When Monsignor’s car glided away from her door the Beaubien’s face grew dark, and her eyes drew to narrow slits. “So,” she reflected, as she entered the elevator to mount to her dressing room, “that is her game, is it? The poor, fat simpleton has no interest in either the girl or myself, other than to use us as stepping-stones. She forgets that a stone sometimes turns under the foot. Fool!”
She entered her room and rang for her maid. Turning to the pier glass, she threw on the electric light and scrutinized her features narrowly. “It’s going,” she murmured, “fast! God, how I hate those gray hairs! Oh, what a farce life is––what a howling, mocking farce! I hate it! I hate everything––everybody! No––that little girl––if it is possible for me to love, I love her.”
She sank into an easy chair. “I wonder what it is she does to me. I’m hypnotized, I guess. Anyhow, I’m different when I’m with her. And to think that Hawley-Crowles would sacrifice the child––humph! But, if the girl is made of the right stuff––and I know she is––she will stand up under it and be stronger for the experience. She has got something that will make her stand! I once asked her what she had that I didn’t, and now I know––it is her religion, the religion that Borwell and Lafelle and the whole kit of preachers and priests would corrupt if they had half a chance! Very well, we’ll see what it does under the test. If it saves her, then I want it myself. But, as for that little pin-headed Hawley-Crowles, she’s already signed her own death-warrant. She shall get into the Ames set, yes. And I will use her, oh, beautifully! to pay off certain 90 old scores against Madam Ames––and then I’ll crush her like a dried leaf, the fat fool!”
The Beaubien’s position was, to say the least, peculiar, and one which required infinite tact on her part to protect. It was for that reason that the decorum which prevailed at her dinners was so rigidly observed, and that, whatever the moral status of the man who sat at her board, his conduct was required to be above reproach, on penalty of immediate ejection from the circle of financial pirates, captains of commercial jugglery, and political intriguers who made these feasts opportunities for outlining their predatory campaigns against that most anomalous of creatures, the common citizen.
It was about this table, at whose head always sat the richly gowned Beaubien, that the inner circle of financial kings had gathered almost nightly for years to rig the market, determine the price of wheat or cotton, and develop mendacious schemes of stock-jobbery whose golden harvests they could calculate almost to a dollar before launching. As the wealth of this clique of financial manipulators swelled beyond all bounds, so increased their power, until at last it could be justly said that, when Ames began to dominate the Stock Exchange, the Beaubien practically controlled Wall Street––and, therefore, in a sense, Washington itself. But always with a tenure of control dubiously dependent upon the caprices of the men who continued to pay homage to her personal charm and keen, powerful intellect.
At the time of which we speak her power was at its zenith, and she could with equal impunity decapitate the wealthiest, most aristocratic society dame, or force the door of the most exclusive set for any protégée who might have been kept long years knocking in vain, or whose family name, perchance, headed a list of indictments for gross peculations. At these unicameral meetings, held in the great, dark, mahogany-wainscoted dining room of the Beaubien mansion, where a single lamp of priceless workmanship threw a flood of light upon the sumptuous table beneath and left the rest of the closely guarded room shrouded in Stygian darkness, plans were laid and decrees adopted which seated judges, silenced clergymen, elected senators, and influenced presidents. There a muck-raking, hostile press was muffled. There business opposition was crushed and competition throttled. There tax rates were determined and tariff schedules formulated. There public opinion was disrupted, character assassinated, and the death-warrant of every threatening reformer drawn and signed. In a word, there Mammon, in the rôle of business, organized and unorganized, legitimate and piratical, sat enthroned, with wires 91 leading into every mart of the world, and into every avenue of human endeavor, be it social, political, commercial, or religious. These wires were gathered together into the hands of one man, the directing genius of the group, J. Wilton Ames. Over him lay the shadow of the Beaubien.
An hour after the departure of Monsignor Lafelle the Beaubien, like a radiant sun, descended to the library to greet her assembled guests. Some moments later the heavy doors of the great dining room swung noiselessly open, and the lady proceeded unescorted to her position at the head of the table. At her signal the half dozen men sat down, and the butler immediately entered, followed by two serving men with the cocktails and the first course. The chair at the far end of the table, opposite the Beaubien, remained unoccupied.
“Ames is late to-night,” observed the girthy Gannette, glancing toward the vacant seat, and clumsily attempting to tuck his napkin into his collar.
The Beaubien looked sharply at him. “Were you at the club this afternoon, Mr. Gannette?” she inquired coldly.
Gannette straightened up and became rigid. Pulling the napkin down hastily, he replied in a thick voice, “Just a little game of bridge––some old friends––back from Europe––”