Queen Money

Front matter

By Hie AuThor &

THE STORY OP MARGARET KENT

- I t*

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Arria White’s Ambition . . . . 11

II. One of the Vandewaters . 23

Chapter I. Arria White’s Ambition

So many men and women, the world over, would find temporary convenience, even spiritual profit, in the possession of an additional thousand a year of income, that when I begin my story by saying that Mrs. Clayton White felt the need of just this sum, I venture to make no claim for a pathetic situation ; for Arria, to tell the truth, lacked nothing essential in the way of lodging, food, drink, or raiment. She lived with her husband and her one child, a girl of twelve years, in a pretty house, which admir¬ ing friends were in the habit of calling a “bijou house;” for taste, pains, to say nothing of money, had been lavishly spent to make the most of every inch within the little “ brown-stone front” on Twen¬ tieth Street, New York. The walls and ceilings were artistically decorated; the inlaid floors were polished, and covered with Eastern rugs ; doors, windows, and mantel-pieces were hung with costly tapestries. Not only was the eye pleased, but the house had been made thoroughly comfortable. There were plenty of

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easy-chairs, on smoothly running casters, and springy, roomy sofas in all the corners. Just enough money had been laid out on any passing craze of taste to give diversity by a jumble of blue china, opalescent jars, Chinese carvings, Japanese curios, and embroid¬ eries. But nowhere did these trivialities crowd out the essential things of real interest by which people do live.

“ Books and pictures are our real bric-a-brac,” it was Arria’s habit to say, pointing to the tables laden with literary and art publications, and to the etchings and paintings on the walls. The Clayton Whites had, in fact, a social reputation for knowing and lik¬ ing and having the very best thing. Still, it was not the need of living up to this reputation in order not to disappoint her acquaintances that led Arria to covet an additional thousand a year ; her sole ambi¬ tion, she said to herself, was — not to disappoint her husband.

Clayton White was a newspaper man, and occu¬ pied almost the first position among the corps of experts who write for the Kosmos. He was by turns literary, art, dramatic, and musical critic, and it was recognized to be his distinct mission to impose the highest standards of taste upon his contempo¬ raries. His province was to treat the really note¬ worthy events — to say the fitting word about an epoch-making picture, book, opera, or play. One marvelled sometimes how it was that quite mediocre people had at the tips of their tongues a keen, even subtle remark concerning a book of Tolstoi’s, a clever

ARRIA WHITE’S AMBITIOH.

etching at Goupil’s, or a newly produced German opera. The fact was that these brilliant and original touches were almost certain to have been borrowed from the Kosmos, that is, they were Clayton White’s own flashes of insight, which, after being elaborated by careful thought, and passed through the alembic of his mind, found easy expression in a form which the dullest could seize and remember. His sayings were current in every circle, and were not without due influence upon his day and generation. Of course, every artist or author looked tremblingly in the Kosmos to see if he had gained haven or made shipwreck of himself. Clayton White was indeed admitted to a place among the powers that be, and many people flattered and tried to propitiate him.

Yet no one was so wholly under the tyranny of the great critic and his criticism as was Arria, his wife. She adored her husband, believed him infallible, and was urged by every incentive to live up to his pre¬ cepts of taste, to meet — not only to meet, perhaps to surpass, the requisitions of so clever and fastidious a man ; for he could not only pass sentence upon books and pictures, but knew how to apply aesthetic principles to every-day life. To begin with, he was a gastronomer of no mean order. Cookery was, to his perceptions, an exact science, in which the experi¬ mental stage was long since passed. He liked an elegant table, and had an eye for silver, glass, china, and pottery. Mere inane prettiness was not to his taste — he wanted novel effects, artistic touches. In fact, Arria, with both delight and despair, had long

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since discovered in her husband a preference for whatever is difficult, not to say unattainable, for peo¬ ple of moderate means. The necessities of life counted for nothing with him ; he took such details for granted. “ Try to get up something out of the common run,” he would say to Arria, “something that nobody has expected. There is something deadly material about a dinner that has no surprise in it — no course to give things a piquant turn and stimulate new ideas.”

These directions were not infrequent, for the Clay¬ ton Whites, within their sphere, entertained every¬ body worth entertaining : home-coming and out-going authors and artists ; foreign literary celebrities ; their own journalistic guild, and familiar friends.

Somebody who appreciates the difficulty of attain¬ ing absolute nicety in household arrangements has declared that it costs a good ten thousand a year to have a clean tumbler of clear cold water whenever you want it. Now, the Clayton Whites were far from enjoying the advantages which accrue to ten thousand a year, yet everything in that “bijou house ” must be artistically perfect. Accordingly, Arria’s task was to eke out the deficit of money by her own skill, wit, and tact.

Thus, to give one of those little feasts which pleased every sense and stimulated the intellect as well was to Arria a many-sided experience. They could not have a chef, and, in order not to run the risk of enduring the misery of seeing her husband’s brow knit with wrath over a soup or croquette,

AEEIA WHITE’S AMBITION.

Arria entrusted little save subordinate details to her cook, and prepared almost every dish with her own hands. It goes without saying that she had devised and decorated dinner-cards and menus : the table must have been set under her own supervision, and adorned by herself with clever devices in confection¬ ery, fruit, and flowers — every bouquet and bouton¬ niere made up by her. Each change of service must have been carefully laid out before her eyes ; dessert contrived in some novel and pleasing shape ; every turn of the coming meal rehearsed, in order to insure the skilled co-operation of her waitress. Then, the crowning ‘point — when Arria was faint with ex¬ haustion and fatigue, aching from head to foot, devoured with anxieties — was to meet her guests well dressed, radiant, with no wanderings of eye or mind, but bright, alert, and ready to put each man at his best.

These incentives, these objects in life, of Arria White’s, were, as we all perceive, poor enough. Yet few of us risk our salvation to win kingdoms and provinces, but waste what is best and noblest in us by teasing anxieties and petty ambitions, for results not worth the striving for, scarcely worth the hav¬ ing when gained. Immortal beings though we are, our daily problems, our crying necessities, chiefly concern the questions what we shall eat, drink, and wear — above all, how we shall answer our neighbors’ expectations of us, and put a good foot foremost in the world.

Arria, indeed, could think of nothing else. Al-

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though wit, contrivance, and industry may double one’s available income, the cost tells somewhere. And what, Heaven help her ! Arria was beginning to say to herself, if she were robbing her own heart and soul in spending her full powers on these petty details of existence ! What if, after all, she were omitting her chief duties in life when she neglected her little girl, Ethel, and allowed her husband to find her per¬ petually preoccupied, nervous, and despondent !

If she had but a thousand dollars more a year, she could afford a skilled cook and a third servant. She could use other people’s inventions and accomplish¬ ments, where now she was compelled to be an expert at every trade. She could, in fact, save her spirits and her youth, be a good mother to Ethel and a sympathetic companion to her husband.

The house they lived in had been given her at her marriage ; but she had no other possessions of her own, as her father had died a bankrupt. Yet she felt as if she ought in some way to be able to earn this coveted thousand a year. The people with whom she was most familiar knew how to find an immediate equivalent in money for every talent, invention, and discovery — and was she duller than Mrs. Henderson and Miss Golding, who supported themselves by their pens ? Arria was certain that she could have written a capital novel, but, then, so few novels brought in money! She consulted her husband as to the feasibility of her publishing some epigrammatic papers on social topics in the ICosmos, like the middle articles in the Saturday Review.

AKEIA WHITE’S AMBITION. 17

Now, Clayton White was, according to his lights, an excellent husband. He had no small vices, spent no money on self-indulgences, but gave seven-eighths of his income to Arria to carry on the house ; hence he could not understand this crying need of more money. In fact, it sometimes seemed to him that Arria failed to appreciate her unique advantages as his wife. Slie had everything in the way of litera¬ ture, constant presents of pictures and art publica¬ tions, tickets to everything — while all the most interesting people in New York were constantly brought to the house to amuse her. To see her out of spirits made him remember his own silent griev¬ ance — that he spent all his money on his household, and absolutely retained nothing to enable him to vary his own life a little.

He loved Arria, and was proud of her. Yet a man of genius occasionally requires stimulation, and there was a certain tameness in being always at home opposite his wife at his own table. Arria got up very neat little dinners, but, with all her dexterity, there was at times something a trifle amateurish about her dishes — her croquettes had not just the cream-like consistency of Augustine’s, and she could not, to save her life, serve a bird like Solari. Now, could he have afforded to give a dinner or supper at Delmonico’s occasionally, when he had some special guest to entertain, he would have enjoyed his little fling, and might have found his spirits rise as they rarely did nowadays. Still, although the clever critic had to endure the cramp and pettiness of his career

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as a married man in moderate circumstances, he yet accepted his limitations, and intended to do his duty.

He was a tall, impressive-looking man, with a high white forehead, heavy eyelids, that almost hid his full gray eyes, a large nose, and a fleshy chin with a dimple in it. He not only looked impressive, but his manner was weighty. With men his habit was terse, but women he liked to instruct, and, when they appealed to him, frequently answered with solemnity, “I will tell you all about the matter, from beginning to end.”

Thus he took the trouble to explain to Arria, in reply to her suggestion about society papers, that, although it might seem to novices an easy matter to write like the experts of the Saturday Review , he knew of but one man in this country who could do it — and that man, he remarked, with unobtrusive frankness, was himself. To take that tone of omni¬ science, to have at hand the sum total of human knowledge and experience, as the good woman in “ Swiss Family Robinson ” has everything in her hand¬ bag, to know how to expand into bigness the infi¬ nitely little and compress into pocket compass the infinitely great, was the last result of artistic journal¬ ism. But there was, he added, with a touch of bitterness, too little demand in this country for artistic journalism like his own, and he was obliged to cheapen himself, do hack-work, take the taste of the masses into consideration, or else find his efforts little appreciated.

ARRIA WHITE’S AMBITION.

“Besides,” lie proceeded, “I don’t like to have it suggested that I do not support you comfortably. It really seems to me that you have a good deal of money to spend. I don’t wish to appear a vain egoist, but I do honestly consider that there are worse husbands than I am.”

Arria hastened to assure him that he was of all men the most generous, that her craving for money came solely from a wish to lighten his burdens. She told him nothing of her perplexities, anxieties, fatigues ; it was her ambition to show admirable results, and never tell the secret of processes. Applying to him, evidently, had done her no good; her problem still confronted her.

She had two cousins, both of whom were her inti¬ mate friends ; one was Lucy Florian, and the other Mrs. Archibald Brockway. Arria was by birth a Vandewater, and they were both scions of the great Vandewater family. Thus Arria could safely con¬ sult them about her need of more money in order that she might have more time at her command. Lucy Florian returned promptly : —

“ You spend yourself on too many things, Arria. You want to do and have whatever anybody ever had or thought of. It is your ambition to surpass everybody else, which keeps you in a perpetual hurry and destroys all your peace of mind. Just think how many things you could go without ! ” Going without what did not fall from the skies did not suit Arria’s scheme of existence at all. The Florians were all for simplification. Their house had

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not been refurnished in Lucy’s lifetime, and they went on, year after year, using the same carpets and furniture, as if we were still in the dark ages, and there had been no renaissance of taste. The Florians were sui generis , and might afford to be indif¬ ferent to the fashion of this world ; but Arria must live up to the present moment, and dip her hand in the very crest of the rising wave.

She could be sure of sympathy, at any rate, from Fanny Brockway, whose own fancy was a harp of a thousand strings.

“Of course you need money, you dear, clever thing ! ” Mrs. Brockway replied. “ Everybody I know about needs more money. I’m sure I do. It actually gives me a headache to see the way you go on making your own gowns and all Ethel’s frocks, and painting your own cards.”

“ I like to do it,” said Arria. “ So far as my own satisfaction is concerned, I enjoy economical con¬ trivance more than I do outlay. Don’t you know George Eliot speaks about the romance of a small income ! — you see, everything has its own story when you have to study out each detail. But it begins to wear upon me. The things I have to accomplish pile up in imagination and threaten to crush me. I cannot sleep, or, if I do, I have nightmares, and dream that we have invited all the people we ever saw in all our lives, and that they keep coming and coming, and that the table is not set, that the soup will not clear nor the jellies turn out. I want a little more money, so that I may have three

AEEIA WHITE’S AMBITION.

really good servants. It is so vexatious that I can’t earn a thousand a year ! ”

“The idea! You have a husband! Make him give it to you ! ”

“ He gives everything he can. The fact is, we en¬ tertain too much for our means. But Clayton likes to have the advantage of a certain position, and if we wish to keep a place in society, we must fill it. Whoever is useless here in New York is forgotten ; whoever is indifferent is taken at his word and left alone.”

“You do entertain beautifully. I wouldn’t give up a single dinner-party if I were you. I will tell you what to do.”

“Well, what?”

“ Have bills. Just order things and have bills, you know.”

“Bills? Who, do you suppose, would pay our bills ? ”

“ That is what Archie always says, but I found out long ago that bills always do get paid. Don’t you know, Arria, that some things manage themselves — work out their own salvation, so to speak ! When our bills come in, Archie and I are crushed perfectly flat; it is as if Juggernaut had gone over us. ‘I can never pay them in the world,’ Archie says. But somehow or other they do get paid — they have to be paid. A bill is just like a crying baby : some¬ body is obliged to take care of it, not because one wants to, but just from the necessity of self-preser¬ vation.”

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“We have to hush our own crying babies,” said Arria. There was evidently no outside help for her, but she was used to dealing with shaping hands in the stuff life presented, and she still felt certain that, in some way, circumstances would become plastic to her touch, and she would make that extra thousand a year.

Chapter II. One Of The Vandewaters

One day in May, at the very time when Arria be¬ gan to feel her necessities most urgent, a young man rang at the door of Clayton White’s house, was ad¬ mitted and shown into the parlor. On entering, he stood still, looking about him with an air of curiosity, feeling as if he had committed a blunder ; for the impression made upon him by the rugs, the hang¬ ings, the cloth-of-gold, the embroideries, all the rich¬ ness of oriental coloring which gave tone to the rooms, was that he had by mistake stumbled into the house of a millionnaire. He was almost instantly re¬ assured, however, by the entrance of what seemed to him a very young and marvellously pretty woman, who held his card in one hand and advanced towards him with the other eagerly outstretched.

“ My cousin, Otto March ! ” she exclaimed. “ I am so very, very glad to see you ! ”

Otto March looked at her smiling, but with an air of shyness.

“Is it — is it Mrs. Clayton White?” he asked, in a very low voice.

' “Arria White. Your cousin Arria — your mother always calls me so. We are cousins, you know. All

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the Vandewaters love their own family, and we are both Vandewaters. Call me cousin Arria.”

He listened to her, smiling and eager, and, when she stopped, would have spoken, but seemed to find not a word to say. Accordingly, Arria went on, sitting down herself, and motioning to him to sit be¬ side her.

“I was looking for you. Your dear mother’s let¬ ter came yesterday, telling us that you were in New York for a little visit, and would certainly call. Had she given me your address, I should have sent to you directly, and asked you to establish yourself here. Where are you staying ? ”

“ At the Fifth Avenue.”

“ That is close by. Send for your things, and stay with us.”

“ You are very kind,” said the young fellow, who showed shyness in every feature and every tone, but yet had an air of knowing his own mind. “ But I am best off there. I am here on business ; that is, 1 came on a sort of visit to Kendal, who told me to go to the Fifth Avenue.”

“ Kendal? ” repeated Arria, in a tone of inquiry.

“ Ellery Kendal. He is a cousin of my mother’s, that is, of her first husband.”

“ Ellery Kendal, the broker ? ”

“ Yes, do you know him ? I thought he told me he only knew of Mr. White.”

“ Oh, everybody hears about Ellery Kendal,” said Arria. “ He is one of our rising young men. He is a hero on Wall Street, and is much admired in

ONE OF THE VANDEWATERS.

society.” Arria’s mind moved swiftly to conclusions, and she had already mastered the situation. “ Your mother said you were going into business. Can it be that it is with Ellery Kendal ? ”

Otto looked at her a moment in doubt, then said : —

“ It seems probable, although nothing is decided as yet. My mother wishes it. It is time for me to decide on some career.”

“You are very moderate,” said Arria, laughing.

“ Any New Yorker would tell you that it would al¬ ways be time for you to accept a piece of sheer good-fortune like that.”

Otto stared at her, puzzled.

“ Sheer good-fortune ? ” he repeated.

“ Nothing less than sheer good-fortune ! Why, if • you go in with Ellery Kendal, in five years you are pretty sure to be a great capitalist ! ”

Otto laughed. “I can’t imagine myself a great capitalist,” said he, looking down into his hat. “ My mother would like me to be one. She wants me to have a great income. She has always had a hand¬ some income, and considers a good income the key to a rational existence.”

“I fully agree with her. Do not you consider that a rational existence depends on your having a sufficient income ? ”

Otto laughed slightly, and twisted his hat about in his hands.

“ My mother says I am spoiled by having always had more money in my pocket than I could spend, and that I do not value money as I should do.”

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“ I suppose you have some ambitions of your own about a career,” suggested Arria.

He turned crimson. “ I? — no, not at all,” be said, rather stiffly. .

Arria ransacked her memory for the facts about the young fellow’s education, and remembered that she had heard of his having had a private tutor until

he was sixteen, when he had gone to X - College,

of which his mother’s first husband had been a founder, and that later he had studied at Heidel¬ berg.

“ Your mother wrote me, a year ago, that she was thinking of giving up her home at Littledale, and coming back to New York to live,” she remarked.

“ Yes, that was her intention as soon as I got back from Europe. But my aunt Caroline and her little girl, Virginia, came to visit her, and she put it off. And now,” here Otto’s voice sank, “ my aunt Caro¬ line is ill, very ill, and my mother cannot leave her.” Arria uttered an exclamation of sympathy. “ She may be cured : there is an operation to be tried; but for the present my mother is fastened at Littledale. You cannot think what it costs her to send me to New York by myself,” he added, smiling an almost imperceptible smile at Arria ; and she understood that he felt some youthful amuse¬ ment at these maternal fears for his safety. “ But she thinks that it will never do for me not to be settled at something by September, and that I must take my life in my hand and come to New York and go to work.”

ONE OE THE VANDEWATERS.

Looking at his cousin Arria, Otto was startled to perceive her face light up with a sudden illumina¬ tion. The fact was, a situation was all at once dis¬ closed to her, which might result in her having all her wishes come to pass. Here was a young man, her near relative, with a mother who was enormously rich, and who dreaded to have him come to New York by himself. How important that he should be cared for, guarded, not allowed to fall into the clutches of designing fortune-hunters ! Why should he not live with her ?

“ I can sympathize with your mother’s alarms,” she observed, with eagerness. “ You have been used to a home ; but you will be among friends — among your own family, indeed. We can do a great deal for you,” she went on, with enthusiasm.

Otto felt the charm of such kindness from this pretty and elegant woman, whose smile was gracious, and whose voice was full of inflections which flattered and caressed him. “It will be a great deal for me to have such kind friends,” he said. “ I wandered abo,ut the streets last night after Kendal had left me, and the thought of this great, strange city ap¬ palled me.”

“ What did Mr. Kendal do to entertain you ? ”

“We dined at Delmonico’s. Then we went to the theatre — to the Fifth Avenue ; some newspaper man got us a box. There were half a dozen of us.”

“ Who were the others ? ”

•“A Mr. Charnock, a lawyer; a Mr Vance, and Major Cheney.”

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“ Oh, Barry Charnock ! ”

“Yes. After the theatre we went to Kendal’s club, and stayed till midnight.”

“ Playing cards, I dare say ! Oh, what prodi¬ gals ! ”

“ Then Kendal walked to the hotel with me. And after he had gone, instead of going to bed, as I should, I turned out and walked about the streets.”

“ You would have been much better off with us.”

“I have no doubt of that,” said Otto, laughing. “ Not that we did the least harm in the world.”

“ What are you going to do to-night ? ”

“ I start for home at six o’clock.”

“Indeed, you shall do nothing of the sort!” said Arria. “ You are coming here to dinner. Do you care about literary people ? ”

“ Oh, of all things ! ” cried Otto, eagerly. “ I have never known any literary people, and I long to get some idea of them.”

“We are going to give a little dinner to a suc¬ cessful author, a Mr. Roth. He has written a book, called ‘ Maidens Choosing,’ and it has been a great success. He sails for Europe on Saturday, so Clay¬ ton thought we ought to pay him this little atten¬ tion.”

“ And I may come ? ” said Otto, ardently.

“ I insist upon it ! You must come ! ”

“I will,” Otto said. “I confess,” he added, with one of his shy, honest glances straight into her eyes, “ if I chose the career I wanted, I should be a lit¬ erary man.”

ONE OF THE VANDEWATEES.

“ Have you published anything ? ” asked Arria, in the weary tone of one accustomed to see people take to literature by an utter perversion of logic and good-sense.

“ Oh, no ! — Good Heavens ! I hope there is no such presumption in me ! ”

.“ I am afraid to ask you if you have written any¬ thing,” Arria pursued, with a lighter air, feeling that, after all, the case might not be hopeless. “My advice to unfledged authors is like Punch’s to young men about to marry.”

“‘Don’t!’” said Otto. “You mean, don’t try to be an author.”

“ Exactly. Do anything else in the world ! ”

“ Anything save to try to speak out what you feel to be actual and necessary — what is beautiful and best ? ”

“Yes, that is just what I mean.”

“Yet your husband is a literary man.”

“ He is a critic. Clayton would say to you exactly what I say : Live, and don’t spend your time describ¬ ing and analyzing life. Feel, and don’t think about your feelings. Enjoy every experience which comes in your way, and don’t be trying to draw pecuniary ad¬ vantages from the situation, and make an article about it. The exigencies of trade are hard, but never so hard as when your merchantable stock is, as it were, your own flesh and blood — your loves, your antipa¬ thies, your triumphs, your defeats. There are in every generation a few great writers who remain impressionable, honest, in love with their art; but it

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is a difficult matter for people who write for their daily bread to remain wholly sincere. They exhaust their heart, and have to compel their imagination and intellect to do its service.”

Otto listened to her with close attention.

“ You surprise me,” said he. “ I thought literary people, at least, believed in literature.”

Arria felt reproached. “Ask Clayton’s advice,” said she, rallying. “ I did not mean to be unjust to our own profession ; but when you confessed that you had an offer to go in with Ellery Kendal, it did seem to me the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous to talk of your longing to be a struggling author.”

Otto’s eyes dropped, and he seemed to be musing on her words. “ I don’t think you are wholly right,” said he. “ But I don’t feel certain that I have it in me to be a successful literary man. And what has made me hesitate has been the fear that my inclination for a literary life means that I want time and leisure to think about what men have written already. I should hate to be a mere dilettante — I want to do something.”