Then she choked back the tears as she added: “The girl comes home every night with an empty purse, no matter how full it may have been in the morning. What does she do with the money? Follow her some day and see.”
Carmen’s slight success in the field of letters still further aroused Haynerd’s interest. The peacefully somnolent Social Era, he thought, might awaken to new things under the stimulus of such fresh writing as hers. Perhaps life did hold something of real value after all. Would she furnish him with a column or two on the peculiar social aspect of the metropolis?
She would, and did. And the result was that the staid conservative sheet was given a smart shaking; and several prominent society people sat up and blinked. The article was in no way malicious. It was not even condemnatory. It but threw a clear light from a somewhat unusual angle upon certain phases of New York’s social life, and uncovered a few of the more subtly hidden springs of its peculiar activity.
Among those who read her essay in the Social Era was J. Wilton Ames. He first lay back in his chair and laughed uproariously. And then, when his agents discovered for him the identity of the author, he glowered. The Beaubien was still standing between him and this budding genius. And though he might, and would, ultimately ruin the Beaubien financially, yet this girl, despite her social ostracism, bade fair to earn with her facile pen enough to maintain them both in luxury. So he bent anew to his vengeful schemes, for he would make them come to him. As Trustee, he would learn what courses the girl was pursuing in the University––for he had long known that she was in attendance there. Then he would learn who her associates were; what suggestions and advice her instructors gave her; and her plans for the future. And he would trace her sources of income and apply pressure at the most vital point. He had never in his life been successfully balked. Much less by a woman.
Then Haynerd came to congratulate Carmen again, and to request that she attend with him the formal opening of the new Ames mansion, the great Fifth Avenue palace, for he 41 wanted her vivid, first-hand impressions for his account of the brilliant affair in the Social Era. As reporters, he explained, they would of necessity remain in seclusion, and the girl might disguise to such an extent as to prevent recognition, if she chose. It was business for him, and an opportunity for rich experience for her. And the fearless girl went, because it would help Haynerd, though the Beaubien inwardly trembled.
Invitations to the number of three hundred had been issued to the élite of New York, announcing the formal opening of the newly finished, magnificent Ames dwelling. These invitations were wrought in enamel on cards of pure gold. Each had cost thirty dollars. The mansion itself, twelve millions. A month prior to the opening, the newspapers had printed carefully-worded announcements of the return of Mrs. J. Wilton Ames and her daughter, after a protracted stay at various foreign baths and rest-cures in the hope of restoring the former’s impaired health. But Mrs. Ames now felt that she could no longer deprive society of her needed activities, and so had returned to conduct it through what promised to be a season of unusual brilliancy. The papers did not, however, state that J. Wilton had himself recalled her, after quietly destroying his bill of divorce, because he recognized the necessity of maintaining the social side of his complicated existence on a par with his vast business affairs.
As Carmen and Haynerd approached the huge, white marble structure, cupolaed, gabled, buttressed, and pinnacled, an overwhelming sense of what it stood for suddenly came upon the girl, and she saw revealed in a flash that side of its owner’s life which for so many months she had been pondering. The great shadows that seemed to issue from the massive exterior of the building swept out and engulfed her; and she turned and clasped Haynerd’s arm with the feeling that she would suffocate were she to remain longer in them.
“Perk up, little one,” said Haynerd, taking her hand. “We’ll go round to the rear entrance, and I will present my business card there. Ames’s secretary telephoned me instructions, and I said I was going to bring a lady reporter with me.”
Carmen caught her breath as she passed through the tall, exquisitely wrought iron gateway and along the marble walk which led to the rear. Up the winding steps to the front entrance, where swung the marvelous bronze doors which had stirred the imaginations of two continents, streamed the favored of the fashionable world. Among them Carmen saw many whom she recognized. The buffoon, Larry Beers, was there, swinging jauntily along with the bejeweled wife of Samson, the multimillionaire packer. Kane and his wife, and 42 Weston followed. Outside the gates there was incessant chugging of automobiles, mingled with the shouted orders of the three policemen detailed to direct the traffic. A pinched, ragged urchin and his tattered little sister crept up and peered wildly through the iron pickets of the fence; but a sharp rap from a policeman’s club sent them scattering. Carmen stood for a moment in the shadows and watched the swarm mount the marble steps and enter through those wonderful doors. There were congressmen and senators, magnates and jurists, distillers and preachers. Each one owed his tithe of allegiance to Ames. Some were chained to him hard and fast, nor would break their bonds this side of the grave. Some he owned outright. There were those who grew white under his most casual glance. There were others who knew that his calloused hand was closing about them, and that when it opened again they would fall to the ground, dry as dust. Others, like moths, not yet singed, were hovering ever closer to the bright, cruel flame. Reverend Darius Borwell, bowing and smiling, alighted from his parochial car and tripped blithely up the glistening marble steps. Each and all, wrapping the skeleton of grief, greed, shame, or fear beneath swart broadcloth and shimmering silk, floated up those ghostly steps as if drawn by a tremendous magnet incarnate in the person of J. Wilton Ames.
Carmen shuddered and turned away. Did the pale wraith of Mrs. Hawley-Crowles sigh in the wake of that gilded assembly? Did the moans of poor, grief-stricken Mrs. Gannette, sitting in her poverty and sorrow, die into silence against those bronze doors? Was he, the being who dwelt in that marble palace, the hydra-headed embodiment of the carnal, Scriptural, age-old power that opposes God? And could he stand forever?