Carmen Ariza Part 148

"May I ask," interrupted Haynerd, "the probable cost of the supper?"

"Yes, perhaps you had better mention that item. It will be in the neighborhood of three hundred dollars a plate. House and table decorations, about eight thousand dollars. Here is a copy of the menu.

Run it in full. The menu cards were hand-illuminated by Parisian artists, and each bears a sketch ill.u.s.trative or suggestive of the guest to whom it is given."

"Cost?" queried Haynerd off-handedly.

"Three thousand, if I correctly recall it," was the nonchalant reply.

"As to the viands, you will mention that they have been gathered from every part of the world. Now come with me, and I will give you a hasty sketch of the house, while the guests are a.s.sembling in the grand salon. Then you will remain in the balcony, where you will make what notes you wish on the dress displayed. Refreshments will be served to you later in this waiting room. I need not remind you that you are not expected to mingle with the guests, nor to address any one. Keep to the balcony, and quite out of view."

Opening a door opposite the one through which she had entered, the young woman led her charges directly out upon the great marble balcony overlooking the grand salon below. A rush of brilliant light engulfed them, and a potpourri of chatter and laughter, mingled with soft music from a distant organ, and the less distinct notes of the orchestra in the still more distant ballroom, rose about them in confused babel, as they tiptoed to the exquisitely carved marble railing and peered down upon the gorgeous pageant. The ceiling rose far above them, delicately tinted like a soft Italian sky. The lofty walls dropped, like gold-gray veils, to the richly carved paneled wainscoting beneath, which had once lined the halls of a mediaeval castle on the Rhine. The great windows were hidden behind rare Venetian lace curtains, over which fell hangings of brocade, repeating the soft tints of the wall and the brocade-covered chairs and divans ranged close about the sides of the splendid room. On the floor lay a ma.s.sive, priceless Persian carpet, dating from the fifteenth century.

Haynerd drew a long breath, and whistled softly. From the end of the salon he could mark the short flight of steps which led to the mezzanine, with its walls heavily tapestried, and broken by rich oak doors opening into lavatories and lounging rooms, itself widening at the far end into the grand billiard and smoking parlors, done off in Circa.s.sian walnut, with tables and furniture to harmonize. From the mezzanine he saw the grand stairway falling away in great, sweeping curves, all in blended marble from the world's greatest quarries, and delicately chased and carved into cla.s.sic designs. Two tapestries, centuries old, hung from the walls on either side. Far above, the oak ceiling, for which the _Schwarzwald_ had been ranged, was overlaid with pure gold leaf. The whole was suffused with the glow of myriad hidden and inverted lights, reflected in a thousand angles from burnished gold and marble and rarest gems.

Haynerd turned to the waiting secretary. He groped in the chambers of his imagery for some superlative adjective to express his emotion before this colossal display of wealth. But his ample vocabulary had faded quite. He could only shake his head and give vent to the inept remark, "Swell--by George!"

The secretary, without replying, motioned them to follow. Pa.s.sing noiselessly around the balcony to the opposite side, she indicated a door below, leading off to the right from the grand salon.

"That room beyond," she said, "is the pet.i.t salon. The decorative effects are by French artists. Beyond that is the morning room. It is in panels from French chateaux, covered with Gobelin tapestry. Now from here you can see a bit of the music room. The grand organ cost, installed, about two hundred thousand dollars. It is electrically controlled, with its pipes running all around the room, so as to give the effect of music coming from every corner."

Haynerd again softly whistled.

"There are three art galleries beyond, two for paintings, and one for sculpture. Mr. Ames has without doubt the finest art collection in America. It includes several t.i.tians, Veroneses, da Vincis, Turners, three Rubens, and two Raphaels. By the way, it may interest you to know that his negotiations for the Murillo Madonna were completed to-day, and the picture will be sent to him immediately."

"Might I ask what he paid for it?" Haynerd inquired casually.

"You may say that he paid something over three hundred thousand dollars for it," she replied, in a quite matter of fact tone. "Now,"

she continued, "you will go back to your first position, near the door of the waiting room, and remain there until I return. I may have an opportunity later to show you the library. It is very unique. Great carved stone fireplace, taken from a Scotch castle. Hundreds of rare volumes and first editions. Now, if any one approaches, you can step behind the screen and remain out of view. You have chairs and a table there for your writing. Do not in any event leave this balcony."

With this final injunction she turned and disappeared into the little waiting room from which they had emerged.

For some moments Carmen and Haynerd stood looking alternately at each other and about them at their magnificent environment. Both had seen much of the gilded life, and the girl had dwelt some months in its alien atmosphere. But neither had ever witnessed such a stupendous display of material wealth as was here unfolded before their astonished gaze. At the head of the grand stairway stood the Ames trio, to receive their resplendent guests. The women were magnificently gowned. But Ames's ma.s.sive form in its simple black and chaste linen was the cynosure of all eyes. Even Haynerd could not suppress a note of admiration as he gazed at the splendid figure.

"And yet," he murmured, "a victim, like the rest, of the great delusion."

Carmen laid down the opera gla.s.ses through which she had been studying the man. "He is an expression," she said, "of the American ideal--the ideal of practical material life. It is toward his plane of life that this country's youth are struggling, at, oh, what a cost! Think, think, what his immense, misused revenue could do, if unselfishly used! Why, the cost of this single night's show would put two hundred men like Father Waite through a four-year course in the University, and train them to do life's work! And what, what will Mr. Ames get out of it?"

"Oh, further opportunities to increase his pile, I suppose," returned Haynerd, shrugging his shoulders.

"But, will he get real happiness? Peace? Joy? And does he need further opportunities to acc.u.mulate money? Does he not rather need some one to show him the meaning of life, how to really live?"

"He does, indeed! And it may be your mission, Carmen, to do just that.

But if you don't, then I sincerely hope the man may die before he discovers that all that he has achieved, his wealth, his prestige, his power, have not been worth striving for!"

"He hasn't the slightest idea of the meaning of life," she murmured, looking down upon the glittering throng. "Nor have any of them."

"No," he replied. "They put me in mind of Carlyle's famous remark, as he stood looking out across the London Strand: 'There are in this city some four million people, mostly fools.' How mean, narrow and hard their lives are! These are the high priests of vested privilege, of mediaevalism, of old inst.i.tutions whose perpetual maintenance, even in a generation that has progressed far beyond them, is a fungus blight upon us. Ah, there's little Willie Van Wot, all dolled out! He's glorifying his Creator now by devoting his foolish little existence to coaching trips along the New England sh.o.r.e. He reminds me of the Fleet street poet who wrote a century ago of the similar occupation of a young dandy of that day--

What can little T. O. do?

Why, drive a Phaeton and Two!!!

Can little T. O. do no more?

Yes, drive a Phaeton and Four!!!!

"He's an interesting outgrowth of our unique social system, eh?"

"We must follow Emerson and treat them all as we do pictures, look at them in the best light," murmured Carmen.

"Aye, hang them in the best light!" returned Haynerd. "But make sure they're well hung! There goes the pseudo-princess, member of the royal house of England. She carries the royal taint, too. I tell you, under the splash and glitter you can see the feet of clay, eh?"

"Yes," smiled Carmen, "resting upon the high heel."

"Huh!" muttered Haynerd, with a gesture of disgust. "The women of fas.h.i.+on seem to feel that the Creator didn't do a good job when He designed the feminine s.e.x--that He should have put a hump where the heel is, so's to slant the foot and make comfortable walking impossible, as well as to insure a plentiful crop of foot-troubles and deformities. The Chinese women used to manifest a similarly insane thought. Good heavens! High heel, low brain! The human mind is a cave of black ignorance!"

Carmen did not reply, but bent her attention again to the throng below.

"Look there," said Haynerd, indicating a stout, full-toiletted woman, resplendent with diamonds. "That's our eminent French guest, Madam Carot. She severed herself from her tiresome consort last year by means of a b.i.+.c.hloride tablet deftly immersed in his coffee, and then, leaving a sigh of regret hovering over his unhandsome remains, hastened to our friendly sh.o.r.es, to grace the _beau monde_ with her gowns and jewels."

Carmen turned to him with a remonstrance of incredulity.

"Fact," he stubbornly insisted. "The Social Era got the whole spicy story. And there beside her is our indispensable Mrs. T. Oliver Pennymon. See, she's drifted up to young Watson! Coquetting for a husband still, the old buzzard!"

"Mr. Haynerd!"

"Well, it's fact, anyway," persisted the society monitor. "And there beyond her is fat little Mrs. Stuffenheimer, with her two unlovely, red-faced daughters. Ah, the despairing mamma is still vainly angling for mates for her two chubby Venuses! If they're not married off properly and into good social positions soon, it's mamma for the sc.r.a.p heap! By George! it's positively tragic to see these anxious mothers at Newport and Atlantic City and other fas.h.i.+onable places, rus.h.i.+ng madly hither and yon with their marriageable daughters, dragging them from one function to another in the wild hope that they may ultimately land a man. Worry and pain dig deep furrows into poor mamma's face if she sees her daughters fading into the has-been cla.s.s. It requires heroism, I say, to travel in society! But I guess you know, eh? Well,"

taking up his notebook, "we must get busy now. By the way, how's your shorthand progressing?"

"Oh, splendidly," replied the girl, her eyes still upon the ma.s.sive figure of Ames. Then, recovering from her abstraction, "I can write as fast in it now as in longhand."

"Good!" said Haynerd. "You'll need it later."

For more than an hour the two sat in the seclusion of the splendid balcony, looking down upon the scene of magnificence below. Through the mind of the young girl ran a ceaseless paean of thanksgiving for her timely deliverance from the trammels which she so well knew enshackled these glittering birds of paradise. With it mingled a great, consuming desire, a soul-longing to pour into the vacuity of high society the leaven of her own pure thought. In particular did her boundless love now go out to that gigantic figure whose ideals of life this sumptuous display of material wealth and power expressed. Why was he doing this? What ulterior motive had he? Was it only a vainglorious exhibition of his own human prowess? Was it an announcement, magnificent beyond compare, that he, J. Wilton Ames, had attained the supreme heights of gratified world ambition? That the world at last lay at his feet? And that over it brooded the giant's lament that there remained nothing more to conquer? But, if so, the girl at least knew that the man's herculean efforts to subdue the material world were as nothing. The real conquest lay still before him, the conquest of self. And when that were faced and achieved, well she knew that no such garish display as this would announce the victory to a breathless world.

The bustling little social secretary again appeared, and briefly announced the production of an opera in the auditorium, to which she had come to conduct them. Pa.s.sing through the little waiting room and to the elevator, they quickly mounted to the unoccupied gallery of the theater above. The parquet, which would seat nearly a thousand spectators, was rapidly filling with an eager, curious throng. The Ames trio and some of the more distinguished guests were already occupying the gorgeously decorated boxes at the sides. An orchestra of fifty pieces was visible in the hollow below the stage. Caroni, the famous grand opera leader, stood ready to conduct. The opera itself was the much discussed music drama, Salome.

"Now," commented Haynerd to his fair, wondering companion, who was lost in contemplation of the magnificent mural decorations of the little theater, "we will see something rare, for this opera has been called the most artistic piece of indecency known to the stage. Good heavens! Ames has got Marie Deschamps for the t.i.tle role. She'll cost him not less than five thousand dollars for this one night. And--see here," drawing Carmen's attention to the bill, "Marcou and Corvalle besides! The man must be made of money! These stars get three thousand dollars a night during the regular season."

Every phase of sophistication was manifested in that glittering audience when the curtain rose and the sensational theme was introduced. But to none came thoughts like those which clamored for admittance at the portals of Carmen's mentality. In the bold challenge of the insanely sensual portrayal of a carnal mind the girl saw the age-old defiance of the spirit by the flesh. In the rolls of the wondrous music, in its shrieks, its pleadings, and its dying echoes, she heard voiced again the soul-lament of a weary world searching vainly in the mazes of human thought for truth. As the wonderful Deschamps danced weirdly before her in the ghastly light and fell gloating over her gory trophy, Carmen saw but the frantic struggles of a diseased soul, portrayed as the skilled surgeon lays bare the malignant growth that is eating the quivering tissues of a human frame. The immodesty of dress, the sensual suggestiveness of the dance, the brutal flouting of every element of refinement and delicacy, blazoned in frenzied tone and movement the b.l.o.o.d.y orgy and dance of death which goes on incessantly upon the stage of human life, and ends in the mad whirl and confusion and insane gibbering over the lifeless trophies for which mankind sell their very souls.

"About the limit of tolerance, eh?" commented Haynerd, when the final curtain dropped. "Yes, even to a vitiated taste. The pa.s.sionate thirst for the sensational has led to this sickening display of salacity--"

"Splendid, wasn't it?" came in tones of admiration from the social secretary, who had returned to conduct her charges back to the balcony before the guests emerged from the theater. "You will run the program in full, and comment at some length on the expense attached," she went on. "You have just witnessed the private production of a full opera, unabridged, and with the regular operatic cast. Supper will follow in a half hour. Meantime, you will remain in the balcony where you were before."

Returning to their former position, Carmen sank into a chair at the little table behind the screen, and strove to orient her thought.

Haynerd sat down beside her to arrange his voluminous notes. Presently footsteps were heard, and the sound of voices. Haynerd glanced through the hinge of the screen. "Ha!" he whispered, "here comes Ames and--who's with him? Ah, Representative Wales. Showing him about, I suppose."

Carmen gazed at the approaching men with fascinated eyes, although she saw but one, the towering magician who had reared this fairy palace.

She saw Ames lead his companion to the door of the little waiting room at their right, and heard the congressman protest against entering.

"But we can talk undisturbed in here," urged Ames, his hand on the door.