The Millionaire’s Daughter
To Dorothy Olding
for her unfailing help and encouragement,
especially with this book
Part One
The Millionaire
Part Two
The Heiress
Chapter 1
On his way to the Academy of Music to see a performance of Faust (which he knew would bore him intolerably), Harry Spencer ordered his coachman to drive him uptown to the East Sixties. He had a sudden whim to pay another visit to his new house, just completed, and still unfurnished.
There would be nobody about. He could wander through the empty echoing rooms and permit himself the self-indulgence of a dream.
For tomorrow the acres of carpet and the furniture would begin to arrive and never again would this grand and beautiful house, the fulfillment of a long-cherished ambition, be empty and entirely his. After tomorrow it would be shared with servants, and after that again, a bride.
It was not too large a house. He had carefully avoided the ostentation of the Vanderbilts, with their twin mansions in the Fifties, and of other prominent New York families who still clung to the Twenties and Thirties. He had wanted something smaller and perfect. No passerby could fail to admire the portico with its slender pillars facing Central Park, the dignified façade rising only four floors and broken by beautifully wrought-iron balconies, in the style of a Venetian palace. The fortunate people who were admitted within the front door could exclaim in admiration at the yellow marble staircase, the dark paneling of the hall that was going to make such a suitable background for the pictures he intended acquiring, the suite of rooms, dining room, library and drawing room leading into the ballroom with its magnificent crystal chandeliers; the second-floor drawing room for his wife’s use (he could see her there entertaining fashionable friends with hot chocolate in the mornings or reclining in a tea gown to welcome him home in the late afternoon); and the fifteen bedrooms on the upper floors, several of them complete with their own bathrooms.
Camberwell House, as he called it satirically, after the wretched suburb of London, England, from which his parents had come when he was a very small child, established him as an entrepreneur in the world of business, a shrewd man who had an instinct for what he called the day after tomorrow.
Today was not good enough. All those snobbish old families descended from the Dutch patroons might settle in enclaves downtown and think they were there forever. They were not. A rising population and what would inevitably become land hunger on an island the size of Manhattan would push building farther from the city center and higher in the air. Harry already had architects working on plans for department stores, office buildings and hotels that would rise seven or eight floors.
The day after tomorrow when Harry Spencer would be settled in Camberwell House with a wife and several children. And the shanties would have disappeared from the far end of Central Park, the park itself would be a well-kept vista of trees and gardens, and all of the Sixties, the Seventies and the Eighties would be handsome mansions for the rich.
So this was the last time his house would echo from emptiness. Harry gave a half laugh that was more of a sigh. He found he was a little sentimental, a little reluctant to part with the dream that had possessed him for twenty years.
But there would be other dreams. He would always have a new absorbing project in view. And, he had to remind himself, there was still the vital part of this project to be completed. He was dressed for the kill, so to speak, in his tails, his gleaming white waistcoat, a white gardenia in his lapel, his small pointed golden beard groomed and shining, his blue eyes keen and alert.
Billy, his coachman, was shivering in the freezing night air. The sidewalk was slippery with ice, and the horses skidded on the frozen street as Harry stepped into his smart landau and set off in the direction of the Academy. He had arranged to meet his lawyer and friend, Ephraim de Wynt, in the foyer. Ephraim was one of the few of that powerful elite, the first four hundred, who encouraged rising men and calmly ignored less than illustrious beginnings.
People said unkindly that he himself had an eye on the quick dollar. He did not form these friendships for the pleasure they gave him, although he was reputed to have a deep and fascinated admiration for what he called the God-given talent certain men had for making fortunes. They were the backbone of America. One must never underestimate their enormous influence, even if they hadn’t learned the right words to say in society or had ignorant parents hidden away in slum areas because they were uneasy or unhappy living anywhere else.
Harry Spencer, although he had a mother still living in the Bowery, had risen a good deal above this category because he had, when he liked to use it, a natural social sense, as well as the sort of blunt, stocky good looks that appealed to a number of women. He was already a personality and would be a greater one. Ephraim was going to find it amusing introducing him to the most suitable young lady to be mistress of that grand new house on Fifth Avenue.
He had one young lady in mind already. Miss Mary Ellen van Leyden. She would provide all the class Harry lacked. She was also spirited and reasonably good-looking. A little older than desirable, in her mid-twenties, he fancied, but Harry at thirty-five was no youngster. The van Leydens were a family of impeccable background who lived in a larger, shabby house on Eighth Street that had been built by an ancestor who had made a fortune in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The house was now a period piece, a part of New York history. It was a pity that it was in such a ramshackle condition. The truth was that the once-proud van Leydens had, over three generations, produced too many ne’er-do-wells and were now abysmally poor. The present owner, Robert van Leyden IV, gambled, drank, and relied on a fading charm to get him out of awkward situations.
His wife had been a Boydell from Virginia, another family that had seen better days. There were aristocratic cousins somewhere in England, but Millicent Boydell, after her marriage to Robert van Leyden, found that she was never going to make the much-longed-for trip to Europe simply from lack of money. So in spite of her connections, she withered away in the old house on Eighth Street, only occasionally giving a modest dinner party, when extra servants were hired for the evening, and her husband inevitably got drunk. The two daughters, Mary Ellen and Louisa, remained unmarried, and the son, Boydell, who unfortunately had been born with a club-foot, seemed already to be following in his father’s footsteps.
It was a great shame, a great waste, and there was only one thing to be done, if it were not too late. The girls must marry money, and Boydell must work harder or find himself an heiress who didn’t mind a slight physical deformity.
Ephraim, although he enjoyed the intimacy of a family friend, had no great liking for Millicent van Leyden, with her long nose and her air of superiority and fading elegance, and he despised her dissolute husband. But he was not, after all, concerned for the fortunes of the van Leydens, only for the satisfactory arrangement of his client’s domestic life.
Given an entrée into society, Harry Spencer could double or triple his fortune. And that was a matter that affected Ephraim personally. He frankly enjoyed the company, and the business, of the extremely rich.
“Which one?” asked Harry, scanning the boxes. The ladies, with their fans and feathers, looked like a horticultural display formally arranged around the semicircular auditorium.
“The third box from the left with three ladies. The one in the middle is the mother. I see that they are unescorted. I know Robert van Leyden dislikes the opera, and I don’t think Boydell cares for it either.”
“So much the better. The ladies will be glad of some male company.”
“You’re right, my dear fellow. Shall we go?”
“Wait a minute. Which of the young ladies had you in mind?”
“The taller one on the right. She has her mother’s long nose, but she can be as stately as a duchess when she chooses. I can imagine her coming down that fine staircase of yours.” Ephraim looked at his companion. “You toid me you hadn’t mere prettiness as a standard.”
Harry thought of the qualities he wanted in his wife and knew that good looks would have been a bonus he could hardly have expected. If the two Misses van Leyden had been raving beauties, they would have been snapped up long ago, penniless or not. That stood to reason. No, he was content to settle for quality, breeding, social eminence. After all, a man could go on having the occasional discreet affair. Not even the most innocent and protected of young women would imagine that he could have reached his middle thirties and not had his share of amorous adventures.
He believed he was prepared to settle for the elder van Leyden daughter, long nose or not. He supposed she was healthy. They’d breed children, and she would preside over his table. That would be all he expected of her. In return she could have as many luxuries as she pleased.
With a decisive gesture he put his opera glasses away.
“Then let us go, shall we?”
Millicent van Leyden, pleased for some attention, welcomed Ephraim gladly. He was an old friend. She had even toyed with the thought that he might make a husband for either Mary Ellen or Louisa. Then she had realized that he was an incurable dandy with the pernickety ways of the confirmed bachelor and an embarrassing habit of pandering to the nouveaux riches. One hoped Mary Ellen and Louisa could do better than that. If they hadn’t the looks, they did have the ability to make excellent wives and mothers. It was just too bad that so far no eligible young man had been seriously interested in them.
Mary Ellen was nearly twenty-seven, Louisa six years her junior. At the ball Millicent was shortly giving for Louisa’s twenty-first birthday, something had to happen. She didn’t want to think she had sacrificed her diamond necklace, part of the Boydell family jewels, in vain.
In the meantime here was Ephraim with one of his outlandish rich friends, a shortish man with a small golden beard and air of overwhelming virility. Even Millicent, permanently tired from worry and hopelessness, was aware of the virility. The girls on either side of her were reacting in their usual way: Mary Ellen bridling (an unfortunate mannerism that neither her mother nor any governess had been able to eliminate) and Louisa shrinking back slightly, with her exasperating shyness.
“Millicent, my dear,” Ephraim said, lifting her head in his affected manner to kiss it. “Miss Mary Ellen. Miss Louisa. May I present my friend, Mr. Harry Spencer.”
Harry gave a small formal bow to each of the ladies. He had noticed at once that Mrs. van Leyden’s gown of gray satin had seen many wearings, that the elder daughter had a heavy discontented face and her white tulle was too young for her, and that the younger, who did look suitably innocent and virginal, raised her eyes only fleetingly so that he had no more than an impression of sapphire blue in a rather long, gentle face. She had a long neck, too. It was very graceful. Her hair was dark and done in a smooth coiffure, a contrast to her sister’s high-piled, elaborate curls. She was obviously self-effacing and diffident. Malleable, Harry thought at once. He might not be qualified to teach his wife social graces, but he could teach her other things—if she were willing to learn.
Louisa van Leyden. He knew, with his sure instinct, that she was the one. This meeting, intended to be no more than an inspection of a possible acquisition, was suddenly surprisingly final. He would marry Louisa.
“Mr. Spencer is celebrating the completion of his new house,” Ephraim was saying. “It’s quite a showpiece. Isn’t it, Harry?”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. van Leyden politely. “And where is it, Mr. Spencer?”
“In the upper Sixties.”
“Why did you build so far out of town?”
“It has a splendid view of the park. Excellent air.” These people with their prejudices and their long-established habits. He was not pandering to any of them. “Perhaps you don’t think it so desirable, Mrs. van Leyden. It happens to appeal to me, especially after having lived all my life in the Bowery.
“And I shall, of course, develop other areas in the vicinity,” he added, as if he were speaking of doing nothing more important than tidying up an overgrown garden.
“Really!” exclaimed the elder Miss van Leyden with an air of rapt interest.
“Perhaps Mr. Spencer will invite you to see his marble staircase,” Ephraim murmured. “He calls it yellow, but I prefer to say it is the color of champagne. It has that quality. The best French champagne, of course.”
“Oh, Ephraim, you exaggerate so,” said Mrs. van Leyden in her helpless voice.
“Do you care for the opera?” Harry asked, addressing himself to the younger daughter.
She started, realizing that he was speaking to her and that an answer was required.
“Very much, thank you. I think that Adelina Patti has a wonderful voice.”
Her own voice, soft and breathless, was exactly what he had hoped it would be.
“And you, Mr. Spencer?” Mary Ellen was not going to be overlooked for her younger sister.
“I confess it goes over my head. I’m not an educated man.”
“But you have come, nevertheless.”
“You can try anything once, Miss van Leyden.”
“I think we had better be getting back to our seats,” Ephraim murmured. “The curtain must be going up in a moment.”
Mrs. van Leyden leaned forward and tapped him with her fan.
“You have neglected us, Ephraim.”
“I’m sorry, Millicent. May I present myself for a cup of morning chocolate tomorrow?”
“Of course. We’ll be delighted, won’t we, girls?”
“Yes, Mamma,” said Mary Ellen, her eyes on Harry. Louisa was busy with her program. She scarcely looked up as the two men departed. Was she completely uninterested in the opposite sex? Such a thought was too macabre to be entertained for a moment.
“Well,” said Ephraim, “you made an impression. Although you needn’t have stated your views about the opera quite so emphatically.”
“I won’t pretend. I start as I mean to go on; otherwise I will find myself being dragged here every season.”
“Perhaps you’ll be dragged somewhere else instead. I make you a wager.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’ll shortly receive an invitation to the forthcoming ball at the van Leyden mansion.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. “Did I make enough impression for that? I thought I was firmly relegated to my right category: an upstart from the Bowery.”
“Well, my dear fellow, you would mention the Bowery. However, that direct style of yours may have something to be said for it. Mark my words, you are going to be thoroughly investigated, beginning with my call tomorrow morning. That is, if you still wish me to make it.”
“Certainly I do. Nothing has changed. The terms we mentioned.”
“I understand. After that, I wager the ladies will take a drive up Fifth Avenue in a hired coupe, as they can no longer run their own carriage. But they will duly note the richness and tastefulness of your house. Robert van Leyden still has a friend or two in the business world who will ferret out your prospects. Yes, I fancy you’ll get your invitation to the ball. I only warn you not to drink the fruit cup. Find your way into the library, and van Leyden will give you some of his best bourbon.”
“Are you sure they will be so ready to accept?” Harry asked.
“Why ever not? It’s their answer to a prayer. Mind you, a little wooing may be required, just for the sake of appearances. Mary Ellen is not as young as she would like to be, but I guarantee she’s still a virgin.”
“A ridiculous name,” Harry burst out. “She’s either Mary or she’s Ellen. If you must know the truth, I found her terrifying. One of those man-eating orchids you find in jungles.”
“Did you, by jove? But young ladies must play some sort of courtship game. What else is there for them to do?”
“And what are they when they’ve stopped playing it?”
“That’s a question I personally have never had the courage to find the answer to. You may have an angel or a shrew.”
“For my part,” said Harry definitely, “I prefer the younger one.”
“Do you really! Now I never thought she would appeal to you. She hardly opens her mouth. She may even be a bluestocking. I would rather fancy she is.”
“That would do me no harm.”
Ephraim looked at him with disbelief.
“I never thought you’d be content to learn from a woman.”
“Oh, certain things,” said Harry. He seemed surprised himself. “But I’d have things to teach her, too.”
“That’s more like it, my dear fellow. I can’t see you letting a woman get too powerful. I’d have sworn you would settle for Mary Ellen. But never mind, Louisa it shall be.”
“She has that long neck,” Harry murmured. “I find I like that in a woman.”
“Useful for hanging diamond necklaces around, I admit. But I’ve known shorter necks to accommodate them quite happily. I still think Mary Ellen—”
“If it is to be either, it is to be Louisa,” Harry said shortly. “Let us regard that as settled.”
Chapter 2
On the day after the opera, Millicent van Leyden had one of her prostrating headaches. She lay on the sofa in the drawing room, a room on the first floor that faced the street. She had used to enjoy watching passersby, but the tree of heaven, brought back from China by her husband’s seafaring grandfather, had now grown so big that it obscured the view. In the summer it turned the room into a green gloom. In winter its bare branches hung bare and melancholy or were coated with snow. It was said that when the tree was cut down, the van Leyden mansion would disappear and the family die out.
Well, the house was getting more decrepit by the year, and unless the children hastened to marry, the family was certainly doomed to extinction. Did it matter? Millicent, in thirty years of marriage to a man whom she had alternately adored and despised, did not find her loyalties committed to the van Leydens. She had remained, at heart, a Boydell. New York, or Robert with his dissolute way of life (he had the effrontery to boast that he was a man of leisure), had produced her headaches, her palpitations, the dark circles around her eyes, the petulant droop to her mouth. She never felt entirely well, and sometimes she felt it should not be expected of her to worry about the future of her children.
Nevertheless, it was becoming a matter of embarrassment that there had been no wedding in the family, with Boy approaching thirty, Mary Ellen in her late twenties, and Louisa, her baby, coming of age in three weeks’ time.
Boy seemed to have the idea that his lame foot would revolt a woman and said he never meant to marry. Mary Ellen frightened off her suitors with her bossy ways, and Louisa was too self-effacing. So what was one to do?
She had had every intention of taking the girls and going for a drive as far as Central Park this morning. A brisk blow would have done them all good. They could have done a little shopping at Arnold Constable’s on the way. The dressmaker, Miss Prendergast, was making Mary Ellen’s ball gown from a length of sky blue satin that dear old Aunt Abigail had sent from Virginia, but yards of ribbon and lace were required. Every now and then Aunt Abigail remembered that Millicent had marriageable daughters and, owing to Robert’s improvidence, too little money to equip them for the brilliant social life they should be leading.
Mary Ellen, being the elder sister, should be got off first, so the gifts were usually for her. Little Louisa, whom Aunt Abigail still thought of as a schoolgirl, would have her turn later. Which was scarcely fair when the forthcoming ball was to celebrate Louisa’s coming of age, and on this occasion at least, she should have been the recipient of the blue satin.
However, white was more suitable for a young girl, and Millicent had had the idea of having her white Nottingham lace wedding gown, only slightly yellowed with age, cut down to fit Louisa. It was a beautiful piece of lace, an heirloom, and Louisa was a very lucky girl to be permitted to wear it. With her regulation eighteen-inch waist, she would look very well in the graceful clinging material.
As Aunt Abigail would agree, it might be Louisa’s ball, but in reality it was a determined attempt to find Mary Ellen that badly needed beau. The girl was getting restless and touchy. Her discontent showed in her face, giving it heavy lines. The trouble was, she was too strong-minded. She had always intimidated young men. Her outspokenness, and her total lack of a dowry, left her still unasked for at twenty-seven, which was decidedly humiliating. She really needed an older man who would refuse to be dominated. If such a person could be found still unmarried.
Harry Spencer, New York’s newest millionaire?
The thought had been in Millicent’s mind ever since the encounter the previous evening. She had known very well what Ephraim de Wynt was up to. That man was a busybody, a matchmaker, an old woman. He lived the vicarious life of arranging other people’s affairs. His action last night had brought on Millicent’s headache. Her blood boiled to think that her daughters, descendants of two of the finest families in America, should be virtually held up to offer to a brash opportunist whose antecedents would certainly not bear looking into.
Nevertheless, Mr. Spencer apparently intended to conform to high standards. His appearance had been impeccable, his manners good enough, and that expensive house, even though so far out of town, could not be overlooked. If its style was too vulgar, a clever wife could moderate it. Anyway, what was vulgarity? Everyone now talked of gold plate at dinner and gold taps in the bathroom and even houses built entirely of marble.
Except the impoverished van Leydens who hid behind a flourishing tree of heaven that was visible proof of their length of tenure in the house on Eighth Street. The first van Leyden had built a farmhouse on this spot. It was his grandson who had begun ambitiously to own his own ships, beginning with a small schooner that carried sugar and rum from the Caribbean islands. Later he had brought treasures from the Orient, but there were few of those left now. Millicent remembered a small jade horse, very rare and valuable, that now stood in a glass-fronted cabinet, among other objets d’art, in the Astor house. She winced with humiliation every time she saw it. But it had helped to pay Boy’s expenses at Harvard.
Now her diamonds had gone, as a sort of final despairing gesture, on this ball. The only comforting thing was that when she did exert herself to entertain, her friends rallied around, and the carriages rolled up to the porticoed door of the old mansion as loyally as they had done in the affluent days of the van Leydens. They were still somebody.
Or was it that people were sorry for them?
Millicent found that thought unendurable. She turned her racked head on the cushion, as she had an instant and compulsive vision of Robert sitting in the library, his handsome head lolling back in the shabby leather chair, a cigar in his hand, the decanter of bourbon at his side. He would stay there until noon, when he would put on his overcoat, its fur lining bald in patches from a thousand wearings, and stroll uptown to his club. If he were not home by seven in the evening, Boy would have to go and fetch him. Sometimes the two of them did not return until ten or later, and by then Boy, too, was flushed and limped more noticeably.
The girls were sent to bed, to be spared, if possible, the knowledge that their good-looking only brother seemed to have inherited his father’s weakness. Although Boy preferred rum to bourbon.
Unfortunately, he was not interested in a career, although he had taken his degree in law at Harvard. He worked in a Wall Street office and boasted that he had no aspirations to be anything but the most junior member of the firm. The ability to work had unluckily been left out of his makeup, he said cheerfully. Neither had he any intention of taking his mother’s advice and looking for an heiress to marry. The family was played out, finished. Didn’t Mamma realize that?
By all means snare rich husbands for the girls, if she could. What did it matter if they made disgusting noises eating their soup if it were eaten off a gold plate? But Boy was much too old to have his life planned for him. When the girls were married and his parents dead, he would live the life of a recluse in the dear old house. The prospect appealed to him.
Millicent thought that Mary Ellen might cope with the kind of rich husband Boy satirically described. But not Louisa. Louisa was too shy and sensitive. She must find someone of her own kind and class. With her sister married and able to entertain lavishly, this should not present the difficulty it did at the present time. Millicent found entertaining beyond her purse and an almost intolerable exertion.
Now she had to make the decision whether or not to send Mr. Harry Spencer an invitation to the ball. On the whole, one thought yes. It was what Ephraim de Wynt had intended her to do. So the man could not be too impossible. Ephraim’s greed for wealthy clients did not exceed his fastidiousness.
Perhaps Boy could be persuaded to take a look at that famous house in the upper Sixties and report on it.
There was no need for this, however, for Mary Ellen had already taken the matter into her own determined hands. On the pretext of shopping, she had persuaded Louisa to accompany her, and the two of them had hired a coupe and driven the length of Fifth Avenue.
The house, Mary Ellen reported later in a vivacious voice, was splendid. Maybe a trifle smaller than one would have wished, for something so much money had been spent on, but in excellent taste. Not in the least showy.
“And in a way, Mamma, it must be fun to move out of this rut we’re all in and live somewhere different. Like being a pioneer.”
When she was excited, Mary Ellen looked very handsome.
“You are going to ask Mr. Spencer to our ball, aren’t you, Mamma?”
“I will think about it.” Ephraim had made his promised morning call and supplied her with vital information. She was still suffering from a crise de nerfs. Boy was so little help and Robert even less. They both thought only of themselves.
“Mr. de Wynt says he has an elderly mother living in the Bowery. The story is that she refuses to move from there.”
“It’s probably true.”
“But what is she like?” Millicent worried. “Mr. Spencer isn’t even a first-generation American. He was born in London in England. His father emigrated to New York about thirty years ago. He called himself a street trader.”
“You mean a barrow boy,” said Louisa. She read a great deal and could supply the most unexpected pieces of information.
“Well, I don’t know what he called himself in England, but he got work in a dry goods store here and gradually got to own it. So I guess there’s business brains in the family. The Civil War helped, of course. Any fool could make money selling provisions to the Yankees.”
“But Mr. Harry Spencer doesn’t run a store,” Mary Ellen said. “He deals in real estate.”
“Yes, he has more brains than his father, they say. But he keeps that little store in the Bowery for sentimental reasons. I made Ephraim tell me all this. Money or not, one must know a little about one’s guests.”
“So you do intend to invite him, Mamma.” Mary Ellen’s cheeks had an excited flush.
“Supposing,” Louisa said in her quiet way, “he doesn’t accept the invitation.”
“Not accept!” Millicent exclaimed. “What an extraordinarily unlikely possibility.”
“I just thought that Mr. Spencer looked like a law unto himself. If he comes, it will be because he wants to come. As if he were doing us a favor. Do we need favors from a man like that, Mamma?”
Millicent frowned and moved irritably.
“I must ask you not to question my decisions, Louisa.”
“Let him come or let him stay away,” Mary Ellen said airily. “But do let’s ask him. I can’t wait to give him some advice on the drapes he should hang in his front windows. A mere man—he might know about selling property, but he can’t know about drapes. He really must shut out that dreary wilderness of Central Park.”
“If I were you,” Millicent said, “I’d wait until my advice was asked for. There’s nothing a man likes less than thinking he is being managed.”
“But your generation was so meek.” Mary Ellen’s eyes were flashing. “Ours is not, I hope. If Mr. Spencer doesn’t care for my advice, it will be a pity. But I fancy he will lap it up. Like a tiger cub lapping cream.”
Louisa didn’t see how Mary Ellen, having reached the age of twenty-seven without having had a steady beau, could be so sure of herself. Perhaps she was right; perhaps Mr. Spencer would be humbly impressed by the interest taken in him. All the same, Louisa fancied not. She fancied Mr. Spencer would want to dictate the way the conversation went. However, she kept her mouth shut this time. Like most people too ready with advice, Mary Ellen rarely listened to it herself.
New York was accustomed to the austerity of van Leyden balls. Although the house was one of the few of that period to have its own ballroom, the atmosphere of shabbiness and decay rather canceled out this advantage. Compared to the new and costly grandeur of the Vanderbilt and the Astor mansions, the not quite sparkling chandeliers, the rickety gilt chairs around the ballroom, the hired glass and cutlery and the hired staff, the refreshments that were adequate and picturesque but lacked the piquancy and originality of those produced by a resident French chef (as was the fashion nowadays), the fruit cup instead of champagne all were a little pathetic, a little tragic.
But everyone came, of course. One would never dream of offending poor dear Millicent who had so many troubles. One shared her ardent desire to get Mary Ellen off at last. There was still time for Louisa, although remaining a spinster would perhaps not trouble her as much as it would her sister. She was so quiet, so gentle. Her pale, tranquil face was not likely to excite any great passion in any male breast. But neither would it grow bitter with the passing years. And tonight, in that madeover lace of Millicent’s, she looked dignified and charming. She also knew her place. Although the ball was in honor of her coming of age, she would stay as much in the background as possible and leave Mary Ellen the limelight. Her turn would come later. If she wanted it to.
Surprisingly, however, she was not allowed to stay in the background. That newest millionaire Mr. Harry Spencer had already danced with Louisa twice and with Mary Ellen only once. Now he was bowing over Louisa again, and she was flushing, from embarrassment rather than from pleasure. She stood up with obvious reluctance, then took Mr. Spencer’s arm and swept into a waltz.
One had to admit, however, that they made a nice enough couple. If there was one thing Louisa did excellently, it was ballroom dancing. And Mr. Spencer, although his figure was too short and too solid, had a certain air of arrogance that some ladies would find attractive. He had a very direct way of looking and speaking. His eyes were bright, his complexion healthy, his golden hair and beard striking. He could have been a pirate. He probably was one. Those real estate people knew how to extract money, even if not exactly at the point of a cutlass. But one thing seemed certain: he did not find this, his first ball in high society, in the least intimidating. He was enjoying himself. Somehow he gave the moldering old house a vitality it had long lacked. Even Millicent van Leyden’s mouth had stopped drooping, and she was looking unusually animated. Boy was behaving impeccably, talking to the bejeweled dowagers with his special kind of wry wit. He never ventured on the dance floor. Robert had not yet reached the stage when he must be discreetly persuaded to retire upstairs. And Mary Ellen, dancing with what seemed like angry vigor, had bright patches of color in her cheeks and looked more handsome than anyone would have thought possible.
Halfway through the waltz Mr. Spencer stepped painfully on Louisa’s right foot.
“I am sorry,” he apologized. “Did that hurt very much?”
“Hardly at all.” Louisa wriggled her numbed toes.
“Perhaps we could sit out the rest of this. I’m no performer on the dance floor, as you now have proof.”
Louisa sat on the edge of one of the hired gilt chairs. She felt as if everyone in the room were looking at her, captive in the determined company of Mr. Spencer. How ever did one get rid of him?
“You lead such a busy life, Mr. Spencer. I expect you don’t have time for these pastimes. Duties, I call them.”
“Aren’t they pleasures?” he asked, and Louisa flushed, realizing the gaffe she had made.
“I think of pleasures as things one chooses to do. As far as this ball is concerned, my parents decided it must be given whether I wished it or not. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. All this folderol forced on you.”
“I’m not ungrateful,” Louisa hastened to add. “Both my sister and I enjoy dancing. Especially my sister. Wouldn’t you care to—”
“No, I’ll stay right here, Miss Louisa.”
“But I can’t monopolize you. There are people I am sure you would enjoy meeting.” Louisa wished he would stop looking at her so hard. Had he no manners? She had a suspicion that he made his own. Why didn’t Mamma come and rescue her? Or Mary Ellen? It was Mary Ellen who had particularly wanted Mr. Spencer invited to the ball.
“For the gentlemen who don’t care for dancing,” she said with a shade of desperation, “there is the billiard room.”
Mr. Spencer put his head on one side, smiling in a maddening way.
“I believe you are trying to get rid of me, Miss Louisa.”
“Oh, no! I mean, I only thought—I’m really a very dull person. Boy, my brother, has the van Leyden charm. Or so people say. And Mary Ellen has the vivacity. I’m just rather quiet.”
“I like a quiet woman.”
“But you’ve never married?”
“Not as yet. I had a lot of things to do first. They’ve kept me busy.”
“One knows that. Your success, your wonderful new house.”
“What did you think of my house?”
“I—How do you know I have seen it?”
“You said it was wonderful.”
“Well—so Ephraim told us. Everyone says so.”
“But you did take a drive up Fifth Avenue?”
“Mary Ellen and I often do that. Mamma, too; only she wasn’t feeling well that day.” Louisa realized what she had admitted, blushed again, and brazened it out. “I suppose since you have never married, you don’t know how inquisitive women are.”
“Maybe. Maybe. However, this was one occasion when I confess I hoped for a little curiosity. After meeting you at the opera, I frankly counted on you and your sister taking a drive past my house.”
Louisa wanted nothing but to escape from this increasingly embarrassing conversation.
“Mr. Spencer, you really must excuse me.” She consulted her dance program, holding it close to her eyes as if she were suddenly afflicted with blindness. “The band is about to stop, and I see—oh, yes, I have promised Mr. Naylor—”
“Now, Miss Louisa, don’t you get involved with the son of a man who has just taken out a second mortgage on his Lexington Avenue property. Forgive my saying so, but haven’t you enough of that sort of thing already?”
Louisa was outraged. The rudeness of the man! Her head rose high on her long neck.
“Mr. Spencer, I am only about to dance with Barry Naylor. I am not embracing property or mortgages or anything else.”
She paused and added specifically, “I am not even interested in money.”
“Foolish! Foolish!”
“But with you it’s the spur, the guiding light, the whole purpose of life. Isn’t it?”
Mr. Spencer stroked his neat shining beard with a sensuous movement, as if he were stroking a cat.
“Oh, I know I’m a crude fellow. Yes, I like money. If allows you to be honest.”
“Some means of acquiring it can be far from honest. I hardly know why you use that word.”
“Well, let’s say I would like my sons to go to dancing classes, so they wouldn’t have to pretend dexterity at occasions like this and suffer the humiliation of treading on ladies’ toes. I would like my daughter to have her own evening gown for her own ball. Not that yours isn’t quite charming. It’s a beautiful piece of lace, and age has improved it. But every inch of it wasn’t cut especially for your figure, and you’re pretending it was. My daughter will be able to say that the gown for her ball was specially ordered in Paris. She will never have to say she wore her mother’s cut-down wedding gown.”
Louisa listened in fascinated astonishment as Mr. Spencer went on. “You’re pretending, too, that all this glass and china won’t go back to its owners tomorrow, that this room won’t look very shabby and empty when the flowers are removed, the candles blown out and these uncomfortable chairs put away. You and your family are living in a fantasy, Miss Louisa. But with money this would all be real. Do you see what I mean?”
Louisa sprang up.
“I think you are impertinent and rude.”
“Oh, I agree. I told you I was a crude fellow. My grandfather was a chimney sweep. He burrowed his way down the stately chimneys of England. My father was a barrow boy in Camberwell, which is a slum area of London. I have called my house, the one you were kind enough to admire, Camberwell, because I am honestly proud of what I have achieved. I haven’t had the social advantages of a van Leyden. But I have other advantages, Miss Louisa.” Suddenly he smiled, and his blue eyes were brilliant. “You’ll be hearing about them.”
“Supposing I refuse to listen.”
“I’m afraid you will have to. Human nature being what it is. I would like to think that you had a choice, and that it was favorable to me. But I doubt you will have one. Now I am going to plead a long journey home and make my farewells. My mother gets lonely since my father died. She refuses to move into my new house. She likes living above the store my father had in the Bowery. As a matter of fact, I keep the store open just because she enjoys serving behind the counter now and again. Although when she’s gone, I still may keep it. It’s my childhood, so to speak. Are you surprised to find me so sentimental?”
“Why do you imagine I am interested?”
He laughed suddenly, a hearty, jolly laugh, that made several people turn their heads.
“It’s turned cold, all at once. I feel quite nipped. But I always enjoy a frost. It makes me feel alive.” He made a small bow; then, laughing again in that uninhibited way, he wandered off, obviously meaning to take his leave.
Louisa breathed a sigh of intense relief and heard Mary Ellen hissing behind her. “Is Mr. Spencer leaving?”
“I think so.”
“But it’s hardly past midnight. Did you offend him? I must say, that tête-à-tête you were having—everyone was looking. It isn’t done to spend so much time with one guest.”
“I couldn’t help it. Mr. Spencer is rude and stubborn and abominable.” Louisa looked around desperately. “When do you suppose all these people will go home?”
“It’s your ball. You’re supposed to be enjoying it.”
“I’m not, and you don’t look as if you are, either.”
“The way you monopolized that man.”
“I did not. He wouldn’t leave me. He trod on my toes, and had no manners—” Louisa was nearly crying.
“You little goose. You should have brought him to me. I’d have managed him. Now for goodness’ sake, smile and at least look as if you’re enjoying yourself. Papa has just fallen over one of the potted palms. Boy has taken him upstairs. What a night. The van Leydens’ keeping up appearances!”
The next day, when Millicent van Leyden, Mary Ellen and Louisa were sitting around the fire drinking hot chocolate, a florist’s box containing three dozen yellow roses arrived for Louisa. The enclosed card read: “Dear Miss Louisa, Roses like these will arrive every day until you are my wife. Your devoted admirer, Harry Spencer.”
Louisa dropped the box and the card and tried to suppress hysterical laughter.
“What’s the matter?” Mary Ellen asked.
“Yes, who is your beau, Louisa?” Mamma asked, giving Louisa a quick, anxious look that slid away.
Mamma was not surprised, Louisa realized. She knew!
“It’s not that Mr. Spencer, surely,” Mary Ellen said sourly. “It would be like him to overdo things.”
Louisa said breathlessly, “He must be stopped. He says he’s going to send this many roses every day. It will be like a nightmare. You have these, Mary Ellen.”
“Secondhand flowers! No, thank you.” Mary Ellen had picked up the card and was reading it.
“He wants to marry you!” she exclaimed.
Louisa nodded miserably. “So it seems. I shan’t accept his proposal, of course, even if I run the risk of getting buried in roses.” She sprang up, smoothing her skirts, alpaca and durable. This dress was three years old and would last some time longer. Although not as long as Mamma’s lovely old Nottingham lace that Mr. Spencer had despised. She didn’t really care to have new clothes all the time, which was a thing a man like Mr. Spencer probably couldn’t understand. He would imagine it to be an irresistible lure to a woman.
“It’s so ridiculous,” she went on incredulously. “I only danced with Mr. Spencer and talked to him last night. Under duress, I might say. I simply couldn’t escape from him. Mamma, why are you looking at me like that? Did you know this terrible thing was going to happen?”
“Don’t be silly, Louisa. It isn’t a terrible thing, getting a proposal of marriage. I’m sure your sister will agree.”
“I would accept it as quickly as it was made,” Mary Ellen said unhesitatingly.
“You mean you would marry Mr. Spencer!”
“And live in that beautiful house and give the best parties in town? Oh, yes, indeed.”
“But marry, Mary Ellen! I mean, share his bedroom, sit opposite him at breakfast, have his children. Why, we don’t even know him, either of us. He’s just a rich man suddenly in a great hurry to be married. Now that he has the money he wants the right wife, so he can shine in society. He hasn’t even the finesse to take time in wooing her. And don’t tell me there’s plenty of time for that after marriage, Mamma, because I just don’t believe it would work.”
“You think too much, Louisa,” Millicent said tartly. She adjusted her fine lace shawl with a resigned movement. Her look of faded elegance had never been more pronounced. “In this life one has to be practical. I never was, or I would have seen that your father would slowly ruin us all.”
“What do you mean, Mamma? Are you actually approving of Mr. Spencer?”
“Well, my dear child, it seems we have no alternative. You might know that Ephraim called the other day and had a very long talk with me and your father and Boy. It seems that your father is being threatened with bankruptcy. If that happens, this house and everything in it will be sold. Imagine, the van Leyden house on the market! It would be the end of your father, and of me, too. Quite apart from how we would all live in the future. You girls would have to find positions, be governesses or something. Think of a van Leyden teaching the grandchildren of that odious Jay Gould.”
“Would it matter so much?” Louisa muttered.
“Matter! When your great-great-grandfather was one of the old patroons! He built a house on this very spot. Not to mention my own family, with an ancestor in the court of Queen Elizabeth.”
Louisa’s heart was sinking. She had never heard her mother so eloquent or so determined. But this scheme, which had been hatched cold-bloodedly, keeping her in the dark, was humiliating in the extreme.
“So is Mr. Spencer to save the precious van Leydens from ruin?” she asked with an unfamiliar sarcasm.
“There will be a marriage settlement, of course. But certainly one of the clauses will be that our dear family home is preserved.”
“In return for the sale of one of your daughters. Mamma, I never realized you cared more for a house than for Mary Ellen or me.”
“Louisa!”
Louisa’s lips were trembling. “But it’s true, isn’t it? Mary Ellen, why don’t you say something? Do you like the thought of being sold, like a cow or a sheep?”
“Depends who it’s to,” Mary Ellen said. “That makes all the difference. Oh, don’t be so dim-witted, Louisa. You must have known what was going on from the time Ephraim brought Mr. Spencer to our opera box. I certainly did. Beggars can’t be choosers, even if they have blue blood in their veins.” She was frowning ferociously. She squinted, as if to squeeze back angry tears. “But I wouldn’t regard marrying Harry Spencer as beggary. He’s so alive. He makes Boy and certain other gentlemen in our snobbish circle look pretty limp.”
“Then it’s a pity it wasn’t you he chose.”
“Yes, it was. I’d be a far better match for him than you. I’d like to tell him so.”
“Then do so.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Mary Ellen,” said Mamma, “behave yourself.”
That night they talked around the dinner table in the big dining room with its early colonial furniture, its worn turkey carpet and faded velvet drapes. A portrait of Theodore van Leyden, the old patroon, with his heavy Dutch face (Mary Ellen promised to resemble him) hung over the fireplace. His wife, wearing a dark dress with an exquisite white lace collar that effectively distracted attention from her plain face, hung less conspicuously. That was symbolic of those times, Louisa thought, the wife being a person of minor importance who bowed to all the decisions of her husband.
Although if one were to believe what her own family was saying now, such conditions still existed in this enlightened age. For they were not on the side of her, their daughter, but on that of Harry Spencer, a virtual stranger. To be more accurate, they were on the side of money, and if it involved a marriage of convenience, was that so unusual? Louisa would not be the first unwilling bride. One could count numbers of girls belonging to prominent families who had made successful marriages in precisely this way. And really, someone in this family must marry.
“Anyone would think we had the plague,” Papa complained. He was comparatively sober tonight and, by candlelight, looked handsome and distinguished. Louisa remembered adoring him when she was a child. It wasn’t easy to stop loving someone, even when he had become a different person, with a stumbling step, blurred features and sudden wild rages. One couldn’t contemplate what would happen to him if he had to leave this house. Or to Mamma, either, especially with her delicate health. She had been brought up with a strong sense of duty, and honor, and self-sacrifice, if necessary.
But surely the solution to her family problems didn’t rest entirely on her frail shoulders. Need she do such a cataclysmic thing as marry a man who was not even congenial to her? Wasn’t there another more likable rich man who would admire her? Must it be that brash Harry Spencer? Whatever would they talk about for the rest of their lives?
“One of us does have the plague,” said Boy, in his drawling voice. He kicked his crooked foot against the table leg.
“Boy dear, your poor foot need not be the handicap you imagine it is,” Mamma said. “Plenty of girls would be glad to marry you.”
“And spend the rest of their lives being sorry for me? I know there are some women who thrive on that. But not for me. I’d end by strangling them.” Boy reached for his glass. “No, the life of a recluse for me. I’ll shut myself up and read Lord Byron’s poems. But by all means marry off my sisters. What’s the matter, Lou? Do you dislike your little millionaire so much?”
“No, I don’t dislike him. In other circumstances I would quite like him. It was only that I had hoped to marry for love. Is that wrong?”
“Not wrong, but impractical,” said Papa dismissively. “Your mother and I married to please our families. Didn’t we, my dear? And it worked capitally.”
But Papa was scarcely ever sober, and Mamma had her constant headaches and her palpitations. Was that happiness?
“We’re not forcing you, dear,” said Mamma. “We would never allow you to be unhappy. But personally I thought Mr. Spencer a perfectly charming man. I believe Mary Ellen did, too.”
“Leave me out of this,” said Mary Ellen tartly. “I’m not the bartered bride.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mamma exclaimed. “Bartered bride, indeed! We must go less often to the opera.”
“Fellow seemed reasonable enough,” said Papa. “I had a long talk with him at my club. His intentions are honorable. Promised to get him membership at my club, for a start. Good God, when you think who gets into society nowadays. Anyway, a clever woman will soon get rid of his rough edges.”
“Don’t do it, sis, if you don’t want to,” Boy said suddenly.