The Top of the Heap

“Blind obedience and the truth. That’s what I want from you. Nothing else.”

Mr. Beamish, as he spoke, glared imperially. There are men whom it is more agreeable to avoid than to meet. Mr. Beamish had succeeded in becoming one of them. He was fat, and quite as fascinating as vulgarity and a French tailor could make him. What a French tailor can accomplish in that line exceeds the powers of prose. Yet, though fat, he was forceful, and if vulgar, valiant.

It was his son whom he addressed. The room, large, oblong, furnished in red, tropically hot on this mid-May noon, had the tawdriness of a Paris hotel written all over it. Through an open window the sun lurched. Beyond were the Tuileries. From below came the cries of the hawkers that are never still, “Le Matin! Demandez Le Matin!”

“Now disobey me if you dare⁠—”

The boy made a face. He was rather good looking, and quite athletic.

“Disobey you! Disobey a father who is a phenomenon, a father with thirty million and three chins! What do you take me for? But how do you know she won’t object?”

“Because she does what her mamma wishes.”

“But I don’t see why her mamma should wish anything of the kind, or, for that matter, you either.”

“You don’t, eh? I am decently fixed, am I not? I did the fixing myself, didn’t I? What did I do it for? Why do you suppose that after mining in Montana I monkeyed with Morgan, roiled Rockefeller, and got ahead of Gates? For the fun of it? There is no fun in a job like that. To donate libraries? That is Carnegie’s patent. I want to splurge. In that new house of mine on Fifth Avenue I want to give cotillons and dinner dances⁠—cotillons with automobiles and Russian sables for favors, dinner dances with government bonds for boutonnières. I want to be top of the heap.”

“Noble ambition.”

“And why not? Supposing I am self-made. I am as rich as Croesus, whoever he may be, and just as good as the rest of them. The trouble is that in New York I don’t know anybody⁠—except from 10 to 3. Out of Wall Street I am seven-eighths offered and nothing bid. But here it is different. On this side people who have position don’t seem to be as much afraid of losing it as they are at home. You have noticed that yourself, haven’t you?”

The young man yawned and nodded.

“Anyway,” Mr. Beamish resumed, “that’s been the case with the Finsburys. They are bankrupt, it is true, but they are not bounders, and provided I produce enough they are willing that you should marry their daughter and take her back to New York. There all you will have to do is to fill my house with the smart set. And they’ll come, too; they’ll come on a run when they find a duke’s daughter is there to receive them.”

“But what if I don’t like the girl?”

Mr. Beamish stood up and reached for a hat. “You have got to like her,” he answered shortly. “Come. It’s time for business. Ring the bell, and see if the auto is ready.”

The auto was. And presently, after a series of touf-toufs, a whizz up the Champs Élysées, a bolt into the Avenue Marceau, father and son were let into the drawing room of an appartement meublé, a miniature salon, cream and gold, and tenderly pink, where loomed a dowager, robust and rancid, flanking a tall, large-mouthed, small-eyed girl.

“Duchess, this is my son Harry,” Mr. Beamish began, and, plucking at his collar, and finding it moist, mopped himself abundantly.

The duchess assumed an expression of great amiability. “My daughter, the Lady Angelica,” she announced, with a wave of her fan, and with another, she added: “I am so sorry Finsbury is not in. But he has a perfect mania for going to the dentist’s, and that, I think, shows so much conscientiousness. Do sit down.”

The girl had moved to a sofa. Harry took a seat at her side. Mr. Beamish and the duchess ranged themselves opposite.

“Warm day,” said the fat man. At once he and his hostess lost themselves in cognate reflections.

“Do you like Paris?” Harry asked of the girl, who just raised her eyes to his. “I prefer London. But New York is good enough for me. You have never been there, have you?”

The Lady Angelica flushed, her eyes flickered, her lips half parted, then, as though by a sheer effort of will, her mouth shut tight. What she meant by the mummery Harry could not tell. But he took it for British reserve.

“Yes,” Harry continued, indifferently, “New York is a mighty nice place. We make a specialty of tall houses, high winds, beautiful manners, ready-made clothes, and pretty girls. It is all due to the climate, I believe. Did I understand you to say that you had been there?”

“My daughter,” the duchess overloudly interrupted “has not traveled much; she⁠—”

Harry turned. His father was contemplating a Cupid on the ceiling. The duchess seemed to have one eye on him, the other on Angelica.

“She is only recently out of the schoolroom, you know, and⁠—Come here, Posey!”

Suddenly from somewhere, presumably from under the sofa, there filtered the cry of a cat.

“Come here, Posey, Posey, Posey.” And the duchess, leaning forward, snapped her fingers enticingly.

Mr. Beamish stood up. Harry also was rising; the girl, too. Previously flushed; now she was pale.

“They seem to have forgotten to give poor little Posey his breakfast,” the duchess added, in smiling explanation. “But you are not going, are you? Finsbury will be so sorry. Yet, why not dine with us tomorrow, just a plain family dinner at 8, and afterward my little girl can show you her watercolors. She fairly dotes on watercolors, and that, I think, shows such a pure mind.”

“Tomorrow, I am afraid,” Harry interjected, but his father managed to kick him.

“He will be proud to come. But how about today? Couldn’t you both lunch with us at Paillard’s? My auto can take you there and back in a jiffy.”

“That is my brother’s stepdaughter,” the duchess remarked to Harry, who was examining a photograph on the mantel. “Do you think she resembles Lady Essex? So many do.”

Harry moved closer to the picture. The duchess seized the opportunity to whisper to Mr. Beamish behind her fan. In a moment Harry turned.

“We shall love to,” the duchess resumed. “Lunching at Paillard’s will be quite an escapade. But we shan’t trouble you to bring us back. Our brougham can fetch us. And you won’t mind waiting a moment, while we put on our hats? Angelica!”

Trailing her daughter behind her, the duchess sailed from the room. Father and son were alone.

“Nice girl,” Mr. Beamish remarked, as the door closed.

“A peach. And so chatty.”

“Now see that you make up to her at luncheon. There is nothing like catching a girl on the fly.”

“Give me a hundred thousand a year, and catch her yourself, then. Matrimony, with a pretty girl at the other end, must be jolly good fun. But with her! Caesar’s ghost! It would be medicine. That’s the truth.”

“It is, is it? Well, I want obedience also. You may take your medicine or your walking-stick. Just say which, and be quick.”

Harry glared about the room. Through its cream, and gold, and tender pink, the future surged. Divested of its garland of millions that future looked quite bleak.

Mr. Beamish stamped a foot.

“Which?”

“Medicine,” the boy answered, savagely. “I’ll be shot, though, if I don’t take it in capsules.”

“Don’t be slangy,” retorted the plutocrat, in whose phraseology capsules had no definite meaning.

“Scat!” cried Harry. “There’s that beastly cat again.”

From beyond there filtered anew a shrill meow. But immediately a door opened. The duchess, trailing her daughter, reappeared, and, presently, during an interchange of uplifting intellectualities, the street was reached, the auto hummed into the Champs Élysées, bowled down the avenue, and drew up at Paillard’s.

The canopied terrace was filled with people of manifest distinction, with horizontales and femmes du monde, exotics and cercleux, diplomats, and rastas. From a hall adjoining there issued the murmur of harps, the kiss of flutes, the caress of clinging measures. In the air was the savor of pineapples, the smell of orris, the odor of food and flowers, of pretty women and smart men, the atmosphere of what the French call High Life, and pronounce Hig Leaf. Mr. Beamish inhaled it voluptuously. Preceded by two maîtres d’hôtel, he led his guests to a table.

“Do you chauffe?” Harry asked Angelica, when all were seated.

“Do you, Mr. Harry?” the duchess inquired, in her stead. “I have not let my little girl learn yet, but she is passionately fond of collecting postage stamps, and that, I think, shows so much adaptability. But automobiling is very jolly, is it not?”

“It beats bridge,” Harry answered. “Wouldn’t you like to learn,” he continued, turning to the girl.

The Lady Angelica could not speak; her mouth was full of melon.

“That is the King of the Belgians,” said the duchess, indicating a voluminously bearded old party, who was being helped to a chair near by. “And is not that Mr. Astor, over there? We used to think,” she continued, expansively, “that he might marry among us. But his daughter will. Our young men have such a fondness for your pretty compatriots, and that, I think, shows so much entente cordiale. No, Mr. Beamish, no champagne; a drop of Eau de Vals if you will. After Paget, and Essex, and Craven and Curzon, then Marlborough, and, recently, Manchester, not to speak of my brother, who married a New Yorker, a Mrs. Morningside, of Morningside Park, a widow, with a daughter, such a dear, too, who, I fancy, will marry among us also. You know my brother, do you not, Mr. Beamish? But fair exchange, I often think, is not snobbery; is it, Mr. Harry? And does it not seem to you as though some of you young Americans should begin now, and lay siege to our lovely English girls. Thank you, a bit of the wing, nothing else.”

Harry turned anew to the Lady Angelica. “How would you like to be besieged by an American?” he asked, seductively.

The girl flushed. Apparently, she was about to reply, but British reserve may have prevented. She flushed afresh and looked away.

With superior tact the duchess intervened. “Tell me, Mr. Harry, is not that your ambassador over there?”

Harry turned. As he did so he heard a little plaintive cry. He turned again.

“The large, handsome man near the entrance,” the duchess insistently continued, and actually pointed with her fan.

Harry was forced to turn once more. The cry was repeated, but less plaintively, in a note louder and more shrill.

Again Harry turned. Others were turning, too. The King wheeled in his chair. A cocotte near him put her glasses up.

Angelica’s face was hid by a fan. Her thin frame shook. She seemed convulsed with laughter, with a churchlike desire to conceal it, too. Mr. Beamish was examining his fork as though it were a great curiosity.

In hasty astonishment an omnibus began ferreting under the table. With the same superior tact the duchess waved him away.

“Ce n’est rien,” she announced. “Une petite Angora, voilà tout. Angelica, you ought not to have brought her. Mr. Harry, would you be good enough, that is, my man out there”⁠—as she spoke she motioned at the street⁠—“would you mind fetching him? I will send Posey home by him. Poor, dear, little thing, it is the smell of ris de veau. She just dotes on ris de veau.”

“And that,” said Harry, in open mimic of the duchess, “shows, I think, such a candid nature.”

He got from his seat and made for the entrance. But in the street he discovered that he must have misunderstood the lady. The man he fancied hers spoke no human tongue. He bothered for a moment or two with another servant, but the latter turned out to be the King’s.

Harry started to go back. As he did so, he beheld the duchess entering a cab that stood a trifle beyond. Angelica was at her heels. Mr. Beamish was helping them both.

Harry hurried forward. “You are not going to take Posey home, are you?” he asked, a hand on the door. “Why, give her to me. I’ll do it myself. Where is she?”

He looked from mother to daughter. Both were seated now. The girl had her veil down, but through it, at the question, he could see her mouth contract, then it opened, and from it issued a distinct meow.

Mr. Beamish slammed the door. “Allez,” he bellowed.

Quite flabbergasted, Harry fell back. His astonishment was not unnatural. Not until that moment had it occurred to him that the cat and the girl were one. Then, also, he had never heard a girl meow before. Yet, girls have, and will. Not often, of course, but semi-occasionally, in certain clinics⁠—which Harry had never visited⁠—and in certain treatises⁠—which he had never read. To this inexperience and illiteracy his surprise was due.

“So⁠—so, that is Posey?” he stuttered. “So that is Posey, is it?” he repeated instantly, in a voice more assured. “Well, you may marry that tomcat yourself. For I shan’t,” he added, defiantly. “Not for a million a month. Not for the top of the heap.”

But he addressed the Champs Élysées. His words were lost in the roar of the wide, white street. Mr. Beamish had swung into an automobile, and, in derision, perhaps, was touf-toufing away.

The machine floated on and up toward the Arc, through the glittering haze, through the swarm of glittering traps. Harry watched it go. As it fled a fantasy of finance, felines, and felonies formed and fluttered before him.

Then suddenly the vision of plutocracy and caterwauls faded away. A diminutive groom, impertinent yet correct, had, from the box of a brougham, swung, an inch from his toes. But it was not the boy, nor yet the brougham, nor even an obese coachman, who held the reins, that had vaporized his thoughts. Within the carriage a girl sat staring straight into his face.

As his eyes mingled with her own she turned. He could see her profile. He could see, too, that he had seen it before. But where? In dream? In the Louvre? In the picture of Psyche made by Gérard? Neither the lady or her tiger gave him time to determine. A door was being opened, and she was stepping out.

Then, in the perfection of the ravishment of a frock such as perhaps Doucet alone in all the world can produce, he beheld a waist that would fit in a garter, the figure of a willis in a ballad, the incandescence of beauty beautifully bedraped.

But what was she saying? Was it language of Olympus, or the tongue of France, in which she was deigning to address the groom? Yet manifestly the latter understood. He was tipping his hat. And immediately, too, Harry was enlightened. In those accents which certain sections of Fifth Avenue share with Mayfair there fell from lips of silk the perfectly plain and entirely intelligible Anglo-Saxon order: “Follow me.”

At once, under the chaperonage of the brougham, of the enormous coachman and diminutive groom, up the wide avenue she strolled.

The majority of women walk badly. It was a pleasure to watch this young person, and that pleasure Harry proceeded to enjoy. When she had stepped from the carriage, he had enveloped her with that look which strips from neck to knee. But she had not condescended to notice it, and now, her head erect, her nose in the air, her body unswayed, she passed along, disdainful, indifferent, and serene.

These airs affected him but mediocrally. It occurred to him that she was probably taking that promenade which succeeds the morning canter, and precedes the divertissements of the five o’clock, and in those divertissements he determined to participate. How he was to manage it he did not bother himself to ask. Once he passed her, but, of course, she did not look his way. He dropped behind, yet in the dropping there was not so much as the quiver of an eyelid to betoken a consciousness of his impertinence.

Women admire the brave when they do not prefer the audacious. Harry recognized the beauty of the truth of that axiom, even though he omitted to formulate it. He wanted to be devilish. He longed to. Yet how, barring downright caddishness, is it possible to be devilish with a young person who not only offers no encouragement, but who, in addition to the chaperonage of a brougham, is chaperoning herself with airs of profound contempt?

Reflections of this order are not propitious to enterprise. Only the unexpected is. Then, precisely as it always happens in life, and sometimes in fiction, the unexpected occurred. The Rue de la Boëtie⁠—seductive and significant name!⁠—had been reached, and through the torrent of traps which of a May afternoon pours that way, the girl was attempting to cross the avenue.

Midway on that avenue is a refuge. Before she could land there a tricycle swooped suddenly. It was within an inch of her. But athletics serve one in some stead. Before that inch could be covered Harry grabbed her, lifted her off her feet, pulled her bodily back. She was in his arms, and he, with calm effrontery, was smiling in her face.

“Are you an heiress?” he asked. “If so, you have got to marry me. You nearly had us both run over. After telling me to follow you, too⁠—”

“I told you nothing of the kind. I never spoke to you in my life.”

Furiously she shook herself free, and angrily looked about her. But in the torrent the brougham must have been submerged. It was nowhere in sight.

“And now that you don’t seem to be able to take care of yourself,” Harry continued, “and, what’s more, as you seem to have no one to do it for you, I propose to take you home.”

“You will take yourself off,” the girl retorted, with the same show of splendid anger. “I never saw you before. I never want to see you again.” And her eyes, that were porcelain blue, flashed mightily.

“That’s just it,” Harry dulcetly interjected. “If you were not so uncharitable you would help me. I am a poor orphan, and I need assistance.”

“What you need is a policeman,” the girl threw back. “Now go find one, and let me alone.”

Caress a panther, and it will not necessarily rend you. The girl had shown her teeth. They were royal. But now from her voice the anger had gone. From her eyes the flash had subsided. Harry noted the change, and construed it properly. Château qui parle et femme qui écoute. From impudent he became resolute.

“Where are you stopping?” he asked.

At the question he stared deep into her eyes. She was fragrant as only a girl can be who has accounts all along the Rue de la Paix, and whose face is a wondering rose. As he stared at her she turned and looked much as the shipwrecked are rumored to do when in search of a sail. But in the seething maelstrom of the avenue, only tearing tilburys, scudding Stanhopes, and fleeting phaetons were discernible. The brougham was nowhere in sight, and helplessly she sighed and smiled.

“Across the way, at the Albe,” she answered at last, the point of her tongue just visible.

“Hurry, then, here’s a chance.” And without further preliminaries, yet with two fingers on her elbow, Harry propelled her through a channel which a sergent-de-ville had conveniently engineered.

“You know,” he added, when ultimately the opposite shore was reached, “that when they run you down here they fine you, too. That is the reason of my solicitude.”

“Then your solicitude may cease. This is my hotel. If you presume to follow me any further, there will be somebody to show you the door.”

“Why, I can see it from here, and a very fine door it is. Would you wish me to examine it more in detail?”

But at this he raised his hat. A cab had rattled up, and a gray-bearded Englishman, who had got from the cab, was addressing the girl.

“You are just in time,” she exclaimed. “Lord Chudleigh, let me introduce a gentleman⁠—whom I do not know.” And, with an expression that succeeded in being both diabolic and demure, she passed into the porte-cochère.

Harry’s eyes accompanied her. Then, with a look of entire sweetness, he turned:

“Yes, there’s the devil of it. I haven’t the honor of knowing her, either. A locomotive was pouncing upon her a moment ago, and I took the liberty of saving her life. My name is Beamish,” he added, modestly.

“Hello! No relation to Josiah T.?”

“Unfortunately, his son.”

“Hello! Why unfortunately?”

“Oh, for a hundred reasons. I’ll skip two or three. He wants me to marry. Wants, did I say? He is holding me up.”

“That’s Josiah T. all over. He wants what he wants more than all others that want it, too. But, never mind. I’ll have a talk with him. One good turn deserves another. Meanwhile, you might come in and give us all the facts in your melancholy case. My daughter must be expecting them. Yes?”

“Why, you are a brick,” Harry exclaimed. “I had an idea, though, that your daughter was an American.”

“Yes? This way.”

Then, presently, Harry found himself au premier, in a canary-colored salon, staring again at the prettiest little girl in the world. She seemed but indifferently surprised to see him and but indifferently interested in the rather delayed introduction which ensued.

“Yes,” added Lord Chudleigh, when that ceremony had been effected. “You might give him some tea. And some tears, too, Maud. Unless he marries somebody or other he will be cut off with a million. Yes. I’ll be back directly.”

“He is a brick,” Harry announced, as the door closed. “I just told him so. Now I may add that you are an angel.”

“And I may remark that you are very presuming.”

The girl was seated in a low chair. Her hat was gone, her gloves, too. She was playing with her fingers, the sunlight shuttling her hair, an image of Caprice retouched by Doucet. “And so you are to be married, are you?”

“I hope I am,” Harry, with sudden rapture, replied. “I would marry tomorrow if you would have me. Marry tomorrow!” he interrupted himself to exclaim: “I would marry right now.”

“Nonsense, you are to do as you are told. Who is the lady?”

“An escaped lunatic.”

The girl nodded, with curious sympathy. “You poor thing,” she murmured. “No wonder I thought you needed protection. And you are such a dear,” she added, absently. “I do think it a shame.”

Harry moved closer. “Am I a dear?” he asked, in a little innocent voice. “Tell me that I am.”

“You are a very enterprising young man, that’s what you are,” she cried, releasing a hand he had caught. “Can’t you behave?”

But already Harry had retreated. From without there had come the sound of familiar voices, punctuated by an equally familiar wail.

“As I am a sinner,” he gasped; “there’s that tomcat!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It is only some relatives of mine. By the way, didn’t I see you this afternoon helping them into a cab?”

Harry, unnerved, unmanned, undone, was too abject for reply. The door had opened, and before him a horrible trio; the duchess, her daughter, and his father, stood.

“Hello!” and through a lateral entrance a bearded face emerged.

“Yes, Chudleigh, it is I,” the duchess announced. “The butler fell dead, and while he was being removed Angelica suggested coming here, and that, I think, showed such a sweet disposition.”

“Seraphic! But where did you pick up Beamish?”

“Oho,” said the fat man, “I stopped in for tea at your sister’s, and when the butler dropped dead, as the duke was at the dentist’s⁠—”

“And if that isn’t Mr. Harry,” the duchess interrupted. “Angelica, did you see Mr. Harry?”

Harry, at the moment, was crossing the room.

“How did you get here?” Mr. Beamish, in a hurried whisper, hoarsely inquired of him, and as hoarsely continued: “Don’t you know that⁠—er⁠—that little fascination of our friend is but a slight nervous affection, which only shows itself when she is excited, and which, anyway, matrimony will cure?”

“When who is excited?” Maud had surged, a hand extended. “Mr. Beamish, since everyone has forgotten to introduce us, I am Miss Morningside.”

“We were talking, Miss Morningside,” the plutocrat answered, with a bow, which he executed as though it were a feat, “we were talking of your charming connection, the Lady Angelica, and I was asking this young man if he knew that she had consented to marry me. Yes, Me. We settled it just before the butler⁠—”

But the sentence was never completed. Harry exploded:

“Great Caesar!” he cried. “I don’t wonder the poor devil dropped dead. But isn’t that too jolly?” he added, turning to Maud. “We shall be connections, too.”

“What? What’s all this about matrimony?” Lord Chudleigh called out. “I say, Beamish, you mustn’t ballyrag that boy into marrying anyone of your choosing. Give him his head.”

“Thank you, Lord Chudleigh,” Harry called back. “But I wish you would give me your daughter instead.”

“His stepdaughter,” the duchess severely corrected. “Before her mother married my brother she had lost her first husband, and that, I think, showed so much savoir faire.”

Apparently, Lord Chudleigh did too. “What?” he exclaimed. “Give you Maud?”

“He saved my life,” the young woman serenely suggested.

“Hello! So he did! So he did! Pulled you out from under a runaway baby carriage, I believe. Beamish, what do you say?”

“What do I say?” answered the stock rigger, who, with Wall Street agility, had calculated to an eighth the value which this new vista of smartness unrolled, and who, in one swift, rapt vision beheld in his house a duke’s daughter handing out grand pianos and polo ponies by way of cotillon favors, and an earl’s stepdaughter distributing diamond collars and four-in-hands. “What do I say? Why, it rather strikes me that we’ll corner the market; that we’ll be top of the heap.”

“And that,” said the duchess, “shows, I think⁠—”

Yet what it showed to the duchess no one seemed to heed. A maître d’hôtel, preceding a footman who was weighed down with tea things, had entered the salon, and was supervising their arrangement in a corner of the room.

During the progress of these solemnities Harry, who had been standing in the embrasure of a window with the prettiest little girl in the world, edged over to his father again.

“Did I understand you to say that that little fascination of the Lady Angelica only manifests itself when she is excited?”

“Well, what of it?”

“Miss Morningside and I have been talking it over, and we have decided on a wedding present for her, which, we think, may be of use.”

Mr. Beamish sniffed with sudden suspicion. “You are getting devilish thoughtful of others. What is it?”

“A nice little cage!”

“And it is thoughtful of us, isn’t it?” Harry remarked, as a trifle overhurriedly, perhaps, he returned to where Miss Morningside stood.

“Yes, indeed; but let us think of ourselves,” that young woman answered, whereupon her hand was openly squeezed.

“Hello!” cried Lord Chudleigh. “What’s all this? Maud, come out of that window and pour the tea.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Beamish, “we don’t want any more waiters falling dead. One is enough on a day like this. Isn’t it?” he added, turning to Angelica.

And the duke’s daughter, looking down at the carpet, blushed, as she answered:

“Meow.”