This, however, he protested against, but the host 
 only laughed, saying that there was no other way of getting rid of 
 his stock. 
 
 Left to himself to muse much of the time, as he knew no one 
 intimately, his old love of his desk returned, and his letters were 
 brimming over with a fresh and joyous delight of the place, that 
 soon began to gfive them wide publicity. They were copied far 
 and near, and the young man observed that the hotel people 
 counted him as the cause of their excellent business, which had 
 been languishing before he began to write. His very ignorance 
 was a help to him. He wrote of the springs, the walks, the 
 drives, the irrepressible life of the hotel, as a cultivated Chinaman 
 suddenly set down in the Arcadian gfroves of Versailles might 
 have written, surrounded by the gay world of the grand tnonar que 
 in the Watteau epoch of the monarchy. Saratoga was only be- 
 ginning then, in 1872, to take on the state that now makes it the 
 delight of the mondaine. To the young dreamer, worn out with 
 the heat and dust of New York, it was a paradise, and his letters 
 reflected the generous enthusiasm he felt. Things that seemed 
 commonplace and trivial enough to his rivals, and the jaded 
 senses of the visitors, were by his fancy transformed into rare 
 beauty, and the day divided into hours of idyllic enjoyment, that 
 made the reader yearn to be part and participant of the episodes. 
 
 Even the sort who haunt watering-places, to confide their ennui, 
 were allured by the charm with which the enthusiast invested old 
 scenes and familiar diversions, and the delighted hotel people soon 
 welcomed crowds that had for years deserted Saratoga for Long 
 Branch and Cape May. Unconscious of his handiwork, uncon- 
 scious, too, of the interest taken in him, Fred made no acquaint- 
 ances, accepted the courtesies heaped upon him, the deference 
 shown him by the hotel people, as part of the life of the place, and, 
 of course, reflected the spirit of it in his letters. He had no idea 
 that he was known as a correspondent, much less identified by 
 everybody as the writer of the poetic letters in the " Minerva," nor 
 
148 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 imagined, as he sat on the veranda of an evening, listening to the 
 orchestra, that he was the topic of many gossips. He took the 
 restfulness of the place so literally, that it was with a sense of 
 worldly intrusion that he learned one day of the arrival of the 
 Grimstones and Mrs. Circester. He was at once made to feel that 
 he was a member of the group. His plate was laid at their table, 
 and his time disposed of quite as if he were a member of the 
 family. Eleanor was acting hostess to a daughter of Senator 
 Killgore, and informed Fred that he was to be the cavalier of that 
 young lady, whenever she was herself in no need of his escort ! She 
 told him, writh great composure, that she expected him to devote 
 himself entirely to herself and party, and began by outlining a 
 plan of operations that would have taken up every waking hour 
 of his time during the month she proposed remaining ! She was 
 so frankly enchanted at finding him there, and so free in telling 
 it openly, that Mrs. Circester couldn't resist a significant smile at 
 the table, where the vivacious inginue so artlessly discovered her 
 preference. 
 
 " Then here's my dear Betty Killgore, just out of Vassar, and 
 dying to do the German. I've told her of your passion for danc- 
 ing, and, when I'm not on the floor myself, you may dance 'with 
 Bet ! " 
 
 " Eleanor, how you go on ! If Mr. Carew is a vsrise man, he 
 will keep away from us, and let us look up a victim among the 
 idle people," and Miss Killgore looked pensively at the young 
 man, as if to ask him to make an estimate of her by such qualities 
 as- he should discover in her, and not from the hasty generaliza- 
 tions that Eleanor's impulsive speech suggested. But it was very 
 much as the latter had ruled ; Fred, instead of dreaming on the 
 verandas during the evening, passed most of the time in the ball- 
 room with Nell, Betty finding numerous young men more than 
 willing to endure the hot bath of summer dancing, to look into her 
 wicked black eyes, and move in a delirious embrace under the 
 glare of the chandeliers. The next morning the dancers met in 
 the breakfast-room very late. They were to drive to the lake in 
 the afternoon, and pass the morning at the springs. But as they 
 reached the veranda the soft notes of a Strauss waltz invited them 
 
PROPAGANDA FIDES. i^g 
 
 irresistibly, and for an hour they renewed the delights of the 
 evening before, in the " Matinde German." After luncheon the 
 Grimstone equipage drove up to the piazza, and the two young 
 ladies, Mrs. Circester, Fred, and young Raikes, set out for the 
 lake. 
 
 They passed the afternoon there, took dinner at the water's 
 edge, rowed until ten o'clock, and reached the hotel in time to 
 take up the dance again. Fred went to his room at midnight, 
 bitterly disappointed with himself. His writing, which he had 
 hitherto pushed on with the regularity of clock-work, was now 
 wholly broken up. He sat down, jaded and angry, and wrote 
 till morning, and of course rose at noon, unrefreshed, and show- 
 ing signs of the strain. Mrs. Circester, meeting him as he came 
 from the breakfast-room, took his arm and led him into the gar- 
 den. There, seated in comparative privacy, she carefully spread 
 the fluffy stuff she was fabricating into some not easily compre- 
 hensible article of use or adornment upon her knee, and began : 
 
 " Young gentleman, you can't stand this sort of thing ; your 
 eyes look as though you hadn't slept for a week, and you would 
 do just as you are for a frightful example of dissipation. You 
 can't afford it. If you were rich, and here only for pleasure, it 
 would be another thing. Your capital is your brain and your 
 youth ; when you draw on these you are going toward bankruptcy. 
 You must refuse to dance at night ; tnhiag^ez your resources, and 
 thus be able to meet your rivals on equal terms." 
 
 " Excellent advice, Madame Solomon, but how is a fellow to 
 follow it, whose heels fly out at the scraping of a fiddle ? " 
 
 " Don't g© where such ill-ordered heels are liable to be 
 tempted. You'll get a respite after to-morrow. Hilliard is com- 
 ing, and he is fond of dancing, and Nell is fonder of him than she 
 is of you." This was said with adroit carelessness, as she gave 
 all of her immortal mind to the splicing of a refractory end of the 
 wool broken off at an awkward point in the web of radiant colors 
 she was weaving. 
 
 As Fred said nothing, and persisted in staring studiously at a 
 child improvising a net from her straw hat to fish a drov\med but- 
 terfly from the fountain, she continued : 
 
150 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " What do you think of Betty Killgore ? She is rich, and one 
 of these days she will preside in the White House." 
 
 " Why, I thought General Ajax was already married ? " 
 
 " Don't be stupid. Killgore will be the next President — every 
 one admits that— and Betty will be the lady of the house, as Mrs. 
 Killgore has begun proceedings for a divorce." 
 
 "Why, in that case, the lady of the White House will be 
 Madame Dominguez." Fred stopped and blushed; he had 
 spoken without thinking. 
 
 Mrs. Circester held up one of her needles reflectively. " No, 
 we'i« not yet quite so advanced as that. We have our Pompa- 
 dours and Maintenons, but en cachet. La. marquise will rule the 
 king, but she won't share the throne. Betty is a charming girl. 
 She has more manners than Nell, is less impulsive, is a good deal 
 more ambitious, and sets very small store on money. That's be- 
 cause she has plenty, and will have more. She is fond of literary 
 folks, and I'm told writes Swinburne poetry, whatever that is." 
 
 " It's mostly blood and wine, with a bouquet of hyssop,'' said 
 Fred, owlishly, as though he had settled the poet in a phrase. 
 
 " I don't know what you mean, but I suppose you do," said 
 Mrs. Circester, wdth a confidence that spoke volumes for her 
 credulity in Fred's intellectual discernment. 
 
 " I'm glad Hilliard's coming," said Fred, after a pause. " I 
 had made up my mind to abjure the follies that I find exist even in 
 this perfect world, where, until you came, I worshiped Nature ! " 
 
 " Charming testimonial that, merci Hen ! " 
 
 " Oh, you know that is only a form of speech ! Of course you 
 know I'm enchanted to be near you. What I meant was, that I 
 worked and thought before the butterfly host came down upon 
 the place, and now the temptation is on me to be a beetle among 
 the butterflies." 
 
 " Whereas it's a duty to be a grub." 
 
 "Exactly. And now listen to this vow, registered in these 
 deciduous shades, this temple of Nature, vernal antechamber of 
 Moloch ! " 
 
 " Dear me, how mystic and charming ! Do put that in your 
 next letter." 
 
PROPAGANDA FIDES. icj 
 
 " You have interrupted the agony of extemporization ; here's 
 the vow : I will dance no more at night. I will devote the morn- 
 ing to writing. I will give myself to the seduction of beauty and 
 wit only during the afternoon.'' 
 
 " Good ! We shall now see the stuff you're made of. If you 
 can stick to that, you are safe ; if not, take the advice given the 
 prophet : fly unto a far country and tarry until the evil one is con- 
 quered." 
 
 But Fred found it very easy to keep his pledge. So soon as 
 Hilliard came, Nell equably transferred her caressing fascination 
 to that idol, dispensing Fred from further allegiance with a frank- 
 ness that secretly rather irritated him, for the most Platonic con- 
 stancy is not proof against the bald avowal of mere amity where 
 love might not be impossible. Even tepid water gurgles into action 
 when ice is suddenly plunged into it. Fred's amour propre was 
 wounded, but he gave no sign, gfreatly to Mrs. Circester's chagrin, 
 who, you may be sure, left no resource untried to stimulate her 
 protigS into a passion for the heiress. Like a consummate 
 strategist, she gradually brought Betty and Fred into the inti- 
 macy so facile between young people at a summer resort. Betty 
 was fond of the woods, fond of walking, fond of reading under 
 leafy coverts ; and, as these were the young man's delight, they 
 were not slow in finding a congenial, common ground for a 
 mutual esteem, which was too frankly avowed to lead to miscon- 
 struction. 
 
 Herbert came presently with the coterie of young spend- 
 thrifts Fred had met with him in New York. To them the place 
 was a change of scene, not a change of pleasures. They did little 
 dancing, but were rarely seen out of their rooms before midday. 
 Herbert had been expelled from Harvard, and was in disgrace 
 with his father, who remained in Valedo. 
 
 One day, walking in the woods with Miss Killgore, Fred came 
 upon Herbert, Raikes, and Vandyck, who were chattering bois- 
 terously with a group of young ladies, indulging in a small fete 
 ckampitre. To his amazement, Beauxjambes was among them. 
 She looked up and grinned, but did not speak, as Fred turned 
 and led his companion away by another path. 
 
152 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Who were the ladies with Herbert ? I think I've seen that 
 pretty blonde with dark eyes somewhere before," asked Betty, 
 guilelessly. 
 
 " They are New York friends of Herbert's," Fred said, mak- 
 ing pretense of struggling with a refractory brier that persisted in 
 coiling about his feet. 
 
 " Why didn't Ihey invite us to join them ? " 
 
 " Very hkely they didn't want us,'' answered Fred, airily turn- 
 ing his face away to conceal a grin. 
 
 " I've certainly seen that girl ; her face is perfectly familiar,'' 
 Betty persisted. " What is her name ? " 
 
 " Look out, there ! " But, before the astonished Betty could 
 look, Fred had seized her bodily and lifted her from the ground. 
 She screamed lightly, asking : 
 
 " Good heavens ! What is it — a snake ? " 
 
 " Yes, a monstrous one, too. I think it had horns. Stay here 
 till I see what's become of it." 
 
 " Oh, dear, no — let it go ! I shall scream if you leave me 
 here ! I insist on your holding me ; it might bite you. Do come 
 away ! " 
 
 "That's true, it might. I hadn't thought of that. Some 
 snakes do bite, and it would be just like this one to ruin a 
 fellow's shoe or trousers. As you say, it will be wiser to leave it 
 in the field. It isn't the part of valor, but then there isn't much 
 glory in killing a snake. One couldn't coil it around his victorious 
 brow as a laurel, neither could one send it to the cook as an evi- 
 dence of his prowess." 
 
 " Ugh ! I'm sure there are scores of them here ! " and Betty 
 held up her skirts, stepping in a gingerly fashion over the mosses 
 and tufts of grass, clutching Fred's arm, and looking around on 
 the ground, sure that a snake's eye was upon her. Fred kept up 
 the comedy until they reached the spring, where a draught of 
 iron water restored the young woman's equanimity. 
 
 Meeting Herbert later in the day, that youth laughed in Fred's 
 face as he saw the mute question in his eye. 
 
 "You were surprised, were you, old man? " 
 
 "Well, I wasn't so much surprised as shocked. Don't you 
 
PROPAGANDA FIDES. 153 
 
 think it rather imprudent to indulge your caprice here, while your 
 family are liable at any moment to encounter mademoiselle ? " 
 
 " And what if they do ? Do you suppose they think me a 
 saint ? " cried the reprobate, grinning and unabashed. 
 
 " If adoration implied such a belief, I should think they did." 
 
 " Oh, no, that shows how little you know of women. They 
 adore me because they know I'm a scamp, and I need it at home 
 because I can't get it abroad. Beauxjambes wants me to bring 
 you around to-night. We're going to have what she calls a 
 causerie tntime. I will come for you at ten o'clock.'' 
 
 Fred's impulse was to refuse, but, remembering that he had 
 already affronted one of Herbert's feminine allies by his fastidi- 
 ousness, he agreed to go, and set himself to work during the 
 afternoon, knowing pretty well what a causerie in such company 
 as Beauxjambes was likely to be. 
 
 Mrs. Grimstone gave a dinner that evening, and the company 
 was made up of Romeyn, Raikes, Van Dyck, Hilliard, Dorr, who 
 arrived during the afternoon, Mrs. Van Bourseman, Mrs. Cir- 
 cester. Senator Killgore, and Betty. Fred was placed beside the 
 latter, while Nell sat between Dorr and Hilliard. Nell informed 
 the young men that she had ordered carriages for nine o'clock, 
 and they were going to take a moonlight drive to the lake. Her- 
 bert exclaimed : 
 
 " How unfortunate ! We've made our engagements to attend a 
 political conference at ten o'clock. We're going to arrange a cir- 
 cular to send out in the morning by telegraph, and we've got 
 Carew to promise to draft it for us." 
 
 The readiness and aplomb of this ingenious invention struck 
 Fred dumb. The other young men in the secret of the meditated 
 carousal dared not look at each other, and made pretense of pro- 
 found interest in the suspended remarks of their neighbors. 
 
 " How provoking ! I meant it for a delightful surprise ! " cried 
 Nell, looking at her brother indignantly. " I don't believe a word 
 of it ; you aren't interested in politics at all ; and, besides, Mr. 
 Carew's an Ultrocrat. How can he join in an Optimate meeting .' " 
 
 "Mr, Carew's a journalist," said Herbert, "and writes not 
 what pleases him but what pays him." 
 
154 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 Fred flushed scarlet. Mrs. Circester, who sat next him, 
 seized his arm under the table as he put it down to push the 
 chair back, and whispered under her breath : 
 
 " Don't you see he doesn't comprehend the significance of what 
 he says? Be quiet. This isn't the place for a scene." 
 
 Fred looked at Herbert, but his face gave no sign of the ulte- 
 rior meaning of his brutal inspiration. He was evidently intent 
 only on making the way clear for Beauxjambes's engagement. 
 Nell looked frightened, and Hilliard said, quietly : 
 
 " Yes, the journalist, like the priest, has to mix with sinners as 
 well as saints, to teach both the same faith, and he looks to 
 Heaven to absolve him from the sin of participation." 
 
 " Well, let me, as a sinner,'' rejoined Herbert, " apologize for 
 a clumsy saying that I meant for a compliment.'' 
 
 He raised his glass to Fred, but the latter merely inclined his 
 head and looked away. Herbert had attained his object ; there 
 was nothing more said of the drive, and when, at ten o'clock, the 
 young men rose to go to the meeting, Fred left the room also, but 
 he did not go with the rest of the party to Beauxjambes's. In a 
 few minutes he received a card from Herbert, saying : 
 
 "My dear Carew: Don't mind my stupid words at the 
 table. I only meant to get you clear of the drive. You know I 
 couldn't be guilty of such a rudeness.'' 
 
 He sent back word declining to go, and wrote until the birds 
 sang at his window, and the flaming gas-jets were absorbed in 
 the yellow sunlight, like icicles in rushing water. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE WINGS OF ICARUS. 
 
 Working far into the morning hours, his old habit in jour- 
 nalism, suited Fred better than day-work, and he came down to 
 breakfast near midday with no sign of his night-vigil in face or 
 
THE WINGS OF ICARUS. 155 
 
 manner. There were few in the room. He was reading the 
 morning newspaper, and didn't observe the entrance of HjUiard 
 until he took a place in front of him at the table. Fred was by- 
 no means overjoyed with the prince's company, and, after a rath- 
 er frigid salutation, went on reading. Hilliard, however, having 
 glanced over the news, threw the paper down, and, tapping the 
 end of an cg'g with his spoon, uttered a little preliminary " Ah ! " 
 which was his recognized signal of being willing to talk. Fred 
 made no sign of remarking the condescension, and kept on with 
 his reading. 
 
 " That was a nasty freak of young Bert's, last night, Carew. 
 I want to make you my compliment on your good sense in keep- 
 ing cool. Keeping cool is the Jack Rose of good form ; only un-- 
 der-bred people match insolence with anger. You can always tell 
 a thorough-bred by the way he meets upstart manners. The day 
 has gone by when gentlemen resent slips at the board by flinging 
 a glass at the offender's head. I think the cub would have been 
 delighted, last night, if you had compromised yourself by such an 
 indiscretion. The affront was so brutal that I feared you were 
 going to break his head, then and there. That was why I inter- 
 vened to give you time for the wiser second thought, which is al- 
 ways better in love and war. I think he didn't quite realize the 
 mal entendu of his words, but the fact that they came to his 
 tongue, when half fuddled by his wine, shows that the sentiment 
 was in his sober thought. If I were you, I should take the first 
 convenient opportunity for mending his manners by breaking his 
 bones." 
 
 "I propose to,'' said Fred, quietly, wondering what interest 
 Hilliard had in pushing the quarrel. The latter gave an approv- 
 ing nod, and then went on : 
 
 "The cub made you miss a characteristic outbreak of the high- 
 life indulgence of the day. Beauxjambes presided. She is estab- 
 lished in a cottage, paid for by young Jackanapes. It is mounted 
 as only a.Frenchwoman could mount it, and must have cost a 
 handsome penny. All the younger men of the town were there, 
 and the play ran as high as at Morrissey's. Beauxjambes sang, 
 and at midnight a dozen young millionaires were running amuck 
 
156 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 in the cancan. Bertie is a shifty youth. He drank copiously at 
 dinner, as you saw, and he didn't spare his favorite tipple — cham- 
 pagne and Burgundy mixed at ' L'asile,' as Beauxjambes calls her 
 cottage ; but, instead of dancing, he played all the time, and had 
 won quite one thousand dollars when I came away at three o'clock. 
 
 " He let Rex Romeyn do the honors with Beauxjambes, and that 
 youth didn't spare himself. I left them hilarious and uproarious, 
 and they are probably there still, for many of them were even at 
 three o'clock beyond the power of walking. Ah ! it's a gay life^ 
 that, of these sons of self-made Plutocrats. We are training a fine 
 race for our masters. By heavens ! it makes a man sigh for the 
 backwoods, or a dose of the lead and fire of Puritanism, when he 
 ■thinks of that Silenus horde I saw there last night, in such bestial 
 indulgence as Zola would shrink from embalming. Are they the 
 elect who edit our social code, make our household laws, and give 
 men of parts and possibilities the stamp of success or failure ? " 
 
 " Isn't this a new role for you ? " asked Fred, in surprise, as 
 Hilliard's Jeremiad ended. " But I don't agree with you at all. 
 There are objects in life that such people have no power to influ- 
 ence. They have no part in the serious business of the time. 
 There are rewards for honor, sobriety, and integrity that such 
 Capuans as these can never deflect or influence one jot." 
 
 "What are.they? Name a single ambition in life that these 
 men can not, directly or indirectly, make impossible to a man ? 
 They can make the most blameless life hideous ; they can make 
 the most upright man a pariah ; they can block the path in every 
 profession. In journalism they are omnipotent, for, if they can't 
 ruin a man, as they came near ruining you, they can buy the stock 
 of the journals and deprive them of their daily bread. Look at 
 what happened the other day. One of the great journals of the 
 country opposed Dorr, held up his methods to public hatred, un- 
 earthed rascalities that would in any other country in Christen- 
 dom send him to the galleys. He sows dissension among the 
 stockholders, ruins the property, and then buys it, and,, now actu- 
 ally directs the paper that for years held him up to public indig- 
 nation and horror." 
 . " Is it really true that Dorr runs the ' Forum ' ? " 
 
THE WINGS OF ICARUS. 157 
 
 " I know it to be true. I was in the Union League one night, 
 half "dozing in the library. I pulled a window-curtain over me, and 
 was, I suppose, quite concealed. Half dozing, I recognized the 
 voice of Winslow Wayne. He was pleading as a man pleads for 
 respite when sentence has been pronounced. He was exhibiting 
 papers, as I could tell by the crackling. He read a statement of 
 receipts and expenditures, circulation, advertisements, and what 
 not, showing the financial status of the ' Forum.' He explained 
 the enormous value the paper would be to a man like Dorr, inter- 
 ested in such variable stocks. Then, for the first time, the other 
 spoke, and the voice was Dorr's : 
 
 " ' But it would be of no value to me so soon as the public 
 found out that I ovimed it.' 
 
 " ' The public needn't find that out.' 
 
 " I was quite awake, and realized that I was in a dishonorable 
 part, and I turned about to make known my presence. They got up 
 and left the room, and the next day it was announced that Wayne, 
 who hadn't ten thousand dollars to his name, had bought the con- 
 trolling interest in the ' Forum,' and that the policy of its founder 
 would be continued. That was three months ago. Since then. 
 Dorr's name has never been mentioned, although before that he 
 was denounced daily as the corrupter of our courts, the wrecker of 
 railways, the demon of the Stock Exchange, the master of every 
 occult agency in legislation. Who do you suppose is strong enough 
 to fight against such a force as that ? If Dorr takes the notion, he 
 wall control every journal in the country, and, as it is, he has a 
 curious way of silencing many of them when he cares to." 
 
 " Politics, young men, such a morning as this ? I am ashamed 
 of you ! " It was Mrs. Circester who spoke. She had come in 
 while Hilliard was speaking and heard the last sentence. 
 
 " No ; morals — they are always in order, even though there be 
 none in Saratoga, or, if there be, veiled like the vestals, to make us 
 hold them in awe, while we leave them to the immortals to prac- 
 tice,'' returned Hilliard, as he arose and placed a chair for her. 
 
 " Tiens — tiens ; that's an ungallant sentiment for the preux 
 chevalier of society. Does it mean check in love, or disaster in 
 Wall Street war.' " 
 
158 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Oh, dear, no ; he comes too near who comes to be denied in 
 either of these lists, and I have not yet entered there," replied' Mil- 
 liard. 
 
 "Vague, but it will do. I'm glad I've found you together. 
 Mrs. Grimstone and Eleanor are miserably unhappy about Bertie's 
 conduct last night, and I have undertaken a mission of peace. I 
 want you, Mr. Carew, to promise to carry the quarrel no further, 
 and give Herbert your hand. The affair was to the last degree 
 trying, but Bertie wasn't quite himself, and any further notice of 
 the affront will only make his mother and sister unhappy." 
 
 " Let us drop the subject," said Fred. 
 
 " Not till you give me your word that you will carry the affair 
 no further." 
 
 Fred reflected a moment : 
 
 " If he gives me no cause, I shall ignore the business ; but he 
 deserves a thrashing, and I meant that he should have a sound 
 one." 
 
 " A la bonne heure ; I'll guarantee he'll give you no further 
 cause." 
 
 On leaving the room, Mrs. Circester asked Fred to walk to the 
 springs with her. On the way she resumed the topic of the table, 
 and pointed out the folly of quarreling with Bertie : 
 
 " Unless," she added, reflectively, "he is carrying out Madame 
 Dominguez's plan of revenge, I'm confident he meant nothing. I 
 don't know whether you are aware of it or not, but it is a common 
 belief that a journalist is like a lawyer, and will write anjrthing he 
 is paid for. I might have said the same thing, without dreaming 
 of an affront. It is pure ignorance. Besides, what you look on as 
 an insult, most people would regard simply as a statement of a 
 fact, which would be considered a tribute to the journalist's clever- 
 ness." 
 
 " All I can say is that no journalist, worthy the name, will 
 write what he doesn't believe, any more than a clergyman will 
 preach a doctrine he holds to be unsound," retorted Fred, hotly. 
 
 At dinner, Fred found the table deserted ; all his friends had 
 gone to the races, except Mrs. Circester. She came in just after 
 he sat down, and took a seat near him. When, on the removal 
 
THE WINGS OF ICARUS. i^g 
 
 of the soup, the waiter set the glasses and opened the wine with- 
 out any directions from Fred, Mrs. Circester looked at him with an 
 amused smile, implying wonder at his expensive tastes. 
 
 " How can you support such extravagance } " 
 
 "Extravagant.' What do you mean? The hotel furnishes 
 it I" 
 
 " Of course, the hotel furnishes it, at a handsome profit." 
 
 " Why — ^what do you mean ? The wine is part of the dinner, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, and a very desirable part for those who can afford such 
 Chambertin as this," and Mrs. Circester sipped the purple nectar 
 with the measured deliberation of a. gourmet. 
 
 " The wine is included in the table d'hSte, isn't it ? I always 
 supposed so. I never ordered it ! " 
 
 " Haven't you seen it in your bills ? If you haven't, wait until 
 you settle, my poor innocent, and you'll see how prominently it is 
 included in the sum total." 
 
 Fred explained that his employers settled all the hotel bills. 
 
 She looked at him fixedly : 
 
 " Your office pays your expenses here ? " 
 
 " Yes, so they wrote me." 
 
 " Ah ! " and she smiled significantly ; " th'en the office pays for 
 your wine — extraordinary generosity, I must say, and eloquent 
 proof of the consideration in which your work is held." 
 
 Still later, champagne was brought on in the same way, Fred 
 having said nothing ; Mrs. Circester smiled quizzically, but made 
 no further comment. When the dinner was over, Fred went to 
 the hotel-office and asked for Mr. Mauger, the host. He was not 
 in the office. He had gone to the races ; and Fred, saying that he 
 had business with him when he returned, went to his room and 
 set to writing, a good deal disturbed by the vague doubts Mrs. 
 Circester's manner had suggested. It was ten o'clock when he 
 finished his letter, and strolled out to post it. Returning, he sat 
 down on the inner veranda, near the fountain, a place at that time 
 of night always free from loungers. He had been seated but a 
 little while when a party of men came out and sat down at a table 
 arranged for them. They were drinking and smoking, but, as 
 
i6o THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 there were no lights, Fred did not at first distinguish who they 
 were. He sat thinking absently, only dimly conscious of the talk 
 going on near him. 
 
 " He's a presuming beggar, bke all his class ; what right has he 
 to come among gentlemen ? He hasn't any money. He was at 
 every house in the town last winter, and never bought a flower. 
 'Pon my soul, I don't think he ever paid for a carriage-hire." 
 
 " But how does he get in the swim ? " 
 
 " Oh ! professional. It's the cra2e now to have literary fellows, 
 as it used to be to have singers. I don't know what they'll bore 
 us with next — perhaps long-haired painter-fellows." 
 
 "But he dresses well, and I'm sure his manners are civil- 
 ized." 
 
 " Oh ! dress costs these people nothing. I believe all their bills 
 are receipted for professional value received." 
 
 " But, how can he stand the Marathon's bills — and I notice 
 he has two lands of wine at dinner .>' " 
 
 Fred started. The voices were Van Dyck's and Romeyn's. It 
 was Raikes who answered, laughing : 
 
 " That's not hard to account for. My governor is a stock- 
 holder in the concern, and I've seen the monthly statement. 
 These newspaper chaps are lodged and fed free. That's always 
 understood. They are ' dead-heads ' everywhere. That's all right 
 enough, if they knew how to keep their place ; but when a damned 
 upstart like this poseur pushes into the company of his betters, and 
 affects equality, I say Bertie did the right thing in reminding him 
 of his real roU." 
 
 " Did you see the beggar, Bert, when you spoke ? Damn it ! 
 I thought he was going to let fly his glass at you," and Romeyn 
 laughed loudly at the recollection. 
 
 " He would have fired it, too, if that old cat, Circester, hadn't 
 stopped him," Van Dyck rejoined, with a drawl. 
 
 They finished their drink, lighted their cigars, and relapsed into 
 another theme. Fred arose quietly, went to the office, and asked 
 for Mauger. That functionary received him \vith urbanity, led 
 the way to his inner office, and wanted to know what his visitor 
 would drink, at the same time proffering an open box of cigars. 
 
THE WINGS OF ICARUS. ifij 
 
 Declimng to either drink or smoke, Fred opened the business 
 curtly: 
 
 " Mr. Mauger, I came to ask you a few questions that con- 
 cern me. I am a novice in the work I have been doing this sum- 
 mer. I learn that my bills in this house are not paid. Is that 
 true ? " 
 
 " Why, my dear sir, who has said such a ridiculous thing ? " 
 
 " Reginald Raikes, who says his father is a stockholder, and to 
 ■whom the accounts are submitted monthly." 
 
 " Ah ! well, as a matter of fact, he is of course correct We 
 do not take money from newspaper-men. Your editor \vrote us, 
 when you came, to treat you well, and we have tried to do so. If 
 you have any favdt to find, let me have it." 
 
 " I have no fault to find with the hotel. I have very serious 
 fault to find with the compromising conduct you have pursued 
 with me. I insist on having a bill rendered for all the time I have 
 been in your house, and for every item supplied me. I never 
 dreamed that the bills were not paid." 
 
 " But, my dear sir, don't you understand that, as business men, 
 if we didn't profit by our policy with the press, we wouldn't per- 
 sue it ? Just look at the matter. The company could well afford 
 to pay you handsomely to come here every season, if you would 
 write such letters as you wrote this summer. Why, sir, the effect 
 was felt within ten days. Your very greenness, if you won't be 
 offended, was the g^eat beauty of the letters. You saw things as 
 no one else had ever seen them who wn-ote from here. Why, my 
 young friend, it was worth ten thousand dollars a month to have 
 you in the house, to satisfy the guests who asked about ' Valedo,' 
 the correspondent. We had thousands of copies of the ' Minerva ' 
 sent over the country ; we had every principal paper in the rich 
 towns copy your letters, and, sir, you have made this hotel. I'm 
 free to say it, sir, you have made this hotel, and, instead of paying 
 a penny here, we should be in your debt if we gave you a check for 
 five thousand dollars this minute." 
 
 " You are very kind, Mr. Mauger, to look at the matter in this 
 flattering way. But others don't." 
 
 " What do you mean — ^what others ? Who has the impudence 
 8 
 
l62 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 to meddle with the matter ? I don't care if it is Statenbelt himself, 
 he'll walk out of this house ! " 
 
 "You don't quite understand me, Mr. Mauger; a journalist 
 can't respect himself, and receive indirect wages in this way. The 
 people who talked of it were quite justified in calling me a — a— 
 never mind what, if I knowingly receive bounty in this way. You 
 are extremely kind. You can do me no greater favor than to give 
 me the amount that I am indebted to the hotel, and let me pay it 
 this instant. I can't sleep. I can't look any one in the face till 
 this is done." 
 
 The host eyed the publicist in amazement, and burst out : 
 
 " Why, young man, I've been in the hotel business thirty years, 
 and I never knew such a thing as a correspondent paying a penny. 
 It isn't right. You do us a thousand-fold more good than we can 
 pay for. Why, I know hotel men that buy interests in newspapers 
 to get the free use of their columns. Why, damn it, man, I'd hire 
 you myself, and pay for your letters as advertisements, sooner than 
 have you quit ! I'll make the proposition now, this minute, and 
 put it in writing, to pay you twice per week what the ' Minerva ' 
 pays you, and publish your writings at so much a line, if the 
 editor objects to the arrangement. But he won't ; for he comes 
 here every season, and he never asks to pay his bill, nor is it ever 
 presented him." 
 
 Fred rejected this generous proposal, and declared his intention 
 of quitting the hotel at once. The bill was gfiven him in the end. 
 He was a good deal astonished at the amount, as it exceeded by 
 a large amount his earnings. The host made a last effort. 
 
 " Here it is, receipted — say no more about it ; consider the 
 money as so much earned from us and very gladly paid." 
 
 Fred handed him a check for the sum, and gave notice that he 
 should vacate his room in the morning. He found an agreeable 
 lodging in a secluded part of the town, and by noon was installed 
 in his new quarters. The next afternoon, a note, inviting him to 
 dine with the Grimstones and drive afterward, written by Eleanor, 
 was forwarded from the hotel. He sent a polite refusal. An hour 
 later, as he sat at his window, Mrs. Circester drove up and sent a 
 card in- It was a request for him to come for a drive. 
 
THE WINGS OF ICARUS. 163 
 
 " What new madness has seized you now ? I was in Nell's 
 room when your note came ; we couldn't understand the address, 
 and sent to the office to inquire. They told us you had quit the 
 hotel. What does it all mean ? " 
 
 " It means that I can't afford ten dollars a day when I 'bnly 
 receive fifty dollars per week," and then Fred told the whole 
 story. She listened with little ejaculations of disgust, and com- 
 mented : 
 
 " The scandal-mongering young cads ! Do you know that Her- 
 bert has paid Raikes's gambling debts, and lent Romeyn money to 
 remain here "> Do you know that those fellows get all their cloth- 
 ing from fashionable tailors for the custom they send them ? Do 
 you know that they bribed the jockey at the last three races to 
 disable their own horses ? Do you know that Doming^ez has 
 ■ Herbert's bills for two thousand to fit up ' the Rest ' of that odious 
 creature, Beauxjambes ? " 
 
 " And these are the manners you want me to imitate } " 
 
 " Not at all. These people play the principal part in the life 
 of our time, and, to get a chance, you must keep on terms with 
 them.'' 
 
 " That is to say, when you fall among thieves, you must make 
 believe to be a thief too, in order to take advantage of the honor 
 that exists among them ? " 
 
 " That's your pungent journalistic way of stating the case, and 
 perhaps it isn't far wrong ; but, right or wrong, you can't afford to 
 make enemies of the Grimstones. You can make Nell something 
 else, if you will turn your hand over, and I'm not a person easily 
 deceived in matters of this sort." 
 
 Fred laughed. The persistence of his patron, which had at first 
 annoyed him, began to be rather soothing to his vanity ; for there 
 never was a saint in the form of a man that wasn't secretly flat- 
 tered by the thought that he might inspire a passion if he set him- 
 self to try. Mrs. Circester, however, would have been quite as 
 much surprised as chagrined had she been in the Grimstone par- 
 lor at that very moment. The family had received a telegram from 
 New York, from the head of the house, announcing his immedi- 
 ate coming, and he arrived in the afternoon. He barely took 
 
1 64 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 time to remove the dust of the hot August journey, when he sum- 
 moned Mrs. Grimstone to a conference. She was in no sense 
 afraid of her husband, little sjrmpathetic as they were ordinarily, 
 but the hectic roses faded, or rather the pallor under them inten- 
 sified, when, in a tone of cold curiosity, Grimstone asked : 
 
 " What is this folly I hear about Nell and that fellow Hil- 
 liard?" 
 
 " What about them, my dear ? I know no nonsense, I'm sure." 
 - " Dorr tells me that he can't get a chance to pass the time of 
 day with Nell ; that Hilliard is with her all day, and up to the 
 latest hour at night." 
 
 " It's possible — Nell is here for pleasure ; she enjoys Hilliard, 
 and he seems to enjoy being with her, and I'm sure it is very sat- 
 isfactory to have her in the company of a man so well bred — the 
 leader in the best society of New York." 
 
 " Don't talk that rot, Delia ! Best? A lot of smirking hypo- 
 crites that hold their doors barred until they can verify your bank- 
 account ! However, that's neither here nor there. Dorr has the 
 notion that Nell is the woman he wants to marry. I took care to 
 ask her, before I gave him any definite reply. She said she was 
 indifferent; that if I cared to have it so, she would marry him ; and 
 for a time she gave him every encouragement. On the strength 
 of that, we have joined forces in a number of enterprises, the suc- 
 cess of which demands the devotion of some one who is not a 
 stranger to me ; some one who is joined by ties stronger than mere 
 interest ; some one, in short, who may justly hope to be working 
 in his own behalf as well as mine. Dorr is a fine-looking fellow ; 
 he is not more than forty ; he will not make a showy husband, 
 but he will give Nell such a place as no other woman on this con- 
 tinent can dispute — ^the command of fifty million dollars ! " 
 
 " Well, I'm willing to have Nell make the match, but my say 
 so wouldn't influence her a particle ; nor will yours, if she has 
 made up her mind not to have him." 
 
 '' Send her here — ^we'U see," and the million-maker looked at 
 his wife in mingled wonder and surprise. Nell came rustling in 
 presently, a vision of loveliness, covered with fleecy laces, and no 
 color anywhere, save on the lustrous cheeks and in the langfuishing 
 
THE WINGS OF ICARUS. 
 
 i6S 
 
 eyes. She came up to her father frankly, pulled his head down and 
 kissed him, and forced him into an easy-chair, where, sitting on 
 the arm, she could look down in his face. Then, affecting the 
 sepulchral tones of the tragic persons on the stage : 
 
 " This is the cruel parent that would give his only daugh — ter 
 to ah abhorred suitor ! Look at him — see the crime in his face ! 
 What should be done with him ? He shall be kissed into peni- 
 tence, and locked in my lady's chamber." 
 
 " No — ho — ^Eleanor, you spoiled vixen ; you're not wheedling 
 diamonds, or a drag, or any of the monstrous and wasteful things 
 that have ruined your poor father," and he tried to extricate him- 
 self from the caressing arms — she only laughed at this. 
 
 " Yes ; I shall wheedle everything from you, even your cross 
 temper ! " 
 
 " Seriously, Nell, I know you think too much of your word, and 
 you have too much love for me, to place me in such an awkward 
 position with Dorr. The truth is " — he rose, hesitated, and closed 
 the door — " the truth is, Nell, Dorr can cripple me badly if I gave 
 him cause for anger just now. What can you say against him ? 
 He's not as young as he might be, but he's fine-looking ; he isn't 
 sentimental, but I've no doubt he'll make a very good husband. 
 Besides, what do you care, if you have all the money you want, 
 and all the social consideration his millions will give you ? " 
 
 Nell's face had lost the vivacious audacity of the first moment 
 she entered. Tears stood in her large, lovely eyes, and she leaned 
 against the back of the chair her father sat on, with her hands 
 hangfing down straight behind her, working nervously in each 
 other: 
 
 "Papa, I am to blame in letting you think for a moment that 
 I could ever consent to marry Mr. Dorr ! Let us dismiss that. It 
 is decided. I will tell him that the fault is mine, and if he has any 
 sense of magnanimity he will bear you no ill-will. He doesn't 
 need our fortune, and I certainly don't need his ! Haven't we mill- 
 ions ? You are referred to in every journal one takes up as the 
 millionaire, and aren't you rated as worth anywhere from ten to 
 fifty millions ? What have you wasted your years for, if these 
 millions can't give you independence .' What do you want with 
 
1 66 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 Dorr's ? What could you do with more if you had them ? I can't 
 spend the allowance you make me ! I have given it away for 
 years. I hate the very name of million. I could almost wish you 
 were reduced to a few hundreds ; I'm sure you would be hap- 
 pier, and we should see more of you. Why, papa, do you know 
 that the gardener at Valedo is a far happier man than you, and 
 his family circle is a scene that I have envied and cried over many 
 a time.' No, I will never marry a man who has the craze of 
 money ! It is worse than opium, it is worse than crime ; for these 
 may be cured without killing, but this dreadful mania can't ! " She 
 bent over, wound her arms around his neck, and broke into chok- 
 ing sobs. The two natures, each wrought into passionate purpose 
 by opposing motives, melted into the tender calm of filial and pa- 
 ternal love. 
 
 " Do you — that is, have you any one else in mind that you want 
 to many — or rather that you would marry .' " 
 
 " O papa ! that — that isn't a question I can very well answer ! " 
 
 " You can certainly say whether you love any one else than 
 Dorr!" 
 
 " I can't say that, papa ; because that's a question a girl can 
 answer only when the man that loves her has asked it ! " 
 
 " Is there any man you know that would get a yes to the ques- 
 tion ? " 
 
 " I can't tell until he asks— perhaps yes, perhaps no." 
 
 "Nell, you ought to have some confidence in your father. 
 God knows, I've shown enough in you since the day, twenty-two 
 years ago, when you lay, a little sprawling, crying midget, in the 
 cradle at Valedo ! I will put the question in another way — ^yes, 
 bury your head quite close to my heart ; it is a very true heart to 
 you, my child," and he stroked the hair tenderly as she sank on 
 her knees on the stool beside the chair. " Let me, now that you 
 have a refuge for your blushes, ask this : if I name the man you 
 would marry, will you answer yes ? " He waited, bent over and 
 kissed the head, and still waited. But there was no answer. 
 " Don't you think this is a little hard for me, my child ? You will 
 tell a stranger what you can't tell your own father ? I am hurt, 
 deeply hurt." 
 
MY DUCATS OS MY DAUGHTER? 167 
 
 She clasped his neck closer, her cheeks were burning, and her 
 breath came in agitated gasps. Both were silent for a long time ; 
 at last, Nell, looking up timidly, saw his eyes fixed on the ceiling, 
 and then she whispered : 
 
 " I think he wants to ask me, but he hesitates, because — be- 
 cause — '' she hesitated again, and buried her burning cheeks on 
 her father's breast — " because — " 
 
 " Because what, Nell ? because he fears that you will say no ? " 
 
 " Ah, papa, no, no ! " 
 
 " Why, then ? Most lovers are eager to learn their fate ! " 
 
 She pulled his head down and whispered in his ear, with burn- 
 ing lips : 
 
 " He knows I would say yes." 
 
 He put her gently away and got up. She looked up in a 
 fright. But his face was serene, even benignantly indulgent : 
 
 " My child, I will say no more ; of course you can not be con- 
 strained, and if there is a man you love who asks you to marry 
 him, he must be a fit person, or you wouldn't encourage him. I 
 will say no more, but, until your preference asks you, treat Dorr as 
 kindly as you can, for my sake. Surely, that isn't asking much ! " 
 
 " O papa, how good you are to me ! " and when presently the 
 door opened and her mother came in, father and daughter were 
 sitting in close embrace. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MY DUCATS OR MY DAUGHTER? 
 
 Aaron Grimstone did not quit Saratoga at once, as he had 
 at first proposed. He told his daughter that he would stay a while 
 to get acquainted with his family, even though the indulgence 
 should invite the wolf to the door. Nell understood something of 
 the grim significance of this saying, which was lost on her mother. 
 The girl knew that her father was waiting to see the man that she 
 had a yes ready for, and she resolved that he shouldn't. To his 
 great surprise, she was not at home when Hilliard sent up his card,. 
 
1 68 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 that day, nor the next, nor for a week. Neither did she appear in 
 the dining-room, nor the dancing-room, nor the promenade. Late 
 every evening she drove out with her father and mother, and 
 sometimes Dorr was in the landau. 
 
 This strategy, which Eleanor had determined on for keeping 
 her father's suspicions from HiUiard, had an effect which she 
 could not have produced had she deliberately counted on it. Hil- 
 liard had for months asked himself whether he ought to marry 
 this girl, who for him had no other attraction than her father's 
 millions. He was in no sense a vulgar fortune-seeker. He had 
 reflected long and deeply on the seriousness of the marriage-con- 
 tract. He preserved enough of the sentimentality of his boyhood 
 to seek in his wife the companion of his heart, his aspirations, his 
 better impulses. He scrutinized his sentiments and impulses as 
 closely as the metaphysician, who buried himself in a cell to prove, 
 by a mental vivisection of his owm intellectual organism, the logical 
 formula, " I think, therefore I am." He was as conscious of the 
 time that he had passed the boundary that conscience erects 
 against worldliness and spiritual infidelity, as the mariner whose 
 lead shows the point where the ship rides over the bar. He knew 
 how far his moral decadence had gone, but he was so completely 
 master of himself that he still believed he could resist going with 
 the tide. He had sacrificed many ideals when the craze for 
 money overwhelmed him, but he meant that the passion should 
 never swirl him into the maelstrom of ignoble self-abasement he 
 witnessed in others. He had hoped and tried to make himself 
 believe that sentiment, and the sacred fire that lights the altar of 
 love, were urging him toward Eleanor. But the more he saw her, 
 the clearer her nature revealed itself, the more certainly he saw 
 that she was not the ideal of his youth. 
 
 He felt a very sincere affection for her, he even felt a sort of 
 chivalrous compassion for so gentle a nature left at the mercy of 
 the designing ; for, like all who saw her, Hilliard believed her im- 
 pulsive and weak, as the impulsive are. Her very frankness was 
 pitiable artifice to him. He believed that the open preference she 
 showed for him was an unrefined coquetry, and that she would 
 probably repulse him if he came to her with all that he had to 
 
MY DUCATS OR MY DAUGHTER? 169 
 
 offer, the shadow of a lover's adoration. He at once overesti- 
 mated and underestimated her. Insincerity has this weakness al- 
 ways, that it has no sure measure to gauge conduct or motives 
 abstractly. He knew that his social vogue and pre-eminence in let- 
 ters dazzled the girl ; he never dreamed that her delight in his com- 
 pany was a naive confession of her fondness for him. His ovm 
 dissimulation blurred the lenses through which he observed her, 
 and, perfect master as he was of all the small arts of social diplom- 
 acy, he was really helpless in Nell's hands had she but known it. 
 
 Her belief we have seen in her artless confession to her father. 
 She had created an ideal, or rather she had made Hilliard the ideal 
 of her girlish dreams. He was a creature of poetic refinement ; he 
 loved her, but shrank from admitting it, lest his motive should be 
 misunderstood. He distrusted her magnanimity, and she waited 
 in delicious hope for the time when she should surprise him into 
 an avowal, and then tell him that she had seen into his pure soul 
 from the first ! It had been her dream for months ; for days she 
 had planned and schemed to give him the chance; often she 
 thought the rapturous words on his lips ; a thousand times she had 
 seen them in his eyes. But something had always come between 
 the divine thought and the diviner utterance. The delay only gave 
 her firmer faith. She lived in an atmosphere of such ecstasy as 
 comes in complete abandonment to the ideal. The birds warbled 
 the tender words as she opened her window ; the stars sent them 
 thrilling into her soul in letters of light ; the sun shone them, the 
 waters rippled them. By day and by night she heard them ; she 
 knew they would come, and she waited in the fervent certainty of 
 the bride at the altar. 
 
 This very certainty, which transformed the maiden tremors 
 that mark first love into a sort of coquettish invitation, wholly de- 
 ceived the schooled diplomate, who counted on the timidities that 
 usually mark the tender love of a g^rl. He fancied that she was 
 emphasizing her indifference to him, even while she was glowing 
 and fainting in expectation of the signal. 
 
 The sudden change, marking the father's coming, confirmed 
 him in this belief, and he laughed in a sort of expiatory bitterness 
 over his own just punishment. 
 
170 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 He was sitting on the veranda late in the afternoon, debating 
 whether he should leave for the mountains, when Nell appeared 
 in the vestibule in walking-costume, just as her father drove oft 
 with Dorr and Herbert. " I am going for a walk. Have you 
 anything better to do ? If not, come with me ? " 
 
 " Barring obeying a command from the archangel to appear 
 at the gate of heaven, with the list of one's sins blotted out, I know 
 nothing that would give a man a greater pleasure." He was 
 accustomed to paying her this exaggerated hj'perbolean sort of 
 homage, and, inconsistently enough, it was one of the things he 
 liked least in her that she seemed to accept them with pleasure ; 
 while, as a matter of fact, she disliked them exceedingly, but sup- 
 posed that men of genius commonly expressed themselves in this 
 fashion. She stood for a few minutes adjusting her gloves, mean- 
 while glancing up the street where the Grimstone landau rolled 
 off out of sight until it turned the comer. 
 
 She stepped briskly forward, going toward the park, but avoid- 
 ing the paths toward the spring. She was all animation ; indeed, 
 her vivacity was too exuberant to be natural, and Hilliard insen- 
 sibly realized a feeling of satisfaction that he had relinquished all 
 thought of asking her to marry him. As his thoughtfulness deep- 
 ened, her spirits became more and more buoyant. She thought 
 him timid ; he thought her frivolous, indelicate, repulsive. She 
 thought him confounded by the opportunity within his reach ; he 
 thought she was insolently flaunting the confidence she had in 
 herself, and his own inconsequence to her. It is a scene in the 
 human comedy, old enough and threadbare enough, I fancy, but 
 always full of the delight of the unknown and unforeseen to the 
 poor, pranking comedian — a. diversion that breaks hearts and ruins 
 lives, and all the more pathetic that one is sincere and the other a 
 sham. 
 
 She had passed a miserable week, she chattered ; she hadn't 
 seen a soul she cared for, and she looked at him with an arch- 
 invitation that fairly made him recoil. Her " papa had dragged 
 her hither and yon ; he had kept her prisoner in-doors ; he was 
 jealous if she remained an hour with her maid to dress ; and finally 
 v/ouldn't have the family dine down-stairs, in order that they might 
 
MY DC/CATS OS MY DAUGHTER? lyj 
 
 see as much of each other as his stay would permit. He was the 
 dearest, most unreasona.ble of papas, and she adored him ; there 
 was nothing he refused her ; she believed that, if she asked him to 
 go on a journey around the world, he wouldn't refuse to get the 
 tickets." This was what she said, and here is what she thought : 
 " The dear fellow, he needs to be encouraged ; he is trembling, I 
 can see he is ! he is afraid that papa will say no ! I will show him 
 how I can turn papa around my finger ! He is silly as that poor 
 Carew, who told me he never would many a girl with money, be- 
 cause his motives would be misunderstood. This desu- fellow is 
 even more sensitive. He is too poetic even to say in words the 
 bar he feels between us. But I will show him that money is a 
 small thing to me, compared with a prince like him for a lover ' " 
 
 It may be that this double operation made Nell's speech less com- 
 prehensible than she intended, for Hilliard, who was not called on 
 to reply, save in rare monosyllables, carried on these reflections : 
 " How could I ever think of such a union ? She is really coarse, 
 childish, tedious ; what earthly interest have I in that disreputable 
 old Plutus ? what do I care whether he indulges her to indiscre- 
 tion or not ! Heavens ! think of this woman presiding over my 
 house, meeting the only people congenial to me ! Ugh ! I must 
 have been an idiot ! But how handsome she is ! how distin- 
 guished her carriage ! how she would out-bloom the pale inanities 
 of the ordinary salon with her natural carnation, her limpid, lovely 
 eyes ! Even the coarse bones are a beauty ! How honest and 
 unartificial ! " Happily, the face of the inginue was as impene- 
 trable a mask as the face of the diplomate ; both stood within a 
 word of a common destiny, and both were divided by the abysm 
 of delusion on one side and hypocrisy on the other. 
 
 They had, meanwhile, walked far from the village, along the 
 edge of a wooded field. They crossed at a turnstile and sauntered 
 along the hedge — Nell gathering white daisies and fastening them 
 in her waist. Coming presently to a clump of golden-rod break- 
 ing into bloom, she snipped off a spray, and, fastening it in Hil- 
 liard's lappel, said, gayly : 
 
 " It is the color of deceit, but when deceit is so beautiful who 
 C£ires to resist it ? " 
 
172 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Truly, who cares ? " he echoed, absently. 
 
 They walked on until the field ended in a cross-road. There 
 was a great chestnut-tree fallen across the fence, its limbs still 
 green. Nell ran venturesomely up the trunk, until she was some 
 distance from the ground, calling gayly to Hilliard to follow. He 
 was just about to do it when the limb upon which she was lean- 
 ing gave way. She uttered a little stjutled scream and fell, cling- 
 ing to the limb, leaving the red sun-shade flaring among the 
 branches." 
 
 " Let yourself drop ! Have no fear — I will catch you ! " In 
 spite of herself, she dropped, for her strength gave out. Hilliard 
 caught her in his arms, and asked quite equably if she were hurt. 
 Affronted by this imbecile ineptitude in the face of such a chance 
 as a lover's dream could alone invoke, Nell broke from him and 
 sat down on the root of the tree, pretending to examine the wounds 
 in flesh or raiment. Hilliard, greatly perplexed by this new phase, 
 threw himself lengthwise at her feet, and waited for her to report 
 progress. 
 
 Her thought was : " Well, it's plain that men have no confidence 
 in themselves. I should have kissed a girl,.if she fell into my arms 
 like that, if I were a man ! " What she said was : " Unless you 
 broke a bone in receiving the shock, there's no harm done ! I only 
 tore my skirt ! Do you Uke chestnuts ? " 
 
 "No; they make known to me what Carlyle found out by 
 means of Caledonian cakes and porridge." 
 
 " Dear me ! what a curious thing ! What do they make known 
 — are they, like the cardinal-flower, prophets of tragedy, luckless 
 love, and all manner of dreadful things ? " 
 
 " No ; what I meant to say is that the chestnut is odiously in- 
 digestible." 
 
 " Ah ! but they make delicious dishes of them in France, and 
 the French aren't dyspeptics ! " 
 
 " The French can make a palatable dish of sole-leather, while 
 we can't make bread that the stomach can assimilate, though we 
 use the best flour on the globe." 
 
 " Wait till you come'out to Valedo, and I will set before you 
 bread made by an old aunty from Kentucky, and you'll certainly 
 
My DUCATS OR MY DAUGHTER? 1^3 
 
 say it Is lighter and better than the French rolL By-the-waj', 
 when are you coming to Valedo ? We are going to be very gay 
 there this winter. Your friend Mr. Carew is going to settle there 
 and edit the ' Eagle.' " 
 
 " I shall be in Valedo during the winter some time. I'm booked 
 for a lecture there before Christmas." 
 
 " Delightful ! You must come to us — Herbert will be home, 
 and you shall have such sleighing as you haven't seen since you 
 were in Russia. — Oh, yes, speaking of Mr. Carew, what a charm- 
 ing fellow he is ! Where is he ? I haven't seen him for a fort- 
 night ! " 
 
 Now, the inconsequence of this speech is accounted for by the 
 double operation going on in Nell's mind : while she was speaking 
 her thoughts ran — " Now, if I can manage to tell him Carew's con- 
 versation about marrying, and then get a chance to say how thor- 
 oughly I disapprove of that view of the matter, surely he v«ll find 
 courage." 
 
 " You are charmingly kind to ask me, and I shall be proud and 
 honored to accept. Carew has retired to the seclusion of a board- 
 ing-house ; he found hotel-life interfered with his Muse.. He's a 
 man with a conscience, and puts as much soul in his letters to the 
 ' Minerva ' as another would in an epic poem or love-song." 
 
 Eleanor, with a gliding, unobtrusive motion, :slid down from 
 the root, and, as she began plucking the fragrant clover, said : 
 
 '• He is a poet, that young man. He has the strangest notions. 
 He once told me that he would never marry a girl who had money, 
 even if he were certain she loved him. Such fudge ! Did you ever 
 hear anything so absurd .' — as though it were a girl's fault, if her 
 family happened to have a lot of paltry money ! I've no patience 
 with him, and I told him so." 
 
 " Did you convince him } " There was a startled look in Hil- 
 liard's eyes, a \'ibrating tremor in his voice, that rang like the echo 
 of silver bells in the ears of the siren. 
 
 " No ; he's a most obstinate fellow : I believe that he would let 
 a girl ask him, and refuse — ^the most odious selfishness a man 
 could be guilty of." Now under these commonplaces ran these 
 two opposing currents : 
 
174 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 Over the fibers of Hilliard's consciousness these thoughts took 
 shape : " Is she trying to make a fool of me ? 'Gad ! what beauty 
 there is in her eyes ! She is even trembling, her eyes are averted, 
 she is putting the stems together all awry— she is agitated ; can 
 this fable mean anything? Good God! can it be that I have 
 been misconstruing her — am I to take this as a lowering of the 
 scepter, and kiss the hand ? She is really lovely, and I could form 
 her. Millions in the scale would justify anj^thing, even love : I 
 could love her — I could love her — I will love her — I do love her — 
 I will risk it ! " 
 
 Her thought, confused and roseate with the rising sun of real- 
 ization dazzling the eyes of her sense : " He understands, he 
 appreciates my self-sacrifice; his poetic soul comprehends that 
 it's no indelicacy. He looks the lover, he is the lover, he makes 
 me tremble — I dare not look at him ! Heavens ! am I to win 
 this divine grace — this noble life — this perfect love? He loves 
 me ! I feel it — I see it — he is going to speak, and I must not go 
 any further ! " Her hand had wandered far out in vague reach 
 for a white-topped clover. His hand was there, and they came 
 together. He raised it to his lips and kissed it. Their eyes met ; 
 words that would have been irrevocable were on his lips ; vows 
 that would have bound them were formed, when a crashing in the 
 leaves startled them. Turning their heads at the same instant, 
 they saw Herbert looking on in amazement. He came almost to 
 them and stopped. 
 
 " Nell, father has hurt his arm badly ; the horses sheered down 
 the road, and he was thrown against the wheel. He wants you 
 to come to him. — There is plenty of room in the carriage for you 
 also, Mr. Hilliard ! " 
 
 Nell gave him a tender look of entreaty, and they silently 
 walked to the carriage, which was concealed by the foliage of the 
 fallen tree. The explanation of the untimely apparition was this : 
 Grimstone had gone but a mile or two from the hotel when he re- 
 membered a telegram that he had left on his dressing-table, intend- 
 ing to give it to his valet to take to the office. The valet was out 
 at the moment, and its neglect fljished on him as he was driving. 
 As he entered the hotel, he heard some one ask for Hilliard, and the 
 
MY DUCATS OS MY DAUGHTER? 
 
 175 
 
 response that he had just walked toward the spring with Miss Grim- 
 stone. He got the telegram, asked Dorr to wait in the hotel, and 
 set out in chase. Herbert, meeting an acquaintance, came upon 
 the track of the wanderers. The carriage had actually passed the 
 covert once, and it was only by accident that Herbert caught sight 
 of Nell's tell-tale sun-shade in the limbs of the chestnut. The ac- 
 cident was, of course, a ruse de guerre. Grimstone made very 
 merry over his lame vmst, which he let his daughter nurse as they 
 drove home. He was full of interest, for Hilliard asked him all 
 sorts of respectfully solicitous questions about his career in New 
 York, until the light heart of Nell took pinions more ethereal than 
 bird-wings to fly in the horizon of her new happiness. Arrived at 
 the hotel, Grimstone waved HiUiard a cordial adieu, and strode up 
 the stairs on his daughter's arm. 
 
 He was very gay with her, chatted on all sorts of delightful 
 frivolities ; told her of a project he had for getting her a yacht, in 
 which she was to be captain, and invite all her friends on a pleas- 
 ure-jaunt. He refused to have his hand dressed, but consented to 
 the tender ministry women love, and was lulled in the fashion of 
 the most dove-like and unpremeditating patriarch, soothed by the 
 devotions of the domestic circle. Presently, catching Mrs. Grim- 
 stone's eye, he made a signal for her to withdraw. He redoubled 
 his sallies and convulsed his daughter with laughter ; as she bent 
 over to Idss him in the effusion that came from another sentiment 
 than filial love, he drew her on his knee. 
 
 " There, I love to have you here, and I am almost selfish 
 enough to ask you to always be my daughter." 
 
 " But I shall always be your daughter — how absurd ! " 
 
 "Ah ! when he asks you .' " 
 
 " When he asks me, I shall tell him that, in taking me, he must 
 take a father, too. Dear, dear papa, don't you fear ! " 
 
 Ah, poor child ! How could you see into that father's heart 
 — ^how could you guess the misery that guileless confession, " when 
 he asks me," was to bring on you and yours ? How could you, in 
 sight of the stars, dream that you were stepping into the abyss ? 
 It is the good in us, don't you see, that leads us to the door of 
 darlmess. It is the hand of those that love that smites in the 
 
176 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 vitalest part. Ah ! well, let us wait before we moralize. There 
 are some tragedies that are their own moralizing. 
 
 An hour afterward, Hilliard, in response to " Mr. Aaron Grim- 
 stone's compliments " and polite request, met him in his private 
 parlor. As he entered, Herbert, with a cordial greeting, passed 
 out of the room, and the door closing he was left alone with the 
 millionaire. Unsuspicious of what was coming, Hilliard took the 
 seat proffered him with the tranquil composure of a man of the 
 world, who knew what was due a father-in-law in posse. 
 
 " I have taken the liberty of asking you to come to me, sir, be- 
 cause I am an older man than you ; and what I have to say can, 
 perhaps, be said better within reach of references than it could in 
 a public place. I beg your attention for a few moments." He 
 hesitated, lolling back in his chair, twirling his glasses, and con- 
 sidering the next words. His voice was no longer cordial ; he was 
 now the man of business, the self-made man, the guardian of mill- 
 ions, the head of a dynasty — like Napoleon, when he had sum- 
 moned Jdrome to persuade him of the folly of his American 
 marriage. 
 
 " You contemplate, I believe, Mr. Hilliard, doing me the honor 
 of asking my daughter in marriage ? " Hilliard was prepared for 
 any form of interrogatory than this. What did the question 
 mean ? He had been revolutionized within the hour. Millions 
 would make Eleanor a very desirable wife. What, after all, were 
 his dreams of the woman he wanted .'' Certainly Nell was, if not 
 beautiful, very handsome, and, under his supervision and the influ- 
 ences with which he would surround her, material easily trans- 
 formable into such a woman as the most fastidious aesthete need 
 not shiver over. But there was no time now for hesitation. He 
 was no longer at liberty to deliberate. Though he had not asked 
 the question, or told her in so many words that he loved her, his 
 eyes must have told her that he wanted to, and he was sure that 
 hers told much more. He answered in a low tone, " I had in- 
 tended, Mr. Grimstone, to ask for that honor, when authorized by 
 your daughter." 
 
 " Yes, I supposed as much. Here is what I have to say : My 
 daughter has been engaged for some time to a gentleman whom 
 
MY DUCATS OX MY DAUGHTER? 
 
 177 
 
 I approve very heartily. By her own consent, he has been paying 
 her the attentions of an accepted suitor. I hold that engagement 
 sacred. Should she break it and marry any one else, she will take 
 that step in defiance of my wishes, and she will not get a penny of 
 my fortune. Here is the disposition I have made of my estate in 
 the contingency of my daughter's disobedience." He rose, and 
 going to a drawer in the tray of his traveling-chest, drew out a 
 paper and proffered it to Hilliard. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Mr. Grimstone-^I don't see how this con- 
 cerns me ! It cert^nly does not interest me." 
 
 "Yes, yes, I see — it's not my daughter's fortune you want; 
 well, then, it will be just as well for you to know what this docu- 
 ment has to say. It provides by bill of sale for all my estate, ex- 
 cept my wife's and son's portions. In the event of my daughter's 
 marriage without my consent, she will be left in very moderate 
 circumstances — not by any means such circumstances as would 
 tempt a man like you to link your fortunes with a family that you 
 hold in contempt. Ah ! I know quite well what I am saying. I 
 know perfectly your estimate of money-bags, and I infer the at- 
 traction such a man's daughter would have for refinement and 
 accomplishments like yours. Millions might cover her deficiencies 
 as your wife ; but, as your wife, mark ray words, she vdll never 
 have them ! I shall make no scandal, insist on no public estrange- 
 ment. I shall simply guard my own even from my own." 
 
 Hilliard arose, but, v\rith a wave of the hand, Grimstone held 
 him, and continued tranquilly : " I will be frank with you, sir. I 
 know your history ; I know the first money you made in New 
 York. I know how it was invested ; and I know your tastes and 
 ambitions. Marry my daughter, and you shall never occupy a 
 post of distinction on any journal in the country. I have the rec- 
 ord of the speculation in Ontario vrith Winkle, while you were on 
 the • Atlas,' calculated to a fraction ; your relations with the agent 
 that made the investment in the railway grab. In short, sir, I 
 am determined to proceed to any length to compel my daughter 
 to keep her word to the man she is engaged to. On the other 
 hand, if, as a man of honor, you retire from any further preten- 
 sions to my millions, I may venture to say that, with such abilities 
 
1^8 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 as yours, I can put you in the way of making a fortune not bur- 
 dened with a wife, that, after all, might not meet the needs of a 
 nature so refined as yours, for, all told, you know we are the most 
 vulgar type of the new-made rich. I am not, you see, even equal to 
 the hackneyed French phrase. I believe that I have laid the situa- 
 tion before you. I will give you time to reflect, and you can write 
 me, or come and say what you determine to do." He had moved 
 toward the table as he spoke, and as Hilliard, white and trembling 
 with indignation, wrath, and humiliation, strove to speak. Grim- 
 stone touched a bell, and Herbert, who had apparently been stand- 
 ing on guard at the door, entered. 
 
 " Herbert, give Mr. Hilliard some wine ; there's brandy on the 
 buflet there," and, without another word, he opened the door com- 
 municating wth his sleeping-room, and closed it after him with 
 emphasis. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " LOVE TOOK UP THE HARP OF LIFE." 
 
 Speculating upon this frightful episode in Prince Rupert's 
 career, I have often amused myself with making a parallel of the 
 fantastic freaks that it used to please that beherhoth of all the 
 parvenus. Napoleon I, to play with the monarchs of Europe ! 
 When he sent for kings to come to his tent, or his cabinet, in 
 their own capitals, he was fond of reminding them, as Grimstone 
 reminded Hilliard, of their superior pretensions, their disdain for 
 his merely self-made grandeur. Figure to yourself the Hohen- 
 zoUem king, separated but one reign from the Great Frederick, 
 when, after Jena, Napoleon kept him waiting like a lackey in his 
 antechamber ! A king is but a man, after all, as we hold in this 
 land of equality ; and Frederick of Hohenzollem, rallied on his 
 pretensions, his divine right, and all that was antagonized by the 
 acrid humorist of French democracy, retired from the presence of 
 his dreadful master no more startled, crushed, nor broken than 
 our aspiring and indomitably self-confident paladin of the press. 
 
"LOVE TOOK UP THE HARP OF LIFE." ijg 
 
 Indeed, the dull HohenzoUem was incapable of the acute sense 
 of abasement that made the young man's self-loathing and 
 wretchedness the torturing misery of self-condemnation. For, 
 after all, when Frederick bent to the parvenu's yoke, he accepted 
 it as the fortunes of war, and possessed no refinement of feeling, 
 no quick conscience to reproach him with bringing about his own 
 overthrow through ignobly prostituted power. So that, after all, 
 the HohenzoUem at Jena, the Hapsburg at Austerlitz, Ferdinand 
 at Bayonne, while as parallels they may adorn the tale, do not 
 really help to point the moral ; for they were degraded, diclassi, 
 as kings may be, without strjun upon an3rthing else than wounded 
 pride. With Hilliard it was a moral collapse, because he knew 
 that it was deserved. He knew that it was an inscrutable process 
 of expiation forced upon him by his own abandonment of prin- 
 ciple and manliness. That morning he could have met Grim- 
 stone and laughed in his face over such imperious vaunting as he 
 had made. That morning he could have said, " No, the thought 
 of such an honor as an alliance with your family is not in my 
 mind." He could have said it with truth ; for, as we have seen, 
 the week's interruption in his intercourse with Nell had strength- 
 ened him in his wavering resistance to the luring millions. 
 
 He had held himself as a creature of such a serenely superior 
 atmosphere to this monstrous autochthon ; he had so fastidiously 
 shrunk from giving the gold of his refinement to mingle with the 
 alloy of Grimstone's coarseness. He had reached such an elysium 
 of sensual exaltation when the scene in the field presented the sale 
 of his soul as a sacrifice to an honest love ! He was guiltless in 
 the creation of the conditions which had brought him to the abyss. 
 
 The womsm had tempted him, and he had fallen ; and now — 
 now he was shut out of the paradise of his own self-respect ; denied 
 the only distinction that consoles intellect and capacity in the ig- 
 noble worship of wealth and place ! He was degraded to the 
 money-maker's level, without the lofty consciousness of being 
 able to despise it. He was himself to feel the mysterious power 
 of that potent hierarchy that he himself had been helping to en- 
 throne. No workman in all Grimstone's vineyard was more help- 
 lessly at his mercy. His Satanic insight had followed the five- 
 
l8o THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 thousand-dollar check. He (Grimstone) knew that the fortune 
 that enabled Hilliard to maintain himself independently of his 
 profession was due to the despised and contumeliously rejected 
 bounty ! And now he contemptuously set his own estimate on 
 the man who, pretending to spurn his money, had shiftily made 
 use of it, and then given it back ! The sting and sore of it all 
 was, that he now stood in Grimstone's sight a creature with his 
 own impulses and aims, but clumsy in applying means to ends. 
 
 " It is to me," Grimstone may now say, " it is to me you owe the 
 means to live in the luxury your fastidious refinement craves. My 
 money gjave you your outfit ; my good-will can continue it ; my 
 anger can strip you of iL I am quite willing to throw you chances 
 to enrich yourself, just as I would any other pushing intriguer ; 
 but, give you my daughter ? — she is for your betters ! " That was 
 the maddening thought that burned and bubbled like sweltering 
 venom in his brain, until he threw himself feverishly on the bed, 
 and remained there for the day and night. But he must give the 
 remorseless anarch an answer ! Oh, if he could fly ! If he could 
 go where their mutual conditions were unknown ! Why not go 
 to the south of France, by the purple Mediterranean, where he 
 had wandered and dreamed of the day that might come, when, 
 cheered by a gentle spirit, he should take a villa at St. Tropez, 
 where the dim coasts of Italy were shown in the morning haze, 
 and the low lines of Spain in the dusky evening mirage ? 
 
 Why not? He had money enough to live the simple life of the 
 land: he could write; he felt the appetent faculties that under 
 congenial conditions of repose bloom into the divine flower of ro- 
 mance and poetr)^ He would write fiction ; he would gather the 
 graces that he had heretofore embalmed in the perishing pages 
 of journalism, and give himself a lasting name and fame in medi- 
 tative philosophic fiction. Why not.^* He had the gift of ex- 
 pression, an analytic insight, keen, accurate, and lucid. He would 
 give up all thought of shining in an atmosphere where putres- 
 cence passed for the genuine gleam of the alchemic forces. Such 
 a life he might lead without the burden of this shame con- 
 stantly brought to his mind. Remain ? He would become the 
 scorn, the puppet of the Killgores, the Dorrs, the Grimstones, the 
 
''LOVE TOOK UP THE HARP OF LIFE." i8i 
 
 oligarchy which secretly and nefariously interpenetrated every 
 public employment, insidiously molded popular sentiment, and 
 kept the masses debauched in false principles, false aims, and 
 pernicious doctrines. What power he stood in the clutches of he 
 knew by Carew's experience. If that blameless fellow could be 
 brought. to ruin, kept from the field of his best work, to what 
 might they not reduce him (Hilliard), caught in the hideous trap 
 of his own setting? The atrocious irony of it came when he 
 -confronted the two deeps of the dilemma. He might ignore 
 Grimstone's threats, and marry Eleanor. The father's recourse 
 to such odious means was a confession that Nell would be his for 
 the asking : as to that, she had promised if ever woman had ; but, 
 ah ! there the inexorable in the laws that follow the violation of 
 our own consciences held him in a moral guillotine. Without 
 money, Nell would be a millstone on the body of his life, holding 
 him to the earth, and reminding him of his despicableness. 
 
 For, look you ! Shudder as we may over the blood-curdling 
 torture of our simple and benevolent ancestry, what iron virgin, 
 clasping the naked body in her hollow bosom of spikes, is com- 
 parable to the torture that the refinement of the moral perceptions 
 makes a man susceptible to, when, like Hilliard, he confronts his 
 own abnegation of manhood ? What were the three-feet-high and 
 four-feet-wide torture-boxes of the Venice prison to a man like 
 Hilliard, arrogant in his intellectual supremacy, held in the clammy 
 arms of his own disembodied wrraith ? No arms to combat, no 
 flesh to rend, no enemy to proudly face and calmly dare ! He had 
 himself taken out his heart and given it to the daws to peck and 
 lacerate, and soil in their own revolting similitude. But marry 
 Nell — live vrfth her innocent eyes mutely asking him the meaning 
 of his broken will, his occult bondage ? See her day by day de- 
 prived of the luxuries which are necessities to the weak ; for, of 
 course, weak she must be, nurtured in the atmosphere of super- 
 ficial humanities, veneered manners, and artificial morals. 
 
 Oh, he knew the herd of the money-maker ! Untried and un- 
 tempted, as the plaster is to the chiseled marble, capable of hold- 
 ing form and seeming grace, while undisturbed on their pedestals 
 of egotism and plenty ! If he only loved her ; if he could have 
 
1 82 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 been inspired by that glorious madness that makes the world well 
 given for the heart we love — oh, then how he would have confronted 
 this sordid old huckster, and spurned him in his moral squalor ! 
 Why had he descended from the serene atmosphere he had made 
 for himself, to mix with this ignoble horde ? He was happy in 
 New York ; he was adored where adoration was the incense of 
 inspiration. He could have gained gold and love in a sphere 
 congenial to his utmost dream of refinement. Ah, alas ! he had 
 stooped to the vulgar impulse of avenging the truculent benevo- 
 lence of this sordid parvenu. He had counted on dazzling him 
 by the exhibition of a standing and consideration which, with 
 all his wealth, the Giimstone could not exact. Poor fool — when 
 Grimstone himself gave the signal and measure of how far the 
 eaglet was to fly ! Now he was pulled down to earth with a 
 maiming jerk ; he could neither fight nor fly. He must abide 
 patiently the will of this pitiless task-master !_ 
 
 These were the thoughts that he half uttered in the hateful 
 seclusion of his chamber ; underneath them ran a still tur- 
 bider current, for there are very few of us who dare to be frank 
 even with our own consciences. In these half utterances, there 
 were special pleading, extenuation, conditions. But in the deep, 
 deeper current that scorched and burned him, he knew that the 
 baseness of his beginning was but the sin of omission, compared 
 with the dastard act he had been resigning himself to. He pre- 
 tended to believe that Nell's preference was a caprice ; that his 
 total eclipse in the orbit of her life would leave no darkness ; that, 
 bred in an influence where money was made the measure of 
 every earthly joy, she would readily fall into her father's reason- 
 ing, and that her compliance would be based on the abdication 
 of his manhood. Conscience rebelled in vain ; cowardice and 
 selfishness lured him further and further from the single act he 
 was called upon to do. It was a long and torturing conflict be- 
 tween the vanishing moral forces and the cowardice of egotism. 
 
 All night and the next day he kept his room. What he could 
 eat was set on his writing-table. Even when he thought the wo- 
 ful combat ended, he was not sure but physical death was prefer- 
 able to the tainted moral reprieve he had decided to accept. He 
 
'LOVE TOOK UP THE HARP OF LIFE:' 
 
 183 
 
 denied himself to all his friends, and prepared feverishly to quit 
 the place. His luggage was packed and tickets were taken for New 
 York, when Blackdaw's card was handed him. He shrank from 
 meeting his chief above every one else, but he couldn't refuse. 
 The card said, " Must see you at once — a vital matter ! " Black- 
 daw started when the ravages of forty-eight hours' mental con- 
 flict impressed on Hilliard's face met his eye. 
 
 " You are a sick man, Hilliard. It's madness for you to re- 
 turn to New York ! Come to the mountains with me." 
 
 " Well, if you say so, I'll go. What was the matter you wanted 
 to settle ? " Hilliard sank wearily on the bed, and Blackdaw grew 
 almost pale, or as pale as a tawny complexion can become. He 
 walked the floor discomposedly a moment, then, pulling a chair 
 quite near the bed where Hilliard was stretched at full length, 
 with his hands clasped over his eyes, said, in a broken, hesitating 
 way: 
 
 " You know, of course, that Grimstone, through Wexel, Har- 
 mon & Co., has a large interest in the ' Atlas.' He has been giv- 
 ing us a good deal of trouble since we opened fire on the rings at 
 Washington. Well, we have been able to avert hostilities in the 
 board by showing largely increased profits ; but if an5rthing should 
 lessen them, we should be kicked out ; even as it is we have been 
 compelled to let up on some of the ring Senators, Killgore, War- 
 man, and Balldn. They are interested in Treasury operations with 
 Grimstone and Dorr. I only tell you this, to show you how much 
 we are at the mercy of just the very men that we ought to be free 
 to fight. We can't, and we must do the best we can. Now, I 
 have received a letter from Grimstone, or rather, his son Herbert 
 came and read a letter to me from his father, but didn't let it leave 
 his hands. In that letter he tells me that it is for my interest and 
 the ' Atlas ' that you should be counseled into accepting a propo- 
 sition he has made you, and which he leaves you at liberty to 
 make known to me, or not, as you think best. I don't ask to know 
 what it is ; knowing Grimstone, and knowing you, I can guess, 
 and I say frankly that you can't afford to contest any point in 
 which Grimstone has taken ground against you. It sounds ab- 
 surd, it sounds cowardly, unreal, whatever you please. You al- 
 
1 84 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 ready know something of the power of these rich men — many of 
 them in apparent antagonism, but all bound together in a sort of 
 masonic bond, to crush men or measures that threaten their su- 
 premacy. You remember what happened in poor Carew's affair. 
 I was helpless, though I knew him incapable of a dishonest 
 thought What will happen to you if you defy Grimstone } The 
 ' Atlas ' will be put into new hands. You will be refused admit- 
 tance to such columns as you could write for with conviction. 
 Innuendoes, damaging your social standing, and blasting your lit- 
 erary usefulness, will appear constantly in country papers, and be 
 copied in New York, copied in the ' Atlas,' as a tacit explanation 
 of your disappearance from its columns. " 
 
 Hiiliard had started from the bed and begun walking the room 
 feverishly. He came over and put his hand on Blackdaw's arm. 
 " All you say I know already ; tenfold more than you say of the 
 ulterior methods of these people I could tell you. I don't propose 
 to contest anything with them. I propose to share the fortune 
 they permit me. You may go to Grimstone and tell him that I 
 withdraw all purpose of disputing him ! " He laughed bitterly. 
 " When we read of such a state of things as this in poor, old, pros- 
 ing St. Simon, we wonder at the cravens who laid their necks 
 down for the Grimstones of that day to walk on ; but they were 
 not, after all, as groveling and base as we are, for the men that 
 sent them to the cachots of Vincennes or the Bastile were great 
 nobles, king's sinister-barred sons, the noblesse in manners as well 
 as money. 'Pon my soul, Blackdaw, such episodes as these, put in 
 romance, would cover the author with derision, or force him to a 
 foreign residence. Be it so ! I will embalm what I know of these 
 men in a fiction, and I will drive them out of covert ! I will — " 
 
 " Yes, I've no doubt you could make a pretty tale of it all, but 
 who would publish it ? You couldn't get the title-page printed 
 this side the water ! Those who recognized the fidelity of the 
 characterizations would shrink from offending a ruling caste ; and 
 those who didn't recognize their truthfulness in form and outline, 
 would reject your work as revolutionary fustian, subversive of all 
 the standards of modem taste. No, my boy, if you want to make 
 money and win renown, write a tale apotheosizing callow Grandi- 
 
'LOVE TOOK UP THE HARP OF LIFE." 
 
 I8S 
 
 sons, covert intrigjue in married life, and the tea-table inanities of 
 people of fashion ; attenuate their mental processes, drown their 
 follies in aromatic gush, and you have the synthetic school that 
 modem aesthetic taste demands. No, your virile force and se- 
 quential plan would be out of place in the fragmentary art of 
 to-day. It is for neat phrases and triturated sentimentality that 
 novels are now written. A ' Vanity Fair ' would be pronounced 
 vulgar drivel by the canons that now rule. The realism of Dickens 
 coarse and inhuman. Fiction now must be the reflex of the at- 
 tenuated manners and false standards of the time. Sublimated 
 reporting, in short, of the apings and insincerities of the regnant 
 forces. No, Hilliard, you must leave novel-writing to. the suave 
 mediocrities who embalm insipidity and turn empty phrases with 
 graceful ease. An idea or a plot of the old-fashioned Scott or 
 Dumas sort would shut the door of publication to you." * 
 
 Ten minutes later, Nell looked up expectantly, as Blackdaw 
 came into their private parlor with her father. She had been very 
 happy and very miserable during the three days — happy in the 
 question Hilliard's eyes asked during that brief intoxicating mo- 
 ment by the fallen chestnut ; miserable because since then she had 
 
 * The editor of these pages joins the discriminating reader in abhorrence 
 of this bitter gibing of the literary taste of ten years ago. As the historian 
 of some of the episodes of that decade, influencing the destinies of the persons 
 whose biographies we are studying, he is obliged to give such parts of their 
 talk as best illustrate their character. A country, proud of such fiction as now 
 adorns our literature, will listen with impatience to an insinuation that our 
 novels, tales, and romances are the sublimated reporting of callow youth or 
 dilettante travelers. A taste that has relegated Thackeray and Dickens to 
 the garret can not be impugned even by critics in fiction. So the author begs 
 the reader to estimate the above sentiments as the archaism of minds that no 
 longer rule in critical matters. If further justification be needed, he will cite 
 an authority that all schools will join in accepting — Pere La Fontaine, who 
 disavowed responsibility for repugnant sentimentalism in these quaint lines : 
 " Je chante les heros dont £sope est le p€re ; 
 
 Troupe de qui I'histoire, encor que mensong^re, 
 
 Contient des verites qui servent de lemons. 
 
 Tout parle en mon ouvrage, et meme les poissons : 
 
 Ce quails disent s'adresse d tous tant que nous sommes ; 
 
 Je me sers d'animaux pour instniire les homines." 
 9 
 
1 86 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 neither seen nor heard directly from him. Herbert had said casu- 
 ally at dinner, the day after the mute declaration, that Milliard was 
 confined to his room by a passing indisposition. Eleanor had hur- 
 ried off and ordered a great basket of flowers, and sent them with 
 her card, but no message. The servant was intercepted in the hall 
 by Grimstone's valet, who took the basket back, saying Miss Grim- 
 stone had forgotten to send a note, and, paying the man, said he 
 would deliver them himself. Later they were returned to Nell, 
 with the message that flowers could not be kept in the sick-room. 
 
 So when Blackdaw came, the eager girl was fascinatingly cor- 
 dial. He was Hilliard's closest friend ; he had come to cheer him 
 in his illness ; he would have a message from her adored poet ! She 
 invents a dozen pretexts to get Blackdaw within reach of a whisper, 
 but papa, without a sign of consciousness of the by-play, frus- 
 trated every tentative confidence. Presently she left them, and, 
 slipping out into the corridor, began to walk up and down. When 
 the door opened, she was going to fly to meet Blackdaw, but papa, 
 pretending not to see her, accompanied the guest down-stairs and 
 into the lobby. Tears of anger and terror were in her eyes as she 
 hurried into her room, and threw herself on the bed, with her face 
 pressed into the pillows. She lay there an hour, sobbing and 
 sighing softly. She was sorely perplexed. Should she write ? 
 
 Yes, she would write her beloved a little note, just a word to say 
 how her heart was torn by the illness that separated them. She 
 hurried to her writing-table and took out a small square sheet, 
 with an engraved monogram and arms. But how should she be- 
 gin } " Dear Mr. Hilliard " — no, that form didn't befit their present 
 relations. " My darling " — she bent over and kissed the words, and 
 then looked guiltily over her shoulder. No, he had never called 
 her Eleanor ; she dared not be first to lisp the endearing forms 
 of love. She wrote " Dear Archy " — no, that wouldn't do ; she 
 pressed the paper to her lips, then blushed, and sobbed a little, 
 gentle, longing sigh of timidity and yearning. The rejected forms 
 were on separate slips, and, putting them in an envelop, she wrote 
 on it A. H., and locked them in a drawer. How should she send 
 him word ? He must be in miserable health, he must be dan- 
 gerously ill, or he would have sent some message. She would 
 
"■LOVE TOOK UP THE HARP OF LIFE." 
 
 187 
 
 bear the suspense no longer ; she would send her maid to inquire, 
 and he would send back a note. Delicious thought — a note ; he 
 would say, "Darling Nell." No, "My own darling Nell," "My 
 Nell ! " she began to sing it like a bird, " My Nell," as she rang for 
 the maid. 
 
 "Molly," she said, when the girl came in, "I want you to 
 find out Mr. Hilliard's room; go there and see him yourself. 
 Don't be refused ; push in if they try to stop you, and go to Mr. 
 Hilliard, tell him that Miss Grimstone sends her kindest compli- 
 ments, and wants to know if she can do anything for him, and 
 give him this flower " (it was one of the white clovers she had 
 gathered as she talked in the field). " Tell me just how he looks, 
 and — and — everything — you know ! " 
 
 " Yes, Miss Nell, I know," and Molly looked unutterable know- 
 ingness, and her mistress blushed and slipped a shining piece of 
 gold into her apron-pocket, and then Molly looked still more 
 knowing, and hurried out to carry the message. As she tripped 
 out into the corridor, Mr. Grimstone's valet also stepped out, and, 
 following her noiselessly, caught her arm just as she was raising 
 her hand to knock on Hilliard's door. 
 
 " Molly, Miss Nell has changed her mind, and wants to see you 
 a minute ; she's in Mr. Grimstone's room." 
 
 Molly, vnthout a suspicion, turned and retraced her steps. On 
 reaching Mr. Grimstone's room that gentleman was alone, and 
 Molly was about to go into her mistress's room, when she saw 
 that Nell was not present ; but, bidding the valet withdraw. Grim- 
 stone made a sign for the girl to remain. 
 
 " Molly, what were you going to Mr. Hilliard's room for ? " 
 
 Now, if all the world loves a lover, the Celt adores him. Mol- 
 ly's honest heart was very warm in the interest of her mistress in 
 love. It was doubly warm now that she saw an obstacle. When 
 her master asked her business in Hilliard's room she saw why her 
 darling had been sad and restless by turns, and with the readiness 
 of the Irish nature and the wit of the Irish brain she answered : 
 
 " Sure, sir, Masther HuUyard tuk a buk belonging to Masther 
 Harbart width 'im three days ago. 'Twas I tould him he was 
 welcome til it, an' I heerd Masther Harbart ax fur it awhile ago. 
 
i88 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 an' I knew that Masther HuUyard wuz sick, an' I thought I'd slip 
 in and git it, unbeknownst loike — " 
 
 How much further the honest girl would have perjured her 
 iMimortal soul there is no means of telling, but she was spared any 
 further improvisation in behalf of persecuted love by the entrance 
 of Nell, who caught only the last words. 
 
 " That will do, Molly ; you needn't go for the book again. Her- 
 bert can get along without it." 
 
 Molly, instead of quitting the room by the door she had en- 
 tered, deliberately passed in front of her master, her eyes a perfect 
 fourth of July of pyrotechnics, and signaling to her mistress to the 
 purport that she need have no fear, her love was in good hands, and 
 her secret not to be wrenched from her faithful Molly's heart by 
 all the locomotive power of her father's railways. Nell didn't un- 
 derstand the scene in the least. She turned to follow Molly to 
 learn the result of her message, when her father's voice arrested 
 her. He had risen, and Molly was unable to give a clew. When 
 she had quit the room, he closed the door and turned the key. 
 Then, taking his daughter's hand, led her to the chair he had been 
 sitting in, and, seating her on the padded arm, held her in a 
 close embrace. 
 
 " My daughter, you are not treating your father right, you are 
 not treating your family right. Don't you know that such con- 
 duct as yours will destroy you, pure as you are ? " 
 
 " What conduct ? what do you mean, papa ? " and she sat up- 
 right at arm's-length, devouring him with blazing eyes, half filled 
 with tears. 
 
 "You promised to give me your confidence when the man 
 you thought you loved asked you to marry him." 
 
 He waited. She turned her head away, and sighed drearily. 
 
 "WeU, my child?—" 
 
 " I will tell you all when — ^when — it is settled." 
 
 " You mean by that, I suppose, that he has not asked ? " 
 
 " He has not asked me." 
 
 " Well, then, Nell, where could your senses have been when 
 you sent him flowers, when you sent your maid to his door with 
 compromising messages ? " 
 
"LOVE TOOK UP THE HARP OF LIFE." 
 
 189 
 
 She flung his arms from her shoulder and stepped backward, 
 looking at him fixedly. 
 
 " It is you who have come between us ; it is you who have 
 prevented his writing me ; you, you have been watching me, and 
 breaking my heart ! O papa, how could you, how could you kiss 
 me, and let me kiss you, with this cruel treachery in your heart ? 
 You have kept him from me three long, wretched days ; you put 
 away from me a love that I have been dreaming all my life to win ! " 
 
 She could contain herself no longer, and the incoherence of the 
 last words melted into piteous sobs as she sank heavily upon a 
 couch, burying her face in the cushions. 
 
 " Listen to me, Eleanor : I have done none of these things you 
 say. When I discovered that this young man Hilliard was the 
 man you were interested in, I took measures to find out about 
 him. What I learned convinced me that it was your fortune — 
 ah ! let me finish ; you shall have proof, my poor girl, of all I say — 
 I was convinced that it was your fortune he found the most at- 
 tractive part of you. He was heard in New York satirizing me 
 because I sent him a check for his service to us the day of the 
 riot. He boasted of returning the check, but he never made 
 known that, before returning it, he had made use of it in a specu- 
 lation, and gained a very large sum of money by means of secret 
 information, as well as by using the columns of his paper. My 
 poor girl " (he sat down and put his arms tenderly about her waist 
 as she knelt with haggard eyes fixed on his face), " I thought it 
 best to deal fairly with him, and the day you walked in the woods 
 I sent for him, showed him the disposition I had made of my 
 property in case you married without my consent, and to-day he 
 wthdraws all pretensions to your hand. I would have spared you 
 all this, but — " 
 
 He was talking to a dead woman. Nell swayed forward and 
 would have fallen upon the floor if he had not caught her. There 
 was water within reach, and her smelling-salts were at her girdle. 
 He held herwath implacable composure until she opened her eyes. 
 She looked at him dazedly, wrinkling her brows in a fashion she 
 had, then, suddenly recalling her senses, she staggered away from 
 him. 
 
190 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " I don't believe a word you have said. They have lied to 
 you ; do you hear, father, they have lied to you ! " Then, illogically : 
 " What if he did satirize you for the check ? — no wonder ; you treat- 
 ed him like a lackey. I adore him for it ! It was hke him ! It 
 was the protest of a great soul, when he brought us out of dan- 
 ger, and you acted without delicacy in sending him money. As 
 for that, who is there among the people we do most for, that 
 doesn't sneer at mamma, and ridicule me ? Ask Molly the things 
 she hears from the gossip of our friends' servants. I won't give 
 him up ! " she burst out, starting to her feet, " I won't give him 
 up, if I have to be his servant and live in a garret ! — " 
 
 " My child, it isn't a question of your giving him up — he has 
 given you up." 
 
 " I don't believe it ! I don't believe it ! it is a calumny — it is — " 
 
 " Remember, Nell, that I am now telling you something of my 
 own knowledge ; and such language is not becoming even in your 
 excited state." 
 
 " Prove it ! Show me a line from him ! " 
 
 " He told it by word of mouth." 
 
 " Ah ha ! you insulted him ; you drew it from him in his anger 
 at your odious suspicion." 
 
 " Nell— Nell ! " 
 
 " I don't care. It is disobedient, unfilial. Remember what I 
 have at stake. Why, father, this is murder ; it is murder ! it is 
 nothing less. You measure your millions against my life ; you do. 
 I declare it ! " 
 
 " Don't I tell you, Eleanor, that I made no objection to his 
 marrying you ? I simply shovved him my will, and left him to do 
 as he pleases. He pleases to look elsewhere for a \nie." 
 
 " Still, even admitting this, it is my happiness against your 
 millions. I would give all of them, yes, a million-fold over, for 
 him. Will you refuse him to me ; will you refuse to let me be 
 happy ? O father ! " and she was at his throat, strangling him 
 in a feverish embrace. " Be generous ; be merciful ; be just. Let 
 me be happy ! oh, my God ! let me be happy. Don't make me 
 live the life we see other women leading, who marry to mate 
 fortunes, and not hearts. Oh, my father ! think of the years be- 
 
"BE BUT SWORN, MY LOVE:' i^i 
 
 fore me : think of the little use these millions are to you, and how 
 little they will be if doubled! Be my own father as you have al- 
 ways been, and let me have my sweetheart — " 
 
 There was a knock at the door, and Grimstone, with an evi- 
 dent relief from the trying ordeal, rose and opened it. It was his 
 wife. She looked in wonder and alarm at Nell kneeling on the 
 floor with her head bent over on the couch. Her husband merely 
 said: 
 
 " Nell is very much disturbed ; she ought to lie down — ^she 
 needs rest. I will send the doctor." 
 
 Soothed by the mother's tender sympathy, and encouraged by 
 the tears that mingled vidth her own, she told the dismal little 
 comedy ; and when the doctor came, he found them locked in 
 each other's arms, Nell firmly refusing to have any of his minis- 
 trations. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 "BE BUT SWORN, MY LOVE." 
 
 If experience were reaEy a lamp for our feet, how uneventful 
 and humdrum our lives would be, and how unedifying the lives 
 of those about us ! The countries that have no history may be 
 happy in the eyes of the economists, but how uninteresting they 
 are to the Froudes, Motleys, and Carlyles ! Mary of Scots, in her 
 crimson petticoat, kneeling before the butcher in the dungeon of 
 Fotheringay, is a woful picture that remains when we have for- 
 gotten the forty-five years of her rival's reign! The miserable 
 James, discrowTied, unkinged, pleading with the wherryman, re- 
 mains in our minds, when the years of his high admiralty, and 
 even the tranquil sorrows at St. Germain, fade ! If one really 
 profited by the experience of others, see how little of the heroic 
 the madness and folly of men would contribute to human history ! 
 
 Henry VIII would have had but one vvrife ; for, if experience had 
 been accepted as a warning, none of the seductive beauties that 
 tempted his uxorious passions would have dared be charming as 
 
192 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 they could ! Mary of Scotland would have worn widow's weeds 
 for her French husband, and gone to her grave with a crown. 
 Elizabeth would have married Essex instead of beheading him. 
 Bacon would have coveted the bays instead of lucre, and gone to 
 his long sleep with only part of Pope's epitaph to paint him. 
 Wolsey would have served his God with his heart and his king 
 with his intellect, and found himself honored in his old age. Charles 
 Stuart, heeding the lesson of British turbulence, would have laid 
 his crowned head in the marble sarcophagus of Westminster, in- 
 stead of the potter's field. Henry IV would have lived to crown 
 the peasant's pot with the Sunday capon to a good old age, if he 
 had taken counsel of the fate of the Valois kings. Galileo would 
 have lived to correlate the laws of gfravitation, if he had reflected 
 on the result of intellectual temerity in an age of superstition ; and 
 Savonarola would have gone to sleep peacefully in the eternal 
 sunshine of Fiesole, instead of the pyre in Florence, had he re- 
 called the fate of over-zeal, and the methods of the Borgia. 
 
 Leo would have placated the vindictive sensibilities of Monk 
 Luther, instead of driving him to the mania of revolt, and the ex- 
 altation of combat, had he reflected on what persecution wrought 
 for the Galileans in the time of Tiberius. Cromwell would have 
 made the republic mildly potential, instead of Puritanically in- 
 tolerable, had he recalled the experiments of his Greek predeces- 
 sors. George III would have soothed the anger of his excitable 
 colonists, instead of waging war, had he remembered the fate of 
 Rome's dominions under the later emperors. Frederick the Great 
 would have bathed Voltaire in tears, which he had always at com- 
 mand, when he dismissed him, instead of the insult and contumely 
 of his myrmidons, and would have been spared the humiliation of 
 the philosopher's piquant portrait, had he recalled the gall of Ovid, 
 and the satires of Suetonius ! The men who defined human in- 
 alienalities in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, would have 
 secured them in the republic they founded, if they had been 
 guided by the lessons of Numa, Tarquin, and the great Julius. 
 
 And mark how much history that would have saved — slavery, 
 rebellion, and the anarchic specter of social convulsion which pre- 
 ceded the people's seizure of their inalienable rights in this repub- 
 
"BE BUT SWORN, MY LOVE." 193 
 
 lie! That Bourbon scape-goat, Louis XVI, would have made 
 friends with liberty by advancing it as we see it advancing among 
 us now, instead of distrasting it, and saved his owm and his queen's 
 head ; Napoleon I, master of half Europe, would have enjoyed 
 its possession, had he heeded the lesson of experience laid down 
 by Montesquieu, that " il itait impossible mime au plus habile, 
 et au plus fort ambitieux de souveraines de fonder une monarchie 
 itniverselle," without going back to Alexander, Charlemagne, and 
 Philip II. It is the weakness, vanity, contradiction, and infidelity of 
 men and women that make the study of their vicissitudes an en- 
 tertainment, if not an instruction. Now, had Hilliard's life been 
 guided by the Puritan principles of Fred Carew, he would have 
 shrunk from the first step that led toward that inevitable moral 
 abnegation which we have seen him called upon to ratify. 
 
 He would have been a happier man, but he would have afforded 
 you and me no amusement in watching the phases of his gradual 
 downfall. However, perhaps I am premature in calling it a down- 
 fall. He would, I know, be the most astonished of men to hear 
 himself thus rated ! The Yahoos, that Swift described, made no 
 doubt of being the salt of the earth ! I have met peasants in the 
 wilds of Bohemia, fed on black bread and Leberwurst, who had a 
 kindly compassion for the creatures unhappy enough to be bom 
 American ! In the least altruistic conception of man's obligations 
 and responsibilities, the situation in which Hilliard now found 
 himself may be regarded as trying. To be baffled in an honest 
 love, is hard enough for a constant soul to bear; but to be bafiSed 
 in self-love, that's the cross that tries everjrthing but the soul ; for 
 people who love in that way, I fancy, the soul may be dismissed 
 as a factor in the diagnosis of the resulting suffering. When your 
 body is pricked all over by the sharp points of briers, the wounds 
 are for the time at least more painful than a serious stab. The 
 scratches show more, and take as long to heal. Hilliard was liter- 
 ally scratched until every organ of sense hung in shreds, and the 
 only cure he could look for came from the same cruel points that 
 had torn him. It was literally all that was left to him, to imitate 
 the wondrous wise man, and, by leaping into the same thorns, cure 
 his wounds ! Nor was it the smallest part of his wretchedness, 
 
194 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 that time might bring less poignant pricking of his wounds, for, so 
 long as his fate rested in Grimstone's hands, he would be the 
 slave of an evil memory. Even should the aegis of Plutus cover 
 a future of gold, he would curse its possession as the price of his 
 relinquished manhood. But in all this morbid introspection there 
 was no thought of Nell. Indeed, he couldn't imagine that she 
 wasn't, in some sense, identified with the devilish ambush into 
 which the father had led him, as he chose to think it. He never 
 thought of her waiting the words that had not come from his lips, 
 though the eyes spake them. He put off leaving Saratoga, and 
 passed the days in long walks about the fields, which were in 
 those days nearer the town than now. 
 
 Eleanor meanwhile had come to a resolution. She passed 
 sleepless nights and weary days before her mind was quite made 
 up. Her father's bald statement, that Hilliard had consented to 
 give her up because she would be cut from the paternal will by 
 marrying him, she didn't for a moment believe. No ! her father 
 had insulted him ; had brought powers to bear which, though she 
 only suspected vaguely, she knew were apt to be considered hard 
 to resist. She had first thought of making Herbert a confidant, 
 and dispatching him to Hilliard to arrange for a reunion, but she 
 soon saw that Herbert was as violently opposed to Hilliard as her 
 father. 
 
 After Molly's luckless embassy, she saw that any messages 
 sent would only be intercepted. She might vsrite and send 
 through the post, but with her father's all-pervading influence with 
 the Government officials, backed by Killgore, she had no confi- 
 dence that the letter would reach its address, or, if it did, she 
 couldn't be sure of an answer reaching her. She might write to 
 Hilliard to come boldly — that she was ready to go to the ends of 
 the earth with him ; but, alas ! she didn't feel that she could vent- 
 ure to write that, as, after all, Hilliard had never spoken a word 
 of love. Indeed, she remembered with anguish that it was she 
 who had led him on ; had almost wrenched from him the one re- 
 sponsive look that had thrilled her with the joy of a declaration. 
 Could she trust Betty Killgore ? Yes, that was the only resource. 
 
 But how explain to Betty, without revealing the awkwardness 
 
''BE BUT SWORN, MY LOVE: 
 
 19s 
 
 of her situation ? She was really making advances to a man that 
 had not declared himself ! What if he really had resigned what 
 he had never claimed? It was wofuUy perplexing, whichever 
 way she turned. Ah, Carew ! He was honest and honorable ; he 
 would keep her secret and ask no questions. She would write to 
 him and merely ask him as a favor to leave a note with Hilliard, 
 and bring her an answer. Yes, that was, after all, the predestined 
 solution. She wondered that she hadn't thought of it before. She 
 was all aglow now with the new hope. She could preserve all 
 yet, before Hilliard was driven to something desperate. Poor fel- 
 low ! he was doubtless despairing of her, believing that she had 
 consented to her father's hideous conduct ; she would convince 
 him. Her note was written and dispatched by an hotel-boy. She 
 stood by the window until she saw him quit the porch unmolested. 
 Fred came over at once, and found Nell in the public reception- 
 room, and in a joyous state of agitated cordiality, quite unusual, 
 for she was always vivacious and perfectly self-poised. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Carew, I mean to g^ve you a very strong mark of 
 my esteem for you, of my confidence in your — ^your honor and — 
 and silence. I want you to take this note to Mr. HiUiard, put it 
 in his hands, and ask him if there is an answer. As the note is 
 for Mr. Hilliard only, of course no one else must know of it, or see 
 it, or even know who has written it." 
 
 " You may depend. Miss Grimstone, that exactly what you say 
 shall be done. Shall you wait for an answer here ? " 
 
 " No, I vnll be in my apartment all day, and I shall recognize 
 your knock at our parlor-door." 
 
 Fred was neither astonished nor intrigue by the commission. 
 He didn't quite comprehend why he should have been called in 
 when there were other means at the lady's command to commu- 
 nicate even with a forbidden lover. But he knew Nell's sentiment- 
 al nature, how she preferred the romantic methods in everything, 
 and he entered into the affair with humorous alacrity, without a 
 thought that there was anything very serious involved beyond a 
 pretty variation of Nell's piquant self-assertion. On entering the 
 hotel, he had seen Hilliard talking to the porter, and on going down 
 asked that functionary where he was to be found. The man said 
 
196 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 he had gone toward the Congress Spring, but, on seeking him 
 there, Fred missed him, and hastened back to the hotel. It was 
 very nearly the dinner-hour, and he hurried up to Hilliard's room 
 without the formality of sending his card. In response to his 
 knock an impatient voice, dry and unlike Hilliard's musical tone, 
 bade him " come in." He was putting some articles in a port- 
 manteau, and his trunks stood strapped and ready for removal. 
 
 He didn't look up at Fred's entrance, and when he did there 
 was an expression of resentful impatience in his eye. He said, 
 shortly : 
 
 " How d'ye do .'' You're a stranger over here." 
 
 " Yes, I don't get over here often now ; I've come to deliver 
 you a note, or I should not have ventured up unannounced ; but, 
 like the king's messenger, I am a chartered personage on this mis- 
 sion," and he placed Nell's note in the other's hand. 
 
 Hilliard had never seen Nell's vmting, and did not recognize 
 the superscription in the bold, masculine, graceful hand, with the 
 letters sweeping in abrupt curves known as the English style. 
 Had he suspected whence the note came, he probably would 
 hav^e turned away from the messenger to conceal whatever emo- 
 tion its reading might cause. Unconscious of its purport or au- 
 thor, he tore it open, and at a glance trembled and turned ghastly 
 pale. Fred, occupying himself in examining the lurid works of 
 art that adorn summer hotels, did not see the quick flush and then 
 the hideous pallor that drove the rich red color in waves up to 
 Hilliard's temples. The note merely said : 
 
 " I am my own mistress, and I am waiting for you. 
 
 "Eleanor Grimstone." 
 
 Fred purposely kept his back to the reader, that he might in- 
 dulge his lover's ecstasy unseen. He heard him sink into a seat, 
 smiling softly to himself at this sign of felicity. He pretended to 
 be immersed in the pink prints of impossible nymphs perched on 
 velocipedes, spinning dizzily by the sea-shore, and had exhausted 
 the whole art collection over and over again, and still the absorbed 
 lover gave no sign of leaving his reverie. Fred was sure that he 
 
"BE BUT SWORN, MY LOVE." 107 
 
 had been there half an hour, when he finally turned. Hilliard sat 
 dumb and motionless in the deep easy-chair, limp, woe-begone, 
 dazed. He neither saw nor heeded the messenger — he didn't 
 know he was there ; the envelope was lying on the floor at his feet, 
 the note was open on his knee ; he was staring vaguely out of the 
 window, where the plash of the fountain and the merry voices of 
 children were heard at play. For a moment Fred doubted his 
 senses. It was not Hilliard at all who sat there, but a haggard, 
 miserable, self-tortured, conscience-smitten sinner, too proud for 
 penitence, and too weak to brave the penalty of his own sin. He 
 felt his presence an intrusion upon the man, an invasion of some 
 secret g^ilt, and he said, in his usual tone : 
 
 " I'm to take an answer back, you know." 
 
 Hilliard turned his head slowly, and fixed his eyes, glazed, 
 humid, and unflinching, on the other's face. He raised the note 
 to the level of his eye, but didn't look at it. He held it a moment, 
 then dropped it, and asked in a cold, repellent tone : 
 
 " What do you know of this ? " 
 
 " Absolutely nothing, except that Miss Grimstone sent for me, 
 asked me to put it in your hands, and wait for an answer." 
 
 Hilliard got up, went to the table; sat down, and in a moment 
 handed Fred an envelope addressed to Miss Grimstone. 
 
 " Please to leave that for her," Hilliard said, in a dry, hard 
 voice, and, without adding a word, turned back, and as Fred 
 glanced over his shoulder when he opened the door, Hilliard stood 
 at the window, looking out at the children on the greensward be- 
 neath. 
 
 Fred had passed half-way up the corridor leading to Nell's 
 room, when her father came out of his apartment. He looked 
 sharply at the young man as he bowed, and caught sight of the 
 letter which Fred carried in his hand ; as he raised his arm to 
 knock at Nell's door, Grimstone had retraced his steps unnoticed 
 by Fred, and was at his side and entered vsrith him. It was too 
 late to conceal the note, nor did Nell seem to care to have it kept 
 secret, for she said, as they both entered : 
 
 " You have a note for me from Mr. Hilliard ; give it to me." 
 
 Fred handed her the envelope. She took it with trembling 
 
igS THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 hands, but a defiant manner. Her father walked to the window 
 and affected to look out. Fred, in some embarrassment, said : 
 
 " Miss Grimstone, if I can serve you in any way, pray command 
 me to the utmost. Good-day." 
 
 He bowed, and, as he withdrew, Nell said : 
 
 " I am very, very grateful to you — how grateful, perhaps, some 
 time I may be able to let you know," and gave him her hand. 
 
 He left the door, and walked slowly dovni the corridor in a 
 perplexed reverie. Just as he was turning the comer of the hall- 
 way he heard his name called, and, looking back, saw Nell at the 
 threshold of her door, invoking him with an imploring gesture to 
 return. He was by her side in an instant ; she was flushed and 
 agitated, with the envelope in one hand and her own note in the 
 other. 
 
 " Did Mr. Hilliard send no message with this, no word — ^noth- 
 ing ? " she gasped, and, as she held the paper, Fred could see her 
 own signature on the note. 
 
 " No, nothing else. He appeared very ill, and — " 
 
 " Never mind, Mr. Carew, how he appeared ; that doesn't in- 
 terest us. All my daughter cares to know is whether he sent a 
 verbal message with this note of her own." 
 
 " Papa, I do mind ; I shall know — I'm not a child ; this con- 
 cerns me. Oh, I know what you mean, but you have made me 
 desperate now, and, stranger or not, Mr. Carew and the whole 
 world shall know that I am a slave, and can't write to my sweet- 
 heart vrithout spying and threats ! Our enemies say that we are 
 vulgar and purse-proud, and that we have bad blood. I believe 
 it, and I think I have more than my share, for I can't endure this 
 way of doing things meekly. You have had your way so far, you 
 have separated me from the man I love. — No, you shall not go, Mr. 
 Carew," as Fred was about to withdraw. " I am going to ask 
 another favor of you. Come," she took his arm and, hurrying to 
 the door, opened it, and passed out ; " take me to Mr. Hilliard." 
 
 " But, Miss Grimstone, reflect — " 
 
 " I have reflected. If he can't come to me, I can go to him." 
 
 "Eleanor! daughter, are you quite mad.? " 
 
 "Yes, I am quite mad; I have been for days, and I mean to 
 
"BE BUT SWORN, MY LOVE!' 199 
 
 cure myself. Ah ! you may come. I shall be glad to have you 
 see how I can undo your cruel work in a moment." 
 
 Her father gave her his arm, and Fred fell back a step. 
 
 " I insist on Mr. Carew coming." 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Carew, there can be no possible objection, now that 
 you see the obstinacy of this spoiled girl. It's perhaps just as 
 well that the lesson should be decisive." 
 
 The corridors were quite deserted, most of the guests having 
 gone down to dinner. Fred, perplexed, and not at all compre- 
 hending the amazing incident, hoped that they would find Milliard 
 gone down when they reached his room. Mr. Grimstone, with 
 cold equanimity, bade him knock and ask if they could be received. 
 Fred rapped lightly, and to the imperative and unsuspecting 
 " come in," he opened the door and said, standing on the thresh- 
 old: 
 
 " Here are Miss Grimstone and Mr. Grimstone, who want to 
 speak with you." 
 
 But before Hilliard could collect his wits, or realize the words, 
 Eleanor broke from her father, and, passing Fred, stood inside the 
 door. When the father had entered, Fred slipped out and closed 
 the door softly, leaving the three alone, and walked, abstracted 
 and agitated, to the end of the corridor, where he stood watching 
 the throng of evening arrivals in the rotunda below. 
 
 Eleanor, sustained by her heroic purpose of rescuing the su- 
 persensitive lover from the thrall of heartlessness and persecution, 
 stood panting and expectant before the brow-beaten and over- 
 chivalrous victim. He had arisen when Fred spoke, and stood 
 thrilled and dumb. Shame, anger, consternation, anything but 
 the rapture of the redeemed and rehabilitated lover, were ex- 
 pressed in the handsome face. It is said that the eyes of love are 
 sharp ! It is a shallow sophistry. To Nell, he was the picture of 
 Porphyro, reluctant to embroil Madeline with a stem parent. Her 
 eyes, glistening and tearful, were fixed on him with appealing in- 
 vitation. Sustained by her anger, her madness, delirium, what 
 you will, that may explain this woful demarche, she had been con- 
 fident and even contained until now. But his eyes, quitting hers, 
 searched the father's face ; his hands played nervously with his 
 
200 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 watch-guard. He stood interdicted, and even the eyes of her love 
 began to discern that her lover was less rapturous than discom- 
 fited. Her eye caught the contemptuous expression on her fa- 
 ther's face ; she looked again at the man she loved ; she searched 
 his face for a sign of the sentiment she had last seen there, and 
 she searched in vain. She had a bit of fleecy lace in her hand, 
 and she put it for a moment to her eyes to wipe away the blind- 
 ing, scorching mist that shut out the signs she sought. Aaron 
 Grimstone stood by his daughter's side, troubled, but calm ; since 
 the ordeal must come, he was glad that it was to be decisive, final. 
 He knew his man, and was confident of the result. 
 
 Nell spoke slowly, timidly : 
 
 " Mr. HilUard, I am come to learn from your own lips whether 
 — ^whether — " 
 
 " Mr. Hilliard, my daughter chooses to think that her father 
 has deceived her, and that you seek her hand in marriage. I want 
 you to tell her frankly that you never loved her, that you do not 
 ask to marry her. She has had her head turned by roman- 
 tic notions, and believes that, while you love her, you hesitate 
 to ask her to share your poverty. Pray, make yourself under- 
 stood. It is too late now for sentimentality or fine words ; my 
 daughter has chosen a painful ordeal for herself, and all that can 
 be done now is to make this scene as brief as possible." 
 
 While her father spoke, Eleanor looked from the miserable 
 Hilliard to the hardly less miserable father in a sort of feverish 
 stupor. Why didn't he come and take her to his heart; why 
 didn't he explode in thanksgiving .■> Why did he stand there like an 
 image, his eyes cast down, his hands clinched to keep them from 
 trembling ? She stood shivering, fvith the shadow of the coming 
 catastrophe blanching her cheeks. Speak ? He could not find 
 the vehicle in his parched throat. Move ? His feet were glued 
 to the floor. 
 
 " I have told my daughter that I made no conditions ; that il 
 you married her, she should not inherit from me. Wasn't that 
 the statement I made ? " 
 
 No answer. Nell's eyes grew large with wonder, that changed 
 slowly to anguish. She waited, the words she wanted to utter 
 
"BE BUT SWORN, MY LOVE." 201 
 
 dying on her lips, the horror of the truth freezing her blood. The 
 door behind her opened suddenly, and Blackdaw entered with a 
 stranger. He started to retreat ; but Grimstone, taking his daugh- 
 ter's arm, said : 
 
 " Don't leave ; we were going to dinner, and stopped to make 
 your editor a friendly call." 
 
 Fred, immersed in the panorama below, had not seen Black- 
 daw enter, and, when he looked around, the father and daughter 
 were disappearing down the stairway at the farther end of the 
 hall. But, a moment later, Nell came back alone, and, as she 
 passed near Fred, she recognized him with a faint smile. She 
 made her way to her room, and flung herself face downward on 
 her bed. Her mother, dining in the next room, heard her, and 
 came in to press food on her, but she would not eat. 
 
 What could it mean ? she asked, in miserable torture. What 
 malevolent spell did her father's presence work, that the man she 
 had consecrated by her love couldn't find courage to speak in her 
 father's presence ? She wouldn't believe, even yet, that Hilliard's 
 silence was the eloquence of self-confession. He had been hurt 
 and humiliated by the father ; he even doubted her — ^he would 
 speak if they were alone — yes, that was the secret. She must 
 give him the chance to speak alone ! But how ? Dinner was 
 over, and he would very likely be in his room. She called Molly, 
 and bade her see if he were — yes, Molly came back smiling ; she 
 heard him moving there. Her decision was instantly taken. She 
 would know whether her father's machinations were torturing the 
 man's heart, as this doubt and uncertainty were torturing hers. 
 Taking Molly with her, she hastened along the corridor, now quite 
 dim, and stopped before Hilliard's door. Molly knocked, and a 
 gruff voice bade her enter. The girl opened the door and en- 
 tered, but turned on the threshold, sajang : 
 
 " Ah ! Miss Nelly, darlin' — he's gone ! " 
 
 " Gone ? " she repeated, vacantly. " Gone where ? " 
 
 She had passed the threshold as she spoke, and the porter, 
 putting the trunks on a truck, said, unconcernedly : 
 
 " He's just off on the 'bus, ma'am, for the 8.20 New York ex- 
 press." 
 
202 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 The men wheeled the baggage out. Nell walked to the table. 
 The envelope of her own note was lying, torn in scraps, on the 
 floor, where Hilliard had dropped them. She looked around in 
 piteous despair, and sank into the chair where Hilliard had sat 
 when Fred came in. The table-drawer was open, and in the 
 comer she saw a faded bunch of clover, corn-flowers, and wild 
 bachelor's buttons, which she had given him in the meadow. 
 She put her hand out and gathered them carefully together, rose, 
 and, without a word to the tearful and awe-struck Molly, who 
 was quite overwhelmed by the antics of a lover that required so 
 much courting, passed out. As they left the room, Mr. Grim- 
 stone was coming toward them, talking with Fred. A look of 
 mingled pain and anger came into his face, and he said to his 
 daughter, as if forgetting the presence of others : 
 
 "Eleanor, this is degrading and indecent ! How can I trust 
 you again, after your pledge to— to see no one unless in my pre- 
 sence ? " 
 
 She looked at him listlessly, and her glance wandered to Fred, 
 as she said, wearily : 
 
 " I have not broken my promise. 1 have seen no one since I 
 saw — I have seen no one. " 
 
 Then, with an outburst of passionate sobs, she fled swiftly 
 along the hall and disappeared. The door of Hilliard's room was 
 open, and Mr. Grimstone could see that it was empty. He went 
 in and found that Hilliard had gone, and, if he left on the even- 
 ing train, must have quit the hotel before Nell made her second 
 mad quest. He turned to Fred, who had mechanically followed : 
 
 " Mr. Carew, you are a man of discretion. I needn't say that 
 this affair is not to be mentioned. Young ladies like my daugh- 
 ter take curious notions. She thought this fellow was in love with 
 her, whereas he was in love with her fortune, and, finding that I 
 didn't propose that he should have both, he gave up all preten- 
 sions to my daughter : she didn't believe it. If I can serve you 
 in any way, call on me ; I know how to reward prudence and a 
 close mouth." He said this without looking at him, and was 
 gone. 
 
 Fred sat do\vn in the deserted chamber, quite as much shocked 
 
''BE BUT SWORN, MY LOVE." 203 
 
 by the father's brutal, business-like apostrophe as he was touched 
 by the misery of the poor girl. That Hilliard could really be 
 inflamed with passion for Nell, Fred knew his nature too well to 
 imagine. But he could not understand the conjunction of events 
 that had made her the suitor and Hilliard the reluctant lover. 
 Certainly Grimstone had hinted his willingness to let Nell marry 
 him, if he were willing to take her without fortune. He could 
 very readily understand Grimstone's abhorrence for Hilliard, who, 
 in his first' period in New York, had never omitted an opportunity 
 of satirizing his vulgar ostentation, his coarse manners, and had 
 even lampooned him in his " Atlas " dithyrambics. The incident 
 of the check, too, he recalled, and Hilliard's contemptuous return 
 of the money. He could very readily understand that a man of 
 Grimstone's despotic nature would not consent to let such a man 
 enjoy the millions he had reviled. He was not at all astonished 
 at Nell's action, even though the half-lights in which Hilliard's 
 conduct had shone in her eyes were unknown to him. He be- 
 lieved her capable of offering herself outright to the man she 
 loved. It was inevitable in the view then taken of the rights 
 of the rich ! Why not ? Nell was thoroughly imbued with the 
 new creed, that money gave its possessors fairly unlimited privi- 
 leges, such as the crown gives a queen, or birth gave the nobility 
 of a century back. She had as good as told him, when they 
 talked over the question, that she would- take the matter into her 
 own hands, if she loved a man, and thought him hesitating be- 
 cause he feared he might be thought to seek her wealth. But 
 why had Hilliard fled ? Why had he returned Nell's note with- 
 out a word ? What was the complexity that kept Nell in the 
 dark, and Hilliard from speaking? What new wonder in the 
 evolution of money-making was he about to witness ? 
 
 The next morning he received a brief note from Nell, thanking 
 him for his good oflSces, and telling him that the family were to 
 leave on the early train for New York ; that they would be in 
 Valedo in October, and that she counted on his being among her 
 few trusted friends there. The hegira was rather a relief to Fred. 
 He could now pursue his work unmolested, and he was forced to 
 live quietly, as he had squandered so much money during the first 
 
204 ^-^-^ MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 of the season that he felt economy a duty as well as a necessity. 
 Mrs. Circester was full of wonder when she met Fred, and evi- 
 dently suspected that he was not wholly in the dark as to Nell's 
 flight, for flight she persisted in calling it Herbert still remained, 
 no longer pretending to disguise his intrigue with Beauxjambes, 
 now that his family were gone. 
 
 "He is treating Betty Killgore abominably," Mrs. Circester 
 cried. " He ought to be horsewhipped ! " 
 
 " Why, what is he to Miss Killgore, or she to him ? " 
 
 " She adores the heartless little cad, and it has been understood 
 for years that the two families counted on their marrying. Betty 
 has looked upon him as her affianced ever since she was a young 
 lady.'' 
 
 " If I were a relative of Miss Betty, I would rather see her in 
 her grave than the wife of that youth." 
 
 " Yes, but you are not a man of the world, with the manage- 
 ment of millions to look after. The union of Killgore and Grim- 
 stone will make one of the greatest money powers in the West. 
 Killgore vdll be President some day, and his daughter is a great 
 catch. You may be sure there's some meaning in the Grimstones 
 and Hilliard leaving within twelve hours of each other. You may 
 expect to hear something interesting from that quarter before 
 long." 
 
 " I shouldn't be surprised," Fred said, absently, and Mrs. Cir- 
 cester resumed her speculations, plainly vexed with the young 
 man, but not venturing to tell him so in terms. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 "DE l'audace; toujours de l'audace et encore de 
 l'audace." 
 
 When the season was over, Fred remained in New York only 
 long enough to settle his affairs, and then, with a shudder of relief, 
 set out for Valedo, to edit the " Eagle." Of his experience in that 
 bit of youthful hardihood his own account is the most salient and 
 
''DE vaudace:' 20^ 
 
 picturesque narrative. A month or two after his installment he 
 wrote his friend Rivers : 
 
 " I am sure if I had known all the difficulties and annoyances 
 involved in breathing the breath of life into this ghost, I should 
 have taken counsel of you and prudence, and remained in New 
 York. The 'Eagle' has been, since 1861, Optimate in politics, 
 though some of its stockholders were Ultrocrats. The tracks 'of 
 corruption left in the books are something incredible. I thought 
 we were examining the accounts of a sort of general merchandise 
 establishment. The company, you may not know, was what is 
 called " State Printers '' — through partisan acts of the Assembly, 
 paid for by the directors, both in money and journalistic support. 
 There were a double set of books kept. In one— -every county in 
 the State was charged with the receipt of so much stationery, 
 blank-books, and general office wares. In the second set of books 
 these figured as watches, diamond rings, carriages, and every con- 
 ceivable article of luxury or use. 
 
 " In other words, the State, under cover of furnishing county 
 officers with stationery for purely State interests, was expending 
 thousands annually in defraying personal expenses ; on all this the 
 'Eagle's' percentages were of course enormous. Its former own- 
 ers, a band of politicians, published the paper merely as an instru- 
 ment of terror and party pressure. It subsisted for years on ap- 
 propriations filched from the State Treasury, and black-mail exact- 
 ed from the National Committee. Most of its stockholders are 
 now either rich or are office-holders. Its editor has been made 
 minister to a South American court, while his associates are 
 provided with places in the departments at Washington by Sena- 
 tor Killgdre. 
 
 " The cause of this dispersion is the recent success of the Ultro- 
 crats, who have, for the first time since the civil war, elected the 
 Legislature and Governor. The ring knew that the journal could 
 no longer count upon the State Treasury for its support. When 
 I b^^an work the paper had a merely nominal circulation, even 
 among the Optimate, who understood the corruption it upheld, 
 and upon which it depended to support its existence. The curious 
 
2o6 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 and significant, almost discouraging, phase of the affair is, that it 
 is not the ' Eagle's ' notorious corruption that makes its success 
 problematic. It is the fact that it is supporting the Ultrocrats. 
 
 " Mrs. Circester warned me that we could get no support from 
 the better classes, whatever that means. She said that Valedo hav- 
 ing some of the ' best people ' in the country, and those who wanted 
 to be thought best, would never look at the paper, no matter how 
 good I made it. All my old friends here came to me with the same 
 plaint. It is in a small way the story Paul tells over again, after 
 he had taken up the cause of the humble, simple, and God-fearing 
 at Ephesus. My esteemed contemporaries, at first, in pitying 
 good-humor, warned me that I might as well publish Shakespeare 
 to the subjects of the King of Dahomey — that no newspaper, sup- 
 porting the Ultrocratic party, could succeed for any length of time 
 in Valedo. There were, they said sarcastically, too many churches, 
 too many schools, too much respectability ! Wasn't it notorious 
 that the Ultrocrat party was made up of the ignorant, the lawless, 
 the ' low Irish ' "> 
 
 " Where, my rivals asked, could readers be found among them 
 to support so costly an enterprise as this crazy young snob was 
 making? But I never said a word. Every day the 'Eagle' has 
 made the contrast between itself and its contemporaries more and 
 more marked, and every day its subscription-lists increase, until it 
 now leads all the journals of the city in circulation, and disputes with 
 the great dailies of the East and West in the Appalachia Valley. 
 Every day I spread before my ' ignorant, lawless, and low Irish ' 
 constituents admirably selected extracts from the best current lit- 
 erature, letters from accomplished correspondents, in Rome, Paris, 
 London, New York, and Boston ; twnce a week 1 publish a half- 
 page of art-gossip, book reviews, and well-pondered criticisms on 
 music, the drama, and the industrial arts. 
 
 " In spite of my contract, which makes me supreme in the edi- 
 torial management, I came very near a rupture when I began to 
 show up the monstrous robbery of the poor for the benefit of the 
 rich in protection. This community being imbued vdth the plau- 
 sible doctrine of the baronial creed of political economy, listened 
 with stupefaction to the truths of free trade as the ' Eagle ' in- 
 
"DE L'AUDACE." 207 
 
 trepidly sets them forth. Our contemporaries broke into full cry 
 against the paid agent of the Briton and the Cobden Club daring to 
 insult the workman by trying to reduce his wages to foreign rates. 
 
 " Now, to make my work more difficult, many of the stockhold- 
 ers are interested in manufacturing, and, indolently accepting the 
 sophistries of the shallow and self-seeking protectionists, had a 
 vague idea that the tariff really made wages higher, while assuring 
 them monopolist dividends in their investments. A meeting of the 
 board was called, and I attended. They began by calling attention 
 to the fact that nothing was said in my contract about free trade or 
 protection, and that no journal could hope to exist in Valedo and 
 advocate the doctrine of free trade. I simply reminded them that 
 editorial control meant the assertion of the editor's convictions ; 
 that my convictions, based upon diligent study of economic laws, 
 were unalterably opposed to the pillage of the many for the benefit 
 of the few ; and that they might as well expect me to uphold the 
 similar robberies practiced by our predecessors in the ' Eagle ' as 
 the rapine of protection. I also said that it was a paradox to 
 claim to be an Ultrocrat and a protectionist at the same time. 
 The very essence of Ultrocracy is the right of the many to enjoy 
 the benefits of association. It was the direct antithesis of the 
 Optimate creed, of the ruling of the best by the plunder of the 
 millions. I said, quite franldy, that I believed protection to be the 
 most immoral and dangerous form of the sur\'ival of feudalism, 
 and that I would no more consent to identify myself with a journal 
 tolerating such iniquity, than I would with a party advocating the 
 practices of Captain Kidd. 
 
 " I only give you the substance of the talk — it lasted all the 
 afternoon. The majority were only half-hearted in their opposi- 
 tion to me, knovdng that it was their own private interests they 
 were defending in upholding the policy of protection. Half of 
 them owned that, theoretically, free trade was the true doctrine ; 
 but as the people had been beguiled into believing that they were 
 benefited by protection, it was not good policy for a tentative 
 enterprise, such as they had embarked in, to attempt to combat 
 public prejudices. 
 
 " The president of the body, a man at the head of a great iron 
 
2o8 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 industry, sided with me. He said that he had been all his life a 
 protectionist — ^first, because he thought that the system made his 
 business surer juid his profits larger, He had returned from a 
 year's tour abroad, and he was convinced that he had been trust- 
 ing in the most mischievous untruths ; that with free trade his 
 workmen could be kept at profitable wages all the year round, 
 instead of six and eight months as at present; that with raw 
 material free, he could double his business, and make markets in 
 Mexico and South America, that would enable him to rival the 
 British. Furthermore, he believed Mr. Carew's position a sound 
 one. 
 
 " The Ultrocrat, he argued, was a party in the interests of the 
 people ; it is now made a reproach to it that it was made up of 
 the people ; but as the people were many millions more than the 
 persons calling themselves 'the best,' the people would in the 
 end win. The vote was three to one in favor of sustaining me ; 
 and even as a question of policy it has been of service to the 
 paper, for people are protectionists, I find, just as people were 
 supporters of slavery, through indolence, ignorance, and dislike to 
 confront the powerful. 
 
 "You see, I am really realizing my idea of journalism — the 
 lay -preaching of sound convictions based on knowledge, not 
 prejudices and partisanship ! " 
 
 Fred told a good deal of his novel experiment, but he did not 
 teU all. It is hardly possible now to comprehend the prejudice 
 and obstacles a young man coming from the East had to over- 
 come in an aspiring, wealthy, and imitative community like Vale- 
 do. Fred set to work with the zeal of an evangel, and the ambi- 
 tion of a soldier put at the head of a defeated army. He soon 
 discovered amazing ability, both for the executive details of edi- 
 torial duty as well as the literary part. He organized every di- 
 vision of labor, and supervised the minutest details. In those 
 days provincial journalism, as all outside of New York was classed, 
 paid little attention to the phases of local life that make the his- 
 tory of a large city. Fred instantly directed his efforts to pre- 
 senting each morning every event of interest, social, personal, or 
 
" DE L'AUDACE" 209 
 
 political, that could interest the town. Valedo had then over one 
 hundred thousand people ; its citizens were immensely proud of the 
 rapid growth, manifold industries, and natural beauty of the place. 
 
 They saw nothing jocose in the remark of one of their towns- 
 men who, after a week in Paris, declared that " Valedo did 
 more business in a day than Paris in a month." Hence Fred's 
 work told immediately. His rivals had sneeringly announced 
 that "the Eastern prig" who had come out to teach the back- 
 woods how to edit, was going to make the " Eagle " a Western 
 edition of the " Atlas " of New York, and give his attention wholly 
 to national affairs. Within a month, the Valedoan who wanted to 
 have the news of his own town, read the hitherto despised " Eagle " 
 to get it. This, of course, brought city advertising; and when 
 the stockholders saw that, they knew that their venture was a 
 success and their new editor a prize. The rival journals watched 
 the experiment with a tranquil conviction of its predestined 
 failure. 
 
 They gloated over the insane policy of lavish outlay Fred 
 adopted in news-getting, as well as that of paying his associates 
 liberal salaries. When he began, the average wages of young 
 men working day and night were from fifteen to twenty dollars a 
 week. He immediately raised the average to twenty and thirty 
 dollars»and the effect was at once marked in the superiority of 
 the work. He made the typog^phical effect of his pages as 
 marked as their literary excellence, and every expense incurred 
 was saluted by a shout of gloating expectation from his enemies, 
 who prophesied speedy bankruptcy. Fred himself did the work 
 of three men ; and it was work that told, because his whole soul 
 was in it. The editorial page was soon read with interest in 
 every newspaper office in the country, and encomiums on his tri- 
 umphant success from all the considerable journals convinced the 
 stockholders that enthusiasm and honesty go far to make up the 
 lack of experience. When, at last, his rivals saw the necessity of 
 making head against the new-comer, it was too late. The " Eagle " 
 had within a few months made itself indispensable to all classes 
 who needed the public ear. The church people, who were never 
 known to seek its columns, or in any way identify themselves as 
 10 
 
210 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 organizations with the " Eagle," overwhelmed the young editor 
 with felicitations. One of the most conspicuous clergymen called 
 attention in his pulpit to the work the new editor was doing for 
 the best moral and intellectual interests of Valedo. Nor was 
 Fred less sagacious politically. He forced the Ultrocrats to turn 
 over a new leaf in local party nominations. The Optimate had 
 governed the city for a quarter of a century. By the handi- 
 work of the " Eagle," a reputable young carpenter was chosen 
 mayor, and with him a city council. The city was enormously 
 burdened with debt; the new council, upon the demand of the 
 " Eagle," made inquiry into the financial dealings of their prede- 
 cessors, and it was shown that millions had been pillaged and 
 put to party and private uses. Subject to the most virulent abuse, 
 Fred never permitted a word of persorfal controversy in the col- 
 umns of the " Eagle.'' He dealt humorously with his adversaries, 
 rallied their ill-temper, and to the ridicule of being young, over- 
 dressed, and eccentric, with which he was deluged, never offered 
 a word of remonstrance. The effect of this was that he became 
 an object of popular consideration. His opinions were quoted, 
 his reticence admired, and his ability conceded. 
 
 The Grimstones returned in October, and Fred was made a 
 very welcome guest. Eleanor was not the exuberantly joyous girl 
 that Fred had first known her ; she was still gay, good-humored, 
 and cordial, but there was something of that breezy assurance 
 lacking, which had a charm of its ovsm, that stripped it of coarse- 
 ness — the artlessness of the ingenue, without the brusqueness of 
 the hoyden. Hilliard's name was never mentioned. Grimstone 
 was peculiarly courteous to the young man, who, however, liked 
 him less the more he saw of him. Great parties were frequently 
 given in the " Grimstone Castle," as it was called, and Fred was 
 always made to understand that Eleanor depended on him to help 
 in entertaining. Once, when a girlish friend jokingly coupled the 
 names of the two in a significant way, Nell blushed, and, so soon 
 as she could speak privately to Fred, she said, with a sad smile : 
 
 " I hope, Mr. Carew, such nonsense as this, which you will 
 hear often in a town like this, will not disturb you ; I shall pay no 
 heed to it." 
 
"DE L'AUDACE." jii 
 
 " Such busybody tattle will only trouble me if it makes you un- 
 happy, or makes it necessary for us to be less friendly." 
 
 " It doesn't trouble me, and it sha'n't make me less fond of 
 you ! I believe you to be capable of disinterested friendship, and I 
 prize you now, as I have since I first knew you." 
 
 An event occurred, a few days after, that was to test the 
 strength of this compact. While at work, the city editor brought 
 Fred an article, written by one of the reporters, in which Grim- 
 stone's name was mentioned in a scandal suppressed by the police. 
 -The case. was notorious and revolting; it was known and talked 
 of, but had never appeared in the newspapers. While the city editor 
 was explaining it to his chief, the president of the board of stock- 
 holders came in. He came to impress upon Fred the necessity of 
 keeping the scandal out of the " Eagle " columns. 
 
 " The only question is whether it is true or not," said Fred, 
 inquiringly. 
 
 " Of course, it is true ! Everybody in Valedo knows Grim- 
 stone's intrigues, but we can't afford to back it. He is an adver- 
 tiser, and, besides that, we dare not offend him." 
 
 " That is, you mean to say that, because he is a rich man, he 
 can do what a poor man is disgraced for doing.? If this were a 
 poor blacksmith, the whole report would go into the police news ; 
 but, because it is a rich banker, we must keep it out ? I don't un- 
 derstand that to be the function of journalism." 
 
 " Oh, you are unquestionably right, as a matter of principle, 
 but he is too strong for us ! " 
 
 " Well, Mr. Mabitt, the report must go in — I won't consent to 
 such immoral compromise. How could we hold up our heads if 
 we tolerated such discrimination ? Let every man take the re- 
 sponsibility of his own wickedness, when the law uncovers it. 
 Grimstone is no more to me than John Doe, when he goes before 
 the police court. No, sir, the ' Eagle ' couldn't afford to do such 
 a thing, and I couldn't, as its editor, consent to such coward- 
 ice." 
 
 " I am quite of your opinion, and I merely advise you. It will 
 hurt us, but we can stand it, I suppose. The publication will so 
 astonish Valedo that, perhaps, we can make up in one way what 
 
212 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 we lose in the other," and, rather admiring the young Aristides, 
 the old gentleman withdrew. 
 
 Late in the afternoon, Grimstone's attorney came to Fred and 
 expostulated. He threatened libel suits, which would swamp the 
 " Eagle," as Grimstone could bring witnesses to prove the affair a 
 black-mailing scheme. Fred dismissed the attorney, with a defi- 
 ance to do all he could. The matter was official, and should go in 
 just as other criminal reports did. Still later, Grimstone came 
 himself. His manner was in no way different from the usual cold 
 self-possession that marked him. He began, quite unconstrained- 
 ly, saying: 
 
 " I think you are making a bad mistake, my young friend ! 
 This story is simply an attempt at black-mail. My character can't 
 be hurt by its publication, but it will give pain to my daughter. I 
 may be wrong, but I should say that your relations with my family 
 call for consideration on your part above your duties as a jour- 
 nalist. I can't see how a man, received at my table, can make it 
 consistent with his honor to bring shame to the people who have 
 welcomed him there. I have talked with Mr. Mabitt, and he 
 agrees to uphold whatever you do." 
 
 " Do you assure me unequivocally, Mr. Grimstone, that this 
 is an attempt at black-mailing ? " 
 
 " I do assure you, and I will prove it." 
 
 " It is unnecessary. The report shall not go in — unless it is 
 made a matter of record in the police court. I will send a trust- 
 worthy man to examine the facts, and, until it is shown to be 
 legally established, I shall not print it." 
 
 It was the thought of Eleanor's grief, not Grimstone's as- 
 surance, that won this hasty concession from the young editor. 
 He' had no sooner given it than he regretted it, for he felt that 
 Grimstone was telling a falsehood. When the latter had gone, 
 Fred sent for the city editor and ordered a careful inquiry to be 
 made in the poUce-office, and, very much dissatisfied with himself, 
 he waited for the result. He was dissatisfied, because he had 
 given his promise with culpable haste. He knew that his mistake 
 was a dangerous precedent. It was of Eleanor and the family he 
 was thinking instead of his duty as a journalist. The chief of 
 
*'DE VAVDACE." 
 
 213 
 
 police came himself to assure Fred that the scandal was exagger- 
 ated, and that black-mail was at the bottom of it. He could give 
 no documentary evidence. There was no record in the office. 
 The city editor, however, made it clear to Fred that Grimstone's 
 influence intimidated the chief, and that the documents had been 
 made way with ; that there never would have been a whisper of 
 the affair, if the police had supposed any journal in the city auda- 
 cious enough to make mention of it ; that such things concerning 
 the politicians and the rich were never allowed to leak out offi- 
 cially. Fred dismissed his lieutenant with instructions that in 
 future no one should enjoy partial immunity — that men, money, 
 or influence should never be considered; that if merciful dis- 
 criminations were ever made, it should be in favor of the unhappy 
 and miserable. 
 
 Soon after a still more perplexing incident came up for the ap- 
 plication of this editorial theory. Killgore's wife had obtained a 
 decree of the courts, and the Senator had almost openly installed 
 la marquise en titre as his wife. They occupied discreetly con- 
 tigfuous apartments in Grimstone's hotel, the Albatross, and her 
 receptions were graced by all Valedo, " in society." Now, at a little 
 banquet given in honor of Grimstone's re-election to the Senate, 
 madame, when a discussion of the deepening distresses of the 
 laboring people came up, contributed this vivacious stroke of 
 feminine sagaciousness to the problem : 
 
 " My husband has a million of acres of rice that are rotting for 
 lack of a market. It can be sent to this country as ballast, if Con- 
 gress will subsidize a line of steamers to St. Domingo. That rice 
 would feed millions of laboring-men. In China, laborers live on 
 rice alone, and I'm sure I don't see why Americans can't. The 
 Irish live on potatoes ; the Scotch on oatmeal ; the Germans on 
 lentils ; the French on black bread and %vine ; the Italians on 
 herbs and macaroni ; the Turks on figs. Rice would be a cheap 
 and wholesome dish, and needs no salt in its preparation — ^just 
 water." 
 
 This sally was immensely applauded by the younger men, but 
 Killgore looked at her wamingly as he saw the eyes of the waiters 
 fixed on the economist in malignant hatred. The next day a note 
 
214 "^^^ MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 came to the " Eagle," recounting the scene, and demanding a pub- 
 lic rebuke to this shameless Pompadour, rioting in riches ground 
 from the poor, and then devising ways to fill their stomachs with 
 Chinese fare. It was unsigned, but Fred held it, awaiting a re- 
 sponsible signature. In a day or two he sent a copy of the note 
 to Killgore by a reporter, offering him the columns of the " Eagle " 
 to explain this monstrous doctrine. In a few minutes Killgore 
 came himself, in a terror of apprehension. 
 
 " In the name of God, young man, are you quite mad ? This 
 silly speech was a joke. Not a man in the room regarded it as 
 anything else. To publish this would be degrading and scurril- 
 ous. I won't stand it ! If you publish that, by the living God, I 
 will drive you from Valedo ! I will make your name a by-word 
 and scorn all over the Union ! Ah, I can do it ! You needn't af- 
 fect to doubt it." 
 
 " Is this all the explanation you have to make. Senator ? " asked 
 Fred, leaning back in his chair. 
 
 " Explanation — explanation .' Why, damn your eyes, you im- 
 pudent jackanapes, I make no explanation ! I tell you simply that 
 your breed is becoming too common in a decent profession, and 
 that I, for one, don't propose to be black-mailed ! " 
 
 " There — that is as far as you can go in that direction. When 
 you forget the respect due your g^eat office, I am at liberty to re- 
 mind you of your baseness as a man ; that your private character 
 is a moral leprosy. The victims of your Satyr lusts are known 
 all over the city. Tou have debauched happy homes, you have 
 been chastised by outraged husbands in the open streets; you 
 went to Congress seven years ago with not a thousand dollars to 
 your name ; you figure among the stockholders of a national bank 
 as a holder of half a million of its capital ; your name appears 
 in General Macomber's pensioners for another half million in 
 his John Law scheme. You paid Austin Gray twenty thousand 
 dollars for his own and four other Ultrocrat votes in the 
 Legislature when five members of your own party shrunk in 
 loathing from j'our candidacy, and quit the caucus. You 
 bought men like sheep, in the campaign just ended, to give 
 the electoral vote of Appalachia to General Ajax; and you 
 
"DE L'AUDACE." 215 
 
 have gathered together the very refuse of ruffianism to fill 
 the offices in this State. Your agent in the post-office here, 
 under your directions, destroys the 'Eagle's' mail, throws its 
 packages into the custom-house coal-vaults, and tampers with 
 my correspondence. And you come to me and talk of black-mail ! 
 If your age commands respect, blistered as it is with wrong-doing, 
 or your person impunity, marked as it is vidth your excesses, it is 
 a feeling for your family alone that inspires the sentiment." 
 
 The scorbutic face and glaring eyes of the Senator were quite 
 frightful to see during this awful tirade. Many times the power- 
 ful frame moved as if to seize and strangle this railer at the party's 
 anointed, but he did not dare to invite outsiders and give the 
 hideous lecture an audience. He shook with passion, all the more 
 ominous that it was repressed, and, as he stalked out, he said 
 hoarsely : 
 
 " Very well, young man : if I am capable of all that, you may 
 be sure I shall not fail in putting you out of the power of smirch- 
 ing your betters ! " 
 
 The note was printed the next morning, and the editor vouched 
 for the authenticity of the fact. The labor unions took it up, and 
 passed resolutions denouncing, not the woman, but the Senator 
 who had listened to such sentiments without rebuking them. The 
 first evidence of the Senator's retaliatory vengeance was a long 
 article in his organ, owned by his brother-in-law — a letter from 
 New York purporting to give the result of inquiries made in the 
 " Atlas " office. Here it was alleged that the youth who had un- 
 dertaken to teach vdsdom, morality, and political ethics to Valedo 
 had been regarded as insane ; that his freaks had, in spite of 
 some skill in writing, kept him among the lowest arid least con- 
 sidered of the editorial subordinates. As a proof of the estimate 
 put upon his services, Blackdaw had exhibited the salary rolls for 
 the years of the young man's tenure of service, and his stipend 
 was far below that paid men doing less work ; that he was self- 
 sufficient and captious, and that the editor had finally dispensed 
 with his services with great satisfaction, as a dangerous, untruth- 
 ful, and unbalanced intellect ; that he had then joined the noto- 
 rious "Tomahawk," and that, while on the "Atlas," he had pre- 
 
2i6 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 tended to be an Optimate, took the pay of the Ultrocrats, and went 
 over to that mendacious sheet, which was known as a scandal- 
 monger and the pirate of the press. After this odious showing 
 the editor triumphantly asked : " Into what decent family can the 
 writings of such a man be permitted to penetrate? How can 
 God-fearing fathers of families tolerate the vaporings of such a 
 madman to defile the home circle? Why should a law-abiding 
 community tolerate the existence of a press so infamous, and 
 gfuided by a wretch so abandoned ? " 
 
 Fred was rather surprised at Blackdaw's connivance in this 
 disreputable onslaught, but he v^dsely ignored it, and Valedo read 
 the " Eagle " all the more eagerly, for, however base or defiled, 
 wasn't it a success ? What more could a level-headed community 
 ask ? It was his success, not his virtue, that kept Fred's enter- 
 prise on the high tide. When he reached his office on the morn- 
 ing of the publication of this characteristic evidence of journalistic 
 comity, his desk was buried in flowers, with cards from most of 
 the local personages in Valedo. Among them was a note from 
 Eleanor Grimstone. 
 
 " Dear Friend : Don't pay any heed to the horrid stuff in 
 the ' Clarion ' ; no one who knows you will believe a word of it ; 
 and those who don't know you will soon leam that you are the 
 bravest and noblest heart in the world ! I am going to have a 
 little dinner-party to-morrow, and you are the only gentleman in- 
 vited. You will be so petted and caressed, that, if it were any 
 other man in the world, I should be afraid it would turn his head. 
 But I know yours is firm as your heart is good, and for that reason 
 I am Your cordial and affectionate friend, 
 
 "Eleanor Grimstone." 
 
 Touched by the warm-hearted girl's kindly championship, 
 Fred rummaged through his papers, and made a little packet of 
 the letters he had received from his hierarchical chiefs while on 
 the ■■ Atlas," and went early to the dinner, to show them to her. 
 They were strong and explicit. There were two signed by Black- 
 daw, calling attention to some correspondence he had written 
 
" DE L'AUDACE: 2 17 
 
 during the Appalachian riots, in which his work was pronounced 
 the most brilliant, vivid, and careful study of the calamity that 
 had appeared in the American press ; that its literary finish 
 made it worthy of a more permanent form than the ephemeral 
 pages of a newspaper ; that the accounts had been printed in full 
 by the presses of London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin ; and that he 
 had been directed by the stockholders to express their thanks to 
 him. Eleanor read the letters with great delight, and urged him 
 to print them, to refute the calumnies of the " Clarion." 
 
 " Ah, no ! It is not in the editor the readers of the ' Eagle ' 
 are interested, it is in hiswork. If I make a good paper, I don't 
 mind a straw what is said of me. It's a fellow's work that tells 
 the story ! " 
 
 Nell kept the letters, and when her favorite had been suffi- 
 ciently " petted," she rapped for order, and, to his mortification 
 and confusion, read all the testimonials Fred had intended for her 
 satisfaction alone. 
 
 Betty Killgore, who was of the party, was loudest in pro- 
 claiming the " Clarion " " perfectly horrid." She would pinch her 
 uncle's ears well, she averred, for treating the paragon in such a 
 shameful manner ; and the other young ladies resolved themselves 
 into a civic propaganda, to bruit about the refutation that Fred's 
 modesty refused in the columns of his own journal. In effect, 
 the Senator's first sortie was a grotesque miscarriage, for the 
 tongues of a dozen vehement young women spread the contents 
 of the letters through the town, till they reached the ears of the 
 editor of a gossiping and widely-read Sunday journal, who gave a 
 summing up of Blackdaw's vmtten expressions of admiration, and 
 even to the amount of the salary, which was larger than that paid 
 to the leading editor of any of the Valedo papers, where Fred 
 had forced prices higher, by raising them all around on his own 
 force. 
 
 And so the rash and viTong-headed young Anarch continued 
 to mock the counsels of the wise and the valor of the brave, and 
 the very intrepidity of it gave him an iclat that conservatism and 
 the prudent respect for tradition, which you and I love, would have 
 worked for in vain. " The best," when they read his fierce demo- 
 
2i8 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 cratic onslaughts, reviling the party of great moral ideas, and pil- 
 lorying its leaders in the rack of perfidy, corruption, and dishonor, 
 took it as a charming joke, as Marie Antoinette and her intimates 
 read " Figaro " and the encyclopedists, and made merry over the 
 raillery that was undermining abuse, and privileges, and rank — 
 the throne itself, the Walpurgis feast of the Terror. And, as my 
 pen traces these chronicles of this bristling thorn in the flesh of 
 respectability, I protest that " age hath not withered nor custom 
 staled " the sympathies of youth, and I find myself glowing with 
 Fred's absurd enthusiasm, and foolishly sharing his beUef that the 
 torch of truth may even yet penetrate the gloom of selfishness and 
 the darkness of human vanity ! 
 
 But, of course, we know better in the sane repose of our 
 studies and boudoirs ; we know that only some men are equal, and 
 that inalienable privileges. come only to wealth, and that our duty 
 is nobly done when we give in secret with one hand the tithe of 
 the millions we are clever enough and strong enough to wrest 
 from the supine and deluded multitude by our wise laws, our 
 astute syndicates, and our address in making the silly //-<7&^izz>-i? 
 approve and support — nay, exact the humane protective principle^, 
 that made the Optimate the altar of the church, the pillar of 
 strong government, and the breakwater to communism and Ultroc- 
 racy. Even the sage Montesquieu was, for a time, identified with 
 the pagan sentiments and heretic ethics of the " Persian Letters " ; 
 so it may happen to this editor to be accused of sharing in the 
 atrocious teachings of the young man whose career he is setting 
 down " neither in malice nor extenuation." No — no ! this is only 
 the Jeremiah of the parable bringing the girdle from the Eu- 
 phrates, that all men may see how the perversion of the ingenuous 
 may be brought about, even in the impulse to do good ! 
 
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 219 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL! 
 
 It was in his own home that Fred found the best index of the 
 work the "Eagle" was doing. When his mother consented to 
 have that chart of political schism read at the breakfast-table, he 
 knew that he had nothing to apprehend abroad. It was with 
 death in her soul that Mrs. Carew heard of her son's determina- 
 tion to edit an Ultrocrat newspaper. It was not until her eldest 
 friend in Valedo, the cynosure of its best society and the archi- 
 mandrite, so to speak, of the Episcopal Church, Mrs. Baron Cir- 
 cester, Mrs. Albion's mother-in-law, had put the seal of her ap- 
 proval on Fred's work that' the sorrowing mother had consented 
 to have the " sheet " admitted to the house. Mrs. Carew was one 
 of the mothers that mold whatever is of good repute inthe pres- 
 ent breed of Americans. She was what our forefathers would 
 have called a "godly woman," without being in any^ense a prop- 
 agandist or monomaniac. Dogmatic and unbending she cer- 
 tainly was, but it was the kindly dogmatism of conscience — ^kindli- 
 ness rather than conviction. She hated cordially, heartily, openly, 
 but her hatred never went beyond a sharp word. 
 
 When Mrs. Carew said she had "no patience" with men. 
 creeds, or politics, that meant that reasoning was at an end; 
 that in this world there was no longer a place for them, and 
 only the immeasurable goodness of Divinity could be expected 
 to deal adequately with such perversity in the next ! She had 
 the kindest of hearts, the wisest of heads, and the noblest of 
 impulses constantly at play. She was a benediction to the suf- 
 fering, wherever found, a help to the helpless, a stout foe to 
 social wrong-doing, and vrfthal prejudiced as Peter himself be- 
 fore he got the kej's ! She was in her sixtieth year when 
 Fred's escapade came to shock all her well-grounded convic- 
 tions of social and political righteousness. Married in her six- 
 teenth year to the late Dr. Carew, every year since had been 
 full of observation and growth. She would not pass among the 
 
2 20 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 women of genius as one of them ; but she had rare intelligence, 
 an accurate and swift perception, lucidity in thinking, and excellent 
 powers of expression. These qualities had given her pre-eminence 
 in the various church and charity boards of which Valedo boasts. 
 
 She was president of the Board of Governors of the Old Ladies' 
 Home, secretary of the Hospital Board, and manager in innumer- 
 able other eleemosynary boards. Her family, the Carys, had in 
 early days been the chief folk in that beautiful Geneva that shares 
 some of the admiration with the elder city over the sea — for a beauty 
 that suggests the fitness of the name. She had given great scan- 
 dal to her family when she married Dr. Carew, one of the very 
 few apostles of the despised Hahnemann in this country in those 
 days. She had borne the pitying condolences of her family, and 
 the veiled scorn of her friends, with sturdy combativeness. She 
 had emigrated with her husband to Valedo, and upheld his faint- 
 ing courage as only a resolute woman can. By an inspired tact 
 and the nameless adroitness that only womanly intelligence can 
 keep clear of the questionable, she had pushed the young phy- 
 sician in the face of a dead wall of stupidity, prejudice, and igno- 
 rance. 
 
 She made the introduction of homoeopathy a cult, and de- 
 clared that she would never be satisfied until the victims of the 
 old school had their eyes opened, and indeed the honest woman 
 lived to see the despised sect the most flourishing and highly con- 
 sidered in the " genteel " circles of Valedo. The doctor himself 
 always laid his good fortune to Kate's superior powers. It was 
 Kate who pointed out the bit of property that her savings enabled 
 him to buy, and by the sale of part of which he was afterward en- 
 abled, in 1856, to build that handsome square mansion on Valpa- 
 raiso Avenue that every one in Valedo knew so well. It was Kate 
 who shamed the city councils into admitting homoeopathic practice 
 into the hospitals, and, as she stoutly asserted, gave the unfortu- 
 nates a chance for their lives. It was Kate who saved the soft- 
 hearted doctor from the rueful experience of long columns of fig- 
 ures on the wrong side of the books every year, for the good man 
 gave right and left, and took no heed of the morrow. It was 
 Kate's good management that enabled him to indulge those de- 
 
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 221 
 
 lightful experimental fantasies which most physicians lay by with 
 their college rubrics. It was Kate, too, that fixed his prices as he 
 rose in esteem, for, when it was seen that he rarely lost a patient, 
 even prejudice gave way, and he was called in when his "regular" 
 brothers failed. While his charges were modest, he was but 
 slightly considered ; but when fashionable Valedo began to send 
 for him, at first en cachet, it is true, he soon became the mark of 
 the social ton, and then Kate insisted on rates that made the 
 good doctor tremble, and virtually circumscribed his practice to the 
 very wealthy. 
 
 But by this time (1854) the way had been opened, and others 
 of the despised school came in and made homoeopathy al- 
 most "regular." In 1868 Dr. Carew had the largest practice in 
 Valedo. Mrs. Carew's various boards employed him, and the 
 family looked forward to ease, if not opulence, when the good 
 doctor, attending a medical convention in the East, was thrown 
 between the cars and brought home to Valedo mangled beyond 
 recognition. Mrs. Carew bore the shock with such courage as 
 women only show under g^evous calamity. The doctor's affairs 
 were not in such a prosperous state as his large practice led the 
 world to suppose. He had invested in oil-stock and Western rail- 
 ways, and, when the estate was settled, the widow had barely 
 an income of twelve hundred dollars to depend on. She could 
 not keep Fred at college, and educate the young Jack, wnthout 
 sacrificing her home. Fred at once solved the problem by going 
 to work. 
 
 The Circesters, whose children were all married and living else- 
 where, rented their house and came to live with the viddow, and 
 the homestead was thus retained. The loss of her husband made 
 no change in Mrs. Carew's social and public activities. Indeed, 
 her interest in the Old Ladies' Home, St. Mark's Hospital, and the 
 annual charity festivals, increased as her tutelage of her husband 
 ended. The majestic black-robed figure, with the widow's cap and 
 long veil, became as conspicuous wherever suffering was, as the 
 good doctor's had been. Even with her reduced income she was 
 first in all church-giving and private deeds of good. During her 
 husband's life there had not been wanting censorious critics to 
 
222 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 declare that Kate Carew used her church vantage to exploit the 
 doctor's practice ; that she had with a worldly-wise eye seen from 
 the first that the Episcopal Church was to be the Brahmin caste of 
 the social system of Valedo, and that she had gone over to that 
 fallow field for the crop that could be reaped more readily there 
 than in the sterile social organism of Presbyterianism. The even 
 tenor of her enthusiasm, now that nothing was to be gained, 
 silenced these well-bred calumnies, and the most arrogant lords 
 among the dominating plutocrats were proud and glad of the 
 stately widow's recognition. Whenever the hospital funds ran 
 low or any charity languished, Kate's modest brown horse and 
 shabby Victoria made the rounds of the banks and the great fac- 
 tories, and the deficits were turned to comfortable balances. 
 
 Dr. Carew himself had taken no interest in politics. In his 
 youth he had, like his father before him, voted the Ultrocrat 
 ticket, perhaps because in those days it was quite as compromis- 
 ing to advocate Optimate principles as in 1868 it was to uphold 
 the Ultrocrats. Mrs. Carew herself knew no more of political 
 measures than most American women. She saw that in St. 
 Mark's all the men were Optimate, and that was enough for her. 
 Had her rector, the Rev. Adelbert St. George, ordered his flock to 
 vote the Ultrocrat ticket, she would have set out to see that the 
 edict was obeyed. But the rector was known to support the Opti- 
 mate. He was distantly related to a noble English family, and he 
 had often been heard to declare that the only salvation of this 
 country was to be found in maintaining the Optimate, who were 
 the bulwarks of law and order in this country, as the Conservatives 
 were in Great Britain ! The Reverend Adelbert, as he was called, 
 was very "high-church," and had at first found his path full of 
 thorns. 
 
 It was only among a very few of his flock that he was at the 
 beginning an idol. When he succeeded in raising the church 
 debt, and erecting that superb Gothic, modeled on the Ely Cathe- 
 dral, of which Valedo is so justly proud, he became the autocrat 
 of the diocese. He was generally called, by the unregenerate, the 
 " reverend financier,"' or " the holy money-grubber." His " opera- 
 tions " were the wonder and envy of the sharpest money-makers 
 
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 223 
 
 of the town. St. Mark's, for a time, became great fashion for the 
 worldlings, who went to hear the Reverend Adelbert expound the 
 ' doctrine of financial salvation,'' as they wickedly said, alluding to 
 his skill in saving certain of his flock from the results of bank- 
 ruptcy. Some reckless wags even went so far as to put up quota- 
 tions of St. Mark's stock on 'change, thereby alluding to certain 
 mortgages and investments the rector had secured for the church. 
 It was to this wise young doctor — for the Reverend Adelbert was 
 hardly thirty — that Mrs. Carew carried her grief when Fred came 
 home to take charge of the "Eagle." The clergyman soothed 
 the wretched mother, observing that most very young men were 
 apt to take up with unorthodox notions in religion and politics, 
 but, as they grew older, they were worn out of them by the attri- 
 tion of hard facts and worldly experience. 
 
 " But," she said, piteously, " I know my son : he will grow 
 stronger and stronger the more he is opposed," and she added, 
 naively, unconscious of the humor of it : " He's like me — when he 
 once believes he is right, he only grows more obstinate the more 
 he's reasoned with ! " 
 
 The Reverend Adelbert, who had his own reasons for knowing 
 the truth of this, did not compromise himself by the laugh that 
 was working in him. Mrs. Carew was the main instrument by 
 which he maintained himself in St. Mark's, and he had seen him- 
 self rescued from destruction too often by her confiding faith in 
 his holiness, and her indomitable suasion with others, to risk the 
 creation of a doubt in her mind of his sacerdotal infallibility. 
 
 Fred was in the " Eagle " editorial rooms, preparing his cam- 
 paign, when the rector came in. He merely nodded when the 
 doctor announced himself ; for Fred, though the most liberal of 
 men, was hard at heart and stiff-necked in insensibility when he 
 came within the sphere of this worldly-wise clergyman. He per- 
 haps disliked him all the more, that he succeeded in blinding his 
 usually astute mother to his merely veneered churchliness. He 
 believed him venal, and knew him to be a sham, and his face 
 rarely masked sentiments of this sort, when he cherished them for 
 cause. 
 
 " Are you too busy to give me a minute's talk, Fred .' " asked 
 
224 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the rector, seating himself at the young man's by no means cordial 
 invitation. 
 
 " That depends, Mr. St. George : if to talk religion, yes — if busi- 
 ness, no." 
 
 " Well, it's partly business, for in the end the best business is 
 based on a religious foundation.'' 
 
 " That's a true statement of religion, as you understand it, 
 I'm free to admit," said Fred, with hardly concealed raillery. The 
 Reverend Adelbert, meekly passing over this Philistine gpbe, con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " Your good mother, my dear boy, is deeply hurt at your iden- 
 tifying yourself with a — a — ^with a party that is — is not wholesome 
 in its tendencies ; that is a — made up of the ignorant classes ; the, 
 I may say, the communistic elements — the dregs of the commu- 
 nity. . Your father was an honored member of society, a noble 
 churchman, an exemplary man. Your mother is a saint. She is 
 looked up to in every respectable household in this community. 
 Her works are pointed out everywhere. A Christly example is 
 wanted. Surely you, her son. Dr. Carew's son, can not persist 
 in a course that is to — ^to efface the honors of such noble lives ! 
 You can not mean to give their good name to a paper, edited in 
 the interest of the Ultrocrat party — a party which, in this city 
 and all large cities, where ignorance is in the majority, rules 
 through bad men and bad methods ? I beg of you not to begin 
 your career with such a burden. It will be a stain on you through 
 life ; and later, when you have found that it shuts you out of com- 
 panionship with the only people that a refined man cares to be 
 identified with, you will find it an impediment to your fortunes. 
 Look about you ! Who are Ultrocrats ? In our own church, St. 
 Mark's, only the poorer members of the congregation are of that 
 party. We couldn't support a vestry if we had only that party to 
 depend on ! Even in a worldly sense it is bad policy." 
 
 Fred had settled back comfortably in his chair when the clergy- 
 man began, and had followed him with such flattering interest, 
 nodding his head with implied assent at the most crushing asser- 
 tions as they were educed, that the envoy felt, for one intoxicating 
 moment, that he had the victory. 
 
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 225 
 
 " Mr. St. George, of course you have studied the state of 
 parties In America? You know the principles that each advo- 
 cates. Will you tell me what the Optimate has set forth since 
 1868?" 
 
 " Why, I'm sure, Fred, of course, the party believes in law and 
 order ; it believes in restoring peace to the South, and civilization 
 and — and — " 
 
 " That's a generous and enlivening doctrine, I ovra ; but if the 
 Optimate advocate this, why don't they do it .' It is now seven 
 years since the war ended. The South is overrun with such 
 thieves as would make Cicero give the consuls a clean bill. The 
 States are ruled by carpet-baggers sent by the national Adminis- 
 tration, or upheld by it. But there is no need of going South to 
 test the fitness of the party. Point me out any considerable num- 
 ber of the leading public, men of the party that haven't grown 
 mysteriously rich during the last ten years. Look at the recent 
 exhibit of corruption in the Credit Mobilier and the French 
 arms sale ; of the San Domingo job. Look at a Vice-President 
 tainted by the sin that immortalizes Bacon as ' the meanest of 
 mankind.' Cabinet ministers. Senators, and Congressmen, so 
 greedy, dishonest, and unfaithful that Hastings's spoliation of the 
 Punjaub is mere venality in comparison. Let us come nearer 
 home. Here's Killgore, our Senator. He went to the Senate a 
 few years ago in debt. He is now ranked as a millionaire many 
 times over. Look at the late election of General Ajax, bought in 
 open shambles as boldly and bluntly as you would buy tribes of 
 revolted Indians to keep the peace. Look at the argument put 
 forth in the late campaign — a plea to the most ignoble of human 
 passions — ^hatred of the conquered. You say it is degrading to 
 be identified with the Ultrocrats. So Herodias said to John when 
 he preached the doctrines of the Nazarene. But let me tell you, 
 Mr. St. George, that, as a clergyman, you should be cautious in 
 giving breath to such phrases as you have just used. If you will 
 look at the figures in the late election, you will see that, out of the 
 nine million votes. General Ajax got but little more than half, and 
 over a million of these were the colored votes of the Southern 
 States. As to the ignorance of the Ultrocrats, I don't know a 
 
2 26 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 college professor in the country that isn't an advocate of the prin- 
 ciples of that party, though many of them, through cowardice, 
 vote with the others. Show me an educated man who isn't a 
 believer in the doctrines of free trade ; show me an educated man 
 that doesn't shrink from the aristocratic and centralizing tenden- 
 cies of the Optimate. If anything were needed to point out the 
 way to a young man, look at the action of the men who made the 
 Optimate a g^eat and splendid party in i860. Every man of them 
 has quit the ranks now, leaving those men as leaders who were 
 despised and distrusted in the other party. As for the ignorance 
 of the great cities upholding the Ultrocrats, there is but one large 
 city in the country where they have the majority — New York — 
 and, bad as the government is there, it compares favorably with 
 Philadelphia, Bigbrag, or even our own Valedo here. No, sir ; I 
 was an Optimate so long as I was ignorant. Now that I have 
 light, I am so no longer. I may not always uphold the Ultro- 
 crats, but, please God, an Optimate I shall never be again ; and 
 I'll venture the prediction that, in ten years from now, no decent 
 man will own himself one unless new wine is poured into the old 
 bottles." 
 
 Fred had risen during this florid and ingenuous harangue, 
 and paid little heed to the horrified and indignant embassador. 
 Never had that shepherd heard such blasphemous railing at the 
 Lord's anointed. He gathered his gloves about his wrist in per- 
 plexed dismay, and stood with his hat in his hand, irresolute 
 whether to fly, or put his hand on Fred's mouth to stop the tor- 
 rent of contaminating heterodoxy. 
 
 " I am sorry, Fred, that you have been in bad company since 
 you left us. I can only join your mother in prayers for your 
 rescue from this hideous abysm." 
 
 " Yes, I have been in bad company. I've been helping to edit 
 an Optimate journal, and all my associates were of that party, and 
 I know them pretty well." 
 
 But with a stiff bow the scandalized rector was gone, and he 
 heard the godless youth roaring with laughter as he passed down 
 the dark stairway to the street. 
 
 So that, much as you and I, who are, of course, respectable 
 
ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. 227 
 
 people and unquestioning Optimate, may blame this rash and 
 wrong-headed young zealot, we must own that he had grounds 
 for his confidence in his own foolish wisdom when he saw his 
 mother scanning with approval the " Eagle," and knew that every 
 member of St, Mark's was a daily reader, and that the vestry had 
 ordered the church advertising to be printed in its columns ; and, 
 not only that, but the Reverend Adelbert had sent for one of its 
 reporters to take down Bishop Califf's sermons to young men, 
 and, on the editor's refusal to print them as news, had paid a 
 half-dollar a line for their insertion as advertisements! What 
 wonder that this atrocious young pervert was confirmed in his 
 monstrous backsliding, when it filled the exchequer, brought the 
 stockholders in admiring delegations to his desk, and made the 
 " Eagle " stock eighty per cent above par, and not to be had at 
 that? Then, as I said before, came the election and the over- 
 throw of the Optimate, the exposure of years of such turpitude as 
 put the social status of many of the most respected citizens in 
 mourning, and made the return of the party to power an impossi- 
 bility during the memory of a generation. Nor was Mrs. Albion 
 Circester without some weight in the young man's success. She 
 was socially supreme, and wherever she went Fred's renommie as 
 a Bayard and poet was chanted in the dulcet keys she knew how 
 to sound so incomparably well. 
 
 You must not suppose that she s)Tnpathized with his odious 
 political vagaries. No, she put her approval on moral grounds 
 only. Such a newspaper, she declared, was a matter of local 
 pride ; it gave a distinctive character to the city, like that famous 
 journal in a small New England city that was read and quoted 
 from the Merrimac to the Pacific. As to Fred's being an Ultro- 
 crat, wasn't it well kno^vn that the great Lord Beaconsfield had 
 been a democrat in his youth, and didn't Bismarck drink beer 
 and talk socialism with Lasalle ? All that would pass away when 
 he g^ew older and understood his own interest better ! So Fred 
 became a very interesting object in society. His political heresies 
 gave the great something to condone, and there's nothing society is 
 more willing to do than condone, particularly where the sinner has 
 no need of active partisanship. But it must not be supposed that 
 
228 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the rival journalists folded their arms and bowed meekly to the 
 conquering stride of this insolent innovator. When they found 
 that pleasantries about his personal attire, and ingenuous innuen- 
 does at his fortune-hunting in the Grimstone direction, with hints 
 about the habits he had formed in metropolitan gayeties, didn't 
 annoy or arouse him to response, they revived the scandal of the 
 accusation of bribery, his dismissal from the " Atlas," and, as a 
 climax, his presence at a revolting debauchery in Re)Tiard's res- 
 taurant. All this, however, painful as it was to Fred, only made 
 the public more curious to read his paper ; some, perhaps, to see 
 what he would say, and others as a protest against the malignant 
 cowardice of the warfare. To satisfy his mother and Mrs. Cir- 
 cester, rather than to vindicate himself, he republished the story 
 as narrated in the "Tomahawk," and had the satisfaction of see- 
 ing it reproduced in the columns of his contemporaries, where, 
 having been refused as a correction, it was by order of the 
 " Eagle's " stockholders printed and paid for as an advertisement 
 under threat of proceedings at law. 
 
 This was the roseate horizon that Fred's eager eyes saw on 
 all sides of him when the cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, 
 suddenly arose in the air, a signal of catastrophe. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 A winter's tale. 
 
 Whether the cup be joy or grief we hold to our lips, the hand 
 trembles, and we lose some of the draught. Fred's delight in the 
 unwonted freedom of his pen gave him a certain terror as time 
 went on. There was no means of gauging the direct result of 
 his vehement teachings. Everything in physical nature has a 
 point of measurement — a level from which its working may be as- 
 certained. The chemist has his unit, and can mark to the small- 
 est globule the change wrought by his ingredients ; so through 
 all the varied phases of physics ; but in ethics there is no means 
 of judging the immediate or remote effects of truth ! 
 
A WINTER'S TALE. 229 
 
 Valedo did not give any sign of social or political revival under 
 the radical teachings of its new evangel. Art-schools and aca- 
 demic philosophies did not at once spring into life as the young 
 enthusiast vaguely dreamed they should. The ardor for money- 
 making was not replaced by the religion of sweetness and light, 
 under the satiric flashings of the over-confident casuist. The 
 spear of truth he found singularly blunt before the armor of 
 egoism and habit, engendered by social rivalries and human 
 frailty. Made up largely of men and women who had come West 
 from Boston and New York, Valedo was a reflex of the dominant 
 social tendencies of those cities, modified by climacteric and other 
 intangible conditions. The units of its various social groupings 
 touched at certain points, the groups themselves were as uninter- 
 penetrable as the circles in a Chinese puzzle-box. In large cities 
 there is a catholic disregard sometimes of the mere accident of 
 wealth ; in the Valedos never. In a large city a man is sometimes 
 well thought of, even if he can not produce a tree exhibiting Revo- 
 lutionary or Mayflower ancestry; in the Valedos never. It is 
 true that a lucky church connection may make up for these mis- 
 fortunes, but there is even there a thinly veiled tolerance, such 
 as we may imagine a good Catholic of Philip's time feeling for a 
 co-worshiper upon whose ancestry the scarlet signal of Torque- 
 mada's court had been wrought ! 
 
 Though a richly endowed college was one of the evidences of 
 intellectual pre-eminence that Valedo pointed to with pride, its 
 sectarian basis denied it the humanizing influence in the gfrowth 
 of civilized amenities that follows in the track of a real university. 
 The faculty were received with deference in the regnant social 
 circles, but they were so closely identified with the Presbyterian 
 cult that their influence was for the most part sectarian. Hence, 
 coteries were formed about churches instead of ideas or mutual 
 tastes, congenialities, and what not, that make reading-rooms 
 rational and academic. High fashion was represented by the 
 Episcopalian vestries ; the intellectual by the Unitarians, who had 
 four strong societies, and two very brilliant and admired minis- 
 trants. Intense respectability, symbolized by wealth, was repre- 
 sented in a very numerous body of Baptists. The Presbyterians 
 
23° 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 stood for what would be known in England as the high middle 
 " class," nor, grotesque as it may sound, was the word " class " 
 spared in deahng with the congeries of the accretions that made 
 up the various circles. A tacit deference was observable toward 
 the communicant of St. Mark's, St. Luke's, St. John's, or Grace 
 Church, which was plainly yielded in modified form to the deacons 
 of the First Baptist, the Second Presbyterian, or Bethany. As for 
 the Catholics, who comprised a third or more of the city's popula- 
 tion, they were regarded as much apart as the Jews under Charles 
 Stuart, or the Christians under Tiberius. Some Catholics did hold 
 high state, but it was somewhat in the fashion of the Rothschilds 
 after the admission of the first of that name to Parliament. The 
 Bishop of St. Ignatius, a very charming man and brilliant theolo- 
 gian, if he found himself at a general gathering, was as much 
 an object of curiosity as a Jewish rabbi or an Armenian Patri- 
 arch. There were thoughtful fathers, indeed, who believed 
 " Romanism " a menace to the future of the republic. Grimstone 
 and Killgore were knowm to be filled virith solicitude when they 
 saw the hospitals, schools, reformatories, truant homes, and other 
 establishments of a scholastic-eleemosjTiary character that attested 
 the diligence and charity of the Catholic population ! There was 
 a panic in the religion and charity of Valedo one.awful day when 
 a Catholic councilman was elected, and an indignant outcry from 
 the Optimate press when a majority of the School Board were 
 known to be members of the dreaded communion ! "When the 
 first Catholic mistress was appointed in the public schools there 
 was an indignation meeting, and the wealthier families who sent 
 their small boys and girls to that luckless school withdrew them. 
 
 When, in the course of time, the admirably trained minds of 
 the convent were brought into common recognition in the schools, 
 there was'-a general withdrawal, and from that time may be traced 
 the sentiment which holds public schools vulgar. After that refined 
 Valedo carefully guarded its infantile minds from corruption in 
 the chaste and " select " schools which sprang up in the fashion- 
 able quarters of the city. When a graduate from Fordham, a 
 poet and man of letters, was given the chair of Languages and 
 Rhetoric in the high-school, the Optimate members for Valedo in 
 
A WINTER'S TALE. 231 
 
 the Legislature brought in a bill, adroitly worded, excluding per- 
 sons whose religion recognized a higher authority than the repub- 
 Uc from places in municipal or State schools ! The bill didn't pass, 
 and gave great scandal to the less zealous members of the party, 
 who denounced it as a blunder that would cost votes. Killgore, 
 on the other hand, promised that if he were nominated for Presi- 
 dent he would insist on a plank looking to a national reform which 
 would check the alarming encroachments of the Church of Rome, 
 and as Killgore's mother was a Catholic, every one knew that his 
 convictions were sincere, and that he was actuated by the highest 
 "public good ! 
 
 It may easily be imagined what effect the flamboyant latitudi- 
 narianism of our young Aristides created upon a system or series 
 of systems like these. Intolerant to none of these clashing con- 
 geries, he became intolerable to all. The young men, who had 
 never before read newspapers, followed Fred's luminous raillery 
 with delighted surprise. They had never imagined dry questions 
 of sociology could be invested with such piquancy and charm. 
 The college boys were first infected ; then followed the Athe- 
 naeum Society, a body of young men who had sustained a lan- 
 guid interest in a library association, which, during the winter 
 months, eng^aged notable people to deliver lectures in a course. 
 This body had been made potent in closely contested elections by 
 the Optimate, and had many a time turned the perilously close 
 scale. Fred's first victory was the adhesion of this formidable 
 body to the support of his candidates, and the admission to its 
 course of eminent free-traders and political reformers. Outraged 
 by such a pervasion, many members of the governing board with- 
 drew, and their places were promptly filled by pronounced Ultro- 
 crats and reformers, Fred himself among them. It was at this 
 stage of Fred's civic splendor that Hilliard came to Valedo to de- 
 liver a lecture before the Athenseum Society. 
 
 He was not the gay " Archy " nor the magnificent " Prince 
 Rupert " we knew him long ago. He was still humorous, but not 
 g-ood-humored. His sayings had a bitter spice of acridity, that 
 only his consummate knowledge of the world saved from ran- 
 cor. There was more reserve in his manner, not the reserve of 
 
232 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 self-poise, self-repression, and a keener knowledge of himself, but 
 rather an alert suspension of his wits calculated to make them 
 more effective when they struck. To the great surprise of his 
 friends, he had withdrawn a good deal from the gayeties in which 
 he had for so long been the gayest. It was rumored that he was 
 writing a book, but he never admitted it. He said that he had 
 been studying the Chinese tongue, preparatory to a visit to 
 Cathay. 
 
 He was to pass some time in and near Valedo, and the highest 
 circles were on the qui vive to do him homage. His family lived 
 in the pretty little town of Melito, a sort of summer resort on For- 
 tunatus Bay. He gave out that he came for rest, and passed most 
 of his time in that secluded retreat, coming to town when the 
 spirit moved him. He was not cordial when he met Fred. There 
 was a hard complaisance in his manner that was infinitely dis- 
 agreeable to that inflammable young philosopher, and their inter- 
 course never took on the old intimacy of their earlier days. Hil- 
 liard was, in fact, annoyed at the vogue he found Fred enjoying. 
 He had always thought him a good-natured, passably clever youth, 
 with incorrigibly provincial manners and tastes, and an utter in- 
 capacity to reconcile himself to the grand conditions of life. He 
 could see nothing but his callowness, and took no heed of the 
 strong underlying fiber of his former comrade's character, and 
 quite resented the impression he had made on Valedo. He at- 
 tributed to provincial ignorance the qualities awarded his rival, and 
 looked on his iclat, in a society which he had once found so aris- 
 tocratic, as an evidence of the shallowness of country people. 
 
 He contrasted Fred's renommie vidth the concessions he had 
 found so intoxicating in New York, a few years before, and which 
 of late had begun to lessen, whether because of his own insensible 
 change in manners and motive, or from other causes, he could 
 not quite determine. But a change, he was vaguely conscious, had 
 come over the conditions that had made him a social force, if not 
 the master of the world he best loved to dominate, and felt dis- 
 tinctively fitted to adorn. He theorized a good deal on social 
 anomalies. He was fond of satirizing his native land in the lighter 
 vein he sometimes wrote in the " Atlas," and was never tired of 
 
A WINTER'S TALE. 233 
 
 contrasting the democratic rawness of his countrymen with the 
 pristine elegancies of the Old World. He was fond of alluding to 
 the " higher classes, the middle classes, and the lower classes," 
 quite in the cant of the Briton or German, whose arbitrary lines 
 are established to mark the pretensions of the various groups into 
 which populations are divided. He had mingled with the Vale- 
 doans but a short time, when he admitted that its " higher class " 
 was correlated to the same body in New York as the foliage of 
 one hot-house is to another ; the same tepid temperature brought 
 out the same moral coloring and fragrance, and the same excesses 
 of atmospheric pressure the same hectic and feverish decay of 
 the humanities. Money in Valedo, as in New York, was the blue 
 ribbon that gives the social pas, even where the tradition of May- 
 flower ancestry was most pertinaciously reclaimed. 
 
 He was thus forced to modify his first half-contemptuous ap- 
 preciations of Fred's social conquests. His assimilation by the 
 higher class could not be accounted for by ascribing to Valedo 
 a less discriminating judgment than New York. For the moment 
 the young man was as much a part of the social organic structure 
 as the plainest little crab-apple tree in a garden, which the frosts 
 of spring have transformed into a glittering Hesperidean. Un- 
 derneath the tolerance he knew there was a spirit of resenting 
 intolerance, a reserve of hostile vindictiveness that would turn 
 Fred's triumphs into bitterness, if the time should ever come when 
 the high social powers that lowered the scepter took it in their 
 heads to teach him that he was a caprice, not a part of the social 
 comedy. Then the presumptuous youngster would be made to 
 see that the court paid him was merely a form of supercilious con- 
 descension, which wealth and " birth " sometimes amused them- 
 selves by lavishing on wit and parts, bestowed in the same sar- 
 donic spirit that the courtiers of Louis showered amities upon 
 MoIiSre, after he had been invited to break bread with the " grand 
 monarque." 
 
 As to jealousy, Hilliard was too much confirmed in accepting 
 
 himself in the estimate the world had put upon him to admit even 
 
 to his own thought such a condition of equality between himself 
 
 and his ancient comrade ; for the moral world is unlike the phys- 
 
 11 
 
234 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 ical : we are prone to take our highest flight as the level of our 
 normal orbit, and look upon anything less as temporary phasis of 
 our onward strokes. A man unbalanced enough to give way to 
 such visionary vagaries as Fred had no future, though his antics 
 might for the moment amuse the grand world and give him a 
 fictitious equality with his betters. For sustained flight in these 
 freezing regions, Hilliard knew that natures like his own were the 
 only ones that had any certainty of perennial success. 
 
 Furthermore, Grimstone had been as good as his word : op- 
 portunities for increasing Archy's capital had been put in his way 
 through Blackdaw. He had been given points on legislation, 
 bearing on railways and other stocks, that had enabled both to 
 clear many thousands of dollars during the last few months, and 
 there were other schemes pending that might make millions for 
 these favored protigis of Mammon. 
 
 Hilliard felt his chains quite tolerable when he found they 
 were linked with gold. His literary reputation and journalistic 
 prestige were of value to the millionaire, and he was not as yet 
 asked to compromise any conviction that escaped the moral wreck 
 of the last three years of misplaced ideals and unworthy purposes. 
 Herbert had spoken to him once of Nell's engagement to Dorr as 
 a settled matter, and he no longer experienced the crushing abase- 
 ment that his partly voluntary and partly forced relinquishment 
 had left him in when Grimstone intervened at Saratoga. He had 
 no means of knowing Nell's frame of mind, but he knew that she 
 was socially as conspicuous as ever, and, though he did not seek 
 to put himself in her way since he came to Valedo, he took no 
 particular pains to avoid her. He was sure to meet her, and he 
 meant to resume his old, easy friendliness, without an allusion 
 to the past. The night of his lectures before the Athenaeum, he 
 came to town and dined with the Killgores; Betty and Her- 
 bert drove him to the hall. The audience was very " fashionable 
 and select," as the journals pointed out the next day, specifying 
 the names, with occasional individualization of toilet, that de- 
 lighted the town modistes for months. Nell had accepted Fred's 
 escort and sat quite near the stage, and the lecturer's eyes, it was 
 noticed, avoided her during^ the delivery of his address — a study 
 
A WINTER'S TALE. 235 
 
 of the "Culture of Social Life," illustrated by many charming 
 anecdotes of foreign personages and home incidents. 
 
 It had been arranged that Fred was to relinquish Nell to Her- 
 bert as soon as the lecture was over, as he was forced to be at the 
 " Eagle " office early. They arose and quitted the hall with the 
 first, and Nell was left in the stage antechamber to await Herbert 
 and Betty. When her brother came for her, Nell informed him 
 that she was going home with Mrs. Circester, and, as she was in 
 the back part of the hall, she would wait for her. She shivered a 
 little as she spoke, and begged Betty to lend her the thick shawl 
 she had brought and was not using. When her brother and his 
 companion were gone, she adjusted her veil closely over her face 
 and seated herself near the door. It took fuUy twenty minutes to 
 clear the hall, and as the last of the audience left, the gas was 
 turned down. There was only a dim light in the corridor when 
 Hilliard came out with some of the members of the board. He 
 recognized Betty's shawl, and came forward, shocked and cha- 
 grined. 
 
 " I declare, Miss Killgore, I didn't imagine you would wait ; 
 I meant to walk home." 
 
 She arose, and the murmur of the other voices concealed what- 
 ever of dissimilarity there might have been between her own and 
 Betty's as she said through her veil, " I didn't mind, and, besides, 
 we couldn't let you risk taking cold." 
 
 The committee were paying their final congratulations, and 
 Hilliard hardly caught the sound as he gave the lady his arm. In 
 another moment they were seated in the carriage, and Hilliard, 
 with an exclamation of relief, turned to his companion : 
 
 "I'm glad that ordeal's over. I would rather face a brigade 
 in battle than a country audience where I know most of the peo- 
 ple. But it was a splendid company, and I think they were sat- 
 isfied." 
 
 " Yes, they were delighted." 
 
 " Why, how hoarse you are. Miss Killgpre ; you've really taken 
 cold. Are you well wrapped ? I shouldn't have recognized your 
 voice." 
 
 " Yes ; I — I'm not quite in my right voice." 
 
236 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " You must doctor yourself when you get home." Then, after 
 a moment : " I saw Miss Grimstone in front. How lovely she 
 looked ! " and he sighed lightly. At the same instant the car- 
 riage came under the brilliant light in front of the post-office, 
 where an experiment in illumination was going on. Hilliard's 
 companion had removed her veil, and as he turned his eyes he 
 saw that it was not Betty, but Eleanor. Her cheeks v/ere flam- 
 ing ; her eyes humid and bright. 
 
 " Miss Grimstone ? " 
 
 " Yes ; it is I. O Mr. Hilliard, I could not accept my father's 
 word. I — I must know from your own lips that you gave me up 
 willingly ; that you never loved me ; that you were not deceived 
 about me." 
 
 She palpitated between shame and rapture, and could not find 
 voice. As she spoke, Hilliard had moved suddenly from her side to 
 the seat in front of her, and shrank into the comer in an agony of 
 loathing and dismay. Of all the duperies Fortune plays its fools, 
 this was the crudest for both. Even had he loved her with the 
 passion that sweeps away real obstacles, this amazing freak would 
 have chilled his ardor. He was sensitive to the proprieties as only 
 those are who take on refinement through extraneous teaching, 
 as the self-made monarch is more rigorous in court etiquette than 
 the scion of a thousand dynasties of royal blood. Eleanor's sim- 
 plicity and honesty saved her from realizing the position she had 
 placed herself in, and she, poor girl, was convulsed only by the 
 doubt of the man's loyalty that tortured her now for the first time 
 in all the miserable comedy of errors that her own sentimental 
 imagining had embodied. She waited, with death in her soul, for 
 the words he was to speak. The repulsion her act inspired gave 
 him the force and assurance that under normal contingencies he 
 would have sought in vain. He was once again master of him- 
 self ; the poor girl had made his conduct defensible, if not hon- 
 orable. 
 
 " No, Miss Grimstone," he began, in a low voice, " your father 
 acted toward me with fairness, if not delicacy. He informed me 
 that my presence, as a suitor, was not agreeable to him or his 
 family ; that you were engaged to another man whose person was 
 
A WINTER'S TALE. 237 
 
 in every way more acceptable ; that while he would put no obstacle 
 in the way of a union between us, he would disinherit and disown 
 you. No word of love had ever passed between us. I had no 
 right to suppose that you had any other feeling for me than you 
 had for Mr. Carew, or Mr. Dorr, or a half-dozen others with whom 
 you were cordial and gracious, as you always are. I had never 
 felt for you the sentiment that I believe to be essential to happy 
 marriage, and I freely gave your father the promise he asked, to 
 make no pretensions in future, as I had never in the past, to your 
 hand. . I supposed you knew this, or I would have written you. 
 Believe me. Miss Grimstone, you possess qualities to make you 
 worthy of a man who could be a better husband to you than ever 
 I could be. I am unworthy of you. I have known it from the 
 first, and that would have kept me from asking of you the sacri- 
 fice that my selfishness and ambition sometimes blinded me into 
 wickedly coveting." 
 
 She had listened with incredulous anguish as these ignoble 
 words poured out in soft, measured, vibrating music that almost 
 took the accent of sincerity. I doubt whether she realized the 
 significance of them at all. Her hands were clasped, and she bent 
 forward, striving to catch his eye. The confusing sense of dream- 
 ing kept her from fainting ; the yellow banng-s of light flashing 
 across the interior of the carriage as it rolled under the lamps 
 aided the sense of phantasmagoria. When he had done, she sat, 
 still bent forward, as if expecting the blows to continue, as one 
 walking in a storm thrusts his head forward to meet the blast. In 
 this attitude the carriage stopped, the door opened, and Hilliard 
 hastened to get out. She never said a word. The footman stood 
 respectfully waiting. Hilliard said in a low voice : 
 
 " They have heard the carriage stop and are at the door. 
 Won't you come ? " 
 
 She had wrapped her shawl over her head, and, as she got out, 
 sprang past Hilliard, whose arm was extended to receive her. 
 
 Without a glance, or in any manner recognizing his presence, 
 she walked firmly to the doorway and disappeared as the carriage 
 rolled out of the other side of the. parte cocker e. 
 
238 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 APOCALYPSE ! 
 
 Herbert had returned to Valedo, as his family believed, to 
 settle down preparatory to the long-contemplated marriage with 
 Betty Killgore. His courtship of that good-natured fiancie had 
 never been assiduous or sentimental, and Betty, who adored him, 
 was quite content with his perfunctory wooing, secretly cherishing 
 the purpose of making him all her own when the nuptial knot was 
 safely tied. She was not ignorant of her handsome lover's errant 
 fancy for the Beauxjambes, but, as she had heard so much of 
 young men's " wild oats " in the higher circles, in which her papa's 
 senatorial rank and money gave her assured place, she thought 
 httle of the scandals whispered vdthin her hearing, and never gave 
 the young man cause to suspect that she knew or resented his in- 
 fidelities. Herbert paid assiduous court to the " Eagle's " editor, 
 and Fred soon discovered the cause. He had negotiated an en- 
 gagement for his charmer at the Academy of Music, a temple of 
 the drama, thus named to conciliate the still lingering prejudices 
 of old-fashioned folks, who would have shunned Shakespeare in a 
 building openly called a theatre. But in an "Academy" they 
 made no objection to patronizing any development, of that modem 
 nondescript which holds the stage under the name of comedy, 
 drama, or opira bouffe. The building was owned by Grimstone, 
 and the manager found his lines in hard places when Herbert's 
 presence on the stage was prohibited by his indignant father un- 
 der threat of withdrawing the lease. It was quite as embarrassing 
 to offend the son as the father ; for when a dull week came dur- 
 ing the season, Herbert could always be depended on to bring a 
 good benefit to the bankrupt treasury. So the manager led a 
 dreary life between the irascible father and the importunate son. 
 
 Herbert found means for evading the peremptory orders of his 
 parent. He had keys made for the doors opening from the boxes 
 to the stage, and, while ostensibly in front in exemplary study of 
 
APOCAL YPSE. 239 
 
 the Muses, he was behind in the gfreen-room or dressing-rooms de- 
 moralizing the dramatis persona: with untimely champagne or 
 other beverages of a sort not calculated to steady the nerves of the 
 players. Fred had forbidden the admission of Herbert's prelimi- 
 nary panegyric of the fascinating Beauxjambes in the columns of 
 the " Eagle," and the young man had indignantly come into the 
 editorial rooms to demand the cause. Fred laughed, as he an- 
 swered : 
 
 " Why, good heavens ! Beauxjambes is no singer ! She can't 
 sing a note correctly. If it were not for her disreputable doit- 
 bles entendres and lascivious gestures, she wouldn't be tolerated 
 in a low-class concert troupe. We can't publish such lauda- 
 tions as you have sent us. It would shock public decency when 
 she comes ; it would deprive us of public confidence." 
 
 "But the 'Optimate,' the 'Patriot,' the 'Bugle,' and the 
 ' Clarion ' all publish them, and I'm sure they are taken by the 
 best people," returned Herbert, hotly. "I tell you what it is, 
 Carew, you're carrying things with too high a hand here, and 
 you'll come to g^ef, see if you don't ! Valedo won't stand such 
 airs. I hear the best people everywhere denouncing the ' Eagle's ' 
 radicalism. They are tired of your eternal preaching of virtue." 
 
 " Yes, I shouldn't be astonished. It is the ' best people,' as you 
 call them, that tire first of virtue. I'm not surprised to hear that. 
 However, be easy in your mind, it isn't the best people that we 
 are publishing the ' Eagle ' for. I should think myself in danger 
 if I had them with me, for then I should suspect that I was up- 
 holding them in servility, fraud in politics, and rascality in busi- 
 ness ; to my thinking there is no division of a community so dan- 
 gerous to the social system as the ' respectable classes,' as you 
 would call them — men and women who approve all that is cow- 
 ardly, and base, and wrong, and unchristian, so that it is stamped 
 by wealth, success, or what not. Respectability is the modem 
 synonym for feudal tyranny and moral rottenness.'' 
 
 " Then why don't you say that openly in your columns ? " 
 
 " I do, day by day. I have never concealed it. But, don't 
 you know, the very people held up to public scorn are the last to 
 see it.? I'll wager now that you would be greatly surprised if it 
 
240 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 were told you that you are one of the most dangerous types of 
 n:ien in the community." 
 
 " What the devil do you mean ? How dare you ? " 
 
 " Exactly. Such an assertion rouses you to fury, I see. Yet 
 I am prepared to say that you, and such as you, are ruining the 
 American character. Let us be good-humored about it, and dis- 
 cuss it for the sake of learning something. You, for example, 
 think me a fool, a prig, and an adventurer. You think me a pre- 
 sumptuous beggar for mingling in a society with whom I can't 
 hold head in money. I don't object at all to your estimate. But 
 you must let me hold my own of you and your kind. You have 
 been bred in luxury; you have gone to the best college in the 
 country ; you have been expelled from it ; you pass your time in 
 gambling and intrigue with actresses ; you will presently succeed 
 your father, and set the world an example of moral worthlessness 
 crowned by the most coveted social rewards." 
 
 " Well, by , you've got cheek ! Do you suppose I'm go- 
 ing to let you — ^you — " and he measured Fred disdainfully — " the 
 son of a huckstering quack — " 
 
 " There — stop there ! — say what you please about me, but one 
 word about my father, and I'll beat your worthless body to a 
 jelly ! " and Fred strode over within reach of the angry youth. 
 " Your lips soil any name they speak in praise ; they soil less in 
 calumny, because that is the tribute the base pay the good. Say 
 what you please of the living ; they can defend themselves." 
 
 " You will have your hands full,' then, as long as you stay in 
 Valedo, that's all I've got to say to you now ! " and Herbert's hand- 
 some face vras fairly frightful with all the unholiness of his self- 
 indulgent and perverted nature concentrated in virrath and hate. 
 Fred had turned his back on his enemy, and set to work calm- 
 ly, whistling " Upon a Bank reclining," the strains of which did 
 not sen'e to mollify the rage burning in Herbert's breast as he 
 ran in the heat of his anger down-stairs. He had found a g^eat 
 deal of fault with the " Eagle " before, but Fred's final expression 
 of a scorn only half repressed since the famous mUee at Saratoga, 
 filled Herbert with a desire to teach the young upstart that he 
 could not override his betters. Nor was the criticism of his 
 
APOCALYPSE. 
 
 241 
 
 adored Beauxjambes, that appeared in the " Eagle," at all calcu- 
 lated to make him forget the moral reef he had run upon in the 
 waters of Fred's philosophy. The dramatic editor, without a 
 word from his chief, had dealt with the French soubrette in the 
 strictly impartial spirit that signalizes the true journalist. 
 
 He ridiculed her acting and her singing, while her dress and 
 gestures he pointed out as fit only for those Parisian purlieus in 
 which the prurient breed of vulgarity and ignorance were nurtured, 
 and wound up by declaring that no self-respecting man, let alone 
 women, would consent to be seen among the libidinous multitudes 
 that welcomed this form of social decadence. So far as Her- 
 bert's purpose went, this critique was a triumph. It filled the 
 house nightly. There were few ladies, but men of all ages 
 crowded the Academy in every part. Clergymen showered letters 
 of approval upon the editor of the " Eagle," while his contempo- 
 raries, who had received the siren with eulogium and approval, 
 were openly censured for upholding such indecency. The war- 
 fare only increased Beauxjambes's popularity. Instead of two 
 weeks for which she had been engaged, she was retained a month, 
 and every night with more vehement crowds and warmer applause. 
 On the night of her benefit she aroused tumults of rapturous de- 
 light by caricaturing the " Eagle " and its editor, affording Her- 
 bert such delight that he could barely wait until she reached the 
 wings to embrace and congratulate her. 
 
 After the play there was a sumptuous supper served for the 
 lady, to which all the rival journalists were invited, and at which 
 the prig of the " Eagle " ^vas scathingly satirized, you may be 
 sure, and the fact published in full the next day. All this, how- 
 ever, was merely capital for the " Eagle," as Herbert soon saw, 
 and he knew that to punish the " sneak " he would have to invent 
 some other method. Among his other ulterior purposes. Grim- 
 stone meditated a political career for his son, and urged him to 
 mingle with the ward- workers. and State politicians in his leisure 
 hours. Herbert was nothing loath. He could be seen every even- 
 ing in the Orpheon, a beer-hall, where the rough-and-tumble of the 
 Optimate resorted to meet the local chiefs. Here Herbert soon 
 reigned supreme. His money made him captain of the clientele 
 
242 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 without any trouble, and it was here he met the agents that he 
 meant should give the " Eagle " and its editor trouble. 
 
 Among others who frequented the place were the printers of all 
 the newspaper-offices ; and Herbert was not long in finding out 
 that some of the " Eagle " men were bitterly discontented because 
 Fred had placed a young foreman at the head of the composing- 
 room, superseding an old fellow who was incompetent from drink 
 and debauchery. The new foreman had offered this man an easy 
 and well-paid berth on the advertising columns, generally regarded 
 as the most profitable place in the composing-room. Every re- 
 form, even house-cleaning, disturbs habits and engenders com- 
 plaints. Many of the old printers resented the selection of one 
 of the youngest men in the chapel as foreman, and the feeling 
 soon took the form of a strike : that is to say, so soon as Herbert 
 learned the situation, he set to work to develop the sporadic dis- 
 affection into a hostile demand, made by the printers to all the 
 publishers, but v^th the purpose only of crippling the " Eagle." 
 
 Under the laws of the Union, Hall, Fred's young foreman, was 
 himself compelled to carry the Union's protest to the " Eagle." 
 When he read it, Fred looked at the young man, and, surmising 
 the situation, asked him if he would remain in the office in case 
 the demand was rejected. Hall shook his head. Fred sent for 
 the president of the company — explained that it was an outside 
 attempt to embarrass the " Eagle, and laid out a plan to meet 
 the emergency. He was directed to go ahead. He telegraphed 
 at once to all the neighboring cities for printers, and when the 
 committee returned for an answer, informed them that their 
 proposition was rejected ; that the printers on the " Eagle " were 
 making more money than they had ever made before ; that twice 
 the number of men were employed, and that the present demand 
 was the outcome of caprice and ill-nature, and not for the pur- 
 pose of righting a wrong. He advised the men to talk among 
 themselves and Usten to Hall, and they would recognize the un- 
 reasonableness of their action. Just at the hour when composi- 
 tion should begin, another committee waited upon him to say 
 that the printers had decided to withdraw, and in a few moments 
 the room was empty. 
 
APOCAL YPSE. 243 
 
 Fred could set type himself, after a fashion — so could some 
 of the other employes of the office. They were thus enabled 
 to publish a column or two of matter the next morning; and 
 with type that had been standing, they made a tolerable paper, 
 but, of course, without news. The rival journals came out with 
 their columns full as usual. This was managed in an adroit way. 
 Knowing that the strike would come, they had filled their offices 
 with writers, and men in other departments who knew how to 
 set tjrpe ; and, besides this, had kept the men at their cases up 
 to the very moment of the strike. Of course, the responsibility 
 of the difficulty was at once thrown upon the " Eagle." The 
 vaunted friend of the workmen ! the promoter of social equali- 
 ty ! the Jeremiah of labor in its contest with capital ! the " kid- 
 gloved snob from Wall Street " was held up to execration as the 
 tool of the rich attempting to bully the honest out of their rights 
 and wages ! 
 
 The Printers' Union drew up resolutions forbidding any mem- 
 ber from taking the " Eagle " or advertising in it. Tradesmen 
 were assured that those who patronized this odious sheet would 
 be boycotted — a word not yet in use — and that the paper would 
 not be permitted to exist. The result was rather disappointing. 
 The next day the " Eagle " made up for its short-comings of the 
 previous morning by a double sheet filled with advertising, much 
 of which it had never had before. Printers in large numbers came 
 from as far off as New York, and the affairs of the establishment 
 went on writhout a break. The only evidence of Herbert's manoeu- 
 vre was two score or more of idle printers, a majority of whom 
 had no ground for complaint, and had been forced into the out- 
 break by a lavish use of Herbert's money vdth a few evil-disposed 
 members of the Union. Fred offered most of the men good places, 
 and many of them, with the tacit consent of the Union, resumed 
 their cases — the office wisely exacting no pledges, and making no 
 allusion to the recent differences. In the end Herbert's scheme 
 really strengthened Fred's hands, for he was notoriously a believer 
 in the rights of labor to employ its capital — ^that is, its handicraft — 
 to the best advantage ; and the local unions of every sort soon 
 made this manifest by the record of a minute that " Alfred Carew, 
 
244 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 Esq., was the working-man's friend, and deserving of the confi- 
 dence of every honest toUer." 
 
 This identification of the "Eagle" with the working-men 
 through its editor gave the community a shock. The great cor- 
 porations at once warned the stockholders that, unless disavowed, 
 the paper could count on no more advertising from them. In 
 nearly every business employing men, sympathy with the Union 
 was tacitly accepted as a menace to capital and the well-being of 
 society. A few days after the event, Grimstone waited upon Ma- 
 bitt, the president of the " Eagle's " managers, and protested in 
 the name of all the industrial interests of the city and State. 
 " Any encouragement shown the men," he said, " in their present 
 insubordinate condition, is sure to lead them to license. We are, 
 as it is, threatened with a general strike because we have given 
 notice of a partial suspension of work and general reduction of 
 wages after the new year. We can't afford to have a journal so 
 popular as the ' Eagle ' take the wrong tack, and you must curb 
 this fiery young editor of yours. He's a first-rate fellow, but he 
 needs a strong hand over him to check his plungings ; he needs 
 some one to cultivate his judgment" Mabitt, whose S5Tnpathies 
 were with the working-men, though himself an employer, sug- 
 gested that Grimstone should himself remonstrate with the young 
 anarch, and Fred was sent for. When he came down to the busi- 
 ness-office on the street-floor, Grimstone gave him four fingers of 
 a clammy hand, and a nod intended to be very cordial and reassur- 
 ing. He adopted a jaunty, patronizing tone, intended to flatter the 
 amour propre oi the social nihilist, by insinuating a spontaneously 
 conceded equality between parts and wealth, that would put him 
 at his ease. He did not begin at once on the theme he had in 
 mind, but led to it by a cautious exposition of the embarrassing 
 condition of all sorts of enterprises upon which the country's pros- 
 perity depended. Then he continued, suavely : 
 
 " Let us look at the question calmly. All my interests and 
 the fortunes of thousands of quiet citizens are bound up in 
 these industries. We don't operate them for pleasure, as you 
 know." 
 
 Then he went on to point out that any encouragement to those 
 
APOCALYPSE. 245 
 
 pestiferous organizations only leads them to demands that it was 
 impossible for those who invested capital to comply with. 
 
 " You are young and rash, Carew, and I can understand that 
 you take a young man's sentimental view of things ; you think 
 railway capitalists, the grain capitalists, the mine operators, and 
 foundries, deal with men only as slaves. In one sense we have 
 to. I have, as you know, millions invested in all these branches of 
 industry. I and my associates employ twenty thousand men. We 
 give them work and good pay while we have good business, and, 
 of course, when business falls off, we must protect our invest- 
 ments." 
 
 '. " But, while you are protecting your investments, who are pro- 
 tecting the investments of the twenty thousand you speak of ? " 
 asked Fred, tranquilly. 
 
 " I don't quite catch your meaning," and Grimstone, with a 
 new expression of eye and lip, adjusted his ptjice nez as if exam- 
 ining an unexpected form of the human animal for which his pre- 
 vious studies had made no allowance. 
 
 " And yet, Mr. Grimstone, my question is a very plain one : 
 you have millions of your own and millions of other people's 
 money that you feel bound to make realize a certain percentage 
 of profit — in other words, millions of investments that you must 
 protect. To do that you invoke every instrumentality available — 
 Legislatures, Congress, the militia." 
 
 "Yes — ^yes, we watch our own interests whenever they are 
 threatened." 
 
 " Very well ; are the thousands of workers you speak of less 
 worthy your interest than the hundreds whose money you g^ard 
 so sedulously ? There are, you tell me, twenty thousand men 
 whose existence, brain, body, are wanted in your operations ; all 
 that makes men equal in mortal conditions — what do you do to 
 preserve their investment from depreciation ? Do you fly to their 
 rescue when panic, trade, over-supply, or stock manipulations, 
 throw their investments upon a dead market "} To assure good 
 dividends to your money, you close your industries, lessen your 
 trains, comer produce of all sorts, and, while holding up prices, 
 throw human capital into the waste-basket. Do you give any 
 
246 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 concern to holding human capital up and preventing its stagna- 
 tion ? What measures are you taking to see that the vital capi- 
 tal invested by labor is not made profitless during the suspension 
 of your industries ? It isn't necessary to tell a man like you, who 
 began his fortunes at the anvil, that the primal and enduring capi- 
 tal of the human family is human labor (for without human labor 
 there would be no values), and that the duty of enlightened men 
 is to safeguard that most precious of all capital. It is a mere 
 paradox to cite capital and labor as opposed to each other — they 
 are one." 
 
 " Ton my soul, Carew, you talk like a communist ! What 
 absurdity ! Capital — capital ? Why, man, there is no capital but 
 money. You don't call a machine capital ; and what are work- 
 ing-men but machines .' Brains directing money may, in a sense, 
 be called capital ; but that brains are not capital is proved by the 
 undeviating failure of bright men like yourself to push ahead in 
 the world without the protection of hard-headed and hard-hearted 
 money-makers like myself and Mabitt here " ; and, struck by the 
 exquisite humor of this neat argumentum ad hominem, Aaron 
 Grimstone leaned farther back in his tilted chair, and smiled 
 urbanely at the impulsive agrarian. 
 
 " You will pardon me for saying, Mr. Grimstone, that you not 
 only take a wrong view of your obligations to the working-men, but 
 you take a ludicrously superficial view of the real meaning of capi- 
 tal. It would take too long to go into a scientific argument here ; 
 what the working-men are claiming now peaceably, later on they 
 will demand and then exact it. Their labor is their capital ; it 
 has the highest right to be respected ; it is deserving of as much 
 return as money. A man at the age of forty-five who has per- 
 fected himself in his calling holds himself worth as much per cent 
 as so many thousand dollars, or, in other words, you capitalists 
 have set five thousand dollars as the price of a life when you take 
 it on your railways, or in any other of the many forms money- 
 making has made fatal to life and limb. Very well ; you demand 
 on your investments at least one hundred per cent, and from that 
 tip to one thousand — we A\-ill say for a basis one hundred per 
 cent. Compute a man at five thousand dollars, and his invest- 
 
APOCALYPSE. 247 
 
 ment is five thousand dollars a year from the day his labor is ac- 
 cepted until the day he is no longer able to contribute that capi- 
 tal. At twenty a man invests five thousand dollars — at thirty his 
 five thousand is a sum of fifty thousand dollars ; allowing his 
 earnings as dividends, the principal still increases every day. Do 
 you protect that ? Do you provide against waste in its expendi- 
 ture ? Do you take care that laws are passed to guard against 
 its depreciation } " 
 
 "'Gad, the fellow's crazy V interjected Grimstone, turning to 
 Mabitt in amazement, who was hardly less perplexed by Fred's 
 novel statement of the value of a man to himself. 
 
 "No, I'm perfectly sane, and you may as well prepare to meet 
 just this sort of insanity, if you think it so, for every man that 
 earns his bread in this country will confront you with this demand 
 sooner or later, when the miUions begin to ask why money should 
 be more precious than human life. Then human life will be in 
 peril, and the life won't be the toiler's ! " 
 
 " Egad, young man, this is simply incendiary — incendiary, sir ! 
 and you ought, as a public teacher, to know better. I warn you 
 that a virtuous and law-abiding community won't tolerate such 
 doctrines — won't tolerate them. I tell you it is infamous — it is 
 murderous — it can not be permitted ! " 
 
 " The poor make a virtue of necessity, the rich make a virtue 
 of vice. I imagine the virtue of this community would be a good 
 deal upset by the enforcement of other than laws of its ovrai 
 making. It is very easy to be law-abiding when society makes its 
 own laws for the furtherance of its own ends. For years the rich, 
 and the rich alone, have been making laws for the rich. These 
 laws have enabled you, and such as you, to pile million on mill- 
 ion, while the capital of the people has steadily diminished in 
 value, until to-day the working-man is actually paying the war debt 
 out of his earnings, while the millionaire is seizing the public do- 
 mains, to leave in great estates, like the English noblemen, to a 
 corrupted progeny of spendthrifts. We have under the law of the 
 millionaire to-day spoliation ; we shall have under the laws of the 
 proletaire to-morrow restitution. Mark my words, the revolution 
 may be slow, but it is as sure as the law of light." 
 
248 THE MONSY-MAKERS: 
 
 " Well, Mabitt, I wash my hands of all your affairs after this. 
 If you are going to furnish capital to uphold such preaching as 
 that, then we must see what we can do to bring your enterprise to 
 an end." 
 
 "One moment, Mr. Grimstone." It was Fred who spoke, 
 and his face was very pale. "You are an old man, and age 
 should command moderation in speech. I can not respect you, 
 but I will strive to be temperate. You presume to come here to 
 challenge the policy of this paper ; to talk about virtue and law- 
 abiding. Do you protect virtue ? Have you ever been known to 
 give a dollar that didn't involve a loss to some one else ? Hasn't 
 the fortune that makes you omnipotent along the whole line of 
 your vast railway system been swollen by such strokes as the sink- 
 ing of the canal contractor's barges, upon which your whole pros- 
 perity is based ? Haven't you kept paid judges on the bench 
 from Valedo to New York ? Haven't you paid legislators to pass 
 your bills ? Don't you own Senators in Congress whose votes you 
 order as you would command a clerk in your bank ? Haven't you 
 for fifteen years kept articles on the tariff for your own exclusive 
 benefit ? Haven't you paid journals to preach protection as a 
 profit to the working-men when you know that it robs them of 
 two thirds of their wages 7 Hasn't the Council of Valedo been a 
 mere registry of your decrees for fifteen years ? This is virtue, 
 respectability, and law-abiding, is it ? We shall, I pray to God, 
 soon see the end of it ! You come here to warn me that your dis- 
 pleasure is dangerous, that you will ruin us. Very well ; begin 
 the fight as soon as you please ! I may not be able to bring you 
 to justice, but, by the living God, I'll bring you to restitution and 
 such shame as will leave you only the resource of suicide or exile ! 
 Your power may have terrors for the sort of men you have been 
 accustomed to bully. I invite your utmost efforts, and if your 
 career is not closed in a prison it will be through no lack of effort 
 on my part ! " 
 
 Aaron Grimstone was certainly right : a species of madness 
 had seized Fred. He hadn't the remotest intention of provoking 
 Grimstone when the dispute began ; but, as the man sat before 
 him calm, assured, the shadow of a sneer on his inscrutable face. 
 
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 249 
 
 the devil seized Fred, and all the loathing and bitterness that the 
 stories of the millionaire's villainies had excited in him rushed in 
 a passionate torrent to his lips. It was the exaltation and de- 
 lirium of a civic Luther before the nuncio. He might have ended 
 the anathema with " God help me, I can not do otherwise ! " so 
 ■burning was the inspiration of the moment. Never in forty years 
 had any lips spoken like this to Aaron Grimstone. I doubt if the 
 unique incident of the sunken craft had come to his mind in 
 twenty years. I don't know whether he would have been ashamed 
 of it, if it hadn't been openly flung in his teeth as an ignoble act. 
 He was in the early days rather inclined to hear it spoken of with 
 complacency, but force and anger can make even one's virtues 
 seem crimes sometimes ; and the specter of his first " deal " came 
 back to him now as something more serious than the long hne of 
 adroiter strokes that had enriched him since. He looked at the 
 young vengeance denouncing him, with a bewildered, ghastly ex- 
 pression that appeared like the beginning of apoplexy, and it was 
 only when Mabitt made an appealing gesture that Fred brought 
 his pitiless denunciation to an end. Without a word, Grimstone 
 rose, and, leaning on Mabitt's arm, left the office. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 
 
 " The Carews,'' as Fred's homestead and family circle were 
 familiarly known in Valedo, were a remarkable exception to the 
 life of the city. Mrs. Carew never made what is called a "visit." 
 If her shabby Victoria was seen before the door of the magnate, 
 or the ailing needy, no one was at a loss to account for its pres- 
 ence. The widow's was one of the best-known figures in the city. 
 Her stout frame, sparkling black eyes, deep-set and rather stem, 
 were a terror to the stranger unacquainted with the tenderness 
 of heart that these changing orbs so wantonly belied. Fraud- 
 ulent povert}', or sham of any sort, trembled when the widow. 
 
250 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 throwing back the long folds of cripe which gave her the air of 
 an Eastern priestess, fixed her eyes upon the claimant. Nor was 
 she less a terror to the ladies of the various boards, who joined 
 them in the illusory hope of gossip, display, frivolity. Lord Jeffrey 
 himself could not have cowed the court by a glance more deci- 
 sively dompting than the widow, when the meeting was called to 
 order. 
 
 She was universally recognized as a " woman of faculty,'' mean- 
 ing by that the mistress of masculine readiness of resource and in- 
 ventiveness. She had never been handsome, but age had softened 
 the high cheek-bones, almost Indian in their rugged prominence, 
 and the silver mixed in the -iron-gray hair gave the needed charm 
 to that serener beauty that comes to some women with age. Her 
 powers of endurance were at sixty as fresh and vigorous as her 
 son's at twenty-six. She was the last to go to bed at night and 
 the first to be heard stirring in the morning. One reason she gave 
 for making no visits was the care of her family, and if its numbers 
 were to be considered the excuse was ample. On the death of 
 the doctor, she had invited a maiden sister. Aunt Comeha, or 
 " Neal," as she was called, to make " the Carews " her home. 
 She was a contrast to herself in every way. Aunt " Neal " was as 
 slight as her sister Aunt Kate was robust ; she was five years the 
 elder, and always spoke of Kate as a girl. She was never knowm to 
 approve of anything done without her advice, and made it a point 
 of conscience to ridicule, in a mild way, Kate's partiality for the 
 Rev. St. George, as she persisted in calling the rector. Her Epis- 
 copacy, though deep and enduring, was not so militant as sister 
 Kate's. She would admit earthly humanities and future salvation, 
 even among the Baptists, whereas Kate never liked to contemplate 
 the fate of those Amalekites, after the lights of this world had 
 been wdthdraw. 
 
 Besides Aunt Neal, there were the nephew and two nieces, 
 orphans of a sister long dead. These kinsfolk were not wel- 
 comed grudgingly by the widow. Her house was large, and 
 her heart was larger, and she never found them burdensome or 
 vexatious. She was firm as a martinet vvith her servants, and 
 adored from kitchen to attic withal. She fed her patriarchal steed 
 
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 251 
 
 " Neddy," of a morning, with her own hand, not trusting the man 
 to do that tender office. No matter who sat with her in the Vic- 
 toria, she insisted on holding the reins herself, scouting the capacity 
 of any stranger to understand Neddy's preferences on the road. 
 She had established such amicable relations with this responsive 
 friend that Neddy never knew the restraining check-rein or hitch- 
 ing-strap. She was likewise heard in converse with this intelli- 
 gent beast, as those who knew him could tell, even if Mrs. Carew's 
 voice did not confirm the fact, by the ecstatic twitching of Neddy's 
 ears, which had been trained into a sign-language, comprehensible 
 to his mistress. 
 
 The widow's lines were not, in spite of all her fine traits, always 
 cast in pleasant places. There were heart-burnings among some 
 of the rival Samaritans in the various boards she dominated, who 
 resented her arbitrary sway. For, like all strong natures, it must 
 be owned that the widow was fond of her own way, and, what 
 was more, always managed to have it. But as aa inevitable 
 consequence there were subdued rebellion and barely repressed 
 anarchy in some of the vineyards in which she toiled with single- 
 ness of purpose and purity of heart. Like all strong natures, she 
 didn't wait for open revolt — she went square at the incipience of 
 outbreak, and conquered before the astonished enemy had taken 
 the precaution to combine plans and purposes. Now, Mrs. Grim- 
 stone, though indolent and prone to shirk labor or care of any 
 kind that could be avoided, had set her heart on becoming a man- 
 ager of the Hospital Board. The widow heard of it, and at once 
 put a veto on the scheme, fortif)ring her opposition by reasons that 
 satisfied all those who held the decision of the question. 
 
 Mrs. Grimstone was, it is true, not popular in Valedo ; she was, 
 as we have seen, a perfectly harmless woman, colorless in everything 
 but her raiment, the hues of which, it was sarcastically said, were 
 exaggerated to make up for characteristics Nature had denied her. 
 She sincerely believed that money was rank, and never dreamed 
 that there was anything further required of its possessor than the 
 show of its ownership. She had in her mingling with her " circle," 
 as she called it, heard so much of the animated siances of the 
 boards, and saw their members conceded such enviable preced- 
 
252 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 cnce, that it occurred to her that she might join one of the social 
 sanhedrims, and add to her diversions, if not her social import- 
 ance. 
 
 When she found that her rejection was due to the efforts of the 
 widow, she was astonished, but not angry — that was something 
 she was quite incapable of ; she had heard that anger brought 
 wrinkles and other disagreeable evidences of age, and she had 
 never indulged in such a luxury since the first days of her mar- 
 riage with Mr. Grimstone. But she was hurt in a soft, unvindic- 
 tive, and quite impersonal and placid way. She would have asked 
 the widow why she had refused to have her in the board, if she 
 had met her when the subject was fresh, but without a particle of 
 captiousness, or tit-f or-tat intent. It caused a good deal of amuse- 
 ment in Valedo, and enraged Herbert to fury when it reached his 
 ears. 
 
 Nor was the apparent cause comforting to him as a citizen, 
 looking to eventual social and political pre-eminence. Among the 
 patients in the hospital, who had confided her woes to the widow, 
 was a comely young country girl, who revealed a dreadful tale of 
 Herbert's heartlessness. The story was conveyed to Mrs. Grim- 
 stone, and a plea made for the wretched victim, but she never paid 
 any heed to it. She had at once stated the case to her husband, 
 from whom she had no secrets, unless her paint-pots, still as scru- 
 pulously concealed as on the day they were married, may be ex- 
 cepted. He had promised to attend to the matter, and she heard 
 no more of it. There was, however, I am bound to reveal, an- 
 other and perhaps (wfith the widow) more pregnant cause of re- 
 fusal to admit Mrs. Grimstone. She was known to be liberal to 
 the verge of infidelity in her church notions. 
 
 She- had not only often attended the " Romish '' Cathedral, 
 but — sin of sins ! she had entertained the " Romish " bishop in 
 the Grimstone mansion ! It was notorious, too, that she encour- 
 aged the levity of the worldly when the rector was under dis- 
 cussion, and had been heard to join in the heresies that assailed 
 him in reviling coteries ; while, as for Eleanor, she openly sneered 
 at the altar in St. Mark's, and had been heard to call the church 
 a way-station to Rome ! The widow, knowing the desperate 
 
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 353 
 
 wickedness of the flesh, and being a diligent reader of Solomon, 
 might have accepted contrition for Herbert's acts, but the conduct 
 of the mother in scorning was to her the unpardonable sin, that 
 she could not mitigate or pass over. All this naturally bred feel- 
 ings in the minds of the Grimstones, not calculated to make any 
 escapade of Fred's more tolerable. It may therefore be imagined 
 with what sensations Mrs. Carevvr heard Mrs. Albion Circester's 
 project of marrying Fred off-hand to Nell ! Fred's editorial duties 
 kept him at the office until the paper went to press, generally as 
 late or early as three o'clock in the morning. His breakfast-hour, 
 in consequence, was about noon, when the rest of the family sat 
 down to luncheon. 
 
 Of late, Mrs. Albion Circester, who was visiting Valedo, had 
 fallen into the habit of joining her mother-in-law and forming one 
 of the pleasant group. Mrs. Carew was one of the Christians that 
 believed that good living makes good men. She insisted, indeed, 
 on prescribing food in almost every ailment that befell her immedi- 
 ate friends. It was one of her theories that people should eat just 
 before retiring, and Fred always found a light luncheon waiting 
 him on the table in the early morning. He laughed a good deal 
 over his mother's alimentary theories, but she pointed to his plow- 
 man's appetite as the most conclusive comment on her policy. It 
 was a pleasant table, with all the ladies and Fred, the soft Valedo 
 coal crackling in the open grate. Mrs. Circester was in high 
 spirits, and told Fred, in mock confidence, that she had great 
 news to tell him when the mothers were out of the way ! 
 
 " Fred has no secrets from his mother, I would have you 
 know, Mrs. Albion. I shall know all about it so soon as the hour 
 of confession arrives," and Mrs. Carew looked fondly at the in- 
 dulged publicist. 
 
 "Yes, mothers are fond of declaring themselves in that way,"' 
 said Mrs. Albion, with a sigh, her mind reverting to certain pec- 
 cadilloes of Walter that had reached her ears through other chan- 
 nels than her son's confidence. 
 
 " For example, Fred and I are to be millionaires. Has he 
 told you that ? " 
 
 Mrs. Carew looked inquiringly at her son, and shook her head 
 
254 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 doubtfully. " I hope my son hasn't fixed his mind on riches. If 
 he has he is not hke his dear father, whose very pocket-money I 
 had to see to, and, poor man, I'm afraid I kept him pretty close in 
 that," she added, with a twinkle in her eye, as she caught Fred 
 looking at her. 
 
 " I'll engage he was kept close-reefed, if my experience is an 
 example," laughed Fred. 
 
 " A man can desire money for the good he would be able to 
 do with it," smd Mrs. Albion, pensively returning to the subject. 
 " Now, what couldn't such a bright fellow as our Fred here do if 
 he had, say, half of Grimstone's millions ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't touch a penny of the old sinner's tainted money, 
 any more than I would scorpions ! " 
 
 " Why, Fred, my son, how vehement and improper you've be- 
 come since you joined those odious Ultrocrats ! Such language is 
 only fit for the newspapers ; and, besides, you have already taken 
 money from Grimstone, the thousand dollars — " 
 
 " Thank God, not a penny was ever put to my oviTi use ! and 
 that reminds me — I will redeem it this very day ; I won't be un- 
 der even that form of obligation ! " 
 
 The ladies looked at the young man in consternation. 
 
 " Why, what new freak has seized you ? " said Mrs. Albion. 
 " I declare, you are the most discouraging fellow ; just, too, when 
 I had such glorious news for you. I can't wait, and must tell it. 
 What do you think — ? " 
 
 " That women are the root of all evil." 
 
 " You impertinent scamp ! Nell has refused Hilliard." 
 
 " I knew that a year or more ago." 
 
 " What ! You don't mean it ? Was it at Saratoga .' " 
 
 Fred nodded. 
 
 "Well, she has refused him again. Grimstone's coachman 
 was ill the evening of the lecture, and my man drove for him. 
 Hilliard came home in the carriage with Nell ; and Robert (that's 
 my man) says that, when he stopped under \}a^ parte cocker e, Hil- 
 liard got out, pale as a sheet, and that Miss Eleanor pushed past 
 him, ' her face all wrapped up,' and wouldn't even speak to him ; 
 that when he, Robert, asked Hilliard if he should drive him to his 
 
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 255 
 
 lodgings, he got no answer, and drove off, leaving him ' staring at 
 the Grimstones' doorway quite dazed-like.' " 
 
 " That's very odd," said Fred, musingly. " I went to the 
 lecture with Eleanor. She said nothing of expecting Milliard. I 
 can't understand the affair ; but you may be sure it's only a lov- 
 ers' quarrel, for they are fond of each other, and the marriage 
 ought to be a very happy one." 
 
 Mrs. Albion shook her head in polite exasperation. 
 
 " There never was, Mrs. Carew, such an obstinate, perverse, 
 provoking fellow as this son of yours." 
 
 " Be careful, madam ; you are on dangerous ground. Mother 
 and I are remarked for being exactly alike in our traits." 
 
 " That may be. What is intolerable in a man is lovely in a 
 woman." 
 
 " Ah, I see ! " 
 
 " Now, here is fortune, in the shape of a lovely girl, inviting 
 this ungrateful fellow to take and have ; and he turns his back or 
 looks sidewise, like a girl between two lovers." 
 
 Mrs. Carew looked inquiringly at her son to see the visible 
 evidence of this turpitude ; but, as he was smiling languidly under 
 the castigation, she divined that there was nothing serious, and 
 said simply : " Money-making isn't in the Carew blood. The 
 Cary side of the house are the thrifty ones. I should be very sorry 
 if Fred were to let money influence him in choosing a wife. It 
 needn't be counted an objection ; but I've lived almost sixty 
 years, and I've never seen a happy marriage where money was 
 the chief consideration on either side ; and, furthermore " — ^here 
 Mrs. Carew's voice just touched acerbity — " I hope Fred will 
 never degrade himself by marrying a Grimstone. It's a bad 
 race." 
 
 " He might redeem it," said Mrs. Albion, quickly. 
 
 " You might as well try to sweeten vinegar with cream," re- 
 torted Mrs. Carew, indebted to the silver pitcher in her hand at 
 the instant for the acrid simile. 
 
 " Well, between saints and sinners it's pretty hard to find one's 
 way in this world, that is, if one seeks peace and quiet Unes," said 
 Mrs. Albion, laughing, as she sought Fred's eye. As the group 
 
256 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 arose from the table, a note was handed to Fred, and, excusing 
 himself, he ran up to his room and opened it. He had recognized 
 the superscription ; it was from Nell, and said : " Can you con- 
 trive to be in Rosedale Avenue, near the farther end of the pond, 
 at three P. M. to-morrow ? I want to talk with you undisturbed. 
 I shall drive in the phaeton. — E. G." 
 
 The note was dated the evening before, and had come by 
 post ! It was very surprising and mysterious, and he couldn't 
 conjecture its purport. Nell and he were excellent friends, and 
 associated on the most brotherly and sisterly terms, and he couldn't 
 imagine why she should address him through the post, a point 
 which mystified him even more than the rendezvous. The note 
 had been written the evening before, and the matter was premedi- 
 tated. What could it mean .' Then he fell to reflecting on Mrs. 
 Albion Circester's pertinacity in bringing about a marriage. Could 
 it mean that the two were of a mind — that Nell was encouraging 
 him ? She had herself told him that a rich girl should have some 
 handiwork in a courtship where her affections were interested in 
 high-minded poverty. Ingenuous lad ! The very qualities of 
 mind that made his moral force and practical weakness blinded 
 him here, or he would have seen that Nell's sentimental humor 
 would never have been satisfied with a bold, open challenge. 
 
 She had known how to mislead so confirmed an adept in social 
 guile as Hilliard ; she could have found a score of stratagems to 
 lead Fred on in love aind enlightenment without compromising her 
 own objective purpose. Those of Fred's kind know so little of real 
 artifice, that they are first to suspect the occult where they con- 
 front the unknown. He knew Eleanor to be direct, ingenuous, 
 sentimental ; he knew that she possessed, or at least made use of, 
 few of the conventions that made society such a weariness to him, 
 and he believed her capable of plumply saying, " I love you — I 
 think you love me." It is the weakness of perfect integrity, as it 
 is the defect of dishonesty, to go outside of the normal in search 
 of explanations of the slightest departure from the commonplace. 
 A man of the world would have recognized in an instant that Nell's 
 note meant something not in the least contingent upon her own 
 well-being, or it would never have been written. 
 
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 357 
 
 He left the office a little before three, and found himself at the 
 point the note indicated. The spot was secluded ; the rush of 
 the waters, as they tumbled over the rocks in jocund leaps, 
 drowned the shrill voices of the birds that in summer made this 
 point of the drive vocal. He lingered among the trees but a few 
 minutes, when he saw the phaeton coming rapidly from the direc- 
 tion opposite the city. Nell was driving, and, as she neared him, 
 he thought she never seemed so beautiful ; her large eyes were 
 dimmed, and the humid depths gave an impression of sadness that 
 did not seem wholly the effect of pain. She smiled and blushed 
 as he came to the side of the vehicle, and she said, as he took her 
 hand: 
 
 " You are doing your best to look as though you were not 
 dying with curiosity. Get in, and I will disclose the conspiracy," 
 and she sighed lightly and blushed as his eyes met hers. 
 
 " Indeed, I'm not a bit curious. Shall I take the lines ? " 
 
 " No ; let me drive — I know where to go, and you don't," and 
 she turned the horse's head toward the open country, along the 
 river-road. Fred, to prove his incuriousness, began an extem- 
 poraneous thesis on the beauty of the Rosedale road — half wilds, 
 half avenue, which the city was to honor •m&i a park, inclosing 
 the river, at some future time. It was a mild winter day — quite 
 like spring, so that he forgot the mystery of the rendezvous, and 
 as the air exhilarated him he grew quite sentimental. Nell pres- 
 ently interrupted him : 
 
 " I shall have to turn back soon, as we have a dinner-party 
 this evening. Mr. Dorr is stopping with us, and papa has invited 
 some friends to meet him. I must put you down near the falls, 
 and I shall have to tell you at once why I asked you to come." 
 
 But she seemed even then reluctant ; she leaned back wearily, 
 and let the lines fall loosely on her knees, as the two gray ponies 
 fell into an easy trot. " My note to you," she continued, in a tone 
 of repressed emotion, "was proof of how much confidence I 
 .have in you. What I am going to say will show you how well I 
 like you and how deeply I have your good fortune at heart." She 
 stopped and sighed, as if searching for words to go on. Fred was 
 regarding her attentively, embarrassedly. " Papa, for some rea- 
 12 
 
258 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 son, is very angry with you, and Herbert has asked me never to 
 invite you to the house again. I think I know why Herbert is an- 
 gry with you. I quite approve your conduct, and so does mamma. 
 Certain things said last night at the dinner-table led me to think 
 that you were the subject of conversation between my father 
 and Mr. Dorr. Papa talks quite freely before me at the table, 
 knoviing that I rarely pay any attention to his business affairs. 
 
 I couldn't resist attending, however, so soon as I heard your 
 name mentioned ; and while the gentlemen remained at their wine, 
 I staid in the room, and I fancy they didn't see me. I made out 
 from the conversation that Mr. Dorr is to force the stockholders 
 of the ' Eagle ' to sell him a controlling vote, and that you are 
 to be dismissed, and your place offered to Mr. Hilliard." She 
 turned crimson as she pronounced the name, and stopped, palpi- 
 tating and choked. " I would talk to papa and try to dissuade 
 him, but I know it would do no good. He never permits us to 
 interfere in such things. He is very angry with you for some 
 reason, and it is he who is doing this. The stock is to be bought 
 in Mr. Hilliard's name, so that papa and Dorr sha'n't be knovim 
 in the affair. If this warning is in time, and you are enabled to 
 see your friend Mabbit, or find any means of saving yourself, I 
 shall be so happy, because — because you have been so good to 
 me, and you are such a noble fellow — " But she was now sob- 
 bing, and the lines escaping from her hands as she groped for her 
 handkerchief, Fred seized them and her hand at the same time, 
 and raising it to his lips kissed it gratefully. 
 
 " You are a noble, kind heart. God bless you ! — and I could 
 almost be glad that the affair happened, to give me such an evi- 
 dence of your solicitude. I know I don't deserve it, but it is pre- 
 cious to me all the same." 
 
 " I think you deserve it. An honest man deserves all the grati- 
 tude a woman can show. You must remember that I don't for- 
 get that day in July, when you risked your life for us.'' 
 
 " Ah, but it was not my good fortune to do you such service 
 as Hilliard's ! " He stopped.recalling suddenly Mrs. Albion Cir- 
 cester's revelation of the morning. 
 
 Nell didn't say a word, and appeared not to have heard the 
 
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 359 
 
 name. They drove on in silence for a time, until, looking at her 
 watch, she asked him to turn back. " If you care to come to the 
 house, don't let papa's or Herbert's enmity keep you away. My 
 friends are my friends, and I shall always make them welcome. 
 If you don't mind the disagreeable part, I don't." 
 
 " No ; after what has happened between your father and me 
 and Herbert, it would be impossible for me to cross the threshold ; 
 but I shall see you elsewhere, and I shall never forget your kind- 
 ness. You are the sort of girl that makes a man understand how 
 men warred and died for a woman's smile — for a woman's love." 
 
 She gave him a quick, questioning glance, and then grew 
 ghastly pale. Her hand trembled as she gave it to him when he 
 got out, and when he caught the last glimpse of her as the phaeton 
 shot away, there were shining drops in his eyes, that were not part 
 of their usual sparkle. He stood quite still, looking after her, until 
 a bend in the road discovered him to her, when she waved her 
 hand and was gone. " What a noble nature it is ! How happy 
 she will make some man ! I hope she will get one deserving of 
 so much goodness, unworldliness, and sincerity. Does she love 
 that troglodyte Hilliard, the essence of egotism and insincerity ? 
 In God's name, I hope not ; she deserves better fortune than that, 
 poor thing! Better some simpering, thick-witted inconsequent 
 than that moral octopus ! " He walked on rapidly now, his mind 
 reverting to the scheme for his own dispossession. 
 
 " I was rash in provoking Grimstone. I might have known 
 the means he would employ. I had full warning in the fate of 
 Wayne and Blackdaw. What could be done ? The half interest 
 in the ' Eagle ' will require seventy-five thousand dollars. Where 
 could I get such a sum ? " But the more he studied, the more 
 helpless he saw himself. His contract was for three years, and, of 
 course. Dorr would pay the five thousand dollars a year gladly to 
 get rid of him, so that there would be no pretext to cany the mat- 
 ter into the courts. 
 
 Mabbit was his warm friend. He owned a third of the stock. 
 If he could get him to work among the other large share-owners ! 
 It was worth the effort, and he reached the office determined to 
 leave no means untried to fight the fight to a victorious end. 
 
26o THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 THE HAND OF CRCESUS AND THE VOICE OF ANARCH. 
 
 Meanwhile, most of the great corporations of Valedo had 
 suspended operations for the winter. The columns of fire that 
 lighted the hills around the city by night, in sign of its prosperity, 
 were now thin air. The clouds of smoke that signalized its 
 thrift by day, had disappeared, and the blue horizon could be seen 
 on all sides, for the first time, almost, since the town was a slug- 
 gish Indian trading-post. Ten thousand men were idle, and thou- 
 sands of families foodless and moneyless. Trade of all sorts came 
 to a stand-still. The public press began to cry out for paper 
 money, and instilled the idea among the working-men that the 
 cause of the depression was lack of a convertible medium. 
 
 The land was as rich as it had ever been. -Property was of the 
 same value. The crops had been abundant. There was no money 
 to move them. Congress was called on to issue greenbacks. It 
 was even proposed to authorize the corporation to issue notes 
 convertible into national bonds. Every journal in Valedo, except 
 the " Eagle,'' clamored for this novel system of public spoliation, 
 and Fred was denounced as an agent of the New York bond- 
 holders, bent on sucking the life-blood from the honest, industri- 
 ous classes of the country. Public meetings were held, and peti- 
 tions forwarded to the representatives in Congress, demanding an 
 unlimited expansion of the currency, and denouncing the policy of 
 specie payment. The demagogues in both parties fell in with the 
 rising cry. Killgore at once put himself at the head of the move- 
 ment in Congress, and he was followed by half the Optimate lead- 
 ers. 
 
 The shallower men among the Ultrocrats hastened to sub- 
 scribe to the doctrine, and for a time the great corporations which 
 had precipitated the crisis trembled on the brink of ruin. Secret 
 meetings were held in New York, Valedo, and other great finan- 
 cial marts, and the politicians taken to task. It was too late, 
 however, to attempt to stem the current, and the leaders in Con- 
 
CRCESUS AND ANARCH. 261 
 
 gress, not daring to openly oppose the popular clamor, pretended 
 to push the greenback measure with unabated zeal. It was in 
 Wall Street and the bureaus of the corporations, however, that 
 the real legislation was matured. Popular rage would soon die 
 out, and then safety would return. The only difficulty was the 
 Ultrocrats. However misguided, they were honest in advocating 
 measures looking to the relief of labor, while the more thought- 
 less were willing to seize any means to oust the Optimate from a 
 power they had long abused. As the winter advanced, the misery 
 of the unemployed became more pitiable. In Valedo, thousands 
 were on the verge of starvation, and the most alarming threats 
 were openly uttered. Meanwhile "society" had never been so 
 brilliant, its excesses so sustained or splendid. The idle working- 
 man in his squalid barrack might read day after day of the magnifi- 
 cence of the balls and receptions in which the rich squandered the 
 thousands that would have fed and clothed the poor. In the long 
 hours of the idle day and in the freezing nights around their mis- 
 erable hearths, a sullen hatred of the " best," the " respectable," 
 and the dominant began to pervade the most patient and endur- 
 ing. 
 
 Grave men assembled in the halls of the trades-unions to 
 consult on ways and means. To these meetings noted public 
 agitators were invited, and most of them spoke words of evil 
 counsel. Fred was surprised by a delegation that came to invite 
 him to deliver a lecture on " Capital." Beyond a cautious treat- 
 ment of the subject in the " Eagle," he had never fully developed 
 the theory he had outlined in his unpremeditated outbreak to 
 Grimstone. He was still further sui-prised when the spokesman 
 of the delegation confided to him that his controversy with the 
 millionaire was known ; that one of the employes of the " Eagle," 
 a member of the Union, had heard every word of it, and that his 
 sentiments had made him the idol of the united unions. He was 
 reluctant to identify himself with the membership, as he believed 
 that his best usefulness to the working-men would be in the atti- 
 tude of an outsider ; but as his persistent refusal aroused doubt in 
 the minds of men naturally suspicious, where all conditions seemed 
 banded together to browbeat and deceive them, he finally con- 
 
262 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 sented. He was listened to with profound attention by five thou- 
 sand men, and forced to repeat the address in several districts. 
 
 His theory was so lucidly stated, and so directly in the channel 
 of the nebulous imaginings of the multitude, that the unions adopt- 
 ed " free trade and labor rights " as their watch-word — Fred taking 
 care to make it plain to them that the protection advocated by 
 corporations enabled them to keep up prices, and exact enormous 
 returns on money invested, while the human capital invested got 
 the smallest possible rewards. His purpose was to keep the 
 men from riot and revengeful outbreaks, which a few among 
 them had begun to demand. The majority were with him in 
 seeking redress through enlightened laws, when an incident 
 occurred that aroused the most peacefully disposed to passionate 
 retaliation. 
 
 So soon as the double crisis, the greenback craze and the union 
 of the working-men, arose, Grimstone had concerted with his syn- 
 dicates a policy for the newspapers controlled by them. They were 
 to ascribe the depression to over-immigration, the Chinese and 
 Italian, and dwell on the over-production of the last ten years, 
 pointing out the eleemosynary conditions upon which the great 
 capitalists had employed labor for years back. Eminent pub- 
 lic speakers were called in to address the disaffected, and turn 
 their thoughts to other causes for the hard times. Hilliard 
 was impressed into the campaign, and a great mass-meeting, 
 attended by the unions, was arranged in Grimstone's opera-house, 
 vvhere beer and sandwiches were to be served ad libitum. 
 
 Bands played from the street balcony, and the whole square 
 was alive with the idle crowds attracted by the free bread and beer. 
 Inside the Academy was packed to the roof. Many of the leading 
 Union men were given place on the stage, but there was no one 
 to present the speaker. He came for\vard himself, and it was re- 
 marked by the reporters that he was not this evening in the dis- 
 tingui full dress with boutonniire that he had worn at the Athe- 
 nasum. He was clad in a sober tweed, close-buttoned and unobtru- 
 sive, and when he began with the words " Fellow bread-winners," 
 there was a burst of derisive laughter from those nearest the stage. 
 But he was an admirable speaker, full of the verve of address, and 
 
CUCESUS AND ANARCH. 
 
 263 
 
 the gift of improvisation ; his unstudied allusions and illustrations 
 were the most captivating parts of an argument able, ingenious, 
 picturesque, and anecdotic. He held the great audience in an at- 
 tention fervid as it was reluctant. He convinced no one, but he 
 plainly charmed the house. He pointed out adroitly the use that 
 designing men were making of the masses, partly as dupes, partly 
 as culprits, and bore steadily on the point that labor and capital 
 must be in the most perfect amity, or neither would gain the end 
 sought in common. He satirized in light disdain the novel theo- 
 ries of capital that had recently been propounded by a fantastic 
 young dreamer, whose education had unhappily ended where that 
 of useful men begins. At this there was a murmur and some hiss- 
 ing. He added, of course brains and handicraft are capital in a 
 sense, but where would they be if there were no money to pay 
 them when they had produced their work ? As for free trade, 
 which its apostles were venturesome enough to promulgate in this 
 community flourishing under the blessings of the tariff, he had no 
 fear that the intelligent working-men of the country would help 
 an agitation whose purpose was to reduce them to the condition 
 of the pauper laborers of Europe. 
 
 At this point a young man arose in the audience and asked 
 respectfully if he might put a question. 
 
 " Certainly," said Hilliard. " That's what I'm here for." 
 " Well, then, sir, will you please to tell me how it is that, if we 
 are protected in our labor, that we are thrown out of a job every 
 winter when food is scarcest, and our wages so low that even 
 when work is full we can't save anything? I used to work in 
 Manchester, England. I got four shillings a day the year round. 
 Four shillings, that's a dollar. If I worked extra, I got a shilling 
 an hour. I laid away money on that, for it didn't cost me half to 
 live that it do here. And again, ye see," he continued, encouraged 
 by the nods of assent about him, " nobody could raise the price of 
 provisions in England as yer syndicates and comers do here, and 
 a man could tell the year round what his bread and beef were to 
 cost him. Here we can't tell from day to day whether we are to 
 pay twenty cents or thirty cents for beef, eight or twelve dollars 
 for flour, seven or nine dollars for coal, and so on wdth everything. 
 
264 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 The men that own everything and are protected make their own 
 prices, and we have to pay them. And I can say for the pauper 
 labor of England that I've wrought a bit in all the busy places 
 from Glasgow to Cardiff, and I've never seen the misery and want 
 of this country. You will ask me why I came. I just wanted to 
 rove a bit, for I was only newly married, and had but one child. 
 I heard so much about America, and the riches that lay ready for 
 every man's hand, that I had no peace till I came. I would be 
 a glad man to be back to-morrow at my bench in Wigan, and 
 there's hundreds of my mates that's like me." 
 
 He sat down, and a murmur of approval sounded from the 
 whole audience. 
 
 " It's a very well-put point, and I'm obliged to you," resumed 
 Hilliard, melodiously. " It is such intelligent reasoning men as 
 you we need in this thriving country, and I'm sure that, in the 
 near future, you will change your mind about going back to the 
 stagnant life of the old country. As to your question, it is hard 
 to answer, for it involves some of the profoundest problems that 
 beset the labor question. Generally it may be said that toil is 
 benefited by high prices. Money is plentier when prices are stiff. 
 As to capital, it could not exist in industries if it were not guarded 
 by wise tariff laws. If the tariff were removed, all the great works 
 that make Valedo prosperous would have to come to a stop, be- 
 cause capital could be more profitably employed in other fields. 
 This, however, is only a temporary condition. We shall be strong 
 enough in a few years to contest the markets of the world with 
 England, and then we shall have no more tariff." 
 
 " And meanwhile must labor starve ? " asked the Englishman. 
 "By no means. Capital will share its last cent \vith labor, as 
 it has always done." 
 
 A general and derisive groan saluted this Samaritan sentiment, 
 and Hilliard, flushing slightly, went on, obviously embarrassed, 
 but without betraying any ill-humor. He wound up by assuring 
 them that the capitalists were as eager to see the suspended ma- 
 chinery in operation as the working-men, and that measures were 
 on foot to bring back the piping times of industry. 
 
 There was faint applause, and a motion to thank the lecturer 
 
CnCESUS AND ANARCH. 265 
 
 for his able discourse. But this was met by such an uproar that 
 the question could not be put. 
 
 As Hilliard withdrew the clamor was deafening, and he hur- 
 .ried through the wings and down the stairs to the street. As he 
 reached the lower landing the floor shook beneath his feet, the 
 walls seemed to rock, and he heard from above a sound as if a 
 thousand voices joined in one quavering, despairing, blood-cur- 
 dling groan. In the hoarse roar there was the sharp mingling of 
 crashing timbers, like the detonation of small cannon. He turned 
 in irresolute horror, and the next instant found himself struggling 
 under the rush of feet, as a mass of human figures impelled them- 
 selves headlong down the narrow stairway. The roar above, 
 swollen into a multitudinous shriek, was echoed from outside, and 
 as he emerged, torn and bruised, into the open air, there was a 
 wide, open space in front of him deserted by the crowd, which 
 stood in a compact, clamoring swarm on the opposite side of the 
 square. He looked upward for an instant, and behind him. 
 
 . His heart froze to his ribs ; the sky was lurid with the reflection 
 of flame, and a dense cloud of smoke stood above the building. 
 The walls seemed to palpitate and tremble, and as he fled toward 
 the opposite mass one of the outer chimneys came crashing to 
 the pavement behind him. He made his way around to the front 
 of the building. Men were struggling and battling in madness 
 and desgair to clear the wide doorways. The police, only a few 
 of whom had arrived, could not maintain order, even if they had 
 been able in the sudden emergency to devise it. Mangled and 
 wounded men soon began to issue out, aided by the more coura- 
 geous and level-headed of their companions. Inside, crash after 
 crash could be heard, as if volleys of artillery or dynamite charges 
 were exploding. 
 
 It was far into the night before systematic efforts could be put 
 in force to extricate the victims. By this time the cause of the 
 catastrophe became knowm. Hardly had Hilliard disappeared, 
 when the sudden movement of the mass in the parquet caused the 
 floor near the stage to sink. The crash was heard only by the 
 body nearest the break. They made a stampede toward the gal- 
 leries; this depressed the breaking supports suddenly, and the 
 
266 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 columns under the balcony gave way ; then the two galleries above 
 sagged, precipitating those nearest the edge into the balcony. 
 After that there was no intelligible report. In the rush for the 
 stairways, men, intent only for their lives, paid no heed to the phe- 
 nomena of the disaster. No one could say when the interior 
 caught fire ; but, long before the whole body had issued from the 
 holocaust, the space bounded by the four walls was a burning 
 caldron. How many perished was never definitely known. 
 
 Two hundred were accounted for among the missing ; over 
 an hundred more were crippled for life. The next day, and 
 many days thereafter, were full of sorrow and woe and terror 
 to Valedo. Even the " best " saw the propriety of foregoing 
 the gayeties of the drawing-room. Public halls were turned into 
 hospitals. Money was subscribed lavishly to bury the dead and 
 provide for the widows and orphans. Subscriptions came from 
 all parts of the country, and Grimstone headed them all with a 
 check for twenty thousand dollars. But when the first benumbing 
 sense of horror began to die away, the clamor for vengeance was 
 heard. 
 
 The " Eagle " had pointed out plainly that the disaster was 
 due to the defective construction of the building, and that the 
 blame must be put either on the ignorance of the architect or the 
 parsimony of the owner. The grand jury would meet in March, 
 and the tragedy must be sifted to its first causes. The other jour- 
 nals gave but a lukewarm support to this ; but the public took 
 up the cry, and it was plain that a vigorous examination would 
 ensue. It was at this sinister juncture that the board of mana- 
 gers of the " Eagle " summoned Fred to a meeting, and an- 
 nounced the sale of the stock to Archibald Hilliard, Esq. ! A 
 resolution was handed him, passed at a previous meeting, in 
 which his services were extolled in the most flattering terms, and 
 the best wishes expressed for his future well-being and prosperity. 
 
 The treasurer was directed to pay him fifteen thousand dollars 
 in satisfaction of the forfeited contract of three years' control, and 
 Fred's tenure was at an end. His esteemed contemporaries com- 
 mented on the event as one foreseen from the first. Great inter- 
 ests like those of a daily journal could not be safely intrusted to 
 
CRCESUS AND ANARCH. 267 
 
 untrained boys and crack-brained theorists. Having put the prop- 
 erty in jeopardy, the stockholders, as sagacious business men, 
 were forced to bring the erratic young disturber's powers of mis- 
 chief to a close, and Valedo might now look for conservative and 
 rational teachings from the hitherto incendiary sheet. No sooner, 
 however, was the expulsion known to the working-men, than 
 meetings were called of all the unions. Resolutions were passed, 
 denouncing the prostitution of the " Eagle," and recommending 
 working-men to place no more confidence in it, as it was now the 
 mouth-piece of the arch-oppressor and murderer of their comrades 
 and kinsmen, Grimstone. It was further resolved that pressmen 
 and printers should volunteer to work on a penny paper, the edi- 
 torship of which Mr. Carew should be invited to assume, and that 
 funds should be raised among the unions of the whole country to 
 establish a trustworthy vehicle for the promulgation of the work- 
 ing-men's views and purposes. Fred, when the offer was made 
 to ,him, pointed out the futility of such a scheme. Any organ of 
 any one interest, he showed them, could only hope for support 
 from the interest concerned. A newspaper, above all enter- 
 prises, must have the whole public welfare for its platform, and 
 no good could come from such an experiment as they proposed. 
 
 He had, however, a plan, which he thought was better. An 
 afternoon paper required but little capital, and he thought he could 
 raise enough for that. He proposed issuing a handsome sheet, 
 which he hoped to make so clever and good-humored that he 
 would get most of his old " Eagle " readers, and Avith the help of 
 the labor-unions he might make it succeed. But he would con- 
 sent to no man's working for a penny less than market rates. 
 Presses and materials would cost twenty-five thousand dollars. 
 He went to Mabbit, whose action showed Fred that he had been 
 a reluctant agent in the transfer of the " Eagle," and stated the 
 case to him. He advanced ten thousand dollars, guaranteed by 
 a mortgage on the presses, and within a fortnight the first number 
 of the " Free Press " was put on the streets. It was modeled on 
 the " Tomahawk," and great pains were taken to make the typog- 
 raphy handsome, distinct, and attractive. It was sold for two cents 
 a copy, and the first week's sales ran over seventy-five thousand — 
 
2 68 THE MONEY-MAKEHS. 
 
 an average of ten thousand a day. Fred knew very well that he 
 could not count on keeping this steadily ; but his plan of publish- 
 ing the exact number issued impressed the advertisers, and he 
 soon got enough of this staff of a newspaper's life to assure him 
 against loss. The wisdom of his plan was at once manifest to the 
 unions. They saw that the " Free Press " was read in places 
 where, as an organ of any one phase of social development, it 
 would never have been seen. Fred had been outspoken and au- 
 dacious under the trammels that the conduct of other people's 
 property puts upon a man of conscience as he was ; but his teach- 
 ings in the " Free Press " were bolder, more radical, and more 
 vigorous. He was strong in a certain vein of jocose irony, that 
 was much relished in Western journalism ; and even the flayed 
 victims of his humorous malice were obliged to laugh with him, 
 rather than be laughed at by the public. He never mentioned 
 Grimstone or Hilliard by name ; but there was no mistaking his 
 covert allusions to the intellectual Antinous of the monopolist 
 Tiberius. 
 
 Before employing classic allusions of this sort, the columns of 
 the " Free Press " were adorned with a condensed narrative of the 
 historical or mythological personages, so that the least informed 
 might see the fitness of the parallel. Hilliard, on his side, 
 maintained the combat with brilliancy and vigor. He lacked, 
 however, the heart in the work that soon gave Fred the victory. 
 Hilliard 's pen was at greater advantage in elegant persiflage and 
 dilettante satire. He was not at all interested in the social prob- 
 lems that fired his rival's heart and inspired his pen. His cari- 
 catures of the young Boanerges amused the drawing-rooms of 
 Valedo, but they carried no convictions to those who read to be 
 convinced or informed. 
 
 Fred, too, had the immeasurable advantage of being an editor 
 — a faculty quite distinct from that of a writer. A finished writer 
 may be an inferior editor, and pretty generally is ; but a good 
 editor has httle need to write. He can select and direct those 
 who write. Hilliard had neither the industry nor aper^u essen- 
 tial to a good editor, especially in a city like Valedo. In New 
 York the editor is just as apt to be a show-piece as a worker ; but 
 
CSCBSUS AND ANARCH. 
 
 269 
 
 there it makes no appreciable difference in the conduct of the 
 journal, because its resources are so great, its space so ample, its 
 news so full, that no one man stamps a journal with his own direct- 
 ing indi\iduality, as seemed necessary a quarter of a centnry ago, 
 and as is still looked for in provincial journals. There people look 
 quite as eagerly for the opinion of the editor, who is known to 
 everybody, as they do for the telegraphic and local news. 
 
 It was a most fortunate thing for Fred that he was an editor as 
 well as a writer, for his enemies did not submit without a struggle 
 to the creation of such a formidable antagonist as a journal that 
 had no stockholders to be bought out in an emergency. The press 
 news, a close corporation in the interests of the Optimate, Fred 
 could not get. The telegraph officials delayed his dispatches, 
 brought them in mangled and unintelligible, and generally ham- 
 pered the news service until suit was brought, and the operators 
 testified that they had been instructed to pay no heed to the " Free 
 Press " work until everything else had been taken from the line. 
 The jury awarded ten thousand dollars damages, and the company 
 carried the case to the higher courts, where one of Killgore's 
 judges reversed the decision. Fred appealed to the United States 
 Court ; and then, as the affair was sure to create a scandal, the 
 company compromised by the payment of five thousand dollars 
 and costs, with a promise to serve the " Free Press " as promptly 
 as other customers. 
 
 But still other means were found to cripple him. The rail- 
 way officials were ordered to keep the sheet from all the trains. 
 Packages made up for the small towns w^ere maliciously thro^\Ti 
 off at the wrong stations. Those sent by post were made way 
 with and never delivered. All these evidences of the prodigious 
 hold of monopoly on the destinies of the citizens were set forth 
 from day to day in Fred's cleverest vein, and the fair-minded be- 
 gan to welcome the breezy, free-spoken advocate of a man's right 
 to himself. When these obstacles were found unavailing, Her- 
 bert Grimstone incited three or four libel-suits; but he shrank 
 from a trial of any beyond the first. Fred managed to involve 
 that young man as the inspiring cause of the action, and it was a 
 grotesque failure. Obviously, fortune had at last begun to favor 
 
270 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the " fool " ; for, in spite of everything, the " Free Press " was 
 thriving amazingly, and the " Eagle " v?as as plainly losing ground. 
 It pursued the general course laid down by Fred ; but instead of 
 opposing and exposing the Optimate, it gently labored with the 
 party in Hilliard's most humorous vein, warning them that the 
 people might, in their exasperation, resort to the Ultrocrats in 
 pure spleen. It was as backsliding saints, not besotted sinners, 
 that it dealt with the party ; and the local bosses, for a time ab- 
 horred and displaced under Fred's reform spirit, returned unre- 
 pentant, if not triumphant, to the control of the local machines. 
 Herbert's triumph was complete when the rentrie of Beaux- 
 jambes to the local stage was signalized by a column of un- 
 stinted laudation in the very page that had once libeled her as 
 indecent and vulgar. Young Valedo remembered for many a 
 day the Lupercalia that expiated the " Eagle's " offense and reha- 
 bilitated the goddess. The " Free Press " caused a run (jSJfiie 
 Latin dictionaries by a significant line alluding to the jifbir as 
 Lupercalian in every sense ! ♦ 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. *^ 
 
 THE guinea's stamp. 
 
 Anterior to the stages of Fred's enterprise herein hastily 
 summarized, other and occult forces were at work, whose influ- 
 ences sprang from what precedes, and bear upon what followed 
 in this history of economic and social complication. The disaster 
 at the Academy horrified the whole country. Artists were sent 
 from the illustrated periodicals, and, in the first confused reports, 
 every journal in the land pointed out the criminality of the own- 
 ers, architects, or builders, in the woeful business. But it was 
 observable in the course of a few days that these first indionant 
 and scorching outbursts were modified, and the fact pointed out 
 that some vicious hand must have undermined the timbers, or 
 
THE GUINEA'S STAMP. 371 
 
 perhaps even fired a charge of dynamite ! The " Eagle " strongly 
 supported this view. The responsibility was thus insensibly 
 shifted upon either the working-men or some evil-disposed mar- 
 plot among them ! Fred, with the concurrence of the directing 
 minds of the local unions, engaged counsel, and secretly set on 
 foot a thorough investigation. Almost the first piece de conviction 
 that came into their hands was conclusive of the responsibility, if 
 not the guilt, of Grimstone. The day of the calamity Rankin, the 
 architect who had put up the building, took to his bed, and ad- 
 mission to see or correspond with him was refused by the doctor. 
 Mrs. Carew and Mrs. Rankin were fellow-managers in the Old 
 T-Ladies' Home, and Fred asked his mother to see if she could do 
 Lanything for the invalid. Mrs. Carew was famous for the prepara- 
 tion of delicacies for the ailing, and her kindly largesse was never 
 refused, even by people who could have transplanted the groves 
 of Roumelia, haiLthey been prescribed by the physician. 
 
 She had vif i^ the house several times, but was not admitted 
 to th e sij^k vman, whom she declared the " regulars " were mur- 
 derin^B» their pestiferous pharmacy of irritants. At length she 
 returned, announcing that she had met Grimstone leaving the 
 house, and that Mrs. Rankin had come to her in a glow of rap- 
 ture. Mr. Grimstone had given her husband a commission to go 
 to Europe for a year, and study plans in Italy for the rebuilding 
 of the Academy. Fred instantly apprised the law^^er, and legal 
 measures were at once taken to prevent this flight, if it were at- 
 tempted before the grand jtirj' had acted on the information the 
 committee was collecting. Word was conveyed to the architect 
 of the measures taken, and there was no further hint of his going 
 abroad. The working-men believed firmly that the massacre had 
 been deliberately planned, as an economic St. Bartholomew's, and 
 though the evidence gathered by the committee disproved this 
 atrocious suggestion, there were certain traces found of a corrup- 
 tion fund, used to keep members of the Union in the ranks as spies 
 and informers. Not only that, but others whose mission it was to 
 insidiously instill such seditious counsels among the ignorant as 
 would lead to overt acts of sporadic rioting and illegalities that 
 would bring the organization within the cognizance of the law ! 
 
2^2 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 The Optimate officials were found to have been leagued with the 
 corporations in this odious work, and evidences of their readiness 
 to meet the slightest outbreak with general massacre were elicited 
 from disaffected agents now hostile to their former masters. 
 These facts Fred, dreading the effect of such disclosures at such 
 a perilous time, prevailed upon the committee to keep from the 
 rank and file. 
 
 When the jury was finally empanneled, and in spite of the 
 efforts of the corporations citizens of only ordinary circumstances 
 were the majority, the investigations went on from day to day. 
 The first ten days' evidence related to the event itself; after that 
 came the inquiry into the cause. Grimstone was summoned ; the 
 entire square around the court-room was crowded. He was ob- 
 viously broken a good deal, and it was plain that he was suffering 
 deeply. He gave his testimony calmly and coldly in the measured 
 tones he always used. He hadn't much to say. He owned the 
 building ; the plans were his own modification of the architect's ; 
 he didn't think that his specifications had impaired the solidity of 
 the structure. This he said, however, hesitatingly. When he 
 quit the room, it was the conviction of those present that his par- 
 simony had limited the builder, and the architect was looked for 
 with breathless interest. He came to the stand, leaning upon the 
 arm of his physician, and supported by his wife. A robust man 
 of large stature, he was shrunken to mere flesh and bones, and 
 his head fell over on his breast when the oath had been adminis- 
 tered. His clerk had the plans and specifications of the Academy. 
 These were unrolled on the long table and frequently referred to 
 during the subsequent testimony. He was questioned for three 
 days. On the fourth he broke down at the question : 
 
 -" In your judgment, would the floors and walls of the Academy 
 have resisted the weight put upon them the night of the accident 
 if your employer had not ordered the change ? " 
 
 He looked despairingly at the questioner, bowed his head, and 
 replied : 
 
 " What I then thought, and what I now think, you will find 
 set forth in a letter I sent Mr. Grimstone. Here is a copy." 
 
 There was a painful, cruel suspension of breath in the audi- 
 
THE GUINEA'S STAMP. 273 
 
 ence as the fatal letter was read. It was, in substance, a protest 
 against the substitution of iron for masonry in the supporting walls 
 and buttresses, and a firm assertion of the architect's purpose to 
 give up the work ; for, if built as Mr. Grimstone ordered, the 
 building would be unsafe, and must ultimately crush out the lat- 
 eral walls, or give way under a simultaneous movement of a mul- 
 titude. There was a cry of horror in the room. The tragedy 
 had been predescribed ten years before its occurrence! The 
 wretched prophet quailed despairingly in his seat For a time 
 the inquiry came to a pause. When it was resumed, the physi- 
 cian announced that the witness could not endure another instant 
 of such a strain, and he was carried, half unconscious, from the 
 room. Then followed days of tedious inquiry into the materials 
 furnished, the workmen employed, down even to the nails, bolts, 
 and mortar. The verdict, when the long inquiry came to an end, 
 found " that the three hundred citizens, who came to their death 
 
 on the of February last, lost their lives through the use of 
 
 imperfect material and inadequate supports to the flooring, but- 
 tresses, and walls of the Academy of Music, and that the respon- 
 sible cause of this defective building was Aaron Grimstone!" 
 The verdict was generally anticipated so soon as the testimony 
 of the architect and builder had been heard. But there was a 
 half-expressed sentiment that Grimstone's wealth and influence 
 would shield him from direct blame. The verdict was published 
 early in the afternoon. The latest edition of the paper contained 
 the appalling news of the architect's death. He had shot himself 
 in his bed ten minutes after a newsboy had passed under his 
 window shouting the substance of the jury's conclusion. 
 
 That evening Herbert, passing the narrow street back of Mrs. 
 Carew's in an open phaeton with Beauxjambes, was recogn"ized 
 by a group of loitering young men, and pelted with bits of gravel, 
 stones, and what not. He turned fiercely and shook his whip, ut- 
 tering a frightful imprecation. At this the men darted out fleetly, 
 and, before the horses could get sufficient headway, the vehicle 
 was stopped. Herbert, struggling manfully, was dragged out and 
 haled toward the canal. Beauxjambes set up a piercing shriek ; 
 and Fred, sitting in his room, heard it, rushed out on the roof of 
 
274 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the piazza, then leaped lightly to the ground, and was at her side 
 in an instant. 
 
 " What's the meaning of this outrage ? Who are you ; what 
 do you want ? " he asked one of the ruffians near the roadway. 
 
 " Oh, it's only us, Maister Carew. We're just havin' a bit of 
 sport wi' young Grim ; Luke's got him in the alley yonder, and 
 he'll give him a smart duckin', I'll go bail ! " 
 
 Beauxjambes, hearing the words, leaped from the carriage, 
 and cried, imploringly: 
 
 "O Mr. Carew, dear Mr. Carew, save Herbert from those 
 murderers ; I know they'll kill him ! Dear Mr. Carew, you were 
 his good friend, and I'm sure you ought to be still. Oh, for God's 
 sake, save him ; they are murdering him ! " 
 
 Moving swiftly over the ground toward the group, with whom 
 Herbert could be heard pleading, threatening, and scuffling, Fred 
 hurried forward in the twilight. The men were gibing and laugh- 
 ing, and Fred felt no apprehension of anything more serious than 
 rough horse-play. As the two reached the end of the narrow 
 alley, the group became defined visibly against the sky, on the 
 very brink of the canal. Herbert's struggles had ceased. He 
 was, at the moment they reached him, high in the air, and the 
 next they could see a confusion of arms and legs sprawling over 
 the water, and then heard a heavy splash. 
 
 " O my God, my God, my husband ! In the name of Heaven, 
 save my husband ! It is my husband, my husband ! What shall 
 I do? What shall I do?" 
 
 Even while Herbert was whirling through the air, Fred had 
 his coat and waistcoat off. As he slipped off his shoes, he en- 
 deavored to tranquillize the hysterical woman at his side, keeping 
 his eye fixed on the spot where the body had disappeared. The 
 men stood by, laughing and joking on the amount of villainy that 
 would be washed out of young Satan by the ducking ; but they 
 became suddenly silent when a minute or two passed and there 
 was no sign in the water that the young man had come up. 
 
 " Stand by to help, men ! " shouted Fred, and plunged into 
 the water as near the spot where Herbert had sunk as he could 
 guess in the rapidly waning sunset. The lights from the bridge 
 
THE GUINEA'S STAMP. 375 
 
 near by fell in long, golden ridges on the placid water. Beaux- 
 jambes on her knees, her hands clasped, and her lips moving as 
 if in prayer, thought it an age before Fred finally shot up, a yard 
 from where he had plunged in, bearing Herbert in his arms. The 
 men helped to pull him up — refusing, however, to help Herbert ; 
 and, when both were safely on the bank, darted away with an 
 explosion of derisive laughter, and the threat that the next time it 
 would be a rope for young Satan. Herbert's body was warm, 
 Fred, taking him on his shoulder, bade the delirious Beauxjambes 
 bring his shoes and garments, and set out svriftly for his owm 
 home. It was but a few minutes' walk, as he had the key of 
 the rear gate ; he gave the victim over to his mother, who was 
 famous in an emergency of that sort, and presently the young man 
 opened his eyes and stared about him in amazement. Fred had 
 gone to change his clothes ; there was no one in the room but 
 Mrs. Carew and Beauxjambes, who sat helpless and sobbing at 
 the foot of the bed. Fred, meanwhile, had put on dry apparel, 
 and gone out to see about the horses. He found two or three of 
 the men guarding them, and said, sharply : 
 
 " That's pretty serious work you've been doing, my lads ! 
 Lucky for you that young Grimstone isn't in a condition to take 
 any action in the matter, or you would see States-prison for a 
 year or two." 
 
 " We wuz only goin' to hev a bit of fun vri' him, ye know ; 
 we wouldn't hurt a hair of his delicate head for the ^vurld. His 
 time's not come yit. We've worse in store for the old "un." 
 
 Returning to the invalid, he found him in his mother's bed, 
 which was near the dining-room and on the ground-floor. He 
 had not spoken a word, but Fred thought he could detect that it 
 was embarrassment, not ailing, that kept him silent. He closed 
 his eyes when Fred came to the bedside. As his mother left the 
 room, bending over him, Fred asked, in a kindly tone : 
 
 " I don't think I have any clothes that will fit you. Shall I 
 send a servant to your house for some, or would you rather have 
 your wife — " 
 
 " Who the devil told you she is my wife ? What business are 
 my private affairs to you, you infernal sneak ? " 
 
276 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " O Herbert, dear Herbert, forgive me ! It was I, in my de- 
 spair, when I thought they were killing you — I forgot, and called 
 you my husband ! " 
 
 " Then you are a damned fool, just as I said you'd be." 
 
 " Mrs. Grimstone," interrupted Fred, with urbanity, " I will 
 not remain to mar the amenities of the hone3nmoon. I see the 
 bridegroom has quite recovered, and my services are no longer 
 needed. Good-night." Encountering his mother in the hallway, 
 she asked : 
 
 " Who is that young woman, Fred ? I never saw her before. 
 Is she a relative of the Grimstones ? " 
 
 Fred almost laughed in his mother's face as he thought of 
 her horror if she knew that the young lady was an actress, for the 
 stage was almost as great an abhorrence to the honest widow as 
 a " Romish " altar. Answering to the form rather than the fact,' 
 Fred said she was a near relative, and her presence quite proper 
 under the circumstances. He told her to ask Herbert whether he 
 would wait for his clothes to dry, or send home for some. Her- 
 bert, it is hardly needed to say, preferred to wait for his garments 
 to drj-. 
 
 At ten o'clock his mother came to Fred to say that a chill 
 had followed Herbert's recovery, and that it would be dangerous 
 for him to be removed that night. It was agreed that the family 
 should be informed of the situation, and Fred went in to tell him 
 of it. He found him delirious, and motioning to Mrs. Herbert, 
 said to her as they reached the hall, " I am going to send a note 
 to Mrs. Grimstone, informing her of your husband's condition." 
 
 " Oh, no — no — no ! O dear Mr. Carew, no, do not ; for then 
 I shall not be allowed to stay near him ! They do not know we 
 are married. It was secret, and Herbert isn't going to tell them 
 until the right time comes." She clasped her hands piteously. 
 " O Mr. Carew, don't drive me away ! I know what you think 
 of me. I know what your mother would think if she knew. 
 I knew you wouldn't tell her, for I know, even though Herbert 
 hates you now, what a kind heart you have. I love him — I love 
 him, and I am not so bad as you think me. My life has been 
 what my destiny made it. But I do love Herbert, and he loves 
 
THE GUINEA'S STAMP. 
 
 277 
 
 me. Ah ! dear Mr. Carew, if you had ever loved, if you were a bit 
 hke other young men, you would feel for me. I can't give him up. 
 O my God, don't ask me to do it ! " 
 
 " But what will his family think if he remain from home all 
 night ? " 
 
 Even in her misery, a flash of the old Beauxjambes shone for 
 a moment in the wan face. " Who but you could ask such a 
 question > He never goes home at night. He stops with me at 
 the • Villa.' " 
 
 " Well, you're his wife ; you certainly ought to have a say in 
 the matter. I will tell my mother— or, stay, you women know 
 how to do these little deceptions best ; suppose you settle it with 
 her?" 
 
 She snatched his hand and kissed it. 
 
 " You are adorable, and you shall not regret it," she said, with 
 a sob of relief. She succeeded in impressing Mrs. Carew with the 
 imprudence of frightening the family at that late hour, and add- 
 ing adroitly, having already discovered her devotion to Hahne- 
 mann, that they would come with Dr. Phlebotomy, the stiffest mar- 
 tinet of the old school in the city. That was quite sufhcient for 
 Mrs. Carew. It was bad enough to have the abhorred Grimstone 
 blood in the house, but to have that butcher — never ! She would 
 have concealed Herbert a decade rather than that the walls made 
 sacred by Dr. Carew's ministry should be desecrated by a " regu- 
 lar." Herbert's fever deepened during the night, and Mrs. Carew 
 passed most of the time by the bedside. She urged Mrs. Herbert 
 to lie dowm, but had not the heart to insist against her tearful, 
 pleading eyes and angelic abnegation. 
 
 Fred couldn't look his mother in the face when, at the break- 
 fast-table, she broke into a eulogy on the devotion, womanliness, 
 and good sense of Mrs. Herbert, as in the watches of the night 
 the young woman had confided the relationship to her hostess. 
 Her belief in Hahnemann and implicit trust in the widow's ad- 
 ministration of the infinite pilules had entirely won Mrs. Carew's 
 heart, and Fred thought with some dismay of what he would 
 have to endure when the honest woman learned that she was the 
 odious creature that the " Eagle," under his own trenchant sway. 
 
278 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 had excoriated so unmercifully. But even our virtuous Fred, you 
 see, held that a passive deception was justifiable in the case of a 
 pretty woman ! Was there ever a man that didn't ? Don't you 
 think that St. Anthony, while muffling his head that he might not 
 see the flesh \\ith the eyes of the flesh, would have taken his staff 
 and done manful battle to save the sirens from the harsh hands 
 of the ascetics, to whose age and imbecility beauty in distress 
 was no longer a challenge to all that is chivalrous in manhood ? 
 
 Fred, whose joy it was never to have told his mother an untruth, 
 or deceived her, even in the days that jam lured boys of his age 
 into the small sin of fibbing, went to the office quite cheerful over 
 this first innocent hypocrisy. When during the day, however, Mrs. 
 Albion Circester drove up to the office and sent for him, he found 
 the truth of the adage that a lie breeds a lie. He cautioned the 
 lady not to betray the poor girl, if she called ; and, of course, call 
 she must, to see the helpless Benedict, and tease him if she got a 
 chance. Mrs. Herbert was in agony when the fine lady insisted 
 on coming in, but Mrs. Albion smiled very sweetly on her, gave 
 her a significant nod, and went to the invalid's bedside. Herbert 
 was less feverish, bat weak and languid. He looked horribly em- 
 barrassed, but during a moment that Mrs. Carew was preparing 
 an " attenuation " of some pilular substance, she whispered : 
 " I know it all ; don't be afraid. I'll never betray you." 
 He turned away cross and pettish, and was no doubt glad that 
 Mrs. Carew had forbidden him to speak. He could see that his 
 wife had found means of satisfying the Argus, and he gloomily 
 wondered why he had been such an infernal fool. For Herbert, 
 like many another, had married in haste. The sick-bed was the 
 first leisure he had enjoyed since that felicitous event, and repin- 
 ing rather than repentance was his present plaint. 
 
CJ!<ESUS ON THE PYRE. 279 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 CRCESUS ON THE PYRE. 
 
 Aaron Grimstone was in the bank directors' room when 
 he heard his name shouted by the newsboys that March after- 
 noon. One of the younger clerks was with him arranging papers. 
 He started as he heard his own name, and, turning from the young 
 lad, he said, hoarsely : 
 
 " Go and get me the afternoon papers." When they were laid 
 before him he did not immediately take them up. As the lad re- 
 sumed his place, Grimstone said again, without turning his 
 head: 
 
 " Frank, go and find Herbert, and tell him I want liim at 
 once." 
 
 Left alone, he looked out sidewise toward the doors leading to 
 the banking oflices. They were slightly ajar. He touched a 
 bell, and, when a boy appeared, said : 
 
 " Close the doors, and, if any one asks for me, I'm engaged." 
 
 The apartment had windows on the side-street. He got up 
 and drew the shades down carefully, then he took up a paper. 
 He turned the page, and read the jury's verdict entirely through. 
 The pallor of his face deepened into a bluish, livid blankness until 
 the circles under the eyes seemed bulged and swollen. His nos- 
 trils shrank until his nose seemed a mere sharp interrogation- 
 point. He mechanically took up one journal after another, and 
 read each through — slowly, absorbedly, as if trying to evade 
 any mental processes of his own in the matter. There was no 
 comment by the editors ; the report had come in too late. Only 
 the naked fact that the deaths of three hundred people were laid 
 at the door of one man's parsimony and greed ! His mind began 
 to work retrospectively on the wound he had received. The 
 golden rounds in the ladder of his life first shone out, canrjing 
 him in soft, gratulatory, sensuous ecstasy into the zenith of world- 
 lincss. There was something jocund and stimulating in the pro- 
 
28o THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 cession of the airy sprites, as they whisked one by one before his 
 mental retina, massing in auriferous clouds, vague, shadowy, se- 
 ductive. 
 
 He recalled, ^\^th whimsical distinctness, sitting with his daugh- 
 ter before the San Sisto Madonna in Dresden, and losing himself 
 in speculating the cost of each cherubic head in the clouds sur- 
 rounding the Virgin ; if the picture were worth the millions it was 
 rated at in the hand-book, then these cherubs became mixed with 
 his own invisible legions ! These were the agency of his phalans- 
 tery ; they had obeyed his magic code, they had built up Valedo, 
 where he found it a barren vale nesding under the shadows of its 
 now million-producing hills. Insensibly as the train grouped itself 
 on the golden pinnacles, a crimson stain marked them. There 
 was blood on their golden outlines, blood on their hands^ 
 blood oozed from the pores of their Bodies, their smirking leer 
 faded into the wan shadow of joyousness. He rubbed his eyes 
 and started up. What! after a lifetime of energies devoted to 
 this graceless community, did they turn in his old age to curse 
 him, to mark him with worse than the brand of Cain ? 
 
 Where were his potent millions ? How did a handful of im- 
 poverished beggars dare sit in judgment upon him, the anointed 
 of Mammon, the brain and architect of a thousand wealth-produ- 
 cing employments 1 By what legerdemain did a dozen beggars, 
 who had never emerged from the lowest forms of money-getting, 
 affix this intolerable brand upon his brow — he, a Colossus among 
 pygmies, lord of millions, arbiter in courts. Congress, and Legis- 
 latures ? How was it he had not foreseen dastard attempts of 
 this sort, and fashioned methods of preventing them ? He had 
 blocked expedients as decisive and dangerous. He had invented 
 means for stifling the clamors of the press ; he had smothered 
 inquiry in Congress and the State Legislatures which would have 
 exposed scores of the greatest, and given them, bound hand and 
 foot, to the vulgar hatred of the sordid masses ! How was it he 
 had not protected himself ? Then his mind reverted to the days 
 when he had been worshiped as the patron and protector of the 
 nascent greatness of the town. It was this phantom-fleeting, 
 delusive adulation that had thrown him off his guard. A king 
 
CRCESUS ON THE PYRE. 281 
 
 now reigned that knew not Joseph ! He was to be subject to 
 the laws of the low-bom ! 
 
 He was hated, and his humiliation gave the masses more joy 
 than his early popularity. His rivals, too — Dorr, though bound in 
 golden bonds, wouldn't he seek to take advantage of the shackled 
 giant to carry his ambitious rival schemes ? 
 
 Just as his crowning enterprises were on the verge of realiza- 
 tion ! Just as he was about to reap the well-earned rewards of 
 forty-five years of Herculean tasks ! Just as Herbert was to 
 carry into statecraft the qualities that he had applied to finance ! 
 Just as the dreams of splendid alliances he had cherished were 
 about to take shape in the marriages of Herbert and Eleanor to 
 the ruler in politics and the arch-arbiter of capital — ^was his 
 majestic edifice to be dabbled with blood? And such blood, the 
 vulgar, insensate mob, whose plaudits and fawnings he could 
 have grained by a day's extra pay! — ^an ignorant, witless horde, 
 whose taking off was a mercy to them, and a gain to the economy 
 of the community ! They couldn't die in their besotted squalor, 
 but must thrust themselves upon him, to leave a murderous mem- 
 ory on the fair fabric of his life-work ! 
 
 Where was the justice of Heaven those fools, the preachers, 
 prated ? He took up the paper again, and ran his eye over the 
 names of the twelve jurors. "Ugh!" he said, as his glance 
 stopped at some of them that had been for years on his own 
 salary-rolls. " Cattle that I've fed from the common trough ! A 
 curse must come to the country where reputation is the sport of 
 such ignorant malice and legalized calumny ! " He touched his 
 bell again. When the boy came he said, with his back to him : 
 
 " Take the coupd and fetch Senator Killgore here. Tell him 
 I must see him at once. If he's not at home, he wiU be at his 
 law-office." 
 
 " The Senator was here not five minutes ago, sir ; but we told 
 him your orders, and he went away." 
 
 " Very well ; find him." 
 
 He put the evening papers out of sight, and then set to pacing 
 the room, resuming the irritated introspection of the last half-hour. 
 He could get no further than the atrocious -wTong done him. He 
 13 
 
282 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 could see no moral issue involved. He was a humane Samson, 
 set upon by a horde of ignoble Philistines, bent upon destroying 
 him under the vast edifice he had reared in the common weal. 
 But he would not be an Agonistes. He would destroy the PhiMs- 
 tine horde, and rear new columns, not for his own martyrdom, 
 but for theirs. When presently the boy reappeared, announcing 
 the Senator, Grirastone seated himself again, and said over his 
 shoulder : 
 
 " Ah, Killgore, I am glad to see you ! " though this was a met- 
 aphor, unless he had eyes in the back of his head. Killgore came 
 and dropped jadedly into a chair at the side of the desk fronting 
 the banker. 
 
 " This is an outrageous business ! I came as soon as I heard 
 it, to see what is to be done. We can, I think, hush it up, though 
 a verdict is a devilish unpleasant record to go on the files." 
 
 " Yes, I sent for you to take the matter in hand. Isn't there 
 some way to prove malice .•■ " 
 
 " I'm afraid not. The verdict is based on Rankin's report. If 
 he hadn't weakened, or, rather, if he hadn't been idiot enough to 
 blow his head off — I don't speak of brains, for the cur had none — 
 we might fight the thing. The only way I see out of it now is to 
 let the matter rest until we can elect our friends to the city offices ; 
 then we shall find means to erase the testimony and nullify the 
 effect of the finding." 
 
 " It would be better if that could be done with the present offi- 
 cials, as they are opposed in politics; the effect would be stronger, 
 and the work itself less open to suspicion." 
 
 " I doubt the possibihty. There are not enough members of 
 the council that we can influence. Most of them are young men, 
 and are not open to the arguments that bring older men around. 
 I doubt if fifty thousand dollars would do it." 
 
 " Would a hundred thousand do it ? " 
 
 " It might, if that young fire-brand Carew could be made to 
 listen to reason." 
 
 " Why Carew ? " 
 
 " He holds the Ultrocrats in his hand. I never knew a case of 
 so young a man.capturingf a party. I must say, however, that he 
 
CRCESUS ON THE PYRE. 
 
 283 
 
 fairly owns their allegiance, for his plans gave them success, and 
 the ' Eagle,' under his sway, made them, for the first time in six- 
 teen years, respectable. I find many of our own people more 
 than half-way into the Ultrocrat camp.'' 
 
 Grim stone rose and paced the floor, Killgore relapsed into si- 
 lence. Without looking at the Senator, Grimstone abruptly asked : 
 
 " If this Carew fellow could be brought over to us, or silenced 
 — sent away, say — what chance would you have for carrying the 
 spring elections ? " 
 
 " There are two ways we might carry them. Get the unions 
 embroiled in a riot, and so many of them indicted and terrorized 
 that they can be kept from the polls ; or resume work, and order 
 the overseers to watch them in voting. It will cost like the mis- 
 chief ! more, of course, than in previous elections, for the men have 
 had a taste of their own way, and will demand higher prices than 
 formerly. Some of the operators and foremen, too, have gone 
 over to the other camp ; they are not tied up as we are vdth ward 
 bosses, who want place, and the men stand an equal chance for 
 office in the Ultrocrat primaries." 
 
 '• A riot, you say, would g^ve us the day ? " 
 
 " Unquestionably : it would terrify the sentimentalists who have 
 been captivated by Carew's mad reform doctrines. Do you know 
 that more than half our best people, the lawyers, college-men, and 
 bookish people, are free-traders ? I have been perfectly disgusted 
 with the letters I have received, complaining about the Optimate 
 attitude on the tariff. A riot, however, with the destruction of 
 just enough property to make a big bill against the State, will 
 bring these people to their senses, and re-establish the Optimate 
 in the State and nation for another twenty years." 
 
 " Well, about this verdict : try the present office-fellows, there 
 will be no difficulty about the sum you name. If you find it im- 
 practicable, we will try the other plan, but in any event we must 
 carry the election — that is vital. — Well ? " This was addressed to 
 the clerk whom he had sent in search of Herbert. 
 
 " Mr. Herbert has gone driving, sir, and it is not known when 
 he will return. Mrs. Grimstone told me to say to you that he 
 would very likely be home to dinner." 
 
284 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 When the young man had withdrawn, Grimstone, facing the 
 Senator, said : 
 
 "That reminds me, Killgore — the marriage might just as 
 well be now as any time — eh ? " 
 
 " With all my heart ; but Betty says that Herbert fights shy of 
 fixing the day. He seems to be chained to the heels of that 
 actress, and Betty has been a good deal put out about it. My im- 
 pression is that she thinks Herbert wants to back out." 
 
 " I will see that he doesn't back out I " said the other, grimly, as 
 he put on his overcoat, and the two gentlemen passed out, bowing 
 urbanely to the personnel who were preparing for the closing of 
 the establishment. 
 
 Herbert, as we know, didn't favor the family with his presence 
 at dinner. That repast was taken at the lake, with a party of 
 New York friends and Beauxjambes, and it was on his return 
 from the rural banquet that he was waylaid, as we have seen. 
 
 No allusion to the verdict was made at the dinner-table. 
 Neither Mrs. Grimstone nor Nell knew of it. Mr. Grimstone 
 usually brought the afternoon journals home with him from the 
 bank. This evening he had forgotten them ; for, when Nell, with 
 the serving of the coffee, told the servant to go and fetch them 
 from her father's pocket, he said, absently : 
 
 " I think I didn't bring them," and then turned the conver- 
 sation quickly upon Herbert and Betty. He thought that it was 
 high time for that young man to marry and settle down. He was 
 thinking of taking a trip abroad, which would keep him a year, 
 and he wanted to see Herbert married and housed before he quit 
 the country. It was likely that he should henceforth gradually 
 withdraw from business, and he wanted to see his children set- 
 tled. Eleanor started at this, and, getting up from the table, went 
 into the drawing-room. She sat absently running over the keys 
 of the piano softly ; and presently, when she was quite absorbed, 
 her father's voice startled her. The room was dim, as the chan- 
 deliers were not lighted, and only one or two side-burners half 
 turned on. 
 
 " I want to talk with you, Nelly," and, fixing a large, low, up- 
 holstered chair by her side, he drew her, slightly shrinking, toward 
 
CRCESUS ON THE PYRE. 285 
 
 him. " Tell me, daughter, do you think better of Dorr? Do you 
 feel that you can marry him and be happy ? I am not going to 
 put an atom of pressure on you. If you can marry him and feel 
 no repugnance, I shall be very glad ; if not, I haven't a word to 
 say. But, before you answer, let me say to you that love-mar- 
 riages are foolish, and for the most part end unhappily. Your 
 mother and I never considered such a thing; you see we are 
 happy " — he hesitated, as he felt Nell's frame moving with a visi- 
 ble shudder. He added, a little huskily — "happy in our way. 
 Look about you; see the miserable endings of the unions 
 wrhere people married for what they call love ! If it be the man 
 who brings the money, the woman turns into a frivolous, gossip- 
 ing gad-about, hovering on the thin edge of infidelity, or belittled 
 by the tongue of scandal. If it be the woman who brings the 
 money, the man wastes it upon wantons and club excesses, and 
 in the end misery — " 
 
 " It is too late, papa ! I told Mr. Dorr last night that I could 
 never marry him, and he has released me from the engagement. 
 Though it will hardly please you to hear it, I am sure he was re- 
 lieved and glad. Men don't think so much of your daughter as 
 you do, papa — don't you know that ? " 
 
 He got up, startled and confused. Was it possible Dorr had 
 foreseen the jury's action ? He was glad to be released from an 
 odious alliance ! What did it all mean } Even Billiard had not 
 demurred at giving Nell up. In his heart he would have forgiven 
 Archy all the wrongs he alleged at his hands, if he had sturdily 
 said, " Your daughter is what I want, not your money, and I 
 mean to have her ! " But he had given her up, and there was an 
 ease and apparent relief that, even to his absorbed senses, looked 
 very much like the altruistic resignation vdth which the Christian 
 accepts the sorrows of his neighbor ! In his ovsm affairs, the pro- 
 cesses of Aaron Grimstone's brain moved regularly, inevitably, in- 
 exorably ; but now he was confronted daily with conditions and 
 phenomena that he had no clew to regulate, correlate, or with 
 which he could mentally sympathize. Self-interest he had found 
 to be the key of human action. What could these new conditions 
 mean, where men whom he had gauged deliberately stepped 
 
286 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 aside and refused the coronal chaplet of all their dreams and 
 struggles ? Had it been the mad-brained fool Carew, he could 
 have reconciled the fact and the motive : but Hilliard, eaten with 
 egotism ; Dorr, the breath of whose life was gold, abdicating the 
 scepter of millions ! Aaron Grimstone thought for a moment con- 
 fusedly that senility had stolen upon him ; had he lost his intellect, 
 he asked himself, or had he passed the threshold of sanity, and 
 was he in a world of gibbering maniacs ? He must have been 
 prodigiously upset, or he never would have asked the question 
 that he now put to his daughter, who sat leaning listlessly on the 
 piano : 
 
 " Do you love Hilliard ? Would you marry him ? " 
 
 She turned and looked at him in the dim light, and her arms as 
 they fell evoked a harsh, dissonant crash from the keys of the piano. 
 
 " Love him ? I loathe him ! Marry him ? I would murder 
 him, rather ! " 
 
 " What's this ? Have you at last found out the sleek hypo- 
 crite and accomplished adventurer he is ? " And, in the overmas- 
 tering triumph of the discovery, he stood and laughed — laughed 
 till his hard blue eyes softened into tears, and he sat down beside 
 his daughter. 
 
 " God be praised ! I am easy on that score. Do you know, 
 Nell, the horror of my life has been that I should have to give 
 you to that mercenary profligate ? — for I thought you so blinded 
 and besotted by his graces of form and manner that you would 
 never penetrate him, never discover that he despised and toler- 
 ated you, until you were the victim of his egotism and money- 
 seeking." 
 
 " Please say no more about it, papa. I never want to hear his 
 name again ; I never want him brought to the house. He is as 
 completely gone from my heart as the odor of that dead flower 
 there from my senses." 
 
 There were laws in human conduct, then, after all ! He had 
 not counted on this stroke of fortune. Nell might now marry 
 whom he pleased, for the experience she had gone through would 
 make the approaches of adventurers more difficult. He embraced 
 her tenderly, saying, in a sort of triumphant rapture : 
 
CSCBSUS ON THE PYRE. 
 
 287 
 
 " We shall go abroad in May. You shall mingle with men 
 worthy of you in England, and you shall return a countess or 
 duchess or princess, what you will, if you will be glided by me. 
 Think of it, Eleanor : we shall see little noblemen playing about 
 in these rooms, and you shall be the first in rank in this town ! " 
 
 Fortune's vials were not all filled with blood and bitterness, 
 after all, and he rubbed his bands in a discreetly subdued joy. 
 Eleanor had never seen her father in such a state of sentimental 
 exaltation. It frightened her — he so sustained and undemon- 
 strative. She couldn't account for it, and it startled her. Hith- 
 erto he had never admitted that there was any attainment higher 
 than riches. The man that owned the most millions, and knew 
 best how to make them bring more, this was his ideal man. Now 
 he forgot Dorr, his rival co-equal in millions, and hardly less astute. 
 What could it mean .' Had the long tension and final disappoint- 
 ment turned his brain ? Were that form she thought adamant, 
 and that mind she regarded as a delicate but unimpalrable ma- 
 chine, suddenly thrown into disorder ? She could think of noth- 
 ing else that would explain his almost senile raptures. 
 
 Presently Mrs. Grimstone entered the room. 
 
 " Has Herbert come in yet ? " Grimstone asked, eagerly. 
 
 " No ; he is driving, and I fancy he won't be back until late," 
 she answered, not surprised at the question, for father and son 
 had frequent evening sessions in the private studio alone. A little 
 later, Killgore and his daughter called. As the gentlemen were 
 leaving the room, Mr. Grimstone pinched the young lady's chin 
 playfully and asked, archly : 
 
 " When are we to fix the day, little girl ? We're tired waiting 
 lovers' caprices ! " 
 
 Betty blushed, and turned appealingly to Nell. 
 
 " You mustn't ask young ladies such questions before folks, 
 papa ; it's very awkward. Go away, and talk your business and 
 politics with the Senator, and Betty and I will talk about love and 
 marriage " ; and she smiled a little sadly, for she had a premoni- 
 tion that Betty's love was to be sorrow and shame, like her own. 
 Herbert, however, didn't come that evening, for he was lying in 
 fever at Mrs. Carew's, and, if Beauxjambes could hold her own. 
 
288 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 his family were not to be enlightened until he was able to tell 
 them the story himself. 
 
 It was Herbert's habit, no matter how prolonged his carousals, 
 to visit the bank about midday quite regularly. His father waited 
 impatiently until past one o'clock the next day, and then sent a 
 messenger with imperative directions to find him. The man was 
 gone until five o'clock, and returned with the alarming report that 
 the young man had taken the horses the afternoon before, and had 
 gone to the lake for a fish-dinner. The horses were still gone, but 
 had been seen in the city the evening before. The banker sat in 
 a pulseless, swooning horror. He instantly concluded that the 
 unions had made away with the unfortunate boy so soon as the 
 verdict was made known the day before ! There was not one 
 among the thousands in Valedo whose hot hatred of the banker 
 waited vengeance impatiently, who could have resisted a pitying 
 sjrmpathy had the power of seeing the man's heart been given 
 him in those awful hours of uncertainty. It was as if every dollar 
 in the many miUions he had brought together had been dipped in 
 his blood and each one rolled away into a bottomless abyss, leav- 
 ing him the phantom of himself. Herbert gone, Herbert dead ! 
 of what value his millions .'' Of what use his imperial power ? 
 Herbert dead ! what was there for Iiim to live for ? Herbert, 
 who was to have carried the Grimstone genius into politics, and 
 make in the nation's destiny the same mark that he had made in 
 its industries ! But, no ; the handsome boy couldn't be dead. 
 Surely, no one could have the heart to dabble his young limbs 
 in blood ! He was too \vinning, too gay, too generous ! He 
 couldn't have an enemy in the world, and who would visit ven- 
 geance against the father upon the innocent son ? Suddenly he 
 leaped to his feet, his eyes aflame. 
 
 Yes, it is for ransom they are holding him. He would give 
 them millions to restore his boy ; yes, his adored millions ! He 
 would offer them all if Herbert might be given back alive. He 
 got in the coupe, ordering the driver to go to Killgore's office. As 
 the vehicle crossed the main street, he saw out of the window 
 Fred Carew coming toward him from the " Free Press " office, on 
 his way to dinner. A thought flashed into the banker's head. He 
 
CJiCESUS ON THE PYRE. 289 
 
 ordered the driver to halt, and, as Fred reached hailing distance, 
 he said, in almost beseeching tones : " Ah, Carew, get in here ; I 
 want to talk with you." To Fred's inexpressible amazement he 
 held out a trembling and feverish hand, and instead of the three 
 fingers he had never been known to increase, save to money co- 
 equals, he gave him the whole hand, and even retained it when 
 the perplexed young man had taken his seat. 
 
 " My son Herbert, my son, where is he ? You must know ! 
 Is he dead ? " 
 
 The coupi was still standing, and the voice rang out so loud 
 and pleadingly that the passers-by were arrested by it Fred 
 tapped on the glass for the driver to move on, and, as the wheels 
 turned, he said : " Herbert is still a little feverish ; but there is no 
 danger — " 
 
 But his words were cut off. The other, relinquishing his hand, 
 flung both arms about his neck, ejaculating fervently : " Oh, thank 
 God ! What a noble fellow you are ! you saved his life ! ah, I 
 know you saved his life ! You shall have a million — yes, you 
 shall have a million — you shall have whatever you want. Oh, 
 I'm not the heart of stone you think me! Did they hurt my 
 boy .' " 
 
 " No, he was not hurt ; he is suffering from previous impru- 
 dence, and the cold water gave his system a shock — " 
 
 " Cold water ? What do you mean ? I don't understand." 
 He put his hand to his forehead and stared at Fred helplessly. 
 
 " Why, haven't you heard ? " 
 
 " No, I've heard nothing. Where is he ? " 
 
 Fred had been talking under the supposition that Mr. Grim- 
 stone had either seen Herbert, or had heard directly from him. 
 He then told the story, and asked : 
 
 " But how came you to speak to me, not knowing anything 
 of the affair .? " 
 
 It was difficult for the father to answer this question. It 
 would have been an insult to Fred, after what he had just heard, 
 to reveal his behef that he was the intimate of men who could 
 have been guilty of the dastardly designs he had conjured. His 
 wits were his own again, however, and he made answer, plausibly : 
 
290 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Oh, as a journalist, popular among the lower orders, it just 
 flashed into my mind, as I saw you coming, that you would be 
 likely to know of my son's whereabout.— But where is the block- 
 head going?" 
 
 The fact was, the driver alluded to as the " blockhead " had 
 halted before Killgore's ofBce, where he had been directed to go. 
 The old gentleman pulled down the window, and said, sharply: 
 
 " Drive to Mrs. Carew's, on Valparaiso Avenue ! " 
 
 Then he made Fred go over the whole story again, holding 
 his hand the while, greatly to the young man's embarrassment. 
 
 It is needless to say that Fred made no allusion to Mrs. Her- 
 bert, and the father did not seem to notice the curious circum- 
 stance of his son's driving about alone. 
 
 " And you leaped into the canal and hauled him out alone ? 
 What a fine fellow you are ! And you knew that it was Herbert, 
 my son, when you did it ? " 
 
 The old man eyed him curiously and relapsed into reverie. 
 This was the man that he had twice launched all his subtle power 
 against ! This was the man that he was even then slowly under- 
 mining, to bring him in the end to the felon's dock ! This was 
 the man that three years before he and his agents had sent into 
 the world innocent, but branded with dishonor ! Aaron Grim- 
 stone was emerging into a region of the unreal and absurd, that 
 all his astute powers were helpless to grapple with. Then a gro- 
 tesque thought flashed into his head. How much this boy is like 
 NeU ! Unselfish, humorously ignorant of life's realities, but some- 
 how breaking through all the barriers of fate and enmity, if not 
 victorious, at least serene and unscathed. Could there be, after 
 all, such a thing as moral responsibility ? — a golden chain which, 
 however tangled and lost in the waste and refuse of things, holds 
 men safely from destruction, even as a rope at sea holds the ship- 
 wrecked, though the waves beat upon him, and the rocks lacerate 
 his flesh ? Out of finance, Aaron Grimstone's ratiocinative pro- 
 cesses were crude and confused, as you see ; but he caught a 
 glimmering of that luminous truth which is the life of the world, 
 that it is given all men to see fitfully, and some to know perma- 
 nently. When they entered the house, Fred left Grimstone in 
 
" THE REVOLT OF CALIBAN." 291 
 
 the reception-room, and hastened to apprise Mrs. Herbert of the 
 unwelcome visitor. He called her into the dining-room, and briefly 
 explained the circumstance, adding : 
 
 " It was cruel to make the father suffer such an ordeal, and I 
 feel that I have done wrong. I will now show him into Herbert's 
 room, or, rather, get my mother to take him in ; for I can't see 
 Herbert myself. There is a limit even to my patience with that 
 young man." 
 
 Mrs. Herbert pressed his hand and furtively kissed it, as he, 
 blushing scarlet, turned away. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 "THE REVOLT OF CALIBAN." 
 
 That night momentous events took shape and the conse- 
 quences of finality among the Valedo unions. Delegates from all 
 the societies in the State met the local unions in secret There 
 were three hundred thousand working-men represented. Reports 
 were read showing that, of this whole number, half were out 
 of employment; that the monopolists were drawing the same 
 dividends as vjrhen labor was at its best ; and that, in the majority 
 of suspensions, comers and stock operations were the cause. 
 Speeches were made until midnight ; the sense of the meeting was 
 clear that some action should be taken. Appeals had been made 
 and disregarded. The meeting voted "en masse" that arms 
 should be supplied, or taken wherever found, and that the prop- 
 erty of the monopolists should be destroyed. As one of the 
 speakers said, " That will give some of us work to rebuild." 
 
 The most inflammatory speech was made by an ex-member of 
 the Valedo Council, a middle-aged man named Anthony Blair. 
 He was an Optimate in politics, and had been accused of buying 
 his way into the Council, with money furnished by the Optimate 
 committee. He advised the burning of all the railway-buildings, 
 the tearing up of the rails, the destruction of the rolling-stock, and 
 
2g2 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the wreck of all sorts of property owned by corporations. This 
 he declared was the only way of arousing the public. 
 
 " Look at the French working-men ; see how they forced the 
 Government to heed them. They burned all the public buildings 
 in Paris. Let us imitate their tactics, and we shall force our op- 
 pressors to right our wrongs ! " 
 
 The assembly cheered these sentiments wildly, but a more 
 conservative member offered a resolution that the executive com- 
 mittee should decide on the work to be done, and the manner and 
 time of doing it. The vote was close, but the resolution was car- 
 ried. Now the executive committee consisted of one delegate 
 from each union, and these were the trusted men of the brother- 
 hood. 
 
 When the meeting adjourned, the men moved in squads home- 
 ward. Blair lived in the outskirts of the town, and quite across 
 it in a direction opposite the Union assembly-rooms. A group 
 of comrades going in the same direction left him at his gate, 
 and good-night was said by one of them as Blair entered the 
 house. At the comer one of the men crossed the street, and 
 stepping back, opposite Blair's door, concealed himself in the yard 
 behind the palings. Another ran swiftly around to the alley divid- 
 ing the long square, and climbing the fence, concealed himself 
 where he could command a full view of Blair's rear gate. 
 
 The bells of the City Hall were striking one when the man on 
 watch, in the alley, saw a light flash in the back room of Blair's 
 house. Then all was darkness. He could hear a door close, but 
 as the wall was in shadow, he could see no one. In a moment he 
 heard a shuffling of dried leaves. The gate was unlocked, and 
 the figure of a man appeared. He looked up and down the nar- 
 row alley, and seeing the way clear, emerged, and locked the gate 
 after him. Then he set out toward the business quarter of the 
 city. The man on watch leaped the fence, ran along under its 
 shadow, vaulted lightly over Blair's gate, and running through his 
 yard, displayed for a second the bright bull's-eye of a dark lantern, 
 and hurried up to the cross-street. He was followed, at the same 
 moment, by the man concealed opposite Blair's house. Both 
 reached the comer almost at the same time. 
 
" THE REVOLT OF CALIBAN." 293 
 
 The figure of a man could be seen hastening westward, and 
 the two followed cautiously after, keeping well in the shadow of 
 the fences and trees, which grew very thick on the sides of the 
 Valedo streets, quite to the busiest thoroughfares. The first fig- 
 ure continued onward — once, meeting a policeman, he stopped for 
 a moment, and then pursued his course. The pursuers evaded 
 the officer by crossing the street. They kept their man in sight 
 until, arriving near the court-house, he suddenly plunged into the 
 devious penetralia of alleys and cuh-de-sac surrounding this most 
 ancient edifice in the town. The two men separated, one darting 
 down the street leading south of the building, and the other con- 
 tinuing to the point where the pursued had disappeared. He 
 caught sight of him again just as he was ascending the three steps 
 leading to the rear door of Killgore's law-office. The irregular 
 fronts of the buildings and the darkness of the narrow streets en- 
 abled the pursuer to get almost opposite the door as it opened 
 after a preconcerted signal. When the door stood open, the glare 
 of a night-lamp fell on the figure the men had been following. It 
 was Blair. He remained an hour or more, but the watching men 
 did not follow him on his return ; they waited. In a few minutes 
 the door was again opened, and seven figures came out and passed 
 onward to the Albatross Hotel. The watchers followed, and, 
 while one entered with them on the Main Street entrance, the 
 other hurried around the comer and came in by the Valedo Ave- 
 nue door. 
 
 The party went into the cafi, where the bar-tender was lean- 
 ing over the counter asleep. It was nearly three o'clock, and the 
 place closed at that hour. The two men who had followed Blair 
 came to the bar and asked for beer, while the party of seven 
 ordered champagne, and inquired if carriages were still on the 
 stand. When the two working-men had been served their beer 
 they went out. They returned to the assembly-rooms and re- 
 ported what they had seen, and gave the names of the men whom 
 Blair had visited. They were all conspicuous in the suspended 
 industries, and one of them was Killgore's law-partner and coun- 
 sel for Grirastone. 
 
 The committee sat until morning. Men were detailed to watch 
 
294 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 all the public edifices, the railway property, and corporation plants. 
 They were sent in relays that reports might be brought in every 
 half-hour. By daylight all the books had been removed from 
 the railway freight-offices, dynamite had been stored in the various 
 old buildings which the companies had long talked of replacing, 
 and fire-arms were placed in conspicuous places without guard or 
 lock and key. Comrades in the telegraph-office reported a sum- 
 mons on the Governor for militia to be ready at a moment's no- 
 tice. But not a city official had been warned, nor any of the city 
 militia made ready. The chairman of the committee — ^a young 
 Vermonter knovra as " Grit " Plummer, commonly called " Grit " 
 — however, smiled grimly when the reports were in. 
 
 " They mean to have us destroy all their old truck and then 
 make the State pay for it, and of course we would bear our share 
 in the tax. They have laid dynamite where we can seize it ; the 
 banks, with their vaults empty, are thrown open. The home 
 militia might fight us in earnest ; we are to walk right into their 
 trap, and then they will go to the Legislature demanding laws to 
 bind us hand and foot. Ah ! they are long-headed, but they've 
 got to wake up early to catch Fred Carew asleep with more than 
 one eye ! " 
 
 For it was the artless Fred who had first warned the leaders 
 of the Union of the astute policy of their oppressors. He had 
 been enlightened by one of the printers whom Herbert had en- 
 gaged to strike on the " Eagle," and, though he knew none of the 
 details, the hint to a pertinacious fellow like the young radical 
 was sufficient. 
 
 By ten o'clock in the morning all the railway shops, stations, 
 and rolling-stock were seized by the working-men. The engi- 
 neers struck — the train-men joined them ; the entire personnel 
 either joined the revolt or stood aloof. None of the working- 
 men were armed. They had been cautioned against carrying 
 even a penknife. There was to be no violence. The first step 
 was to seize the property of the corporation; the next to ne- 
 gotiate. 
 
 So soon as the outbreak was known, the wildest terror was 
 stimulated in the residence quarters and the commercial streets. 
 
•' THE REVOLT OF CALIBAN." 295 
 
 Men, who seemed to be controlled by a directing spirit, went 
 about warning shopkeepers and others that sack and bloodshed 
 might be expected every instant. Hundreds, concealing jewels, 
 valuables, and what not, fled in carriages to other towns. Rail- 
 way and telegraphic communication was suspended. Outside 
 of some broils incited by the prophets of bloodshed there was no 
 fighting when darkness came. The executive committee had 
 sent a communication to the syndicate of the corporation, stating 
 briefly that the working-men proposed holding all corporation 
 property ift pledge, and all corporate industry in suspension, until 
 an agreement had been signed recognizing the equal rights of 
 human capital with money or property capital. 
 
 : The syndicate returned the communication without an answer. 
 The unions met again that night, and again the moderates carried 
 the vote, Blair, as before, demanding fire and sword " to bring the 
 tyrants to their knees." The executive committee's powers were 
 enlarged, and they were given authority to appoint officers if, in 
 their judgment, attack seemed imminent. 
 
 As before, Blair vras followed and traced to the same rendez- 
 vous, only that to-night there were a dozen spies tracked to various 
 places known to be tenanted by the agents of the syndicate. In 
 the morning Blair and these men were quietly seized in their beds 
 and taken to the assembly. Threatened with instant punish- 
 ment, Blair acknowledged that he had been hired by the syndi- 
 cate to stir up the men to outrages, which would make the Unions 
 liable to the law ; that he had reported verbally the proceedings 
 of the Union ; and that he was to have a large reward if he could 
 induce the men to use the dynamite, or seize the arms placed in 
 the freight-station for that purpose. He furthermore confided to 
 them that scores of men were in tovra pretending to be working- 
 men, who were to set fire to buildings, and provoke encounter 
 with peaceable citizens, to compromise the Union ; that so soon 
 as the panic was sufficiently spread, the militia now marching from 
 four directions were ordered into the city by noon ; that, in short, 
 a " case " was to be " made up " that would put the unions at the 
 mercy of the syndicates not only in Valedo, but in every industrial 
 center of the country. 
 
296 THE MON^EY-MAKERS. 
 
 The examination was taken down in short-hand. When the 
 presiding officer called the delegates to order, he spoke with 
 solemnity of the crisis, pleading with his comrades to listen with 
 calmness and legislate with prudence ; that the designs of their 
 enemies would be fatally fulfilled by haste or intemperate conduct ; 
 that while the revelations about to be made to them would be a 
 surprise to a majority, the guardians of the working-men's interests 
 had known the syndicate's deadly purposes from the first. The 
 disclosures were then read. The assembly sat mute, stupefied, 
 immovable, listening with horror to the circumstantial recital of 
 devilish malignity devised for their destruction. When the end 
 came, the president looked anxiously into the faces of the silent 
 company, as if reluctant to precipitate the discussion of such atro- 
 cious plotting. The silence grew ominous as well as painful, 
 when a delegate representing the coal-workers of Transylvania 
 arose. He began in a subdued tone, when those in front shouted 
 for him to take the platform. 
 
 " We, who have earned our bread and worked our way in the 
 mines, are not surprised by this. It is only the treachery of our 
 own that makes me feel heart-sick; we have met all this sort 
 of thing time and again. We have seen laws made to bend our 
 souls and bodies, on the strength of misdeeds that were none of 
 our doing. We have seen our Congressmen and Assemblymen 
 taking the testimony of our oppressors on evidence made by them 
 and bolstered up by the false witnesses of our own ranks ; but 
 we have never, thank God, met men who had lived by the sweat 
 of their brovvr willing to put the rope around the necks of their 
 mates ! Well, we know the worst ; now let us act ! They mean 
 to make us slaughter the innocent ; they mean to make us guilty 
 of riot before the law. I, for one, intend to give them their fill, 
 and I have a hundred men behind me that have the same 
 mind. 
 
 " It's no living at all to live as we live. If we speak to ask for 
 our own, we are disturbers ; if we meet to talk over our troubles, 
 we are law-breakers ; if we join to demand our rights, we are male- 
 factors. So be it ! Let us take them at their word ; let us give 
 blow for blow ; let us see if our wits be not equal to their brains. 
 
" THE REVOLT OF CALIBAN." 297 
 
 They are few, we are many. Let us take the arms they have put 
 in our hands ; but, instead of using them against the innocent, as 
 they have laid out for us, let us go straight at the oppressor ; let 
 us bum over their heads their ill-gotten palaces ; let us trample 
 under the feet of our just rage their wicked bodies ; let us spare 
 no man or men who have been bold and open in taking the bread 
 from our mouths, the roofs from our heads ! They have made laws 
 to make us afraid ; these laws are for the most part murderous and 
 one-sided. We are a majority, we are the law; let us make 
 greed and theft and craft afraid of us ! We can do it ; we live 
 under the lynch-law of Mammon. Let us set up the lynch-law 
 of common rights ; let us make the thieves tremble, and let no 
 honest man be harmed. They have ten thousand soldiers — pos- 
 sibly more. We have half the hearts of the country with us ! 
 Let us give blow for blow, for in the end it is death by inches ! 
 The more we yield, the more we are forced to yield. As well die 
 now, and in manful fight, as by the fireless hearth, or in the 
 stifling deeps of the mine. They declare war : let us give it to 
 them, and give it like men ! " 
 
 He ceased, and walked back to his seat, the assembly appar- 
 ently about equally divided in murmurs of assent and disapproba- 
 tion. While he was speaking, Fred had made his way from the 
 body of the mass to the platform, and, when silence was restored, 
 he stood before the men, and by a gesture asked to be heard. 
 
 " Before you take further action, I ask you to hear a word of 
 counsel from a man that has never denied the unfortunate, or 
 misguided the doubting. Listen for a moment to Father Gagne- 
 pain, the Vicar of St. Patrick's. I have taken the liberty of bring- 
 ing him here, for he is a workman, if any of us be." 
 
 There was a general murmur of assent, and the priest, a gen- 
 tle-faced, gray-haired man past sixty, arose in the rear of the hall. 
 So soon as he was recognized, there was a general invitation for 
 him to go to the platform. As he advanced slowly, the delegates 
 fixed themselves expectantly in their seats, but there was no ap- 
 plause. With a placatory wave of the right arm, that seemed the 
 sig^ of the cross, he began, in a voice of lingering pathos and 
 appeal : 
 
298 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Men of sorrow, wrath under wrong puts men in the state 
 of iron in its red heat. No wise thing was ever done in rage. Let 
 us be calm first, and then counsel. Labor is the lot of all. Work 
 is peace. War is the hand of hate. We must turn our forces 
 from that, for that is the weapon of our enemy. As man hates 
 only those he wrongs, we have no hate for those who oppress 
 us. We toil, that others may reap : we must act in such a way 
 that our lives as well as our labors shall not be their spoil. We 
 want wages, not warfare ; confidence, not contention. 
 
 " It is out of the same pot of life we all feed, and all for the 
 same end — sustenance. Some with a pewter spoon — ^we are the 
 ones that have that — we dip out our boiled barley, our husks, and 
 are nourished in the end. These others, with the silver and gold, 
 get the same in another form — what matter that they get more, or 
 that they go deeper into the pot ? It is a pot, after all, and it feeds 
 all, and it can keep none of us from dying — ^it can make no soul 
 whiter, no heart bigger, no conscience purer. Let us leave the 
 strife, and the wrong, and the wickedness, to those who know bet- 
 ter, and still give their hearts to it. Let us lift our spoon, and, when 
 we have done, wipe our souls from rage, and hatred, and caviling, 
 and all manner of evil that clouds our day, and leaves us no force 
 for the night. If we haven't the wit of those that scorn us, we may 
 have the peace of those that believe God thinks well of a creed of 
 soberness, as well as a creed of force ; that it is not want of know- 
 ing that makes some of us vials of virrong-doing, but over-know- 
 ing ; for I'm sometimes fain to believe that all the harm that comes 
 to men, comes from too much schooling, and pruning, and glossing 
 the soul, and the sense, and the word. I've read much ; and all 
 my reading goes to make me sure that it is not those that know 
 most that do best by their kind. It's not those that carry the 
 torch of science that throw most light on the feet of the worn — 
 the farer in the rocky roods of the vineyard. Pleasure is the 
 creed that rules, and money is the altar. We that are poor and 
 humble, witless and unkempt, have no place in the service of this 
 creed, any more than the slaves in Rome's lusts, or the pastimes 
 of a king. But bear the wrong for a joy that will come— a joy 
 to which the things of this world are thin and streaked. I know 
 
" THE REVOLT OF CALIBAN:' 299 
 
 that fine words butter no parsnips— that the hope of the sight of 
 God won't fill the empty belly — ^but neither will wrath, and blood- 
 spilling, and hatred, and the mad things that your rage prompts 
 you to do. So stifle your wrath — ^wait ; laws that fail you can be 
 made over ; men that crush you can be made to see that your 
 want is their own loss ; and when you can count on that, you 
 have an arm stronger than lead or iron, surer than fire and 
 sword. 
 
 " Trust me, my friends, I am counseling you in the interest of 
 those you hold dear — those who, with your strong arm, are in 
 sore distress, but who, without it, would be still more helpless. It 
 tries me sorely to say what is in my heart ; but, as your comrade 
 and guide, I must warn you that, bad as the oppressor is, you 
 are not wholly without blame. You have listened to the evil 
 counsels of evil men, and you cling to the thought of strife and 
 destruction. Riot, pillage, ruin, and all the wrathful train that 
 have been filling your minds, are the agencies that the crafty puts 
 in the hands of the unwise for their own hurt. Your poor bodies, 
 planted in this ground, would not rise in a bloody crop for the 
 destruction of your enemies ! Your blood would spring up in a 
 dragon-brood to destroy those you love. Bloodshed washes out 
 no wrongs : men never see clearer through crime. Death solves 
 no riddles." 
 
 When I recall the rapt attention, the solemn interest of the 
 men who listened, the wave of refluent hate that sunk and died, as 
 these words, almost mystical, fell with the cadence of a prayer 
 and the soothing of a benediction, I am reminded of ^schine's 
 saying to the wondering students in Carthage, who were incredu- 
 lous as to the effects of that tumultuous harangue of Demosthenes 
 which drove his rival from the city of the Violet Crown. Father 
 Gagnepain knew his audience— many of them were of his flock — 
 and the words that he used were filled with a meaning for them 
 that the cold types can never convey. It was like Joshua's protest 
 to Israel. When the speaker meekly withdrew there was a low 
 and fer\'ent " Amen ! " and it was unanimously resolved that no 
 blow should be struck that was not in self-defence, even when 
 worst came to worst. 
 
300 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 While with the committee, Fred was handed a bit of paper, on 
 which he read, in a sprawling, almost illegible hand : 
 
 "Mr. Carew: Won't you give me a minute's speech? I 
 have something important to tell you. I. D. Gleason." 
 
 Fred, recalling the name, went at once to see the man. He 
 had been doing well in his new employment — ^time-keeper in 
 Killgore's steel-works. Gleason was agitated and timid. He 
 withdrew into an obscure comer when he saw Fred approaching, 
 and said, huskily : 
 
 " Mr. Carew, you mustn't ask me how I know what I tell you. 
 I know it ! It is this : Watch is to be kept on you through the 
 trouble by several men, who can come into court and testify to 
 all you do. If it so happens that you do nothing that can put the 
 law on you, then worse is to be done." 
 
 " Worse ! What do you mean ? " 
 
 " O Mr. Carew, it's your life they want ; and if you are in the 
 troubles to-day, there are men that will put a ball in you by acci- 
 dent, like ! " 
 
 " Why me .> " 
 
 " Oh, don't ask me ! but it is you that they blame for the ver- 
 dict, and — and — " 
 
 " All right, Gleason ; you have done me a good turn. I'll take 
 care of myself. Ill not forget your service to me." 
 
 Gleason slipped away, as if dreading to be seen. Fred laid 
 the disclosures before the executive council. It was agreed that 
 the editor could do the cause the best service by remaining at his 
 desk. There were men enough to hold the positions taken. It 
 was not likely there would be fighting. If there were, it was 
 arms, not men, that the cause stood in need of. 
 
 He left the council early in the morning. The men were sim- 
 ply to march to the shops and factories, take possession peace- 
 ably, and, under no circumstances, use fire-arms unless attacked. 
 They were met at every point by the organized authorities, who 
 opened a fusillade and then retreated. At ten o'clock Fred was 
 summoned to the shops. The men held possession, and no fur- 
 ther trouble was apprehended. 
 
A MASQUE OF HORROR. 301 
 
 Fires, however, had broken out in several parts of the city. 
 Some cars, that had been stopped en route through the streets, had 
 been pillaged and then fired. Militia froin distant cities could be 
 seen on the crests of the hiUs. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 ^ A MASQUE OF HORROR. 
 
 An ominous silence meanwhile reigned in the city's center and 
 the residence quarter. As the morning broke the crash of mus- 
 ketry and the dull reverberations of exploding dynamite could be 
 distinctly heard by those listening behind the barricaded doors 
 and the guarded shops and private residences. The city militia 
 had been dispersed on their guardian duty. The men were gen- 
 erally posted inside the walls, with improvised loop-holes to 
 enable them to warn off marauders, for it was looting squads 
 that were mainly apprehended so far from the scene of combat. 
 As the day wore on, however, the wounded of both sides strug- 
 gled in a confused mass from the river streets toward the Alba- 
 tross Hotel, where the mayor had secured rooms for the victims. 
 Presently groups of men, not wounded, pressed thither, and it 
 was impossible to distinguish the rioters from the militia and 
 their allies. It was after four o'clock, and the struggle was still 
 kept up at the freight-station, when a thunderous shout, hoarse, 
 prolonged, and blood-curdling, was heard from the combat. 
 
 In an instant the broad Main Street was densely crowded by 
 bodies of men in irregular columns making toward the "Alba- 
 tross.'' They were evidently working by preconcert, for, on reach- 
 ing the building, the mass di\-ided and surrounded the hotel on 
 three sides. The leader entered the office, and, demanding the 
 proprietor, gave him an hour to empty the place, bag and bag- 
 gage. "The hotel was Grimstone's," he said, "and built on the 
 same plan as the Academy." It had been " condemned by the 
 architect and builder, and we are determined that there shan't be 
 any Academy murder here ! " 
 
302 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 It was useless to point out that the rooms could not be cleared 
 in such a time ; that the wounded could not be moved, and that 
 great suffering must follow if it were attempted. The leader 
 was inexorable. The hotel was a death-trap, its destruction had 
 been ordered, and he was there to obey his commands, not to par- 
 ley. The manager knew this, but hoped to gain time. The mili- 
 tia might reach the scene if he could keep the rioters amused. 
 But this the rioters understood as well as he, and the leader, point- 
 ing to the clock, said, significantly : 
 
 " You have already lost seven minutes — in fifty-three minutes 
 we shall have fires lighted on every floor. You have been warned : 
 do as you like ! " 
 
 There were but few people living in the house ; many had quit 
 in the morning, when the threatened disturbance was known to 
 have begun. Fred, who had returned from the contest at the 
 shops, to get out the latest edition of the " Free Press," saw the 
 movement of the crowd from his office-window, and hastened out 
 to inform himself of its meaning. He was cheered by the men, 
 many of whom knew him, and they eagerly imparted the purpose 
 of the foray. He dared not remonstrate, but making his way to 
 the hotel-office, took the leader aside and pleaded with him 
 to stop the attack, and march back to his brethren, who 
 needed every man in the decisive and less criminal action on 
 the railway. 
 
 " Why, man, it was ' Grit ' himself that ordered this diversion 
 after a full vote of the council. I've pledged my head that this 
 man-trap shall not stand another day, and I'll keep my word or 
 lose my head ! Talk won't do any good ; we're bound to do this 
 thing, while we've the power, and we have it now." 
 
 " Yes, you have it, I fear, but it will be costly work for you all 
 in the end." 
 
 " Well, we're in for it now. They wanted us to do enough 
 destroying to give them the whip-hand, and we'll not disappoint 
 them." 
 
 The scene in the corridors now arrested Fred's attention. 
 Women, laden with sacks of clothing and all sorts of belongings, 
 came hurrying down the main stairs, followed by frightened chil- 
 
A MASQUE OF HORROR. .303 
 
 dren and nurses, canying mountains of portable effects. Way 
 was readily and even respectfully made for them by the investing 
 ranks — the men in many cases good-humoredly talcing the 
 women's burdens, and depositing them in the neighboring city 
 buildings. While intent on this piteous spectacle, Fred started, 
 as a woman in g^eat disorder appeared at the head of the upper 
 stairs, carrying a large bundle wrapped in a scarlet shawl. He 
 vaguely recognized the face, as he wondered where he had seen 
 it she reached the vestibule above. He started and trembled ; it 
 was Madame Dominguez, and he recollected now that she had 
 come on to Valedo about the time that Senator Killgore returned 
 from Washington. The leader of the working-men, Brayton, who 
 had been employed as foreman in Killgore's steel-works, recog- 
 nized her too. He turned and spoke to one of the men : a dozen 
 eager and scowling faces were raised as the woman halted irreso- 
 lutely in the upper hallway. 
 
 " The damned Jezebel, she ought to be stripped and ducked ! 
 It was her work that caused the salary grab and the railway steal. 
 Let's give her a taste of the work-folk she despises so much ! " 
 It was Brayton who spoke. 
 
 "She's making for the side door; let a handful of us go up 
 that way and make her show herself here. She wasn't always so 
 scared when she could get men to look at her ! " There was a 
 fierce laugh at this, and a half-dozen of them filed out of the office 
 to put the threat in execution. Fred was horrified. He felt that 
 remonstrance would be useless. The woman certainly deserved 
 hatred ; but she was a woman, and the indignity threatened must 
 be prevented. But how ? He slipped quietly into the crowd, and, 
 being familiar with the building, ran down through the kitchen, 
 and up the servants' stairs to the second floor. He found the 
 door leading to the hallway locked, but a vigorous kick broke out 
 enough of the panel to let his slender body through. Hurrying 
 through narrow halls filled with the dibris of sudden flight, he 
 came out in the broad central corridor. The men, however, 
 were ahead of him. Two emerged from the side stairway, and 
 one of them, seizing the terrified marquise by the shoulder, said, 
 with mock politeness : 
 
304 "^^^ MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " This is the way, your ladyship ; your carriage is below." 
 She looked at him with wild pleading in her eyes, and dropped 
 her burden. " Where are your ladyship's wonderful diamonds 
 that we used to see from the gallery, eh .> We'll take good care 
 of them — never fear.'' 
 
 " I say, Watson, this isn't very manly work for men. You 
 ought to be ashamed of yourself," and Fred pushed the man's 
 arm from the woman's shoulder. 
 
 " Why, blast your eyes, young fellow ! don't you know who it 
 is ? It's the Killgore woman — the woman that said rice was good 
 enough grub for work-people." 
 
 " I don't care who she is or what she said ; she's a woman, 
 and that's enough for me, and ought to be for you, if you had the 
 feelings of a man." 
 
 " I'm man enough for you, young fellow ! Perhaps you'd like 
 to test it " — and he again laid his brawny hand on the trembling 
 creature, whose eyes were fixed in anguish upon Fred. 
 
 " There, you brute, take that ! " and Fred dealt him a ringing 
 blow between the eyes. He staggered backward, and the other, 
 who had taken no part, leaped toward the assailant ; but, the 
 bundle serving Fred as a rampart, enabled him to evade the blow, 
 and gave him the opportunity to strike the other on the side of the 
 head — a sweeping stroke that confused him an instant. But that 
 instant gave Fred time to seize the bundle and the woman's arm, 
 and drag both to the open door of the nearest room. Before the 
 men reached it the key was turned, and Fred was given a moment's 
 respite. A quick glance showed an open door leading from the 
 room on both sides to the next. Directing La Marquise to hurry 
 and lock one, he ran and secured the other. Then he waited to 
 see if the men had entered the rooms on either side. Yes, they 
 were at the door to which the woman had luckily turned the key. 
 There was no transom over that door, and they could not see into 
 the place of refuge. He could hear the men talking, and lis- 
 tened : 
 
 " Do you go for the rest, and keep an eye on the other door ; 
 I'll guard them well, and hold them there like rats in a trap. 
 They'll have to come out as soon as the fire begins." 
 
A MASQUE OF HORROR. 305 
 
 " What have you in the bundle ? " asked Fred of his unex- 
 pected protegie. 
 
 " My jewels and papers of value." 
 
 " Could you take them out of the boxes and fasten them about 
 your body ? I can secure some of them about me." 
 
 " Yes, I think so ; but, never mind the jewels, I don't care for 
 them, if I can only escape those dreadful people. Are they going 
 to kill me ? " 
 
 " No, they don't mean that ; they are going to — to — well, never 
 mind, you must not fall into their hands. There are some things 
 as bad as killing, you know." 
 
 She looked at him trembling and perplexed. 
 
 " Now we must plan how we can manage to get out of here," 
 Fred continued. " Keep up your courage, and we'll find a way ; 
 I'm sure of it." 
 
 The apartment was evidently the sitting or reception room of 
 a suite, as the furnishings indicated, and if the next were a bed- 
 chamber, as Fred conjectured, it might not have a door opening 
 into the hallway. He climbed to the transom, and could see that, 
 as yet, there were none of the enemy there. Unlocking the door 
 noiselessly, he opened it, and found that his guess was right. Evi- 
 dence of hasty flight showed that the place had just been vacated ; 
 trunks were open and empty, as if pillaged, and garments scattered 
 over the floor told the story. In the closet hung various articles of 
 men's apparel. Fred contemplated them a moment ; then, select- 
 ing a dark suit, he called Madame Dominguez. 
 
 " There, put that on, and conceal your papers on the inside, 
 and do it as .quickly as possible. I will keep guard at the out- 
 side door. Don't be a minute ! " 
 
 She went into the bedroom, and he returned to the door, 
 where he could hear the guard moving impatiently. He thought 
 it an age when, presently, the metamorphosed marquise appeared, 
 a comely youth in everything but the hair, which bulged out com- 
 promisingly under the Derby hat. 
 
 " That's capital," whispered Fred ; " but the hair will undo us. 
 Haven't you scissors ? " 
 
 " Alas, no ! oh, dear ! no, no ! " 
 14 
 
3o6 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Well, we must find a pair. I'll look in the dressing-case." 
 
 He found them, sure enough, ver>- small and very sharp ; and, 
 coming back, he whispered : 
 
 " It's a cruel sacrifice ; but it must be done." 
 
 She shuddered, and put up her hands, pleadingly. 
 
 " Will you dtJ it, or shall I ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid I can't." 
 
 " Well, then, I must." 
 
 She let do\vn the glistening mass, and stood dumbly before 
 him. But even then a comb was needed. He ran to get it ; and 
 she, in a deadly panic, fled after him. With a few vicious snips, 
 the long locks fell in an ebon mass at the victim's feet. Fred 
 could not repress a smile as she carefully gathered it, folded it in 
 a towel, and slipped it into a pocket ; at the same instant a con- 
 fused murmur could be heard at the door by which they had en- 
 tered. There was a violent knocking, and a harsh voice said 
 through the key-hole : 
 
 " Come, Carew ! if you've had enough of that beauty's com- 
 pany, you'd better be getting out. The fires will be lighted in 
 five minutes, so you may as well come." 
 
 Without waiting for a response, a heavy blow was struck on 
 the panel, evidently with the butt of a gun. 
 
 " Now's our time ! You must keep close to me, but not so 
 close as to interfere with my arms." 
 
 As she spoke, he ran to the open fireplace and snatched a 
 heavy brass-knobbed poker ; and, motioning to the woman to fol- 
 low, made his way to the other door. Under cover of the noise, 
 he slipped the bolt and turned the key ; then cautioning her to 
 keep close, he opened the door noiselessly. It swung toward him. 
 When wide enough open, he could see the guard was not in 
 front of it ; then opening it \vider, he thrust his head out. The 
 guard was at the end of the hall wall, which ran transversely, 
 watching the men pounding at the other door. 
 
 "Come," whispered Fred. They were in a side hall, from 
 which a small stairway led up roofward. At the moment they 
 emerged, the guard turned and faced them ; but he had taken a 
 step and was thus out of the sight of his comrades in the main 
 
A MASQUE OF HORROR. ,oy 
 
 hall. He seemed confused for a moment, and Fred said, quickly, 
 " Dart up the stairs and make for the servants' entrance to the 
 south when you get to the landing." 
 
 " Ah ha ! you're smoked out, are ye ? " 
 
 The man sprang toward the doorway, dragging Fred with him. 
 Reluctant to strike, Fred had hoped that he would make for the 
 room, unless he recognized Madame Dominguez in the disguise. 
 So soon as he had looked into the room and saw it empty, he cast 
 a quick glance at the figure flying up the stairs. 
 
 "Ah ha, my lad! that's your game, is it? — I say, fellows— 
 here's fun ! — ^the worn — " 
 
 But the call was not finished. Fred, wrenching himself from 
 the strong grasp, dealt the man a stunning blow over the side of 
 the head, and he fell, quite limp, in the doorway. Husthng him 
 in, Fred whipped out the key and locked the door on him, and 
 then dashed up-stairs. He found his frotkgde standing gazing 
 over the banister. She had witnessed the combat below, and 
 said, as he looked at her impatiently: 
 
 " Oh, my generous friend, how could I go on, when you were 
 in such peril ? " 
 
 Even in the anxiety of the moment, the thought came into his 
 mind that women were, after all, half angel, even in their aban- 
 donment. Here was a creature to whom he had given the dead- 
 liest affront that can be given to a woman, risking indignity, per- 
 haps death, in a suddenly conceived solicitude for the man she 
 must have abhorred ! He seized her arm, and fled to the servants' 
 staircase; pushed dov^mward until they reached the basement, 
 and then halted to take breath and reconnoitre. But in a moment 
 he became conscious of a stifling atmosphere ; and as he groped 
 through the darkness, he realized that the place was filled with 
 smoke. In a second they could see flames ahead of them, and 
 hear the crackling of dry timber. 
 
 " We must take to the stairs again and try our luck on the 
 upper-floor." But the place, dim at any time when the gas was 
 not lighted, was now as confusing as the Roman Catacombs with- 
 out a guide. After what seemed an age in the suffocating atmos- 
 phere, Fred fell against a box, stifled and overcome. The woman. 
 
2o8 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 in passing a spout of running water, had dipped her handkerchief 
 in it, and now held it to his nostrils. That restored his failing 
 strength ; and as the dropping water was heard near them, he satu- 
 rated his own handkerchief, and then each holding these pressed 
 to their nostrils began to grope through the burning smoke, now 
 rolling around them from all sides. Every door in the basement 
 was open, but the smoke drove them back from the portals. At 
 last they stumbled into a dark, vault-like room, empty and cold. 
 The chill revived them, and a moment's groping showed them 
 that it was the ice-house. 
 
 " Perhaps we should be safer if we closed the iron door and 
 waited here ; the fire can't bum this, and we couldn't smother in 
 such an atmosphere." 
 
 She made no response ; she only clung closer to him, without 
 an articulate sound. 
 
 " Shall I leave you here, and look about a bit ? " 
 
 " O my God, no ! I won't leave you. Oh, don't ask that ! " 
 
 Fred reflected a moment, and then, taking her hand, pushed 
 out and onward. Presently the heated air came into their nos- 
 trils, laden virith a sort of delicious, invigorating perfume. Putting 
 out his hand, he felt bottles, and knew they were in the wine-vault. 
 He seized one and broke the neck, but the quick gush showed 
 that it was champagne, which to drink under such circumstances 
 would be madness. He searched further and found a bottle that 
 gave promise of a more invigorating draught. It proved to be a 
 fine brand of Bordeaux. 
 
 " Here's luck at last," he panted. " Take a good swallow of 
 that, there's hfe in it." 
 
 The bottle was more than half emptied when both had satis- 
 fied their parching thirst. He took down two bottles, and, giving 
 his companion one, sUpped the other in his breast. They set out 
 v>ath revived strength, though the roaring of the flames, and the 
 crashing of the timbers as the floors above were consumed, made 
 every step more perilous. The woman never uttered a word ; 
 with her handkerchief pressed to her face vdth one hand she held 
 Fred's arm with the other, and groped onward resolutely. But 
 their strength now began to fail — a part of the floor above them 
 
A MASQUE OF HORROR. 309 
 
 cracked and yawned, and a deluge of coals fell almost at their 
 feet. Then he felt the grasp on his arm relax, and, snatching at 
 the figure, he found her sinking inert and limp. He still held the 
 poker. Thrusting it between his teeth, he raised her on his right 
 arm, flung her over his shoulder, and stumbled on, for the mo- 
 mentary glare discovered to him the coal-cellar just beyond, and he 
 knew, if he could reach that, there must be a way out, as it opened 
 on the alley. How he reached it he never knew, for there was a 
 burning, lava-like bed before him, and he felt his shoes crisping 
 and burning his instep. But he did get there, and the loose coals 
 scattered over the floor soothed and revived him. The inner door 
 was locked with a chain-lock. The poker soon wrenched that 
 off, and the blessed air poured in on his scorched eyes and face. 
 
 Now came the reaction. He laid the fainting woman on the 
 black ground and staggered against the clammy stone walls. 
 She was grimy as a miner — ^no danger of recognition now if Bray- 
 ton and his band should come. But he had risked too much and 
 worked too hard to run any danger of encountering the mad host. 
 The problem of escape was simplified, not solved. He began to 
 look about to see how he could get out of this prison, for prison 
 it was. The sidewalk was fully six feet above him, and the grat- 
 ing must be removed before they could emerge. While he stood 
 revolving the possibilities, Madame Dominguez revived and opened 
 her eyes. She got up to a sitting posture and glanced around. 
 Taking the bottle from his bosom he broke the neck and held it 
 to her lips. The wine gurgled down her throat with difficulty, 
 and as she raised her head the light from above caught her eye — 
 the light of day. She nearly choked in the sudden, delirious rec- 
 ognition, and Fred caught her in his arms. 
 
 " The open air ! O God be praised ! " Then she looked timidly 
 at Fred. " Are you hurt } Your face is bloody." He had, with- 
 out knowing it, cut his lips with the jagged edge of the bottle in 
 the madness of his thirst. 
 
 " No, I'm not hurt. I was about used up, though, when we 
 reached this coal-hole. I'm good for a strong fight now, but I 
 think we're all right here. I can hear voices in the street, and 
 perhaps we can attract some one to our assistance." 
 
3IO THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " But mightn't they be the rioters ? " — then she checked her- 
 self gTiihily, but continued : " That's true — let us call to them." 
 Fred divined her thought— she feared the men even more than 
 the place, but she would not ask him to imperil his life. 
 
 "Even Pompadour released Voltaire from the Bastile," he 
 said to himself. " When you feel strong enough we can try our 
 skill here, and if we fail then it will be time enough to take the 
 chances of outside aid." But as he spoke the light was suddenly 
 obscured, and black clouds of smoke rolled down the grating, 
 shutting out the sunlight. A handful of mortar dropped at their 
 feet. "That means that we've no time to lose. Stay here a 
 moment." He went out into the cellar and presently came back 
 with a truck used for carrying the coal-boxes to the kitchen. He 
 placed this on end against the wall and mounted to the top, 
 but even then he could not reach the grating. Coming down, he 
 bade madame climb on his shoulders, and when she was securely 
 fixed there he again mounted the truck. " See if you can move 
 it." 
 
 It was immovable — she couldn't stir it an inch. Then he 
 got up again and examined the fastening. A bar was slipped 
 through a clasp in the center and locked at the other end. Tak- 
 ing his poker, he inserted it in a crevice of the wall, and caught 
 hold of the gyrating. Then madame pulled out the poker, and. 
 hanging suspended by one arm, he wrenched off the hasp with 
 the other, and dropped exhausted to the floor. After a breathing- 
 time, madame again mounted on his shoulders, and readily 
 pushed up one side of the grating. It fell back with a heavy 
 crash. A great cloud of smoke nearly smothered them as they 
 scrambled out on the pavement. Under cover of this smoke Fred, 
 taking her by the hand, ran swiftly across the narrow alley, dark 
 as midnight, to the rear of a storehouse. The door was fastened, 
 and they groped along the hot wall to an open space leading into 
 a canal court. Here crowds of people were busied in precautions 
 against the spread of the fire. The fugitives passed in among 
 them unremarked. A moment later they were on the wharves of 
 the canal, and Fred said to his companion : " Where shall I take 
 you } We are now, I think, out of danger." 
 
A MASQUE OF HORROR. ju 
 
 Her face was black with coal-dust, and he could not guess 
 what she was thinking. She said, in a forlorn, helpless way : 
 
 " I don't know what to do. I can't go to any of my acquaint- 
 ances like this." 
 
 She looked ruefully at her soiled hands and apparel in a be- 
 wildered, jocose way. 
 
 "That's true," responded Fred, hastily; "I'm stupid"; and 
 he led the way rapidly toward his own home, reflecting humorously 
 on the curious characters his exploits were making inmates of his 
 sedate home, and guests of his unsuspicious mother. He merely 
 told that astonished Samaritan as much of the story as was need- 
 ful, and, delivering the documents to the lady, ran up to his room 
 to bathe himself. When he came down, his mother had urged 
 the reluctant visitor to take to bed — such an opportunity for the 
 dispensation of her pharmacopoeia was irresistible to the energetic 
 amateur — and Madame Dominguez was forced to submit, at least 
 till she could obtain clothing suitable to her sex. As Mrs. Ca- 
 rew's figure was very much larger than her own, it was useless 
 to think of using that lady's wardrobe, and it would take time to 
 procure an outfit. Smothering a mad desire to break into Abderian 
 laughter, Fred listened to the maternal homily delivered in the 
 hallway, as the good lady dwelt on the chance that sent the victim 
 into her hands. 
 
 As he was about to open the door, Madame Dominguez 
 called to him. She had washed the black from her face, which 
 wore an expression of blank despair — ^with more of terror than 
 when she was surrounded by her enemies in the hotel corridor. 
 
 " O Mr. Carew, I owe you so much — so much more than you 
 dream, though, perhaps, who knows but I have been the means 
 of saving you from a great treachery ? " She paused and virung 
 her hands. Fred thought the recent horror had shaken her brain. 
 " I must warn you," she continued, eagerly, almost in a whisper, 
 " do not let Herbert or Killgore see you while the riot lasts ! Do 
 not go among the working-men ! Some of them are paid to bring 
 about your destruction ! You are a menace to some men of great 
 power and inflexible purpose. Their hate you have already felt, 
 but their fear is more dangerous. What I know, or how I know 
 
,j2 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 it, I can not confide to you ; but you have enemies— men who 
 will hesitate at nothing to either identify you with bloodshed, or 
 take your life. No bravery, no watchfulness can save you un- 
 less you remain in-doors. Pledge me that you will do this — 
 pledge me, in God's name, for, if you don't, I shall feel blood- 
 guiltiness on my own hands!— Pledge me, or" — she grew quite 
 determined as she spoke — " I will remain by your side till the 
 end ! " 
 
 "You may be reassured, Madame Dominguez, I have my du- 
 ties in my own office that will keep me in-doors, and besides, the 
 troubles are virtually over. The soldiery hold all the disputed 
 points." 
 
 On reaching the street, he found that he had come home none 
 too soon, for the newsboys were filling the air with details of 
 the burning of the Albatross; the death of the editor of the 
 " Free Press " and the Marchioness Dominguez. When he reached 
 his ov>m office, his heart-broken assistant was reading the proofs 
 of a lurid mortuary article — an epic of thrilling and weird magni- 
 loquence — in which the lost chief was apotheosized as a being 
 of supernatural endowments, apostolic virtues, and a genius for 
 which no comparison could be found. Fred listened, unobserved, 
 as the young elegist read the slip aloud to his tearful auditors, and 
 then said : 
 
 " By George, Fordham, it's worth while dying, for a tribute 
 like that ! I've a good notion to commit suicide, for I'll never get 
 so good a send-off again." 
 
 As is the editorial way, no one looked up when he entered ; no 
 editor was ever knovm to see a visitor entering the sanctum until 
 addressed ! Fred bore, good-naturedly, the demonstrative hug- 
 ging that followed, and then asked for news before satisfying 
 their burning curiosity. Grit, he learned, had been wounded 
 and taken ; the revolt was substantially at an end. He had the 
 information verified ; then calmly sat down and wrote the impas- 
 sioned and immortal " leader " that everybody in Valedo remem- 
 bers so well, in which, while in no wise extenuating the mad- 
 ness and wickedness of the Union, he reminded the conquerors 
 that their triumph was in no sense due to the righteousness of 
 
A MASQUE OF HORROR. 313 
 
 their cause, nor even the weakness of their adversaries ; that the 
 wrongs which had arrayed the working-men in arms would prove 
 a dangerous experiment in the end ; that the multitude, even if 
 wrong, or groping blindly with imperfect means, were sure to seize 
 the right forces, and succeed in the future ; that the munitions 
 placed by sinister agencies in the way of irritated men had done 
 more serious work than the plotters had foreseen, and that this 
 guilt cried out, not against the deluded instruments, but the mo- 
 nopolists who had engineered the massacre ; that while the rioters 
 were willing dupes, the monopolists were the confessed criminals, 
 .with whom the law must deal in a Draconian spirit ; that the pre- 
 meditated scheme of making the Union the scape-goat of the mon- 
 strous plot would turn the momentary impulse of riot into irre- 
 sistible revolution; that concession, not vengeance, must close 
 the drama, and that the down-trodden victims of craft and malig- 
 nancy should be left unmolested to bury their dead and change 
 the misery of hunger and destitution into the woe of mourning ; 
 that the victors must cry quits, or, if there were expiations, the 
 rich and ruling should expiate their blood-guiltiness by sharing 
 their evil-won and criminally-held millions with the multitude they 
 had combined to madden. " Do not — ^this fervid proem wound 
 up — dream of the retaliations you have planned, or you will make 
 the cry of the few the creed of the many : 
 
 * Lest, when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our despair; 
 And learn by proof, in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare 1 ' " 
 
 Against this incendiary address Hilliard arose to his best He 
 pointed out the wanton and bloodthirsty spirit in which the 
 unions, turning a deaf ear to their benefactors the corporations, 
 had seized the incident of temporary depression in production to 
 indoctrinate a docile and, as a rule, exemplary body of men, to 
 look upon their natural proctectors as enemies ; how, misled by 
 the larmoyant rhapsodies of an unbalanced publicist, their pass- 
 ing distresses had been made to seem the deliberate work of the 
 great and good men whose interests suffered with those of un- 
 employed labor ; that a stem lesson was now needed, a signal 
 vindication of the advanced stage of the century's civilization. 
 
314 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 and that the evil spirits must reap as they had wrought ; that 
 bloody teaching and bloody acts must be met by swift but pas- 
 sionless reprisal. How it was the privilege of the well-bom to 
 teach the toiler continence in times of trial ; that while wealth 
 shared the usufruct with the brawn of the land, there was an eter- 
 nal fitness in the rule of the " best.'' From the cultivated alone 
 came the precepts that made communities tolerable. That socie- 
 ty had during the last decade re-entered its primal conditions, 
 where the graces of breeding and the amelioration of blood exact- 
 ed the reverence of the lowly and the reasonable forbearance of 
 the high. That while the bread-winner has his place in the social 
 scheme, it is the divine right of blood, birth, and money to wield 
 the social scepter. He ended with a couplet which Valedo thought 
 quite eclipsed Fred's Virginian lines in appositeness : " Deliver up 
 the criminals among you, or the vengeance of law and order will 
 not stop to discriminate, but seizing the guiltless as well as the 
 
 guilty— 
 
 "... Give them wounds, instead of eyes, 
 To weep in blood their intermissive miseries I " 
 
 But Fred's other esteemed contemporaries seized his dithyram- 
 bics to hold him up to public execration as an unrepentant abettor 
 of the outbreak. They denounced him by name as the instigator 
 of the conflict, and Valedo's disgrace. It was he who had plunged 
 hundreds into mourning — let the hand of rapine loose upon the 
 fibers of the city's prosperity ; that such a monster could not be 
 tolerated in a law-abiding community ; and that if the last scene 
 in the tragedy took the form of lynching, the most scrupulous for 
 law and order could not regard such a result with any other feel- 
 ing than satisfaction ! 
 
 But there was no lynching; and it was observed that the 
 " Eagle," which was known to represent the Aulic Council of the 
 monopolists, studiously refrained from identifying its former edit- 
 or with the outbreak, and even pointed out his restraining influ- 
 ence, and his gallantry in rescuing a noble lady from imminent peril. 
 It was generally understood that strong friends in the enemy's 
 ranks saved the rash evangel of the rights of labor from the hand 
 of the red terror that presently fell upon the leaders of the unions. 
 
"AS THE HUSBAND IS, THE WIFE IS." 315 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 "AS THE HUSBAND IS, THE WIFE IS." 
 
 Herbert had not welcomed the paternal presence at his bed- 
 side with any tender tokens of filial joy. Indeed, the icy chill of 
 the water from which Fred had snatched him gave him less of a 
 shock than the sudden apparition at his bedside. Ignorant of 
 how far the widow had gone in explaining his plight, he didn't 
 know whether the dreaded time for explanation had come or not. 
 His father's manner, however, soon reassured him. He evidently 
 had no suspicion of either the circumstances of his maltreatment 
 or the relationship existing vnih. Beauxjambes. Never had his 
 father shown such tenderness, such gayety. He prattled to the 
 invalid, who dared not meet his eye, with the effusive delight of a 
 lover on probation. Herbert couldn't reconcile this new phase 
 of his father's character with his past experience. His indulgence 
 had been that of the silent, unquestioning sort : so long as Herbert 
 kept his follies and extravagances out of public scandal, the father 
 never made a reproach. He gave him all the money he asked, 
 and never inquired its purpose. He was not ignorant of the boy's 
 unrestrained dissoluteness ; time and again pensions to clamoring 
 victims had acquainted him with the fields in which his son's wild- 
 oats were scattered. That, however, troubled him very little. 
 
 He saw other men in his own condition made uncomfortable by 
 the follies of sons that money couldn't always hush up or termi- 
 nate. He was quite willing that the boy should have his " fling," 
 providing that he kept clear of compromising alliances. He had 
 told him so often, and on this condition had made him very liberal 
 allowances. It was the knowledge of his father's sentiments that 
 now troubled the young man's mind, and, as he tossed on his pil- 
 low day and night, he cursed himself for slipping the noose over 
 his own neck. He had married Beauxjambes in the euthanasia 
 of champagne and rivalry. A comrade, the son of a New York 
 millionaire, had become enamored of the soubrette. He had lav- 
 ished the most costly presents on her. It was made a matter of 
 boasting which of the two young Plutocrats would carry off Pro- 
 
3i6 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 serpine, and Herbert, insanely jealous, irritated by opposition, had 
 won, by the proffer of the altar, when the other had gone only so 
 far as a settlement, a town-house, and a Saratoga villa! The 
 young lady, familiar with the fragile tenure of such amours, with 
 much affectation of coy reluctance, finally consented, and a clergy- 
 man in a small village near Valedo unhesitatingly performed the 
 ceremony. The honeymoon was now past, however, and Her- 
 bert had already begun to look his rashness in the face. 
 
 He was eng^ed to Betty Killgore, as long as he could remem- 
 ber, and he knew that the acknowledgment of his union with Beaux- 
 jambes would bring misery into the Senator's household as well as 
 dismay into his own. His wife, too, had acquainted him with the 
 first symptom of moral restraint he had ever known. She had sur- 
 prised him embracing one of the damsels of the troupe, and had 
 there and then pulled the young woman's hair, and forced the man- 
 ager to chase her from the company. She had, too, a way of ask- 
 ing an account of his goings out and comings in, which maddened a 
 young man who had never been asked to give an account of himself 
 since his nursling days. Violent scenes had, as a matter of course, 
 followed, made up by tears and sullen embraces. As his passion 
 for the girl cooled, hers for him became a maddening adoration. 
 His beauty fascinated her from the first, for he was a markedly 
 handsome man. His figure was good, his limbs well formed, his 
 hands shapely, his complexion brilliant, his eyes a liquid brown, 
 his eyebrows arched, graceful, and delicately penciled, his lips car- 
 mine, full and sensuous, his expression a seductive languor, irre- 
 sistible to women of a certain type. The actress adored him with 
 that curious adoration often seen in women who have led a public 
 life, for men who take them from it. She would have borne every 
 form of the caprice such natures as Herbert's exhibit, if she could 
 have counted on his fidelity ; she saw with aniguish that the same 
 animal attraction that made her his slave, drew other women 
 to him, if he but looked at them. She had begun by resenting his 
 infidelities, in the artless poutings and turbulent outbursts that 
 women resort to when they feel strong in their power ; but she 
 soon saw that his promises were hollow, and his penitence a sham. 
 
 Then she had uttered threats: she would leave him, she 
 
"AS THE HUSBAND IS, THE WIFE IS." ^ij 
 
 would throw herself into the arms of Van Argent, the rival from 
 whom he had snatched her. He coldly shrugged his shoulders 
 and bade her try it. Then she had stormed and threatened, and 
 he had struck her, and then she had loved him the more ! She 
 rose from the floor where his blow had sent her reeling, and clung 
 to him, sobbing and pleading forgiveness ! Thenceforth she was 
 so submissively his slave that he chafed more and more at the in- 
 sanity that had bound him to her. An undercurrent like this in 
 the life of an elegant young man not yet twenty-five was not, as 
 you see, calculated to give him the ease his responsibilities and 
 advantages demanded, when his father set before him the plans 
 we. have heard him outline to Killgore. There was no reason the 
 marriage with Betty should be longer deferred. He must arrange 
 with that young lady at once, and have the affair well over before 
 the departure of Mr. Grimstone and Nell for Europe. He should 
 remain and take hold of such enterprises as he had taste for. 
 
 Herbert listened with angry impatience. He cursed his folly, 
 and cursed his wife. If he could only stave off the discovery, he 
 could perhaps get a divorce ! The law was happily lax for such 
 victims as himself, and he gave his mind to devising a line of con- 
 duct that would bring him out of the meshes. When his father had 
 gone, Beauxjambes was struck dumb by the look the invalid gave 
 her. she asked in terror if " the papa " knew. " Of course not. 
 Don't be a fool ; one fool in the family's enough ! " he muttered, 
 turning gloomily toward the wall. She sat down timidly by the 
 bed, and her hand crept under the clothes to find his. He 
 snatched it away irritably, and bundled the coverlet about him. 
 Poor thing! she blamed herself; the papa had been lecturing the 
 victim, and she was the cause, even though the marriage was 
 not known. But, oh ! if the papa only knew how she loved the 
 handsome fellow, how she would be his slave, how she would 
 never murmur, no matter what freak led him from her ! If she 
 could but have him to nurse, to fondle, to brush the soft hair from 
 the brow, to kiss the strong hand, to hold him in her arms, and 
 press to her aching heart, she would ask no more. He had fallen 
 asleep; now she rose and pressed her hot lips to his beautiful 
 brow. He murmured in his sleep : 
 
3i8 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Damn fool ! damn fool ! " 
 
 She knelt down softly beside the bed and sobbed quietly. Pres- 
 ently the door opened, Mrs. Carew looked in, but did not look at 
 the bed ; she said, in a low voice, not observing the kneeling figure : 
 
 " Yes, Miss Grimstone, you may go in, but don't disturb him 
 until he wakes." 
 
 As Nell entered the room, the wife from the other side of the 
 bed raised her head. The two women confronted each other 
 alone in the room. Mrs. Herbert started up and stood trembling. 
 Nell recognized her in an instant. In the early days of his in- 
 fatuation Herbert had taken his sister to the theatre where she 
 was playing, and once in Valedo. She glanced at the bed, and 
 then at the panic-stricken wife. In the first indignant shock she 
 made a movement to open the door, with a haughty, imperious 
 gesture ; the wife, gliding toward her, held up her hand beseech- 
 ingly. Nell paused, struck by the indescribable pathos and plead- 
 ing in the attitude ; but she drew her robe back insultingly as the 
 other reached her. The act, the refinement of a pure woman's 
 intolerance and a proud woman's assertion of her status, was 
 realized in all its subtile significance by the other. The humility, 
 abject, imploring, vanished from her face ; she drew herself up 
 with a dignity, even majesty, innate only in those who have felt 
 the sanctifying benediction of unselfish love, and she said, with a 
 composure strongly in contrast with Nell's agitation : 
 
 " Madame, I have a right to be here, stronger than yours. I 
 have the right of a wife ! " 
 
 The words were hardly louder than a whisper, but their in- 
 tensity vibrated the close air of the sick-room, and Herbert started 
 up and caught sight of the two figures. 
 
 " Eleanor, is that you ? Good God ! " 
 
 With a little cry she fled past the wife, upon whom Herbert's 
 voice had fallen like a withering blight, and flung herself into his 
 arms hysterically, as the other, opening the door, softly passed out. 
 Next to himself, Herbert was fond of his sister, and he submitted 
 graciously to the embraces that seemed to grow in fervor, as the 
 confused thought of the declaration she had just heard began to 
 take shape in certainty. 
 
"AS THE HUSBAND IS, THE WIFE IS." 319 
 
 " O Bert 1 is it true ? Is that — that creature — are you married 
 to that woman?" 
 
 "Damn it, Nell! who told you that? Does father know? 
 Have these damned people in the house been publishing it in the 
 streets ? I might have known that sneak Carew would make all 
 he could of it. Damn him ! " 
 
 " Herbert 1 Herbert ! how can you talk so ? No one knows 
 but myself; I — " 
 
 She was going to tell that the wife herself had made it known 
 to her ; but, knowing her brother, and realizing now that he had 
 enjoined secrecy, with a woman's quick divination, she knew that 
 his wrath would be vented on the wretched wife, if she betrayed 
 the confession that her own (Nell's) demeanor had extorted. With 
 the eye of a woman that had loved, she saw that Beauxjambes 
 adored her brother, and, \\rith the impulse of a woman that had 
 loved in vain, she took the side of the unhappy. 
 
 " I found it out by means you would never- suspect. I alone 
 know it ; and if it is for your interest to keep it secret for a time, 
 you need not fear that I vrill let it be known.'' 
 
 Herbert at once attributed the betrayal to Mrs. Carew, who 
 had not, in fact, been asked to conceal it, and would naturally 
 enough suppose that Nell knew. There was, after all, no harm 
 done, as he had been on the point of taking Nell into his confi- 
 dence, to enable him the better to evade the awkward questions 
 as to his whereabout and prolonged absence from home. Nell 
 told him all the news, the progress of the riot, and her father's 
 strange conduct, which at first she could not account for until she 
 had heard of the verdict, through a neighbor, who came inno- 
 cently to commiserate v»nth the family, and denounce the inso- 
 lence of the jury. 
 
 " Mamma," she added, " is quite broken down under the affair, 
 or she would have come with me." 
 
 Herbert remarked dutifully that it was quite as well she hadn't 
 come, looking significantly over his shoulder toward the door. 
 
 " But it must be known some time, Bert, and why not tell 
 mamma ? She will make the best of it. since it will do no good 
 to do anvthing else." 
 
320 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " Don't be silly, Nell ! Do you want to drive me wild ? " 
 Then, looking at her, and dropping his voice, " Perhaps she need 
 never know ; perhaps I can get out of it.'' 
 
 " Good Heavens, Bert ! — what do you mean ? " 
 
 "I mean just what I say: because I was a fool, I needn't 
 continue a fool, and before long, perhaps, I shall be free again." 
 
 " Free ? What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Oh, never mind ; you wouldn't understand if I told you." 
 
 " But don't you love — ^what is her first name ? " 
 
 " Melanie.'' 
 
 "What a pretty name ! and she is really lovely. I don't blame 
 you for falling in love ; but — " 
 
 " But what ? " 
 
 Now Nell's thought was, " How could she fall in love with 
 you ? " for, though she was fond of him, and knew that he was a 
 handsome fellow, she was not ignorant either of his selfishness or 
 his incapacity to love deeply and sincerely. The look in M^lanie's 
 eyes was enough for her to see that, while Herbert might have 
 chosen more wisely, looking at his worldly position, he could not 
 have gained a more unselfish devotion than this poor girl lavished 
 upon him. 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " Oh, how could you be so rash ? What will Senator KOlgore 
 say ? And poor Betty, she thinks of you by day, and dreams of 
 you by night ! She has been radiant since papa told her the day 
 must be fixed this spring.'' 
 
 Herbert winced a little at this, and pulled the coverlet up to 
 his neck, as though a sudden chill had come upon him. 
 
 "Killgore I don't mind. He'll probably find himself in the 
 same boat one of these days. Betty needn't know anything about 
 it ; when the day comes, I shall be ready." 
 
 " Ready ? Are you dreaming ? " 
 
 " I'm going to break this cursed marriage ! I was an eternal 
 fool ever to let myself be caught, but I'm not going to be idiot 
 enough to stay caught," 
 
 " Herbert, Herbert, she loves you, tenderly and devotedly, and 
 she is your wife ; you must face the fact like a man. Don't dream 
 
"AS THE HUSBAND IS, THE WIFE IS." 321 
 
 of such baseness. 1 should disown you. Papa will be deeply 
 grieved, for he has set his heart on your marrying Betty, but he's 
 not the cold, exacting man he was, and I'm sure I can reconcile 
 him to the marriage." 
 
 " You'll be good enough to keep the affair to yourself. That's 
 the way with all women : they enjoy trapping a man themselves, 
 and next to that they enjoy another woman making a fool of 
 him." 
 
 Nell's own thoughts at the moment were far away. She 
 had run a chance of having the same speech made about her- 
 self. The coincidence did not, you may be sure, lessen her grow- 
 ing sympathy with the poor girl for whom this odious treason 
 was planning. She said nothing, however. She knew Herbert 
 too well to waste words. She resolved to make a reconciliation 
 between the wife and father, and prevent wrong being added to 
 folly. 
 
 Herbert had been writing at intervals upon a tablet, on which 
 Mrs. Carew left the hours for each of the medicaments. He 
 •folded the sheet, and, when enveloped and addressed, asked his 
 sister to have it sent to an address which she recognized as that of 
 a lawyer notorious in divorce suits. As she was ready to go, she 
 rang the bell, and, when the servant came, asked to see Mrs. Ca- 
 rew. She stepped into the hall to meet her, and, having thanked 
 her for her care of Herbert, asked for Mrs. Herbert. She took her 
 seat in the reception-room, while Mrs. Carew went in search of 
 Melanie, who appeared a moment later. Kell rose as she en- 
 tered, and held out her hand amicably. 
 
 "You are my brother's wife. The marriage may not have been 
 prudent, but it is too late now to think of that. I am Herbert's 
 sister, and if you will let me I will be yours, for I know you love 
 him, and that, after all, is the greatest happiness a man can g^in. 
 Oh, don't — don't ! " — (for the hauteur which M61anie had as- 
 sumed, to confront the arrogant kinswoman of her husband, 
 melted into tender frenzy under this kind speech, and she fell on 
 her knees, kissing the hem of the other's garment, only daring to 
 touch her lips in the end to Nell's hand) — " no, you shall not," 
 and, bending over, Nell touched her lips to the wife's forehead. 
 
322 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 " It is enough for me that you love him, MSlanie — what a pretty- 
 name ! — and how lovely you are ! I can see how no man could 
 resist loving you. My name is Eleanor for you, and you shall be 
 Melanie for me, n' est-ce pas ! " 
 
 "Ah, Tnon Dieu, what an angel you are, how worthy to be the 
 dear Herbert's sister ! Oh, he will be so happy now, that the — the 
 affair is dinoue for you, and perhaps you will intercede for us, for 
 I am so unhappy that he is not in confidence with the father." 
 
 " You may trust me, Melanie ; I will try to avert disaster from 
 your love, even though it be not wise.'' 
 
 " Oh, how could one be wiser than loving such an adorable 
 boy, so good, so handsome, so — so — " But the poor thing could 
 not add the terms that came to her mind, for even her love was 
 not blind to Herbert's selfishness, and certain other memories 
 were evoked by the enumeration of the youth's virtues. So the 
 two parted, the one pitying and compassionate, the other radiant 
 with the light of a new hfe in her lovely eyes, and buoyant trust 
 in her heart. When she went into the sick-room, Herbert was 
 up and dressed. She looked at him in amazement. " Why, Ber- 
 tie, how imprudent ! What will Mrs. Carew say.? " 
 
 "I don't care what the old fool says ; I'm not going to lie here 
 any longer. Besides, the family will be coming to the house all 
 the time, and your cursed obstinacy will make everything known. 
 I'm going home, and you must go like a reasonable woman, and 
 wait until I can get out again all right. You needn't make a 
 scene ; it won't do any good. I'm going to do just what I say. 
 Just ask Mrs. Carew to have the horses taken out, and lend me 
 her man to drive home." But Melanie sat quite dumb and still. 
 She knew that there was something besides the desire to get home 
 in this sudden determination. What it was she had no suspicion, 
 but that her love was in jeopardy she dimly felt. Before she could 
 act or think, Mrs. Carew came in, and started in surprise when she 
 saw Herbert up and dressed. He told her in a few words that he 
 was well, and couldn't think of trespassing on her any longer, and, 
 thanks to her invaluable and wonderful prescriptions, he would pull 
 himself together in a day or two. So the carriage was brought 
 around, and M61anie, in an agony of desolation, sobbed au revoir 
 
"AS THE HUSBAND IS, THE WIFE IS." 323 
 
 on his restive neck. He drove straight home. As he entered the 
 vestibule, KUlgore, flushed and trembling, came out. He gave the 
 "young man a look of concentrated hatred and scorn, and brushed 
 past him as he held out his hand. 
 
 " Don't offer me your hand, you contemptible puppy ! give it 
 to your actress, where it belongs ! " and with that he strode down 
 the steps. 
 
 Herbert was stunned. " It's all over ! " he muttered, and was 
 going to sneak up to his room, when he heard a shriek in the 
 library. He made his way thither. His sister was on her knees, 
 holding her father's head in her arms. She didn't look up as 
 Herbert entered, but hearing the step, she said, huskily and fright- 
 ened : 
 
 " Send for Dr. Arkwright ; don't delay a minute ! " 
 
 Herbert slipped out, sent a servant, and returned to the room. 
 Nell looked up this time. She did not seem surprised, but 
 beckoned her brother to help her put the inanimate body of the 
 father on the couch. It was done with difficulty. He breathed 
 ' heavily, and Herbert saw that it was a shock of paralysis. Her- 
 bert divined that KiUgore had something to do with it, and con- 
 cluded that he had come to reproach the father with the son's 
 conduct, which was the fact. Killgore had heard the story indi- 
 rectly from Van Argent's friends, and on inquiry found its truth. 
 
 Aaron Grimstone passed a precarious day and night, but at the 
 end of twenty-four hours was pronounced out of danger. One of 
 his arms was stricken dead, but his intellect was unimpaired. 
 The third day Herbert was admitted to the sick-room with the 
 doctor. His father was lying tranquilly on the bed, Nell sitting 
 beside it. He did not look around as the doctor entered. 
 
 "You see, Herbert, he is all right now," said the doctor, 
 cheerily. 
 
 At the sound of his son's name, the invalid's face contracted 
 horribly. He raised himself in the bed and glared toward him ; 
 then, raising his unimpaired arm, he pointed to the door. 
 
 " Go out, you dog ! you selfish, low-lived ingrate ! quit this 
 house ; quit my sight ; you are no son of mine ! Go rot in the 
 slime you have wallowed in ; you are no son of mine, and not a 
 
324 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 penny of mine shall go to keep you in the slums you have chosen ! 
 Go, I say, you ruffian — go, before I call the servants to put you 
 out !— " 
 
 The last words were almost a shriek, and the livid face was 
 distorted so frightfully that the doctor himself, seizing Herbert by 
 the shoulder and hurrying him to the door, groaned : 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me ? You have killed him ; he can never 
 survive this. Go, go — for Heaven's sake, go ! " 
 
 When he turned back, Aaron Grimstone was still sitting erect 
 in the bed. The doctor approached him and attempted to take 
 his hand and induce him to lie down. 
 
 " No, no, no ! I can't breathe while that scoundrel is in the 
 house ! I haven't heard the hall-door yet. When I know that he 
 is gone, then I will lie dovim, and not before ! " 
 
 He waited, rigid, his eyes blazing, his fingers working convul- 
 sively in the clothes. Minutes passed, and there was no sound of 
 closing doors. He turned to Eleanor, fiercely : 
 
 " Must I get up myself.? must I go and throw that beast out? 
 Oh, I can do it ! I'm not dead yet." 
 
 " O papa ! he's your son — he — " 
 
 " He's not my son ! — Dr. Arkwright, will you call one of the 
 servants ? Stay — " 
 
 He reached out for the bell-cord. Nell got up and quit the 
 room, and in an instant later the hall-door closed. 
 
 " Ah ! he'U find I'm not dead, and I sha'n't die until his power 
 for evil is ended." 
 
 Then he sank back on the pillows, and as his daughter re-en- 
 tered the room he looked at her inquiringly. She was sobbing, 
 and could not look at him. The servant entering in response to 
 the bell, he asked : 
 
 " Who was it that just went out ? " 
 
 " Master Herbert, sir. I can call him if you wish ; he can't 
 have reached the comer." 
 
 " No ; that will do." 
 
 The doctor remained some time. When he had gone, the in- 
 valid sent Nell to the library for a portfolio. When she returned 
 with it, he was up and dressed in a wrapper. 
 
"AS THE HUSBAND IS, THE WIFE IS." 325 
 
 " Come," he said, " give me your arm." 
 
 He led her straight to Herbert's room. It was empty ; but 
 his belongings were in the room. Then he returned to his own 
 chamber and rang the bell. When the servant answered, he 
 said : 
 
 " Tell the housekeeper to pack up Mr. Herbert's clothes, 
 books, and all his effects in this house, and send them to Wild 
 Rose Villa, on the New Park road. Have it done this afternoon." 
 
 Wild Rose VUla had been furnished by Herbert as a bache- 
 lor's retreat the year before. It had been used as a sort of club- 
 house to entertain his friends. His father had given him the 
 place ; and, while he knew of the presence of the actress, did not 
 suspect the relations existing between her and his son. 
 
 Here M^lanie, waiting her husband's return to her, read in the 
 newspapers, the next morning after the parting, the announcement 
 of Mr. Grimstone's attack. She persuaded herself, the next day 
 and the next, that Herbert remained away, that he was watching 
 by the invalid's bedside. When the convalescence was announced, 
 she said to herself, " He will be here to-dajs" and she arrayed 
 herself in the fascinating fabrics he used to admire, to do honor 
 to his coming. Late in the afternoon of the third day, her heart 
 bounded with joy, for a van drove up and deposited many trunks 
 and boxes laden with his property. She had them opened, and 
 busied herself in distributing them about the pretty rooms, so that 
 he should find everything familiar when he came. It was mid- 
 night before she had completed this labor of love; but she 
 dressed herself as carefully as though going to a soirie, and sat 
 down, fatigued and worn, to wait. He was accustomed to com- 
 ing home in the morning hours. She must keep herself fresh and 
 fascinating, and she applied all the dainty nostrums known to the 
 stage to preserve herself for the rapture of the prodigal's coming. 
 At five o'clock she despairingly disrobed and hid herself in bed ; 
 but even then there was no sleep for the poor tired head. Every 
 sound in the distance startled her. It was he — ^then, as the wheels 
 rolled on, she sank, gasping and woe-worn, on the hot, tear-wet 
 pillows. At noon she could endure the agony no longer. She 
 wrote a piteous line, and, closing it under cover to Nell, dispatched 
 
326 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the servant. In an hour a note came back with a hne from her 
 sister-in-law : 
 
 " Dear Melanie : We are in great distress. Papa has quar- 
 reled with Herbert, and he has gone to New York. Be brave ; 
 you have a true friend in 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " Eleanor." 
 
 " Gone to New York — and without a word ! — gone ! " 
 
 Then the strain on weary nature relaxed, and she was put in 
 a delirium of fever, where for days a merciful unconsciousness 
 gave the heart a surcease. When she recovered, she again wrote 
 Nell, but could get no tidings of her husband. 
 
 Then she set out for New York. She sent for Abeille. Had 
 he seen Herbert ? Yes ; Herbert was at the theatre every night, 
 and was that very evening going to a, stag-supper at Reynard's. 
 He didn't know his address, but supposed he was at the Claren- 
 don. Melanie sent a note there, but Herbert hadn't been stop- 
 ping at the hotel. In the evening she went to Reynard's. About 
 eleven o'clock, Herbert, flushed and tipsy, came in with one of the 
 women of Melanie 's old troupe. She confronted him, pale and 
 resolute. He regarded her with an offensive leer. 
 
 " Herbert, don't you know me ? It's Melanie." 
 
 " Oh, damnation ! go 'way ! I don't want to see you. What 
 are you plaguing me for? " 
 
 The woman with him laughed, shrugging her shoulders, and 
 dragged him up the stairs. Raikes, Van Dyck, and the old set, 
 were in the supper-room, and Herbert exploited the scene amid 
 shouts of laughter. 
 
 " Let's have her up here ; she can do the cancan for us — she 
 beats your new flame at that, Bert." 
 
 When a company of the roystering blades ran down the stairs, 
 Melanie had disappeared, and the reprobates mourned the merri- 
 ment lost in Beauxjambes's cancan. 
 
so JiUNS THE WORLD AWAY. 327 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 SO RUNS THE WORLD AWAY. 
 
 That crowning stroke of Aaron Grimstone's illustrious life- 
 work, as his money friends somewhat equivocally and prema- 
 turely called the late outbreak, suddenly assumed the shape of a 
 menacing piece of justification to the rioters. The sagacious 
 counsels of the arch-millionaire were no longer overruling the syn- 
 dicates. Hilliard, from his assumed relations to the old man, and 
 Dorr as his close confidant, controlled in a large measure the line 
 of conduct pursued, and they brought passionate resentments 
 and the arrogant sense of money's omnipotence to the considera- 
 tion of ways and means that still needed the most delicate hand- 
 ling to obscure the handiwork of the corporation, and keep the 
 malefactions of the labor unions in conspicuous relief. When 
 appealed to, Grimstone listened in distraught listlessness. The 
 only point upon which he pronounced vdth his ancient decision 
 was the policy to be pursued with Carew. He ordered that no 
 steps should be taken to incriminate him in the coming venge- 
 ance of law and order. This attitude caused vehement discus- 
 sion: Carew, it was declared, was the most mischievous of all 
 the agencies law and order had to deal with. His was the brain 
 and his the battle-cry that welded the masses into a compact 
 resistance, never before met by the forces of capital, and an ex- 
 ample should be made of him. 
 
 Hilliard was not surprised at Grimstone's intervention in be- 
 half of his quondam associate ; but he was amazed when Kill- 
 gore pronounced the same conviction, boldly declaring that he 
 would himself defend the young editor if he were made a victim ! 
 
 Nothing was to be undertaken seriously until after the spring 
 elections, for which trusted friends of the corporations were select- 
 ed in all the wards, and a mayor that could be depended on placed 
 at the head of the ticket. The companies and citizens' associa- 
 tions meanwhile collected evidence to lay before the legislative 
 committee and the jury. Every agency known to electoral war- 
 fare, was brought into play by the Optimate committee, which for 
 
328 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 the time adopted the non-partisan name of Citizens' Association. 
 Made up only of the richest men in the city, selected by caucus, 
 and chosen by prearranged agreement, this body lavished sums 
 of money on the local contest which, in other years, the State 
 Committee couldn't command. Every conceivable agency was 
 brought into play. Women visited the houses of the doubtful 
 voters, the pulpit was called in to point out to the various flocks 
 the way to political salvation. Assurances were given the Ro- 
 manist prelate and his priests that society expected their influence 
 in rescuing property and business interests from the deadly peril 
 of agrarian and communistic doctrines. A fund was established 
 for indigent working-men, and all the workshops and manufac- 
 tories of the city resumed work, to better control the votes of the 
 men. Foremen in the interest of the employers were put on 
 guard, and given funds to encourage the greedy. It was plainly 
 given out that the continuance of work at full pay depended on 
 the result of the election. If the Ultrocrats won, it would be by 
 the numerical superiority of the working-men, and the corpora- 
 tions would have no other remedy than closing their establish- 
 ments, not daring to trust their capital in a community ruled by 
 such a party. 
 
 Fred and his fellows were not idle. Meetings were held daily 
 and nightly. There was no money to use for the machinery of 
 organization, let alone to tempt the venal. But the rallying-cry, 
 'Free trade, free labor, and free men," made up for the want of 
 money. The working-men began dimly to realize, under the teach- 
 ings of Fred, and an enthusiastic corps of collegians led by the 
 Professor of Political Economy, that the protective practice was a 
 rope fastened around the money-bags of the rich, the ends of 
 which were used as a whip for labor ; hence they presented a soli- 
 darity of conviction which the insidious plottings of the monopo- 
 lists found it impossible to shake. By Fred's advice, the unions as 
 bodies took no part in the contest, and, when the vote was counted, 
 every Ultrocrat candidate on the ticket, save the councilmen in 
 the rich wards, was elected ! The city was panic-stricken ! In 
 spite of such agencies as even capital had rarely resorted to, the 
 masses had realized their interests, and had stood for them man- 
 
so RUNS THE WORLD AWAY. 329 
 
 fully! "Business interests,'' the shameless and Plutocratic cry- 
 that had hitherto confused and misled the million, was now be- 
 come the definition of greed, rapacity, corruption, and fraud. 
 " Business interests " were caricatured by the triumphant masses 
 on illuminated banners, by grotesque figures representing sacks of 
 gold with the heads of the most notorious of the leaders of the 
 's3mdicates, covered with coats of many colors, made up of stock 
 certificates, that were well known to have been watered* and by 
 means of which millions had been pillaged. Upon these were crisp 
 "definitions extracted from Fred's most vigorous leaders, such as, 
 "Business interests"; "The union of the rich to plunder the 
 poor"; "The letter of marque of the millionaire pirate to plun- 
 der commerce " ; " Protection " ; " The slavery of the South trans- 
 ferred to the North " ; " The robbery of the many for the enrich- 
 ment of the few " ; " Thousands in the pockets of the capitalist, 
 and hunger in the belly of the people" — ^these and scores as 
 pointed and descriptive had met and vanquished the utmost power 
 of money, and Valedo waited in painful suspense to see how the 
 manumitted serfs would use their new mastery. Fred knew the 
 peril, and met it. Only the wisest heads and most conservative 
 counsels were encouraged, and to his surprise and delight the 
 young men were the most contained and judicious in advising. 
 
 They had no wrongs to avenge. Their interest was purely pa- 
 triotic, and wholesome results followed. For the riots, a jury was 
 made up of which the college professor was foreman, and three 
 of the corporations were represented. The remainder were decent 
 tax-payers who had held aloof from the labor demonstration. The 
 facts outlined in this narrative were discovered, and confirmed by 
 participants and agents. The verdict was, of course, pronounced 
 by the " Eagle," and the Optimate press in general, an insult to 
 the "respectable" sentiment of the city. It was in substance to 
 the effect that the "business interests," as the corporations were 
 fond of calling themselves during election-times, were responsible 
 for so manipulating employment as to drive the working-men to 
 starvation and revolt ; that the riot would never have resulted in 
 bloodshed had the corporations not placed arms within reach of 
 the desperate and misguided members of the unions, actuated by 
 15 
 
33° 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 motives that were degrading to humanity; that the property 
 destroyed was for the most part worthless, and condemned as in- 
 secure — ^in proof, the reports of the company's architects were 
 quoted ; that the destruction of the " Albatross " was really in the 
 public interest, as the builder had pronounced it even more unsafe 
 than the late Academy, in which three hundred men had perished ; 
 that the evidence conclusively showed the responsibility of the 
 railways and manufacturing syndicates in all the recent trouble ; 
 and that neither the city nor State could be made accountable for 
 the destruction of property or lives lost ; that the vicious eco- 
 nomical doctrine of unjust taxation embodied in the tariff was at 
 the root of all the existing evil, and, until that was swept away, 
 labor must be the sport and victim of organized wealth. Then 
 followed a great public meeting, in which this extraordinary ver- 
 dict was ratified, and the State Congress delegation called upon to 
 relieve labor of the tariff-chains put upon it by the corporations, 
 under plea of protecting labor, which was every day reducing 
 the artisan to the impotency of the Southern slaves before the 
 war. 
 
 To the horror of the Optimate, the college professors, many of 
 the local clergy, and a great following of those admitted to be 
 " respectable," joined this demonstration, and signed the mani- 
 festo, calling upon Congress to legislate for the million instead of 
 the milUonaire. But, going still further in insolence, a resolution 
 was added requesting Senator KiUgore to resign his place in the 
 Senate, as no longer representing the principles of the party that 
 elected him : that when chosen to the Senate he was a poor man, 
 in sympathy with those who earned their bread ; that now he was 
 a rich man, representing only the schemes of monopoly and the 
 coterie of a centralizing oligarchy, under whose odious law-making 
 the rich were becoming richer and the poor poorer. 
 
 This movement, with the findings of the jury, startled the State, 
 and profoundly impressed the country. The Legislatures of several 
 of the States took up the subject, and the congress elections in 
 several of the States were fought upon the issues therein outlined ; 
 and, to anticipate a little, when the ballots were .counted, an enor- 
 moiis majority for free trade was sent to the next Congress, and 
 
so RUMS THE WORLD AWAY. 331 
 
 the most illustrious and enlightened Ultrocrat in the Union was 
 elected Speaker, and a sweeping free-trade bill brought into the 
 House. It was defeated by the Optimate Senate, but the reform- 
 ers did not lose heart, and the battle still went on until, two years 
 later, the Ultrocrat candidate was elected to the presidency by a 
 popular majority of a quarter of a million* 
 
 Fred's mission was ended. He had proved that money might 
 be confronted and checked ; that the million were more than 
 the few, and that the multitude might be made to see the here- 
 sies in which craft and gain enmeshed them. He declined the 
 nomination for Congress which was urged upon him, pointing 
 out that, in the hne of battle forming, he could be of more service 
 in journalism than in the legislative hierarchy. He named the col- 
 lege professor as a proper man to represent the awakening public 
 conscience, and he was triumphantly elected. 
 
 Aaron Grimstone, with restored faculties, resumed his old tni- 
 tier. His strokes in stocks became the wonder of the street. It 
 was calculated that in three months he had added millions to his 
 fortune by the manipulation of railways and the watering of tele- 
 graph stock. He had been very busy with lawyers devising a will 
 that should defeat contest after his death. He was very tender and 
 confidential with Nell, but never alluded to Herbert. On Nell's 
 pleading, he settled an income upon Mflanie, who had returned to 
 the Villa, where her sister-in-law often spent part of every day, 
 fondling the little boy that had come to comfort the deserted wife. 
 Herbert had either forgotten or abandoned his action for divorce. 
 Eleanor had never sent the letter he had intrusted to her, and 
 the young man, lost in dissipation, and rid of his wife's presence, 
 let the matter hang in suspense. He made large and frequent 
 drafts upon his mother and sister, and gave no hint of returning 
 to Valedo. There was no official proclamation of Herbert's ex- 
 
 * He was kept from his seat by the perjury of eight men put upon a com- 
 mission selected to investigate the returns, who, so soon as agreed upon by 
 the Ultrocrats, boldly turned upon their previous declarations, and pretended 
 they were mere instruments for counting the votes certified by the Governors 
 of the States, and not empowered to examine the methods by which the Gov- 
 ernors awarded the certificates. 
 
332 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 pulsion and disinheritance, but society in Valedo knew that father 
 and son were alienated. The young man's comrades, who hated 
 him cordially for his arrogance and pride of purse, were not slow 
 in exposing the cause of the rupture, and Valedo waited and won- 
 dered what the dinouement would be. 
 
 In May, father and daughter were to sail for a prolonged tour 
 in Europe. Everything had been arranged, all the complicated 
 affairs of the great estate placed in order, and only the adieux 
 were to be said. 
 
 Nell had tried her utmost to postpone the journey. She looked 
 forward to it with dread. She was leaving all she loved behind, 
 and she was not in the frame of mind to enter into the spirit of 
 foreign travel. Her mother's health, too, was a strong uneasiness 
 to her. Mrs. Grimstone was too delicate at any time to endure 
 the sea-voyage, and, though she had made up her mind to go with 
 her husband and daughter, the physician had peremptorily forbid- 
 den her to venture the ordeal. More than all, Eleanor had come 
 to love Herbert's baby with a passionate idolatry that comes to 
 women who have loved and lost. She had manoeuvred cautiously 
 to interest her father in the innocent child, but he turned from her 
 harshly whenever the subject was mooted. She spent hours every 
 day with the deserted wife, and had become sincerely attached to 
 her. M^lanie, under trial, was the perfect antitype of the reckless 
 actress in vogue. She bore her desertion with that pathetic resig- 
 nation seen in women who have the instinct of maternal love de- 
 veloped beyond the mere surface passions of the social instinct. 
 
 She prattled vnsely to Eleanor how she was going to rear the 
 little Herbert, so that the curse of money should not corrupt him. 
 Then, frightened at the inferable reproach to his father, she stam- 
 mered, blushed, and shrank back. Eleanor laughed gayly. 
 
 "Ah, we must teach him to use wealth, not worship it, or be- 
 come its victim. That's the secret of happiness with riches. He 
 shall be guided by his aunty, who has learned the use and abuse of 
 money"; and she sighed softly as she pressed the small image of 
 her brother to her face, very much as if the pink and white atom 
 were a muff of fleecy furbelows, meant expressly for the conven- 
 ience of young women. She was deeply moved when she arose 
 
so HUNS THE WORLD AWAY. 
 
 333 
 
 to say farewell. M^lanie had looked forward to the separation 
 with anguish, but she bore up better than Eleanor, now that the 
 parting had come. She had felt her desertion less while she was 
 a daily consoler and reminder of the absent husband. Nell, how- 
 ever, was to see Herbert in New York and urge him to return. 
 This thought gave the poor wife sustaining hope, that the sister 
 was far from sharing, though she did not let the other know it. 
 From M^lanie's cottage she drove to Mrs. Carew's to take leave 
 of that energetic propagandist of Hahnemann. It was nearly the 
 dinner-hour, and Fred had just returned from the office for the day. 
 
 " Why haven't you been to see us, Mr. Fred } Papa has asked 
 for you often, and would be very glad to see you," Eleanor said, 
 a little embarrassed as she shook hands. 
 
 " Oh," exclaimed Mrs. Carew, " he has become such a poli- 
 tician that we never see him much at home, and, g^ven up as he is 
 to those pestilent Ultrocrats, he may well be ashamed to go near 
 respectable people." 
 
 " Mother is right,' ' Fred rejoined. " I am afraid to go near 
 ' respectable ' people ; not, however, from the motive she alleges. 
 I am already accused by the more hot-headed in my party of being 
 in collusion with the ' bloated bondholders.' What would be said 
 of me if I were known to hold intimate relations with the king of 
 the corporations ? Make my respectful duty to your father, and 
 tell him that I sincerely hope he will come back from Europe 
 restored to his old strength, and I'm sure he will appreciate the 
 unselfishness of the wish, for he is the opponent we find hardest 
 to meet in our battles." 
 
 Eleanor looked at him steadily while he said this laughingly. 
 In her mind there was an image of another ; and the contrast be- 
 tween the loyalty and unselfishness of this rash and headstrong 
 enthusiast, with the other's shifty self-seeking and moral supple- 
 ness, stimulated yague, indefinable dreams that had long ago 
 perplexed her, in the old, happy days, when she had first learned 
 how constant he was in his convictions, and unspotted from the 
 selfishness of the world. 
 
 Mrs. Carew pressed her to remain to dinner, and she put off 
 her hat and cloak, and accepted with a sense of enjoyment and 
 
334 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 surcease she had not felt in months. As the mother left the room 
 to attend her hostess duties, Eleanor seized the opportunity to say 
 ■ to Fred: 
 
 " We shall be gone a year, perhaps longer. I am going to 
 ask a favor of the friendship I know you have for me. I want 
 you to promise me to be a friend to M61anie. Poor thing ! she 
 needs protection and sympathy. I shall feel greatly relieved and 
 comforted if you will promise me this." 
 
 She stopped with heightened color, and her voice was very 
 tremulous. 
 
 "Willingly; I will do anything in my power. My mother 
 shall visit her every day — something she will do the more willingly, 
 that Mrs. Herbert is a confirmed homoeopathist, and listens to the 
 dear mother \vith unswerving credulity when she recites the won- 
 ders of that unobtrusive system." 
 
 " And I want you to promise that you vvtU write and let me 
 know how she is bearing up — how she gets along." 
 
 " I will do it with pleasure, and in return you must tell me of 
 the sights in Europe, which, alas ! I suppose I shall never see." 
 
 " Come," said Mrs. Carew, reappearing, " let us go out to 
 dinner," and Fred, with Nell on his arm, followed the preoccu- 
 pied matron. He was very gay during the meal, and Nell fell 
 quite into the spirit of his jocularities. He drove home with her 
 after an hour or two, in which Nell played and Fred sang. He 
 took leave of her under the forte-cochere, and there were tears in 
 her eyes and a strange trembling in her frame as he pressed her 
 hands in a final farewell. Mrs. Grimstone came out as she went 
 up-stairs, to tell her that the father had been very uneasy and 
 troubled by her absence, and was waiting impatiently for her. 
 
 He started up and seized her with a feverish eagerness as she 
 tripped softly into his study. The light was low and deeply 
 shaded, and the father and child sat down together, as she had 
 sat when a small girl, her head pillowed on his breast. The 
 mother came in presently and joined the group, and they sat thus 
 until the clocks were striking eleven. He did all the talking. 
 His mind went back to Nell's childhood, and he revived little 
 reminiscences of things of which she had never supposed that 
 
so JiUNS THE WORLD A WAY. 335 
 
 he took note. He was very tender in bringing up the memories 
 of his courtship and the early days of his married life. Mrs. 
 Grimstone sobbed softly over the fond recollections, greatly sur- 
 prised to discover them cherished in the heart she thought so 
 hard and so immersed in worldliness. When the mother and 
 daughter arose to go, he clung to them with a strange persistence, 
 embracing them with an affection he had never before shown 
 any one save Eleanor. After they were gone, he sat for an hour 
 where he had been while they were with him. The stroke of 
 midnight was ringing over the city, when he started up and be- 
 gan to pace the floor with a tottering, feeble stride. Turning up 
 the lights, he unlocked a drawer and took out a package tied up 
 with a faded blue ribbon. He sat down at the open desk and 
 opened it with trembling fingers. There were a dozen letters, in 
 a large, round, boyish hand, beginning " Dearest papa " ; the ink 
 was faded and yellow, the creases in the letters worn to rags. In 
 the packet there was a small, oval, velvet case. He opened this, 
 and looked intently at a round, chubby face, the daguerreotype 
 colors still fresh and warm. It was Herbert's portrait, taken when 
 he was a boy of twelve ; his eyes large and innocent, his curls 
 framing an expressive, almost Raphaelic countenance. He studied 
 the charming, childish lines long and attentively, and sighed softly. 
 
 The packet was wrapped up again carefully, and put in an 
 envelope, and vsdth a firm hand addressed to Nell, then put back 
 in the drawer. Then he arose and began pacing the floor pre- 
 occupiedly, his paralyzed arm hanging limply at his side, and the 
 other in his bosom. It was two o'clock when he unrobed him- 
 self, turned down the lights, and entered the bath-room, carrying 
 a morocco-bound case in his hand. He turned the lights up at 
 full head, let on the water, and paced the apartment until the 
 tub was three quarters fuU. Then he closed the doors care- 
 fully and turned the lights down. 
 
 Nell, sleeping on another floor, started, shuddering in her 
 dreams, by the dull echo of something crashing. She did not 
 wake. In the morning the sensation of it returned to her, and 
 she wondered at the vividness of her dreaming pain, and the half 
 consciousness of the sound. 
 
336 
 
 THE MONEY-MAKERS. 
 
 At seven o'clock, Ralph, the valet, entering Mr. Grimstone's 
 chamber, found the bed undisturbed. The bath-room door was 
 closed. He opened it, and entered in surprise. An instant later 
 he came out ghastly and shrieking. When the horrified house- 
 hold returned with him, Aaron Grimstone was found in the bath, 
 cold and dead — an expression of serenity on his care-worn face. 
 He was stretched at full length in the crimson water, and a pistol 
 was found at the bottom of the tub when the body was taken out. 
 On the marble stand beside the bath the pamphlet edition of the 
 finding of the jury in the Academy disaster was lying open at the 
 page where Aaron Grimstone's name appeared as responsible for 
 the lives lost ! 
 
 Herbert's whereabout could not be found; but he saw the 
 report of his father's death in the dispatches, and was in Valedo 
 the next day. The funeral was very simple, though Valedo lav- 
 ished sympathy upon the afflicted family. The newspapers re- 
 frained from any comment on the cause, the " Free Press " deal- 
 ing tenderly and respectfully with the family in its affliction. 
 
 When the dead man's papers were opened, his vast fortune 
 was found divided between his daughter and his own relatives. 
 Herbert was expressly disinherited. " For value received," the 
 controlling shares of stock in the " Eagle " were turned over to 
 Alfred Carew. A bequest of one hundred thousand dollars was 
 left to Elizabeth Killgore. An income of five thousand dollars 
 was settled upon Mdanie, to be paid out of Nell's portion. In 
 spite of his sister's proffer to share her fortune with him, Herbert 
 at once took steps to set the will aside, and it was done without 
 difficulty — the reluctant testimony of the mother and sister, vjrith 
 that of Dr. Arkvmght, proving the testator's mental infirmity 
 when the new wU was drawn up. Under the new order, the 
 fortune was divided equally between the brother and sister, after 
 the deduction of the vddow's dower. Eleanor scrupulously car- 
 ried out her father's wishes, while Herbert fought the conveyance 
 of the " Eagle " shares to Fred, but was worsted in the courts, 
 his sister defending the suit in which Fred refused to enter. And 
 Herbert, made harder and more selfish by his exile, ruled in 
 Aaron Grimstone's stead, and his reign was the embodiment of 
 
so RUNS THE WORLD AWAY. 33 y 
 
 the spirit of those who learn nothing and forget nothing. He re- 
 built the Academy in great splendor, as well as the ill-fated Al- 
 batross. Impotent to molest Fred, who now edited the " Eagle " 
 consolidated with the " Free Press," he waited his opportunity to 
 strike that " insolent upstart " a blow. He repelled all advances 
 from M^lanie, though he took no steps for divorce. He inherited 
 much of his father's business sagacity, and his fortune went on 
 accumulating in spite of his yachting and excesses. He gave 
 large checks to the Optimate committee to stamp out the commu- 
 nistic theories of free trade, and prepared to contest Killgore's 
 seat in the Senate when the time came. 
 
 As a step to this end, he allied himself to Madame Dominguez, 
 whose husband had died. He built her a sumptuous villa on 
 Geometry Avenue ; and, though Valedo was scandalized by the 
 liaison, 2l. man with such a fortune could not be held to strict ac- 
 count. Hilliard was his intimate, and prospered in New York, 
 where he was engaged to the daughter of a California bonanza 
 king. 
 
 And here the parable ends, as all parables end — incomplete, 
 disappointing: unmerited rewards, and unrewarded merit; hap- 
 less love, and loveless happiness; Misery riveting the shackles 
 Greed forges, and Ignorance holding the lees of the flacon to its 
 own lips, while Greed and Irony gulp down the deep draughts of 
 the life-giving nectar ! — Money, not only the law, but the gospel 
 of life ; Money, the law-maker ; Money, the priest at the altar of 
 that worship whose creed is inequality, and whose ideal is self. 
 It is at best a tediously-threshed sheaf, this tale of money-mak- 
 ing ; and, but for the romantic enchantments of the millionaire 
 magician, we couldn't be expected to read it — could we .■' Why, 
 after all, shouldn't he get who can, and he keep who has .' Isn't 
 the story old as Naboth's vineyard ; old, indeed, as Tubal's cru- 
 sade in search of equal partage ? It was not only when God was 
 wroth, that to punish Israel he gave the people a king ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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