For some moments Carmen and Haynerd stood looking alternately at each other and about them at their magnificent environment. Both had seen much of the gilded life, and the girl had dwelt some months in its alien atmosphere. But neither had ever witnessed such a stupendous display of material wealth as was here unfolded before their astonished gaze. At the head of the grand stairway stood the Ames trio, to receive their resplendent guests. The women were magnificently gowned. But Ames’s massive form in its simple black and chaste linen was the cynosure of all eyes. Even Haynerd could not suppress a note of admiration as he gazed at the splendid figure.
“And yet,” he murmured, “a victim, like the rest, of the great delusion.”
Carmen laid down the opera glasses through which she had been studying the man. “He is an expression,” she said, “of the American ideal––the ideal of practical material life. It is toward his plane of life that this country’s youth are struggling, at, oh, what a cost! Think, think, what his immense, misused revenue could do, if unselfishly used! Why, the cost of this single night’s show would put two hundred men like Father Waite through a four-year course in the University, and train them to do life’s work! And what, what will Mr. Ames get out of it?”
“Oh, further opportunities to increase his pile, I suppose,” returned Haynerd, shrugging his shoulders.
“But, will he get real happiness? Peace? Joy? And does he need further opportunities to accumulate money? Does he not rather need some one to show him the meaning of life, how to really live?”
“He does, indeed! And it may be your mission, Carmen, to do just that. But if you don’t, then I sincerely hope the man may die before he discovers that all that he has achieved, his wealth, his prestige, his power, have not been worth striving for!”
“He hasn’t the slightest idea of the meaning of life,” she murmured, looking down upon the glittering throng. “Nor have any of them.”
“No,” he replied. “They put me in mind of Carlyle’s famous remark, as he stood looking out across the London Strand: ‘There are in this city some four million people, mostly fools.’ How mean, narrow and hard their lives are! These are the high priests of vested privilege, of mediaevalism, of old institutions whose perpetual maintenance, even in a generation that has progressed far beyond them, is a fungus blight upon us. Ah, there’s little Willie Van Wot, all dolled out! He’s glorifying his Creator now by devoting his foolish little existence to coaching trips along the New England shore. He reminds me of the Fleet street poet who wrote a century ago of the similar occupation of a young dandy of that day––
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What can little T. O. do? Why, drive a Phaeton and Two!!! Can little T. O. do no more? Yes, drive a Phaeton and Four!!!! |