ii
Then all at once they were rich.
For a while they hardly dared to believe it. The habit of not being rich is something to break. Galt’s revenge for their unbelief, past and present, was to overwhelm them with money. First he returned to them severally all that he had borrowed or taken from them to put into Great Midwestern. This, he said, was not their principal back. It was the profit. It was only the beginning of their profit. Their investments were left whole. Presently they began to receive dividends. Besides, he settled large sums upon them as gifts, and kept increasing them continually.
“What shall we do with it?” asked Natalie.
“Do with it?” said Galt. “What do people do with money? Anything they like. Spend it.”
He encouraged them to be extravagant, especially Natalie. She had a passion for horses. He gave her a stable full on her birthday, all show animals, one of which, handled by Natalie, took first prize in its class at Madison Square Garden the next month. Galt, strutting about the ring, was absurd with wonder and excitement. He wished to clap the judge on the back. Mrs. Galt restrained him as much as she could. She could not keep him from shouting when the ribbon was handed out. It was more a victory for Natalie than for the horse. She was tremendously admired. People looked at their cards to find her name, then at her again, asking, “Who is she?”
She was nobody. In the papers the next morning her name was mentioned and that was all, except that one paper referred to her as the daughter of a Wall Street broker. Other girls, neither so beautiful nor so expert as Natalie, were daintily praised.
Galt was furious. Yet he had no suspicion of what was the matter. There was gloom in his household when he expected gaiety. His efforts to discover the reasons were met with evasive, cryptic sentences.
“What have you been doing today?” he asked Natalie one hot June evening at dinner.
“Nothing,” she answered.
This exchange was followed as usual by a despondent silence which always contained an inaudible accusation of Galt. Everyone would have denied it sweetly. He couldn’t turn it on them. He could only take it out in irritability.
“All fuss and feathers and nothing to do,” he said. “You make me sick. I can’t see why you don’t do what other girls do. There’s nothing they’ve got that you can’t have. Go some place. Go to Newport. That’s where they all go, ain’t it?”
“Papa, dear,” said Natalie, “what should we do at Newport?”
“Do! Do! How the—how do I know? Swim, dance, flirt, whatever the rest of them do. Take a house ... make a splurge ... cut in with the crowd. I don’t know. Your mother does. That’s her business. Ask her.”
“Oh, but you don’t understand,” said Natalie. “We’d not be taken in. Mother does know.”
“What does that mean?” Galt asked.
“You can’t just dress up and go where you want to go,” said Natalie. “You have to be asked. We’d look nice at Newport with a house, wouldn’t we?”
“Go on,” said Galt, in a dazed kind of way.
“I mean,” said Natalie, ... “oh, you know, papa, dear. Don’t be an old stupid. Why go on with it?... Of course you can always do things with people of a sort. They ask you fast enough. But mother says if we do that we’ll never get anywhere. So we have to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“I don’t know,” said Natalie, on the verge of tears. “Ask mother.”
“So ho-o-o-o!” said Galt, beginning to see. “I’ll ask her.”
Mrs. Galt and Vera were in a state of crystal passivity. They heard without listening. Galt pursued the matter no further at dinner. Later he held a long interview with Mrs. Galt and she told him the truth. Social ostracism was the price his family paid for the enemies he had made and continued to make in Wall Street. She had tried. She had knocked, but no door opened. She had prostrated herself before her friends. They were sorry and helpless. Nothing could be done,—not at once. She had better wait quietly, they said, until the storm blew over. Mrs. Valentine was at her worst, terrible and unapproachable. The subject couldn’t even be mentioned. Anyone who received the Galts was damned.