The Relentless City

by E. F. Benson

'Yes, all!' Sometimes, again, it would be he who first used the instrument, and he would ring up his head clerk in New York or a partner, never in a hurry, never apparently impatient. On the other hand, he would not wait idle till the answering bell rang, but go steadily on with his work. At such moments he would raise his eyes sometimes when he was speaking, and if you happened to catch his glance, it is probable you would never forget it, but would understand, though momentarily only and dimly maybe, that at the table in the bare room there sat a Force, a great natural phenomenon, before which all the splendour and magnificence of the house, all the illimitable outpouring of wealth which it implied, became insignificant—a mere shirt-button or a tie-pin to the man from whose brain it had all sprung.

In face, but for those extraordinary eyes, dark gray in colour, but of a vitality so great that it seemed as if each was a separate living entity, his features were somewhat insignificant. He had gray, rather thin whiskers, and iron-gray hair, still thick, and not yet deserting his forehead. His nose was slightly hooked, suggesting that a spoonful, perhaps, of Jewish blood ran in his veins; his mouth was very thin-lipped and compressed. In body, he was short and thin almost to meagreness, and, owing to a nearly total absence of digestive power, he lived practically exclusively on milk, of which he drank some five or six pints a day. And in nothing was his power of control so amazingly shown; for ten years ago he had been both gourmet and gourmand, and had habitually eaten enormous masses of food with a relish and palate for the curiously delicate and uncultivated sense of taste that Savarin might have envied. Even now, when he sat at the head of the table at his wife's parties, he knew, partly by keenness of nostril, partly by look, whether any dish was not perfectly cooked, and next morning the first of the slips which he dropped on to the floor to be picked up by the young man at the door might run: 'To the chef: Not enough asparagus-heads in the sauce Milanaise, Some three weeks ago I told you the same thing.—L. S. P.'

This extraordinary sense of, and attention to, detail, characteristic of the great Napoleon, was also most characteristic of Mr. Palmer. Only the night before his daughter had come down to dinner in a new dress, and found herself the instant target for the piercing gray eye of her father.

'There ought to be two straps on the shoulder, not one,' he said; 'it is copied from the figure of Madame Matignon, in the picture of the last fête of the Empress Eugenie. Pray have it altered.'

'Dear old papa,' remarked Amelie, 'I dare say you know everything, but it wouldn't be so pretty.'

'That is a matter of taste, but it would be right.'

This characteristic, which appeared so strongly even in such branches of human interest as the position of a strap or a bow on a woman's dress, appeared most piercingly of all on questions concerning finance. Figures, indeed, once seen by him, seemed to be indelibly imprinted on his mind, and, without reference, he would embark on enterprises where an accurate knowledge of previous balance-sheets and present prices was essential. It was essential to him; only, instead of referring to books which would give him the required information, he carried it about in his head. To his partners and those who were associated with him in business he was a source of constant wonder. Partners they might be to him in name, and, since they were all well-tried and trusted men, they no doubt were of assistance to him; but as far as executive power was concerned, they might as well have been junior clerks in some other firm, for Palmer went on his way automatically, self-balanced on the topmost crest of the huge wave of prosperity that was flooding America, quicker than the whole of the rest of the New York Market to scent coming trouble or prosperity in the world of money, prompter than any to take advantage of it. Then, when his day's work was done, at whatever hour that might be, it was as if the word 'business' was unknown to him, and there sat at table, dressed in loose and somewhat ill-fitting clothes, a man of very simple and kindly nature, a connoisseur in cookery, art, and millinery, a gentleman at heart, and to the backbone an American—one who, in spite of his gentleness, was without breeding; one who, in spite of his deep and varied knowledge, was without culture.

He and Amelie were seated at lunch alone together on the day following Mrs. Emsworth's triumphant debut. Amelie had only just come in from her ride—the horse she preferred to ride was one which few men could have sat—and she still wore her riding-habit. She was quite obviously the authentic daughter of her father and mother, and, like a clever girl, which she undoubtedly was, she had selected, so it seemed, all the good points possessed by both her parents, rejected all their weaknesses, and embodied the result in the adorable compound known as Amelie Palmer. She had been right, for instance, in possessing herself of her mother's extraordinary vitality and physical health, rejecting her father's digestive apparatus; on the other hand, she had chosen her father's eyes, impressing upon them, however, a certain femininity, and had set them in a complexion of dazzling fairness, which she owed to her mother. And out of the careful selection there had sprung, crowning it all, the quality that more than anything else was she—namely, her unrivalled exuberance of enjoyment. Whether it was some new social effort of her mother's to which she brought her glorious presence, whether she rode alone through the flowering woods, or accompanied her father on his hygienic bicycle ride—'papa's treadmill,' as she called it—she brought to all her occupations the great glowing lantern of her joy, the same brilliant smile of welcome for anything that might turn up, the same divine content-She took nothing seriously, but had enthusiasm for everything. Of refinement or intellectual qualities she had none whatever, but he would be a bloodless man who could really deplore their absence when he looked on that brilliant vitality. Surely it would be time enough to think of such gray gifts when the sparkling tide of her life ran less riotously; at present it would be like teaching some clean-limbed young colt of the meadows to sit up and beg or shake a paw.

In a certain way (and it is part of the purpose of this story to draw out the eventual pedigree of the resemblance) her joie de vivre was very much akin to that quality which had so captivated the Americans in New York on the occasion of Mrs. Emsworth's first night. In the older woman, since her nature had been longer in the crucible of life, it had necessarily undergone a certain change; but the critical observer, had he hazarded the conjecture that at Amelie's age Mrs. Emsworth had been very like Amelie, would, though he was quite wrong about it, have had the satisfaction of making a really clever mistake. For Mrs. Emsworth at that age had been possessed of a somewhat serious and joyless nature; her present joie de vivre was the result of her experience of life, the conviction, thoughtfully arrived at, that joy is the thing worth living for. But Amelie's exuberance was the result, not of philosophy, but of instinct; she laughed like a child merely because she laughed. And the critical observer, if, after making one clever mistake, he had been willing to hazard another, and had guessed that at Mrs. Emsworth's age Amelie would be like Mrs. Emsworth, would have risked a mistake that was not clever. For it is very seldom that experience confirms one's childish instincts; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it either eradicates them altogether, or, at any rate, modifies them almost beyond recognition. Mrs. Emsworth had won back to what had not been in her an instinct when she was a child; and it was more unlikely that Amelie, when a woman, would retain the instincts that were now hers.

At the present moment Amelie's enthusiasm was largely taken up with food.