At sight of me the laughter and conversation died. My wife coloured. James looked abashed for a moment. Then—what a well-mannered, self-possessed dog he is!—he burst out laughing. “Fairly trapped!” he said. And he went on to explain to the others: “The governor and I had a little fall-out, and he sent me down here to play with the ashes. You’ve caught me with the goods on me, governor. It’s up to me—I’ve got to square myself. So I’ll pay by giving you the two prettiest young girls in the room to sit on either side of you at luncheon. Let’s go in, for I’m half-starved.”
As all the women in the room except three—including Aurora—were married, James’s remark was doubly adroit. What could I do but put aside my wrath and set my guests at their ease?
This was the less difficult to do as Natalie Bradish and Horton Kirkby were among the guests—and stopping in the house. I have long had my eye on Miss Bradish as the proper wife for James or Walter—whichever should commend himself to me as my fit successor at the head of the family I purpose to found with the bulk of my wealth. She is a handsome girl; she has a proud, distinguished look and manner; she will inherit several millions some day that can’t be distant, as her father is in hopelessly bad health; she comes of a splendid, widely connected family, and is extremely ambitious and free from sentimental nonsense. Young Kirkby is the very husband for Aurora. His great-grandfather founded their family securely in city real estate and lived long enough firmly to establish the tradition of giving the bulk of the fortune to the eldest male heir. Kirkby is not brilliant; but Aurora has brains enough for two, and he has a set of long, curved fingers that never relax their hold upon what’s in them.
After luncheon I drew my wife away to the sitting-room for the plain talk which was the object of my visit. As the presence of Miss Bradish and Kirkby in the house had lessened my anger on the score of my wife and son’s light-hearted way of looking at his crimes, I put forward the matter of the expense accounts.
“Burridge tells me the total for last month is—” I began, and paused. As I was speaking I was glancing round the room. I had not been in it for several years. I had just noted the absence of a Corot I bought ten years before and paid sixteen thousand dollars for. I don’t care for pictures or that sort of thing, any more than I care for the glitter of diamonds or the colours of gold and silver in themselves. I know that most of this talk of “art” and the like is so much rubbish and affectation. But works of art, like the precious stones and metals, have come to be the conventionally accepted standards of luxury, the everywhere recognised insignia of the aristocracy of wealth. So I have them, and add to my collection steadily just as I add to my collection of finely bound books that no one ever opens. What slaves of convention and ostentation we are!
“What’s become of the Corot that used to hang there?” I asked, suspiciously, because I had had so many experiences of my family’s trifling with my possessions.
My wife smiled scornfully. “I believe you carry round in your head an inventory of everything we’ve got, even to the last pot in the kitchen,” she said. “The Corot is safe. It’s hanging in my bedroom.”
In her bedroom! A Corot I’ve been offered twenty-five thousand dollars for, and she had hidden it away in her bedroom! I was irritated when she put it in her sitting-room where few people came, for it should have had a good place in our New York palace. But in her bedroom, where no one but the servants would ever have a chance to look at it!
“Why didn’t you put it in the attic or the cellar?” I asked.
She lifted her eyebrows and gave me an affected, disdainful glance. “I put it in my bedroom because I like to look at it,” she said.