Boredom has long been the common complaint of the idle rich. Many things are excused because of it; many useless and reckless occupations condoned for and by that favored class on the ground that the time passes so slowly that they must have something to do. Whether or no this is exactly the case, however, is a moot question. To come right down to it, time generally passes a great deal more quickly for those who have more store of worldly goods than they would wish. To the woman of fashion and wealth months and days seem actually to have flown by from the time she made her more or less blushing début until she suddenly wakes one day to realize that there is gray in her hair, and that it will take arduous hours at the beauty parlors to smooth over the ravages of time in a once-unwrinkled countenance. Men, too—more often than not the man of unlimited means comes to know that middle life is upon him and that he has not accomplished any of the great things that he had once planned, always having known that with wealth to back him he could accomplish them. It is all the fault of time. It flies rapidly—too rapidly for those who have the means for gratifying every wish and whim.
The Bentons were no exception to the rule. Time flew by on such light wings for them that it was hard to realize that so much had been accomplished, so much changed in the three years that might have been so many months since they had left Atwood for New York. Of them all, though, the children had most readily accustomed themselves to the change and long since had become seasoned little New Yorkers with little noses turned up at less lucky youngsters who had no nice warm closed car to command whenever they wished a ride.
Hugh, too, at the end of the three years (though his change had been more gradual), might always have lived on Riverside Drive and known club life since his salad days. Unlike his wife, who in the first flush of her good fortune had elected play as her life work, Hugh had turned his attention to work. Ambitious as he was, and before his first success with his invention with no outlet for it, he had not let grass grow under his feet since he had changed his cottage in Atwood for a house on Riverside Drive. Personal attention to the details of the manufacture of his invention had brought him in contact with business men of wealth and solidity and deep down Hugh Benton was not the sort of man to neglect what opportunity threw in his way. From manufacturing to Wall Street had been but a step. Had Hugh Benton’s lucky fairy been with him day by day to wave her magic wand, he could not have had more fortune in his ventures. His was not the story of the ordinary novice. It was the thousandth one that daily draws more and more grist to the mills of the “big men” who rule so autocratically in that small street called Wall;—the story that draws adventurers with all the fascination that fishermen who daily cast their lines off the bathing beaches know because of tales of a solitary tide runner that some time has been known to become unwary.
So it was, that at the end of three years, Hugh Benton was a rich man. He was becoming richer. He might have been a blood relation of Midas, said those who had come eagerly to watch for a tip that might fall from his lips unguardedly, for in so short a time his had become the platitudinous but nonetheless expressive sobriquet of “Lucky Benton.”
With success, came all that it usually implies. His, too, had become the pleasures of the rich. Almost without knowing it, so subtle had come the transformation, home no longer held the joys it once did for the former bank employee. Roadsters of high speed, cards at any of the many clubs where he had been eagerly welcomed, fishing and hunting expeditions from the base of a hundred-thousand-dollar “shack” in the Adirondacks had taken the place of more homely pleasures. It had all come about so easily too. Looking back in one of his few retrospective moods Hugh Benton smiled as he recalled the thought he would never accustom himself to New York. He smiled a bit disdainfully at his own small viewpoint when he remembered how once he had believed he would be content as a gentleman farmer.
Only Marjorie Benton was dissatisfied, though she was queerly conscious that she ought not to be—that she had everything that she had once so sincerely believed necessary to her happiness. The artificiality of all about her had come to her with a shock, an eye opening all the more distressing because of its suddenness. Marjorie Benton had found out she did not know how to play. More, she had discovered she did not want to. At least she did not want to play as did those with whom she came in contact and who had, from the horizon of Atwood, seemed all that was most desirable in the world. For instance, one of her most eager plans when she once put herself to sleep planning was to play bridge and spend wonderful afternoons in the company of cultured and delightful women such as those of whom she had read and whom she hoped to emulate. One of her first steps had been to get an instructress, so that she would be prepared to enter “society.”
It had not been hard for the Bentons to enter the charmed circle. It had been surprisingly easy, in fact, for Hugh’s financial success opened many doors that might otherwise have been barred, and present-day “society” may well be trusted not to overlook the tales the journals have to tell of sudden wealth (and Hugh had proven good copy) however much they may profess to scorn it.
So she had met a great many people, as the wives of Hugh’s friends had called and invited her to one affair after the other. At first she had been fairly beside herself with joy. But it was of short duration. Try as she would, she simply could not “take” to any of these new friends. They were all so frivolous and petty. Life held nothing for them obviously but bridge, dress, theater and gossip.
Then had come the day of her own first bridge party and her first real shock and mute protest. Somehow the thought of playing for money had never entered her mind. She had imagined that they played for a prize, the same as they had done at home at their little whist socials; or perhaps society matrons simply played for amusement.