James had gone to the public school and then to Phillips Exeter; Walter had gone to public school a little while, and then to ——, where he was prepared for Harvard, not in a mixed and somewhat motley crowd, as James was, but in a company made up exclusively of youths of his own class, the sons of those who are aristocratic by birth or by achievement. Aurora was even more exclusively educated. She—with difficulty, as we were still new to our position—was got into a small class of aristocratic children that met at the house of the parents of two of them. Each day she went there in one of our carriages with her French nursery governess, promoted to be her companion; and, when the class was over for the day, the companion called for her in the carriage and took her home.
All Aurora’s young friends were girls like herself, bred in the strictest ideas of the responsibilities of their station, and intent upon making a social success, and, of course, a successful marriage. At the time, my wife, who had not then been completely turned by the adulation my wealth had brought her, used to express to me her doubts whether these children were not too sordid. I was half inclined to agree with her, for it isn’t pleasant to hear mere babies talk of nothing but dresses and jewels, palaces and liveries and carriages, good “catches,” and social position. But I see now that there is no choice between that sort of education and sheer sentimentalism. It is far better that children who are to inherit millions and the responsibilities of high station should be over-sordid than over-sentimental. Sordidness will never lead them into the ruinous mischief of prodigality and bad marriages; sentimentalism is almost certain to do so.
My wife was extremely careful, as the mothers of our class must be, to scan the young men who were permitted to talk with Aurora. Only the eligible had the opportunity to get well acquainted with her—indeed, I believe Horton Kirkby was the first man she really knew well.
It was a surprise to me when Kirkby began to show a preference for her. His mother is one of the leaders of that inner circle of fashionable society which still barred the doors haughtily against us, though it admitted many who were glad to be our friends—perhaps I should say my friends. Kirkby himself keenly delighted in the power which his combination of vast wealth, old family, and impregnable social position gave him. Every one supposed he would marry in his own set. But Aurora got a chance at him, and—well, Aurora inherits something of my magnetism and luck. Kirkby’s coldness to me at the outset and his mother’s deliberately snubbing us again and again make me think his intentions were not then serious. But Aurora alternately fired and froze him with such skill that she succeeded in raising in his mind a doubt which had probably never entered it before—a doubt of his ability to marry any woman he might choose. So, she triumphed.
But after they were engaged she continued to play fast and loose with him. At first I thought this was only clever manœuvring on her part to keep him uncertain and interested. But I presently began to be uneasy and sent her mother to question her adroitly. “She says,” my wife reported to me, “that she can’t take him and she can’t give him up. She says there’s one thing she’d object to more than to marrying him, and that is to seeing some other girl marry him.”
“What nonsense!” said I; “I thought she was too well brought up for such folly.”
“You must admit Kirkby is—clammy,” replied my wife, always full of excuses for her children.
Before I could move to bring Aurora to her senses, Kirkby did it—by breaking off the engagement and transferring his attentions to Mary Stuyvesant, poor as poverty but beautiful and well born. Within a week Aurora had him back; within a fortnight she had the cards out for the wedding.
The presents began to pour in; two rooms down-stairs were filling with magnificence, and we had sent several van loads to the safety deposit vaults. There must have been close upon half a million dollars’ worth, including my gift of a forty-thousand-dollar tiara. Every one in the house was agitated. I had given my wife and daughter carte blanche, releasing Cress and Jack Ridley from attendance on me to assist them and to see that extravagance did not spread into absolutely wanton waste. But this does not mean that I was not in hearty sympathy with my wife’s efforts to make the full realisation of our social ambition a memorable occasion. On the contrary, I wanted precisely that; and I knew the way to accomplish it was by getting five cents’ worth for every five cents spent, not by imitating the wastefulness of the ignorant poor. I was willing that the dollars should fly; but I was determined that each one should hit the mark.
Jack Ridley said to me once: “Why, to you five hundred dollars is less than one dollar would be to me.”