The House of a Merchant Prince

XVII.

THE PAST OF KINGBOLT OF KINGBOLTSVILLE.

THE despised passion of jealousy had, after all, done its work with Bainbridge, as it has with others. It had shown him that he was violently in love. He was forced to contemplate Ottilie as the wife of another, and he knew the desperate pain it would cost him to lose her.

“ Piece of my life,” he soliloquized, “ how shall I tear you out of it ? What shall I do without you ? ”

It did not answer to recall the days of Madeline Scarrett, and to charge fiercely that he was of a weak and susceptible disposition. Some obstinate interior voice kept repeating to him, in spite of Ottilie’s unworthiness, —

“ She is what I only fancied the other to be.”

The former experience, however, had made him intensely skeptical, and added to a fund of stoical reserve. He knew that he could conquer and forget. Perhaps he knew also, now, how these enforced conquests may eat out the vitals of a once warm and generous nature, and leave it in the condition of a tree through the heart of which a flame of fire has run. His brain seethed with a hundred contradictory plans. Before he had had time to carry any of them into execution, something happened which put a very different aspect on the affair.

During this interval he suffered himself to be drawn back, one evening, by way of distraction, to Miss Emily Rawson’s. That affable acquaintance at first affected to take him for some stranger, who had got into the wrong house by mistake, and she refused his hand, extended for hers, but presently took it with a warm and friendly pressure. She was embroidering a velvet table cover by an astral lamp, which cast a becoming light upon her. She was much interested at present in decorative art, and was a subscriber to societies where the new principles were advocated, and to warerooms where articles made in accordance with them were exposed for sale,

“ My design is something out of the common,” she said, holding the work up to inspection. “How do you like it? It was drawn expressly for me by Mr. Lloyd, the architect. I met him first at Bridgefield, the past summer. I spent a few days there. It is not at all a bad summer resort. The air is very good. Mr. Lloyd and I were at the same hotel. We spoke of you, among others. He tells me you were classmates at college.”

“ Yes, we were classmates. We always called him ‘G.’ I recollect him better by that initial than by his name. There was another Lloyd, who was known in the same way as ‘ A. B.’ It was necessary to distinguish them.”

“ That college life must have been so pleasant. By the way, we were quite near the large property of another classmate of yours, as I was told by Mr. Lloyd, — Mr. Kingbolt.”

Bainbridge heard this name pronounced with astonishment. He had come here for some faint aid in avoiding the memory of it, and it was the very first thing to be forced upon his attention.

“Yes,” went on the fair embroiderer, “ there was a glimpse from my window of Kingboltsville, — the factories, the race-track, and the large stuccoed mansion where the family resides. The conservatories are interminable. I was told that the original Kingbolt bought up all the land thereabouts for a song, and redeemed it. The best of it is among the most desirable residence property in the city, of which it now forms a part. I saw the fortunate heir’s mother and sisters, but he himself was not at home. However, I was not interested in him then, but now I am. I want you to tell me about him.”

“ I don’t know that I recollect anything in particular. I am afraid I cannot help you.”

“ What was he like in college ? ”

“ We were not intimate friends. Bridgefield struck you, then, as a passable summer resort ? For my part, I find those interior Connecticut cities too warm.”

“ Did he graduate with a high rank, for instance ? Was he a hard student ?” the questioner persisted.

“ He was dismissed for some informality, I believe, before arriving as far as that,” said Bainbridge, with a kind of final air.

“ And is that all ? ”

“ Yes, — no, — I believe that is all.”

“ Well, that is not enough for me. Ah, here is Mr. Lloyd. I shall ask him. Perhaps he has condescended to burden his mind with a little more detail.”

Mr. Lloyd himself, who, it seemed, had formed the habit of calling occasionally, entered now to pay his respects.

“ I want a full description of Kingbolt of Kingboltsville, Mr. Lloyd. We saw his place last summer, you recollect. Mr. Bainbridge won’t tell me anything, and I have reasons for wanting to know,” said the lady.

“ I cannot be expected to say a great deal of good of him, considering the way he treated me on one occasion. You have heard of that before,” said the new arrival. “ Still, a person of that kind is apt to be spoiled in his bringing up, and I suppose we should make allowances for him. Well, I was in his set in college and for some time afterwards, and I dare say I know as much about his proceedings in those times as anybody. He left the alma mater considerably earlier than the rest of us, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, as it were. He dashed his money about freely while he was there, and lived in great luxury, for that primitive period. It was Said by those who knew him only at a distance that he never wore a suit of clothes a second time. That is a period, you know, when a young man is very particular about his personal appearance. Among other doings, he erected a hall for his class secret society. Bless me, how much we thought of that sort of nonsense once ! Between ourselves there was no secret at all, but we had a hall like a charnel-house, and went around with the mysterious air of murderers. The hall cost him forty thousand dollars. He got his mother to persuade his trustees to let him have the money. They thought that perhaps he would be more contented, and take an interest in his studies, if they humored him in this. It did not work in that way, however. The faculty, after a good deal of forbearance, had to send him away. He was really too much. They could have maintained no discipline at all in the place, if they had not done so.

“ He asked a number of us up to his place to help celebrate his coming of age,” Lloyd went on. Finding himself listened to, he showed a certain zest in these reminiscences. “ When we got there we found him turned serious. His trustees had talked to him, after he was expelled, and made quite an impression on him, it seemed. They described to him how his father had built up a great institution, which had come to be known pretty much the world over, and how he had had honors from foreign courts, had been mayor and governor, and might have been ambassador, if he would. They said that he, the son, ought not to be willing to throw away, and even disgrace, the memory of all that had gone before. They said that if he did not desire to take a profession he ought to go into the works and learn the business, so as to be competent to manage it himself, and keep it always at the same pitch of importance. This our friend had consented to do. When he had arrived at this decision, nothing would do but he must wear a blue shirt and jackboots and carry a tin dinner-pail, like any of the ordinary hands, and begin by oiling the machinery. He never does, or at least never begins, anything by halves. It was in such costume that he showed his visitors through the works, — fashionable young women and all, — when we came up to the birthday celebration. The festivities lasted three days. It was quite on the English plan. It was an idea of his sisters, who had been abroad a good deal. As for his mother, she would consent to almost anything. She was lady-like and well-meaning, but weak. One could easily see that. The fact is, Kingbolt never had any particular bringing up. He was never controlled. I was told that his father — as long as he lived, for he died early — treated everything the boy did as a huge joke. He used to say that he had not made a success enough of discipline in his own case to lay down rules for the government of others.

“ 4 Let him fight it out on his own account,’his father would say. 4 He has good traits from his mother, and may be one or two not so bad from me ; and no doubt, in the long run, the good will prevail over the bad.’

44 So if he got black in the face with temper, or smashed all the crockery, they simply put him in a padded room; and if he kicked the governess with his new boots till she cried, they comforted her with a liberal present. His mother took everything in the prayerful and tearful style.”

“ They allowed him to kick his governess ? A cheerful beginning, I must say,” commented Miss Rawson. Bainbridge, who had been about to withdraw, found himself listening with a dazed interest to this cursory review of his rival’s education.

“ Well, at his coming of age,” G. Lloyd went on, 44 there were dancing, and illuminations, and distributions of presents, and driving gayly through the streets of Bridgefield in all the conveyances the stables could turn out. Kingbolt was again 4 one of the boys,’ and joined in the proceedings with a will. If I had been a parent or guardian, I should have dreaded the effect of such a break in his routine. Whether or not this was the entering wedge, it is certain that within a year he tired of being a horny-handed son of toil, and gave it up.

“The rest of us had taken our sheepskins considerably before that, and a group of choice spirits was assembled in New York. You recollect about it, Bainbridge. You were one of us occasionally, before you had gone into your manufacturing, your orange-planting, and what not.”

44 Yes, I remember,” nodded Bainbridge, gravely.

“ Kingbolt came down to visit us,” pursued Lloyd, " and the boys urged him to stay.

“ ' What shall I do about my trustees ? ’ he asked them. 4 Old Judge Bryan, the chairman, is continually at me about the glories of the past. He will consider me hopelessly lost.’

“ ' Hang your trustees ! ’ I recollect Anthropoid Walker replying. 4 The old Judge will be only too glad not to have anybody to overhaul him in his accounts. Let him alone, and he will embezzle your property in peace. You ’ve got a soul above axle grease. Come into the law school with the rest of us ! Look at me ! I ascribe my future greatness entirely to that noblest of professions, the law.’

“ Let me see ! Anthropoid Walker and Zeus Baldwin — we kept up the old college nicknames still — were in the law school, in Lafayette Place, at that time. Sprowle Onderdonk was another of the legal luminaries. He was considerably older than most of us, and we had not known him so well in college, owing to this fact and his being above us. But with his leisurely way of taking things he had arrived at this point only at the same time, and here put himself quite on an equality with the rest. He had a good mind, that man, and with more pressure upon him might have done something worth while. He still sticks to law in a desultory way, and keeps an office. You recall him as a man of ability, do you not, Bainbridge ? ”

“ I recollect a sledge-hammer style of argument he had sometimes in the debates in Linonia,” replied Bainbridge. “ We used to think he would succeed in politics.”

“ I was a Brother In Unity, not a Linonian, myself. Our college societies,” Lloyd said to Miss Rawson, in explanation of this technical-sounding nomenclature. “ De Longbow Rowley was studying medicine,” he went on. “ That fellow was always telling the most preposterous yarns about things that had happened to him, and he keeps it up yet. Whitehead Finch had gone into business. His family had got him a place in a broker’s office, allowed him two thousand dollars a year to keep off the pangs of starvation, and left him to shift for himself. Gus Ramsdell professed the purpose of becoming a power in the commercial world. He had begun by entering the store of Rodman Harvey, at three dollars a week, but found that this interfered greatly with his society engagements. They ‘ did not know how to treat a gentleman,’ he said, and he was obliged to give it up. He had not yet found another opening to his taste, representing himself as in search of one. We charged him with looking for a place, and hoping not to get it. Sprowle Onderdonk declared, furthermore, that Ramsdell had confided to him, —

“ ‘ I shall not work as long as I have my health.’

“ For my part, I was young and foolish then. I was in an architect’s office, and paying the firm to teach me the business. They had to catch me when they could, in order to do it. I often went down to the office at two or three in the afternoon, and left at four. If the principals were out, even this brief space was spent, as likely as not, in fencing with a fellow-draughtsman, the weapons being T-squares.

“ Well, this was the character of the interesting circle of which Kingbolt became a part. He set up handsome bachelor apartments, which were soon the general rallying point. More than once, after an evening of lively adventures, we spread ourselves out there on his furniture, and passed the rest of the night. There were suppers, at which one of the amusements was to shoot the necks off the champagne bottles with a small revolver, instead of uncorking them. Such rackets ! Ah, yes, indeed ! With our little English hats and English clothes, our sticks and eye-glasses, our hands in our pockets, and quips and cranks innumerable at the ends of our tongues, we tore about from one pleasure to another. I dare say we were a sort of terror to most with whom we came in contact. We took boxes at the spectacular dramas. We knew where the best beer was to be had, and the best Welsh rarebit, and anchovy sandwich. We patronized the Tyrolean warblers at the Vienna Garden, in the Bowery; dropped in at Herman’s,where leading artists are to be found, and at Schwalbach’s, where actors resort after the play. I remember how the joints of beef, the piles of oysters, the green of the salads, and the vivid scarlet of the lobsters, arranged in ornamental pyramids on Schwalbach’s counter, impressed my imagination when I saw them first.”

“ You describe to me not only Kingbolt, but a whole state of society,” said Miss Rawson. “ This is better than I expected, but of course you do not suppose that I approve of you.”

“ Oh, we reformed. I, at least, had my living to make. They are all club men now, those fellows, and great swells, and I have little or nothing to do with them, except when I go and bore one of them, unblushingly, for his influence in some building contract. Athletic sports were an important part of the programme, in the times I speak of. Not that we really took part in them, but it was the thing to be posted, and to be present on eventful occasions. The base-ball and cricket games, the dog shows, the shooting and rowing matches, — those were the important objects of life. A good running high jump at Hoboken would draw the coterie away from their ostensible occupations for a day. The long purse — and Kingbolt’s was the longest — attended religiously any important regatta at Saratoga, or ball match at Chicago or Baltimore, If our university nine or boat’s crew chanced to be passing through town, or the glee club came here to give a concert, you may be sure that a patriotic attempt was made to let them have as hilarious a time as possible.”

“ And society ? I suppose you were great breakers of feminine hearts ? ”

“As a rule, society was rather despised, just then. Still, we did condescend to an occasional party. We trained around somewhat in company, taking a sardonic view of things ; referring to the débutantes, for instance, as ‘ young gushers.’ When the show was over we bounded up two stairs at a time, preparing cigarettes for lighting, on the way, got into our ulsters, opened our crush hats with the loudest explosions they were capable of, and so — not being club men, though there were some petty junior clubs, in which membership might have been taken — off to Delmonico’s, Schwalbach’s, or some other of the chosen resorts. A certain reverential awe was entertained for a class of older men, whom we saw heading all the important movements in society and on the turf. Some of them were bald, corpulent, of weather-beaten visages and profuse whiskers, —the kind of persons one had been used to as officers of banks and companies and deacons of churches. Occasionally, one of them took his racing-stables abroad, by way of variety, and contested all the great events of the European turf. An existence which could hold the continuous interest of persons of such a maturity must be a life of pleasure indeed.”

“ But you do not separate yourself from Kingbolt,” interrupted Emily Rawson. “Were you all exactly alike? Thus far you have not shown that he was worse than the rest of you.”

“ I do not admit that I set out to say anything so very bad of him. He is whimsical, — that is all. He separates himself from the rest of us mainly by that. He lets nothing stand in the way of his pursuance of a whim. He carries it to the bitter end.”

“ Ah, indeed ! ” said Emily Rawson.

And “ Ah, indeed ! ” echoed Bainbridge, mentally, in a dull way. The exposition of this trait in Kingbolt was the knell of lingering hopes.

“ He ran out to Colorado, now and then, for a hunt,” coutinued Lloyd. “ He was not greatly given to reading, nor a person of a romantic fancy, I should say ; and for a time Europe seemed without the least attraction for him. At length, however, he went across with Gus Ramsdell. He proposed only a brief stay, but it extended into one of several years, and left his law course very much in the lurch. The pair traveled, at first, on the comic plan, modeling their doings after a class of literature then much in vogue. They were locked up at Cologne, among other episodes, for beating a commissionaire, — who, no doubt, deserved it. Ramsdell came back, but Kingbolt remained, and the dignified side of things gradually took hold of him. He picked up manners and customs and languages, and began to make titled acquaintances, and conduct himself en grand seigneur. He registered as Kingbolt of Kingboltsville. In those places —and they comprise the greater part of Europe — where all the Americas, their languages and peoples, are confounded as one, and a corresponding ignorance of their social system prevails, he was taken to be, in his own country, the chief of a clan, or the lord of a barony at least. An African potentate who had bought farming implements of the Eureka Tool Works, and conferred a decoration on the father, gave a hunt in the young man’s honor, — at least, so Kingbolt relates. A splendidly caparisoned steed was sent out to meet him, in charge of slaves, as he drew near the appointed place, — quite like a bit of the Arabian Nights. He killed a wild boar, the tusks of which, among other trophies, still ornament his room. I dare say this is so. He was not particularly given to stretching a point, like our friend Rowley.”

“ Not particularly,” assented Bainbridge, being appealed to.

“ Kingbolt returned from Europe with plenty of new airs and graces and enlarged ideas of spending money. He had been elected to the clubs, meanwhile, and was now in close relations with the older men we had been used to revere. It was at this time that he formally went in for a society career, and set up for ‘ the glass of fashion and the mould of form,’ in town and country. Then be went off again, briefly, on an earnest tack. I doubt if it was anything more than a paragraph in a newspaper that started it,—a paragraph suggesting to rich men to do something with their money ; improve the condition of their subordinates, for instance. He ran across me again, turned serious enough myself by that time, I assure you. I had my living to get, and had been able to follow that idle group about as far — about as far as you could throw an ox by the tail, for instance. Well, he ran across me, and took me to Europe with him to prepare the most perfect plans for an industrial museum and model cottages. I was to have — well, he promised almost everything ; and he meant it, I dare say. But he proved insufferable as a task-master. All our old intimacy went for nothing. We quarreled violently, and he turned me adrift; that was the way of it. It was devilish awkward at first, I recollect, — out of money, away from home, and my time and labors gone for nothing; but now I can look back at it more coolly. No doubt I was somewhat to blame myself. He had fallen in before this with a certain fascinating St. Hill, who attached himself to him as a sort of parasite, and probably had something to do with inducing him to abandon the philanthropic project entirely. St. Hill was brought back to this country instead of myself. He could give you points on the character of Kingbolt. And that is the extent of my information.”

The architect drew a long breath, as if after having talked interminably.

“ Sure? ” queried Miss Rawson.

“ Positive.”

“ Well, we are very much obliged to you. Concerning his more public career, I knew more or less already.”

Lloyd and Bainbridge fell to exchanging a few casual remarks on some art club, where, it seemed, they were in the habit of meeting occasionally, and Bainbridge presently rose to go.

As he was passing out of the room, the Rev. Edwin Swan was coming in. This was an assistant lately attached to one of the minor Episcopal churches. He was a deserving, quiet, plain man, of a most respectable position naturally, but without fortune ; and it was thought that he was looking for a wife. Their fair entertainer was fluttered at the presence of so many presentable men in her parlor at the same time. Each would comprehend, she hoped, and in particular the recreant Bainbridge, that, if she was not in demand by him, she certainly was by others.

“ But I have not told you the reason of my interest in Kingbolt of Kingboltsville,” she said confidentially, at the threshold, to the departing guest.

“ No,” said Bainbridge.

“ Well, I have seen him out driving with our friend Ottilie Harvey. I hear he paid her much attention at Newport, also. I have my informants, you see. ‘ Such things have been, said Private James.’ She would be an enterprising little minx if given but half a chance. I am sure of it. Do you not think so?”

“ Very likely,” said Bainbridge.

XVIII.

AT THE EMPIRE CLUB AND AROUND TOWN.

One morning, at about this time, Arthur Kingbolt of Kingboltsville awoke at nine o’clock, and rang the bell for his body servant. Ten or eleven was a more usual hour with him, and the services of Greenway were generally in requisition to rouse him from his somewhat heavy slumbers. He had met Greenway in the employ of one of the smaller London clubs, and brought him over expressly for his own use.

“ Get to work now, Greenway,” he said. “ I am going to get up.”

The well-trained and discreet Greenway first handed in the “ brandy cocktail ” his master had accustomed himself to demand, as adapted to the needs of his peculiar constitution, and then proceeded deftly to shave him, while he still reclined under the rich Persian canopy of his bed. The servant laid out a velvet jacket, braided and faced with silk. While Kingbolt exchanged for this the night-gown of China silk in which he had slept, and rose, and lounged in an easy - chair, with a cigarette and a morning paper, Greenway brought in from an adjoining room the articles of apparel selected for the day’s wear. There was a store of clothing, hats, boots and shoes, and walking-sticks almost sufficient to have equipped a company.

The luxury of these chambers could hardly have jarred even upon a feminine taste. The masculine element was shown in many pictures of types of female loveliness — photographs of actresses and the like — of a rather free sort, in weapons, and in trophies of the chase. There could be seen the wild boar tusks that came from the hunt with the potentate of Barbary; the stuffed head of a red deer, shot, with a Scotch lord, in the Scottish highlands; the head of a “ big-horn ” of Montana, and of a fallow deer of the Adirondacks.

“ Get me some sort of a breakfast, here, will you, Greenway?” directed the master, in a petulant tone. “It does n't make any difference what it is. I ’ll stand that villainous club cooking no longer. No,” he countermanded, when a beginning of carrying the order into execution had been made, “ I ’ll go to Delmonico’s. Don’t forget,” he said, as a parting direction, “to take back to Millerick’s that beastly driving-coat he sent me yesterday ! What does he think I am, I wonder ? ”

When in the street, however, Kingbolt changed his mind once more, and went to the Empire Club, as usual. Greenway thought he had rarely seen his master in a more capricious and irritable frame of mind than at present.

Kingbolt was hailed in the lobby of the club by some men who affected to take his appearance at that time of day as a remarkable phenomenon.

“Turning over a new leaf,—out to see the sun rise, — early dewdrop, and that sort of thing, eh ? ” said one Whitehead Finch, of whom we have already heard some slight mention.

“ I’m not turning over anything. I suppose a man has a right to get up, if he likes,” the new-comer rejoined, not too amiably.

“ Well, you can’t keep the London style going a great while here,” said Mr. Ramsdell. “Lord, I’ve tried it! I used to sleep till four in the afternoon, regularly. Over there in the fog, it makes no difference when you burn your gas ; one part of the twenty-four hours is as proper for it as another. But here it is quite a different matter. If a fellow does n’t show himself in pretty fair season, the programme for the day is made up without him, and he gets left.”

“Your friend St. Hill is posted again for quite a stiff little sum,” said De Longbow Rowley, nodding towards the bulletin board, where various matters of interest were officially brought to attention.

Kingbolt walked over to it, and read a notice to the effect that St. Hill was largely in arrears, in his dues of various kinds, to the club. Such delinquency subjected the offender to the embarrassment of this kind of publicity, and after a certain time, if it were still unsatisfied, to loss of membership. On going to his letter-box, there lay a note from the same person, which proved to be an appeal to him, Kingbolt, to take down the announcement and liquidate the indebtedness, as “ a temporary accommodation,” for which the writer would remain forever grateful.

“ There is getting to be too much of this sort of thing. I am sick of it,” he muttered, stuffing the note into his pocket.

But when the rest made the bulletin the text for an abusive discussion of St. Hill, it suited his perverse humor to stand by the man. The Empire Club was a rather noted place for gossip. The characters of both men and women were often handled there in a style that would have become a tea-drinking of spinsters of the old school. This, however, rarely precluded the extending of the usual civilities to the victim if fallen in with at the very next moment.

“ What sort of a company has the fellow got ? What keeps him a-going, any way?” inquired Gus Ramsdell, who had long since come into property, by inheritance, which placed him beyond the need of aspirations, commercial or other, connected with the problem of his self-support.

“It’s a swindle, if it’s anything, as sure as a gun. That’s my opinion,” said Mr. Rowley. “ I should not be surprised to see him come to grief, and dropped out of decent society, any day.”

“ We are not dropping people nowadays,” said the elderly Watervliet. “ The Texas is coming more into vogue. In Texas, I understand, they don’t drop a man out of society till he is hanged.”

Watervliet’s own means of support were not of the most apparent. A friendly hand, now and then, stopped a serious gap in his exchequer. He varied his sitting in the club window with an occasional long voyage to the tropics in somebody’s yacht, in the winter. In summer, he had been known to admit deprecatingly, in a rare moment of weakness for him, that his livelihood was but a matter of his railroad fares, since he passed from one hospitable country house to another, in a continual round of visits.

“ Look at the way he took in that gudgeon of a Stillsby,” said Mr. Northfleet. “ He pretended to make a venture for him in stocks, and sent him word presently that his money was doubled. He did not pay the money over, though; you may be sure of that. He advised now that it be put into another deal, which, he said, promised even better than the first. Stillsby, of course, was delighted at his luck, and advanced more funds. The upshot was that he never got a cent back. Now that the sum was a big one, St. Hill got away with it. He regretted to say that an unfortunate turn of the market had, etc., etc. Still, he felt that if entrusted with a new opportunity he could at once redeem previous losses, and return a handsome profit upon the whole investment. It’s a very old dodge, — that is. I say, that is what St. Hill did to you, is n’t it, Stillsby?” the speaker called to Stillsby, who had just come down the stairs.

“ Yes, sir, that’s what he did. I put up — He, he, I ” — began Stillsby, stuttering in his eagerness to tell the story.

“ Bah! Wall Street is Wall Street,” said Kingbolt contemptuously, and setting foot on the stairs to go to the breakfast he had ordered in the restaurant. “ What do people expect ? ”

“ Yes, that is so, too,” assented Stillsby, agreeing readily with any one who spoke with authority.

When Kingbolt had breakfasted he found the same men, with others, sitting in the conversation room, by the large windows giving upon the Avenue. A few who were reading newspapers offered laconic remarks, from time to time, on subjects enlisting their interest.

“ I see there’s another duke, a great swell, coming in by the French steamer,” said Northfleet. “ I suppose that crazy Mrs. Poyntz will go to his hotel, grab him by the hair of the head, and have him on exhibition before he knows he is fairly ashore. Poor duffers ! they don’t know the difference at first.”

“ I see old Elphinstone Swan has dropped off,” said Ramsdell. “ That must be what the club’s flag is halfmasted for to-day.”

“ I thought he was dead centuries ago, ” commented De Longbow Rowley, with a yawn.

“ Not at all. I could have told you better than that,” said Finch. “ I have had my eye on the prospective widow this long time. Madeline Scarrett has made a good speculation of it. Here she is, about as young and handsome as ever, with all the old man’s money to boot.”

After this, silence for a while.

Mr. Watervliet broke it with a low whistle, expressive of keen emotion. “ I see Canterbury Boy is gone,” he said.

“ What ! — No ! — It can’t be ! — When ? — How did it happen ? ” were the general exclamations, with a letting fall of papers and rapt expressions of concern.

“ At the Fashion Course, Long Island, yesterday, at five in the afternoon,” pursued Watervliet, in a melancholy tone. “ Taken with bleeding of the lungs at three o’clock, and expired at five. Only in the seventh year of his age. By Jove, that’s hard ! ”

This striking instance of the brevity of life, the vanity of all things mortal, cast temporarily a deep gloom over the company. Such members of it as had won money in times past on Canterbury Boy were almost moved to tears; and even those who had lost now ignored the circumstance, in the shock of his untimely taking off. Anecdotes of the favorite were exchanged, then others of a kindred sort, all pervaded by a pensive cast. Finch recalled that owner who was accustomed to deck a pet mare, after her victories, with a collar and pendants of diamonds. Rowley admired that jockey who had desired to be buried on the race - course at the three-quarter stretch pole, in order to hear the inspiring rattle of the hoofs above his head, as he lay.

The gloom lifted by degrees, and, upon some other chance reference, the prospects of Rodman Harvey in the coming election were spoken of. Harvey had distanced General Burlington in the convention, and secured the regular nomination of his party. Banners, duly weighted and pierced, and adorned with execrable portraits of himself in the usual way, had long been swinging for him across the streets. His rival at the polls was to be the Hon. Michael Brannagan, nominated by Tammany Hall. Bets for and against Harvey’s success were being freely offered, when Sprowle Onderdonk entered.

“ Hang your bets ! ” cried Onderdonk. " Stir yourselves up, and come out and vote for him, for once! He is the Sprowle candidate, as it were; we want him elected. His daughter marries into the family. See ? ”

“ That’s so,” said Northfleet, while Kingbolt got up, and moved restlessly about the floor. " Well, count on me for one. By the way, that’s another rather pretty girl they have up there at the Harveys’, — the one they keep in the background, the cousin. What’s her name? Ottilie. You get a glimpse of her now and then, you know. What is she like ? ”

“ Kingbolt can give you the points. Ask him ! They were as thick as Siamese twins last summer, — sly dog ! ” replied Onderdonk.

“ What is she like, Kingbolt, old boy, — the demure Miss Harvey number two, the gem of purest ray serene, the dark, unfathomed caves of ocean, etc. ?” pursued the inquirer.

“ On the intellectual lay, I believe. Wants to be quoted to, and that sort of thing. Don’t trouble yourself to pitch in ; you ’ll never ' get ahead.’ ”

The not over-bright Stillsby, on hearing this, crept up to the library, and was soon buried deep in a literature consisting of large volumes of poetical quotations.

Kingbolt, leaving the club, passed Sprowle with a surly 44 How are you ? ” treatment at which that person appeared surprised, having been accustomed to a much more friendly manner of late.

Gus Ramsdell came out into the hall after him, and called, “ Don’t forget the Capricorn dinner to-night! ” Then, " Whither away ? ” he said. “I ’ll join you. What do you say to a game at the Racquet Club ? Or will you put on the gloves ? I spent most of yesterday over the ticker, watching a little go in Wall Street, and I want exercise.”

“ I have got to go and see my tailor,” said Kingbolt.

“ What! Millerick ? By the way, so have I. Perhaps after that you will come up town with me to a stable. Rickardson, with whom I used to have dealings, has opened a new place, and I have promised him to drop in. I am on the lookout, in a general way, for a new off-wheeler for my four-in-hand. I think I ought to have something rather better in that place. The chestnut is n’t quite what he should be of late.”

When the pair entered Millerick’s place, — one of the select small shops on the Avenue, profusely ornamented both within and without in the new style of decoration, — the fashionable tailor came forward to meet them. He was a tall, spare man, with large sidewhiskers. He wore a long frock coat, of a spotless, technical sort of elegance, and rubbed his hands affably together. Kingbolt raised his voice in loud complaint almost from the door.

“ I have come to overhaul you about that driving - coat,” he said. " Don’t you know I could n’t show myself in a thing like that ? Where is it? Yes, now, here ! Could n’t any human being understand that I would n’t be seen with such shoulders on me as those ? You have Eastlaked your place all over, you know, with your pictures, and your gilding, and stiff-jointed traps; but you can’t Eastlake me, Millerick. I won’t have it. Well, it’s of no use ; I shall have to get all my things over from London, as usual.”

Millerick met this attack with an excellent grace. " You are perfectly right, Mr. Kingbolt,” he said, tossing the garment aside, with a large, magnanimous air. “ It is not a proper coat for you. The fact is, we were changing cutters. But you shall have another right away. You will naturally want it for Mr. Onderdonk’s garden party, the day after to-morrow. It will be quick work, but it shall be ready, and this time without fault, I guarantee.”

“ Oh, well, Millerick, if you are going to take it that way,” said the young Crœsus, not to be outdone, — since, after all, it is desirable to stand well with one’s tailor, — “ you put it in the bill, all the same ! I suppose it only wants a touch here and there. Mistakes will happen, you know. At any rate, let me have some kind of a coat, this or another, by to-morrow night. Do you understand ? ”

“Millerick is the only man in town who whll do that,” he said, somewhat mollified by this exhibition of his power, as he departed with his companion.

“ He won’t do it for me,” said Ramsdell. “ He would see me in Jericho first. How do you manage it ? ”

Ramsdell’s acquaintance Rickardson was found in a large, new brick stable, presiding over an auction of horses. He was posted up at a little desk at one side of the interior, above a track on which the paces of the animals successively offered for sale were shown off. Spectators, seemingly for the most part livery-stable keepers and others connected with the equine interest in a small way, crowded thickly upon this track, with catalogues in their hands. They made way reluctantly as each horse was sped around, and they filled in behind him immediately after, as if such a thing as danger to life and limb from iron-shod hoofs had never been heard of.

“ Anything in our line, Rick ? ” called Ramsdell up to the auctioneer where he stood at his desk.

“ I should n’t wonder if the next lot but one would be worth your while to look at, Mr. Ramsdell,” replied Rickardson.

The “lot ” just then before the house was quickly disposed of. The next was brought out and run around the ring by a stable-boy. The lookers-on scattered to escape maiming for life, and closed up imperturbably, as before. This lot was a young filly of excellent stock, marred by some blemish, which allowed her to go for a song.

“ She’s a young un, and a good un ! ” cried the auctioneer. “ Look wot you ’re a-gittin’. This magnificent two-year-old filly at seventy dollars’ bid ! ”

The inexperienced filly tossed her head up against the restraining halter, and stared in a wild-eyed way at the crowd.

“ This here magnificent filly at seventy dollars’ bid ! Eighty, do I hear ? At eighty dollars ! Eighty ! Eighty dollars ! Last call ! At eighty dollars ! Sanders,” with a sudden fall of the voice.

The “ next lot but one ” now followed, the stable-boy this time on his back. This candidate for favor was described in the printed catalogues as “ the chestnut gelding Rob Roy, coming seven years old next March ; greatly admired at Long Branch last season ; the property of a gentleman going to Europe, and got to be sold at any sacrifice.”

Kingbolt gave a start of surprise, and began to study his appearance anxiously.

“ Ah — ha—a ! ” cried Rickardson with gusto. “ Here’s the stock you ’re all a-waitin’ for. Splendid, fine, high knee action. Beautiful combined saddler and driver. Send him along, there ! ”

The stable-boy struck the animal with his whip, and rode down the crowd, who escaped annihilation only by another of the usual miracles.

“ There he is, — all in a nutshell,” the sanguine auctioneer continued. “ Let ’em see him walk ! There ’s a beauty ! Game, beautiful-gaited, without doubt the most beautiful-styled young horse in New York ! — best-styled and most promising horse in North America, today ! ”

But before any offer could be made for all these attractions, Kingbolt, who had scrutinized every motion of the socalled Rob Roy with a painful intentness, pressed forward to the auctioneer’s desk, and, throwing up one hand, cried out excitedly, “ You can’t sell that horse! There is no Rob Roy about it. That’s my horse Jim. You wait till you hear from me ! Do you understand ? ”

To Ramsdell, who in much astonishment had endeavored to follow him, he said, “ That’s Jim, as sure as we are alive ! I let St. Hill keep him for the summer, and here he is selling him out on me. He has changed him, but I would know the horse in a million,”

Rickardson was disposed at first to put down this unseemly interruption. “ Beauty ! ” he continued to the audience, by way of keeping the sale still in motion, while pros and cons were being discussed.

Influenced, however, by the representations of Mr. Ramsdell, he withdrew for the present the chestnut gelding Rob Roy from auction. He explained to the public that a mistake had arisen among gentlemen, which would no doubt be settled fair and satisfactory to all concerned.

“ Was there ever a more stupendous piece of cheek ? ” said Kingbolt, in a towering rage. “ St. Hill told me that the horse had gone a trifle lame, and he had left him at pasture. He would have told me after a while, I suppose, that he was dead, and I should have taken his word for it. And to think of what I have done for that man ! Well, this ends it. By the way, oblige me, will you, Ramsdell, by not saying anything about this to the other fellows, just now! I was rather crowded into defending the wretch this morning.”

Kingbolt put himself actively on the lookout for his knavish protégé for the rest of the day. He had not fallen in with him, however, up to the hour of the Capricorn dinner, at seven o’clock.

The culinary department of the Empire Club had been enlisted to do its best for these little Capricorn dinners. The terrapin to-day was of a flavor that could not have been surpassed in Maryland. The canvas-back was done to a turn. The Château Latour was comfortably warm, the Steinberg Cabinet iced to the last degree of perfection. The dishes called out a good deal of discourse of a gastronomical order. It was good form to be gourmet to a certain extent.

De Longbow Rowley laid down the axiom that “ you can tell where a man belongs by his style of ordering a dinner.”

Anthropoid Walker had taken to politics, and got himself elected a member of the legislature. He had abandoned on that account few of the practices of swelldom. His accomplishments as a good fellow, so far as they could be brought to bear, stood him in good stead, in his new career. He described a dinner he had given, from motives of policy, to brother legislators at Albany. He boasted of having at another time distinguished accurately, by the taste alone, seven different kinds of wine of a kindred sort, his eyes being blindfolded.

“We have seen you when you could n’t tell water from champagne, and you know it,” said Sprowle Onderdonk.

Walker admitted this, but claimed that the experiment referred to was made at an early stage in the evening.

The ages at which various wines are at their best and after which they begin to decline, and phenomena attending their decline, were touched upon by one and another.

De Longbow Rowley declared that he had seen and tasted a port so old that it had turned snow-white. He forgot precisely where or when, but recalled that it was unmitigated slop.

Zeus Baldwin, who had abandoned the law, and was now a doctor in medicine, was also present. “ All I know is,” he said, “ that they sell you, at one of the German cities, a wine which they say dates back to the year 1600 or so. It costs three or four dollars a thimbleful. It has become a mere thick syrup.”

“ Oh, they fill it up, you know,” objected Mr. Northfleet.

“ Not at all ! ” said Sprowle Onderdonk. “ I have tried it, too. It would n’t be so beastly if they did.”

Society scandals, sporting matters, and narratives of personal adventure followed. De Longbow Rowley was, in accordance with his reputation, at the front, with the most marvelous experience. It was met with in his secondbut-one-before-the-last expedition into the wilds of Crim Tartary, and was at the hands of roving marauders.

Whitehead Finch thought good to parody this, to the general delight of the company, with an egregious invention of prowess and desperate doings of his own on a Mississippi steamboat.

“ I was the only peaceable person on board,” he Said, “ and was beset by a gang of bullies and cut-throats. Alone and unarmed against such numbers, what could I do ? The captain and crew were in league with them, also. It was as much as my life was worth to show the least resentment. But they little knew the sleeping lion they were arousing. They crowded the mourners too far. Unable at last to control myself, I rushed to a red-hot stove there was in the cabin, and bit a piece out of it, just to show what I was made of. For an instant those burly ruffians stood paralyzed. Before they could recover I had flown wildly to the deck and thrown myself over the bow. I took precautions to spring as far forward as possible. It must have been some eighty feet. The desperadoes thought I had suicided, and I could hear their shouts of demoniac glee rending the air behind me. But nothing of the kind. I calmly waited till that ill-fated boat came by, seized her cut-water in my teeth, — our family are known, I may say, for their excellent teeth, — and with a few ferocious yanks had in an instant fora the whole front out of her, so that she went to the bottom like a shot. Those bullies never knew what hurt them. Not a soul was left alive but myself to tell the tale. I rarely mention it. I am sometimes tempted to regret having used such extreme severity. Still, in a pinch like that, a man cannot always plan with the coolness that might be most judicious.”

Rowley was accustomed through long practice to take rebuffs of this kind with great good-nature.

“ I wonder if this new French duke will be wanting to marry an American girl, like all the rest of the heavy swells that come over,” said Northfleet, branching out in another direction.

11 Well, American girls have got to marry somebody,” said Gus Ramsdell, “ since they can’t have us.”

“ Why don’t we go over and marry their titled women in return ? ” inquired De Longbow Rowley. “ Come ! I have a notion to go and take a Lady Georgiana something, or an Hon. Miss Percy something or other, for a novelty.”

“ By the way, speaking of marriages,” said Sprowle Onderdonk, “ I may as well give you a bit of news. The day for the wedding of my cousin Sprowle with Miss Harvey has been set, and the cards are ordered. As I shall not have another chance of the same sort, I intend to call my garden party of Thursday partly a celebration in their honor. I have asked Dr. Wyburd to add a few lines of an appropriate hymeneal sort to his poem. You must all come up in your drags, and give the occasion as distinguished a look as possible.”

Kingbolt, who had shown no great interest in the gayeties of the feast, lost from this point even such as he had possessed. His lack of animation and appetite was openly commented on by the others.

“ Has Dr. Zeus Baldwin been talking to you, Kingbolt?” cried Northfleet. “ I believe I am right, doctor, in holding that your theory requires that nothing be taken into the stomach for twenty-four hours before retiring to bed.”

“ Forty-eight,” replied Dr. Zeus Baldwin promptly.

The violent indignation Kingbolt had proposed to visit upon St. Hill had in a measure evaporated before he finally met with him, later the same night. The offense had become of a lesser consequence, in the stir of emotion aroused by the announcement of Sprowle Onderdonk. The day actually fixed, and near at hand, for the final loss of Angelica ! As long as the marriage was not yet completed he must always have entertained some unreasonable hope.

St. Hill was lounging in the readingroom, with a somewhat downcast air, for him, when Kingbolt came out of the Capricorn dinner. This Luciferlike spirit rather attracted than repelled the latter. Something irregular and desperate in another was in consonance with his own mood.

The protégé, however, was at first startled and much confused at being suddenly taxed with his fraud. He pleaded embarrassments in his business, losses and delays in the collection of debts. Then, grown bolder, on finding that the reproaches addressed him were after all but of an absent sort, he held that the attempt to sell the horse had been some piece of stupidity on Rickardson’s part, and not done by his, St. Hill’s, order.

“ How can a man half tell what he is doing, in such a fix?” he said. “ Things like that staring him in the face, for instance! ” He pointed to the bulletin board. “ I can’t even decently show myself here except at this time of night, when there are but few around. I was in hopes you would have taken that notice down.”

He spoke in a melancholy way, as if more in sorrow than in anger, as at a disappointment in a friend which touched him in a very tender place.

“ You are always in a box, man, and I am sick and tired of it! ” cried Kingbolt. “ Why don’t you economize ? Why don’t you do something for yourself? You have the best of everything. You eat better dinners and wear better clothes than anybody else. You look as if you were worth forty millions.”

“ I have to, old fellow,” argued St. Hill. “When a man is down, that is the time he has got to look his best. If he is really prosperous, it makes no difference how he looks. Besides, you cut off one promising source of revenue I had. You recollect how you prevented me when I proposed giving Rodman Harvey a twist.”

“ Twist him now, if you like, and be hanged to the lot of them ! ”

St. Hill did not disclose that he had already made the attempt and failed in it. He was astonished anew at the discovery that his patron’s infatuation was finally over, just when he had begun to act upon the belief that it was confirmed, and Kingbolt as a means of profit lost to him for good. He had sold the horse with the purpose of reaping all the benefit possible from the last stages of this connection. He cursed his folly now; but Kingbolt’s present demeanor encouraged him to hope that he might yet reinstate himself in favor, in spite of it.

Kingbolt was for making this a night of wild dissipation, and the parasite readily fell in with his humor. They joined a couple of kindred spirits, whom they met among resorts the bare existence of which — important as is the part they have in the lives of so many of the ornaments of polite society—it is the custom of society to ignore. This quartette repaired finally to a gaming establishment, discreetly kept, and provided with every convenience and luxury, and sat down to play.

Before daylight the heir of the Eureka Tool Works of Kingboltsville had squandered a sum which increased his reputation for extravagance even in quarters where large figures were no novelty. He awoke in his apartment late in the afternoon, that day, instead of at nine in the morning. There came to him almost at once, as an unwelcome thought, the engagement in which he had involved himself, to drive a load of guests on his drag up to Sprowle Onderdonk’s garden party on the morrow. He devoted some reflection to a means to get out of it, but none occurred as feasible.

No, he said. He would appear before Angelica at the fête — given to celebrate her coming nuptials though it were — with a proud and contemptuous demeanor, which should make it plain to her that she was by no means the cause of the agitation in his breast she might fancy.

William Henry Bishop.