The house of cards : a record

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THE HOUSE OF CAEDS

I

The name is commonplace enough, and unmeaning besides ; the pun is obvious. I hate the obvious. But my cheerful young friend had put questions to me.

“ What is in this old quarry here, Major Heigh ? ”

“ Memories,” said I. “ We’ll dig some up. ...” But he parried.

« What’s the castle yonder ? ”

And then it was that I sneered out the poor, punning, hackneyed phrase. “That? That is the House of Cards ! Down on your knees, boy, and sing, My country , His of thee”

“ Ah,” says my young friend, and again, “ Oho ! ” — not incisively ; but it is for me to say things now. I begin with the finances of the House, rounding my lips to the size of the figures, and chirping little audacities of comment on the ways and means, seasoning it all with that grim humour which you have doubtless noted over my signature — J. H in the

Commonwealth. Then I pull up, abruptly, I suppose, and display a dignified reticence. I am no gossip, I. Cards is my friend; and I particularly detest this gabble about rich men from some Mrs. Quickly in trousers. Who knows, moreover, when gentlemen of the high finance will have a little Bastille of their own, and our pliant governor will issue snug lettres-de-cachet ? A promoter, did you say, Cards ? Not at all. He reorganizes railways and things ; one railway I know he has reorganized three times; and these rejuvenated concerns have been very grateful to him. He is rich beyond all decent guessing, educated, stately in port, my friend of fifty years ; and I regard him as the most dangerous man in America.

« A politician, is he ? I didn’t know. ...”

“ Nonsense ! He despises politics, — and that is why he is the most dangerous man in America.”

Again it is “Ah” and “Oho” from my young friend, who is no better than an Englishman ; but I can see that he is duly impressed with my epigrammatic way of talk. He shall read my letters in the Commonwealth. Just now, however, I am to tell him about Cards. Yes, Cards is “a plain man of business,” his own rating; and wears his great honours, as he has borne his faculties, very meekly indeed. Yet, if I were playing Shakespeare with him, I should certainly not call him Duncan; not Macbeth either ; Caesar, some would say : but I am by no means sure. He asks no crown of any political origin, whatever his actual power in finance and the great industrial world. He deplores, sincerely as I think, the rule of low politicians ; rails with me, now and then, at our futile democracy ; and how he does hate to go on foot by the Wager Building, here in Philadelphia, and have that dissolute group of bosses and ward-heelers salute him by name ! Yet if one thing can stir his wrath more than politics, it is reform. Responsible in what he calls his “ fiduciary capacity ” as director of banks and trusts, he points out the sickening folly of men who invite reprisals from our lords of the ballot ; he sends his big cheque to Ganewood, Overlord Ganewood, who holds all the little lords in leash ; and no doubt some of those fellows at the Wager Building are jingling his money in their pockets as he goes haughtily by. No, Cards will not meddle with politics or with reform ; and the politicians all extol him for his fidelity to that first commandment with promise for every American man of affairs : “ Thou shalt do no public service.” I am glad, however, that they made his son and namesake accept high diplomatic honours abroad ; that is safe employment, and full of dignity ; and young

Linsey discharges the duties of his position with efficiency and grace. I could wish, indeed, that a like ambition to shine in foreign parts would possess another son, Horace, whom we call “ sporting Hod,” and whom some of us would willingly contemplate through the haze of one or more severing seas. — Oh, he apologized humbly for the cigar trick, — yes, yes: I have forgiven and forgot . . . forgiven long ago

“ By Jove, though, Windsor Castle sings small to that, now ! ”

“ Doesn’t it ? ” — I am proud of our suburbs. Confound it all, Cards built his house with honest money, not with the dirty stuff that went to the founding of... never mind. Yes, it is a fine place. And we look at its solid walls, and the turrets, and the long gardens and lawns before it, the woods behind, and, by their border, great brick stables with a clock-face we can almost read from here. The golf grounds lie this side of the House, taking in the stone mansion where my Uncle Charles once lived. How he would stare at those young men tossing down a “ highball ” as they dress in his old-fashioned room, at senile Putter discussing his strokes, at Niblack swearing over adverse luck ! — Did we never swear, you ask ? Well . . . yes. Yes. But it was mellow, racy, adventurous, our swearing ; the ten commandments were in force, and one took one’s eternal future in one’s hand. — Yet how fair it all looks to-day ! The rolling country, drained, hedged, bright with these red-coated or white-flannelled folk, and loud with cheerful oath or laugh ; and here at our feet a smooth road, echoing to riders who trot back from polo, and suddenly enlivened by a big four-in-hand, — no common sight nowadays. Observe the tripleplate English groom ! “ Observe the men and

women, — particularly that young whip. That’s Elbert-Kelley ; pronounce JElbare. They did try Quellay,- with a 4 de,’ — Gascon founder, and eclipse under the Albert Kelley cloud and the mills ”

But my comrade, civilly enough, cuts me short. Who was the girl, he hastens to inquire, in the fetching tan suit, who was sitting as far from Master Elbert-Kelley as space would permit, and who nodded so gaily, with such superfluous cordiality, one might put it, to me ? Ho, ho ! To think that I am standing here by the old quarry and telling a Waltham Eliot that all unconsciously he has been looking at a Kriemhild . . . this time, Kriemhild Cards! Oh, my whirligig of time ! Ho, ho !

“ Kriemhild ? Deuce of a name! And you laugh at us Yankees for our Samanthas and Patiences ! Yet I seem to remember . .

« Yet you seem to remember. . .”

« Ah, of course. My uncle’s wife ! ”

“ Sagacious, intelligent boy ! Both Kriemhilds are extant ; this is one of them ; and you shall know both before another sunrise. — Now come home to dinner.”

« Kriemhild Cards. Of course. But she must be just out ? ”

« She is.”

“ I thought the entire flock was out, far out, and up, too, — so high ! ” He raised his hand in the familiar gesture.

“ The others are. Lin must be getting on to forty, the diplomatic Lin. And Horace, though some years younger, is already writ large in the records. Come ! He was at Harvard ! Never heard of Horace ? ”

“ Oh ! Shuffle Cards ! Well, I should think

so. Among the Dickey But I’m just a bit

too late for any contemporary knowledge of Shuffle’s active career. I’ve heard of it, though.” — Waltham Eliot smiled, and I grinned.

“ Major, is she engaged ? ”

« Who ? ”

“ Now, Major ! The lass in tan, to be sure.”

“No. She’s waiting for a duke, or a prince of the blood, I suppose. Now come along to dinner.”

“ The old man is a terror, — Cards Senior ? ”

“ Gentle as a dove, — at home. A child can play with him. But ware a bout with him at the office, my lad. Better hand over your assets at the start. He’s generous. But if you scent of a newspaper, and he once thinks ‘ reporter,’ why, pray that your flight be in the winter so that you may dive into the first snowbank ! — But he’ll like you.” — I looked a moment at the smooth, strong face, the clear eye, the bigness of the frame, and the sureness of the pose, the whole effect of sanity, alertness, honesty, force, health. — « He’ll like you. Well, who wouldn’t?”

“ Thank you ! ”

“ No. Don’t thank me. Behave yourself when I present you this evening to my lord and my lady, and to my young lady. Do you hear, sir ? — And now,” — I stamped my foot as we Heighs do when we mean business, — “ now come home to dinner, or you’ll get none.” We are a rough, hardy, plain-speaking breed.

It was only the preceding day that I stood on my piazza, with the westering sun in front of me, and used strong language to a smoothtongued politician with a G.A.R. badge on his coat and his mouth full of tobacco and flattery. I didn’t ask him in ; no apothecary’s civet or other remedy could have sweetened the room for a month. I didn’t even look at the fellow, as he stood there, but blinked painfully into the sunset, — and spoke my mind. He had been a bounty- jumper in the old days of the war ; and I remember refusing to let him enlist in my company. Now he is great-man’s great-man to our county boss ; and he is very strong on G.A.R. posts and pensions. He had me expelled from the local post — once named after me — because I broke up a dirty political “ deal ” ; and he assured my old soldiers that I “ wouldn’t mind.” One of them, on whose little farm I held a mortgage with five years’ interest unpaid, relying on this assurance, told me that the vote of expulsion was a mere formality that should make no difference at all in my blend of mercy and justice. And here now is the source of all the trouble ; he smiles obsequiously, hat in hand, remarking in his easy, rural-politics style that there need be no hard feelings, and asks me for my indispensable signature on a certificate to get a pension, a fat pension, for the biggest coward in my command. The fellow had contracted heart-disease in running away from battle. This time, however, our satrap finds my language too impetuous even for his tried suavity of intercourse, and goes away sorrowful ; while I turn wrathfully around and make straight for my doorway, only to see the imperturbable Bridget, with a card in her hand, waiting my leisure, and a brisk young fellow standing near the piazza step, his head averted to conceal something very like laughter ; he motions the driver of a crazy station-wagon to bide for further orders. I had not noted any wagon, any servant, any visitor, during my harangue ; and there is no doubt that I am growing old. I look at the card ; I look at the young man ; and I nearly topple over into my rhododendrons. Bridget interprets my facial transformations. “ Bring up the gintleman’s coat and umbrella, Danny,” she says ; “and yez can take back the man with* the copper button. We’ll trade.” — Bridget now and then abuses her privilege as an old bachelor’s old servant.

But we sit down, this athletic, bronzed young fellow and I, in the library, — the plain, comfortable, high-studded room where my father, one summer night long ago, read to my mother about Colonel Newcome, while I stood listening on the piazza. . . .

“ You look like him,” I say, alluding to my old friend and companion-in-arms whose name this youngster bears. “You look like him, — and you don’t. The resemblance knocks one down with surprise ; you saw me reel like an actor, just now, eh? But the difference picks one up again, — though slowly, slowly. I’m not sure I am picked up quite yet. You’re bigger, stockier ; your face is ampler, or else it’s the new smooth-shave versus old moustache. You youngsters are plausible and cheeky where we were bearded, mysterious, and romantic, — eh ? You’re too big, too jocular and frivolous, for girls of my day, with romance in their dear little hearts. Confound you cool, matter-of-fact, rising generation, anyhow, — eh ? ”

“ Oh, come, Major Heigh !”

“ Yes. But after all, it is the same face as it is the same name. I’ll chance the heart, too. Don’t mind my talk. My name is Bear. I growl and frighten people; but I am a good bear all the same. Welcome to the old den, and make

it your own, my dear boy Waltham Eliot !

Let me see. The brother was. . . Winthrop, — a tot of a lad, — ‘ Winny.’ Ah, I remember. I remember.”

“My father, Major Heigh. And I am the Benjamin of his otfspring. They gave me my uncle’s name. I have been taught to think it a responsibility.”

“ It’s close upon fifty years ago, young fellow. He used to sit where you sit now, and talk to my mother with that foreign accent and that fine courtesy, — boy that he was. How my mother liked him ! How she used to tell me that was the friend for me, — not the farmer boys, not even Cards. She never liked Cards very much. She . . . Waltham Eliot the second, I like you / ”

This was my abrupt way ; but the young fellow looked at me with that honest sympathy in his face which I could remember so well in the uncle. I was lapsing down huge glissades of sentiment. It wouldn’t do at all.

“Eliot,” I said very gruffly, “I remarked that I liked you. What of that, — eh? I can do young men no good. I’m a crusty fellow of the sort they used to call Mugwump. I abuse our constituted rulers. I write stinging letters (unpaid), to the Commonwealth, and I contemplate life as a Hole. I once belonged to our volunteer forces in the civil war ; but that is over long since, and I have just joined another command. Maybe you don’t know it, — you’re not quite old enough ; it’s Shakespeare’s Sixty-sixth Sonneteers. ... No, you are not eligible until you’re past forty. It’s the Tired Regiment. Look up that sonnet some day, my lad. We are all tired, honestly tired ; tired of the Patriots-for-what’sin-it ; tired of this sensual American life grinning and winking through a mask of conventional piety and morals and law ; tired of a tainted government, an exploded democracy ; tired . . . Oh, you are tired, eh ? Well, most of that is from one of my letters. I bore you, eh ? You want to take the next train ? ”

“ Not at all, Major, not at all. Only you . .

— “Are a whining, dyspeptic, cross-grained misanthropic old bachelor, — a sorehead. — Well, so I am frequently told. But see, — did you ever know a man who really loved his country and did not heartily hate many of his countrymen ? ”

“ I’m not past forty.”

“ Quite right, too, dear boy ! Put it off as long as you can. Stick to your ideals and your business and your poetry — and, of course, your sweetheart.”

“ Ah, Major, — why are you a bachelor ? ”

“ So kind women ask me now and then. Youngster, I fear I can do you no good. I repeat it. I am of an old and pretty sound stock, and incidentally I own some stocks also pretty old and pretty sound ; therefore people tolerate me. But I am a marked man. I smoke foul

old pipes No, keep your eyes on me ; I like

it. But you’re not in a good light ; probably it’s the glasses ; and then Squire Ditchwater, out there, got on my nerves. — I’ll telephone now for your trunk. — Letters, eh ? Oh, — after a while, after a while. It’s your face, my thane of Boston, that I’m reading now. And you are my guest for a long pull ; remember that. What are your plans ? ”

“ Well, sir, my father died just before the boom came along, and he thought he was nearly ruined.”

“ Too honest, eh ? ”

“ I don’t like to think so. But a lot of stocks he had marked ‘ trash ’ — copper, you know, and all that, — flew up to par while the executor was gaping at them. It was all sold and reinvested ; mother and the girls are happy in Boston. But Boston is no place for a young lawyer.” — The boy reminded me of his uncle, fifty years ago, talking about his travels and Harvard College and Mr. Emerson. — “ Between you and me, Major Heigh, I think people are more than half right when they say that Boston is side-tracked.” He spoke in a soft, reverential voice, but firmly, like a devoted churchman who has at last concluded to give up the Athanasian creed. “ It’s a great place still ; no better city to live in and to be born in ; I’m loyal enough. But for an active business career, for the lawyer, — no. My friends made for New York ; but that idea is not so obvious as it looks. Corporation law is my special line. Corporations are responsible for our greatness as well as for our corruption ; and remedies must come from corporation law. Well, sir, where is the heart of corporations if not here in Pennsylvania ? ”

“ You know your Boston, judge. Well, do you know your Philadelphia ? Are you minded to be honest like your forebears, and do you want to go to Heaven when you die, and all that sort of thing, — and do you take stop-over privileges in Philadelphia ? ”

“An honest man can always find honest business.”

I gave him my “ Ho, ho ! ” in largest capitals.

“ Well,” he conceded, for my “Ho, ho ! ” in that manner is nearly always fatal to the interlocutor, “ Oh, well, politics apart, I’m for law and hard work ; I only ask a fair field.”

“ Ask it,” I said. I am the very deuce in argument. “ Ask it. Do you expect a fair field here, if any money is to be made ? Business is rotten ; and law is a little more rotten than business ; and both of them have telephone connection, — and not long-distance, either, my son, — with politics. Don’t < politics apart ’ me ! Politics aren’t apart. They’re served with every dish we eat. Why, when I was writing my articles for the Commonwealth about our local bosses, they were going to condemn one of my fields yonder and put up the county pest-house on it. But Cards and Malstrem stepped in then . . . Hang it, Cards is a good friend. — But, — politics apart ! Sho ! ! ”

“Well, Major Heigh, I’ll put up a stiff fight; why shouldn’t I ? I’m five-and-twenty. I have a thousand or two a year — and some law. Plenty of clothes, cheek, and appetite. There you have me, Major.”

I looked at him. “ I have you, eh ? Well, I’ll hold you. Come see your room, — after I’ve sent for that trunk.”

So it came to pass that in the late September afternoon I stood with another Waltham Eliot on our hill by the old quarry, and watched the light flooding rich and warm over that great House of Cards. And the same night we made our call.

II

“Just say a friend, — a young friend. Major Heigh and a young friend, — eh ? ”

Cards’s man, who knows my ways, smiled respectfully ; and I, who did not know quite enough of my young friend’s ways as yet, glanced at him, ready to hearten him if there were need. Most men clear the throat, and make little gestures indicating great ease of manner, before they go into the presence; but Waltham Eliot was evidently afraid neither of Cards nor of anybody else. He looked about him, and expressed some measure of approbation in regard to the drawing-room, — to me a rather frigid region, — as the smooth-gliding John reappeared and bade us follow him to the library. “ All right, John,” I said ; “ I know. That will do.”

I like stage effects. Just beyond the broad doorway the lights burned brightest, falling cannily upon our entrance. Cards, that jetblack hair and heavy moustache now gone almost white, but with the keen dark eye of his youth, the square set of jaw and mouth, the 18 sense of something deliberately indomitable exhaling from his poise and manner, was in such ease as a man of his make could ever assume ; he smoked placidly, looking through the great bay-window at a vague world of night, with a coffee-cup on the little table at his side and two newspapers slipped down to his feet. For all his repose, he was activity in statue ; cut like a qameo, one would better say, against that background of dull, rich colour, — the stretch of heavy rugs, the books, and a fine picture here and there in seeming shadow. His wife, white, too, in her splendid wealth of hair, but with her superb complexion unimpaired by time, her violet eyes that looked as if they made this concession of colour to her beauty, but not to her character, her figure still suggestive of the strength and grace of youth, sat by a shaded drop-light on the library table and read Lord Ormont and his Aminta. Kriemhild the younger, who, if she had come into Fenimore Cooper’s pages, would have been “the other female, occupied with a piece of needlework,” was occupied with nothing but the fox-terrier at her feet, alert for a bark at the visitors and very prettily restrained by his mistress’s uplifted finger. She looked couthie, as the Scotch say, and was not without her own alertness to examine the “ young friend ” at better advantage than from the top of a coach. She was blindingly handsome, — in fact, the bestlooking girl I ever saw, except one ; and she had charm: some day I will filch Eliot’s diary, if I can, and give you all the adjectives. Mine are no good ; you see, I have always known her mother.

The terrier barked. Cards blinked, turning his gaze from the night-scene of the lawn. “Come in, John,” he said, with the capitalist drawl in his voice. Mrs. Cards laid aside her book ; and she said, “ Come in, John,” too, — in her own old-family accent. Remark that it is something to have two persons like them say “ John ” at all ; it is better than my own better’s sometime Sir John with all Europe. And, best of the bunch, “Good work, Uncle John,” came from the young woman. To be sure, none of the home group looked at me. I pushed my companion gently to the fore, as host and hostess rose to greet us ; there he stood, the light full on his face and his figure. — You know how dress brings out the gentleman, and somehow betrays the cad ? — My friends saw a gentleman ; and they saw something more. Ruddy and keen and full of life as he was, they, nevertheless, saw a ghost. “ Ho, ho ! ” I boomed out ; and the daughter, never surprised at any eccentricity of mine, was clearly non-plussed at the behaviour of her parents.

THE HOUSE TKIUMPHANT

“ Ha, Linsey,” I said, stepping forward ; “ Oho, Kriemhild, — no need to name names, eh ? Well, for form — I present Mr. Waltham Eliot, late of Boston. He’s come to settle in Philadelphia, live on law, and be honest Let us make

his visit . . . pleasant.”

It was not too delicate a trick for me to play this banker and his wife. The amazing likeness of young Eliot’s face meant for each of them the quintessence of deepest problems, the sentence of recapitulation which in some lives covers a whole library of action and comment. Cards was the more visibly affected. He mastered his emotion fast enough; but it was transmuted into a strange tenderness of look, an underplay of genuine sentiment that rang again in the formal words of his welcome. Nobody, I think, had ever seen Cards hold a man’s hand the second or two overtime that we noted now, — his daughter with sheer amazement. She was not instructed in this chapter of the family chronicles

I had slipped over to her as her father grasped the young man’s hand, and I gave her my customary gentle pinch of the ear, — a habit, I believe, peculiar to myself and the first Napoleon. The adorable girl put her arm in mine and leaned against my shoulder ; I had on my large steel-rimmed spectacles ; my face, all “ chopped with tanned antiquity,” wreathed itself into a bless-you-my-children smile ; and we were a noticeable group.

“ What’s got into Daddy, Uncle John? Look!”

“ Shh,” said I, impressively. “ Don’t spoil scenes.”

“Mr. Eliot,” Cards was saying, “the Spaniards, I believe, are wont to offer their houses and all they own to a welcome guest. I am not very keen about visitors, and nobody accuses me of exaggerated courtesy ; but I mean it when I tell you that you are absolutely at home in my house.”

“ Show him, then,” I remarked drily, as I led the girl a pace or two forward, “ the best thing you’ve got in the house, by my way of thinking.” And I made my little jest about an engagement of long standing between us ; and the little jest was duly recognized ; then the presentation was made, and for ten minutes there prevailed the inevitable adjustments of times, persons, events. Cards remembered the deceased Winthrop so thoroughly. “ How he cried when they told him the war would be over before he could enlist ! I used to read his first Latin to him, in college days. Why have I heard nothing, . . . but I see little of my old Boston friends now. I went up to commencement the other year ; and I hardly knew my classmates. I recollect that old Chuckle, as we called him, was excited over the prohibition of whisky-punch in the rooms ! It was uncanny. Every corner — our room was in Holworthy — reminded me of your uncle . . . and here this old keg droned on about his punch ! I went off to Boston and talked railroads all the afternoon, — to get sentiment out of my head.”

“ Your sentiment took the approved Harvard form, sir, in that splendid . . .”

“Oh, that. Yes, I named it after your uncle. My dear Mr. Eliot, it was no exaggeration when I told them that your uncle took me to Harvard, and Harvard gave me all I needed and could never have found elsewhere.”

“ Daddy, I’ve known you, lo these many years ; and I’ve never had before such materials for the biography of L. A. Cards ”

“Nonsense, my dear. But I am chattering vilely. It’s your face, Mr. Eliot, that makes me so sentimental. They’ve told you how much you look like him ? ”

“ It seems to strike you and Major Heigh particularly, — though I’ve heard of it before. As I said to the Major, it means a heavy responsibility ” He waited a fraction of a pause,

as if for permission, and changed the subject with some remarks on common friends addressed to the junior Kriemhild. Evidently the young fellow, in his kind heart, thought of the odd relation which he bore to the mother ; thought of her sensations at all this revival of the past.

We were grateful to him In fact, Cards

started visibly, as if he had just come to the idea. Friendship, you see, outlasts the most resolute and desperate loves ; and Cards had been taken by surprise at the sight of this reproduction of one who had been his only friend. Somehow we sundered into two groups. Cards and I smoked ; and Mrs. Cards, whose eyes still had that dreamy look which could have been noted in mine, save for the large, steel-rimmed spectacles, came close to us on pretence of showing me something in her book “ Can any

human being parse that sentence ? ” she inquired. I didn’t answer. She didn’t want any answer. Nor does any sentence written by Mr. George Meredith need parsing. Instinctively we three fell to talking of oldest times, — when we were girl and boys here ; and we looked indulgently over at the young people chatting so easily and frankly. A benediction was in the air ; it was one of those rare moments when life, for a whim, turns from tiger to kitten and rolls about for us, and purrs, and lets us feel how harmless are its claws. Here we were again! There was our good Waltham Eliot of old — by deputy. Only where was Clayton ? Where was his deputy ? They order these things better at the chateau in the French novel. If only the domestique — Jean, thou son of County Kerry, where art thou, mon brave? — if only Jean- John would announce one more visitor, and if that pale, melancholy man with a southern accent could enter . . . Nonsense ! Clayton the younger is now at least seven-and- thirty ; he wears a chin-beard in the occidental fashion, and lives in Kansas City, and has a large family, and is an official in what they call the Beef Trust. Cards got him the job. Cards can do anything for anybody. He can be a most useful friend ; and so I told young Waltham Eliot, as we paced home in the moonlight.