[1]IN THE SWIM

A Story of Currents and Under-Currents in Gayest New York.

By Richard Henry Savage

Chicago and New York: Rand, McNally & Company, Publishers.

[3]CONTENTS.

BOOK I. A RISING STAR.

“Young Lochinvar has Come out of the West,”

The Drift of a Day in New York City,

A Frank Disclosure,

“Wyman and Vreeland” Swing the Street,

Toward the Zenith,

BOOK II. WITH THE CURRENT.

In the “Elmleaf” Bachelor Apartments,

“Plunger” Vreeland’s Gay Life, “Under the Rose,”

Miss Romaine Garland, Stenographer,

Senator Alynton’s Colleague,

An Interview at Lakemere. Some Ingenious Mechanism. “Whose Picture is That?”

BOOK III. ON A LEE SHORE.

Miss Marble’s Waterloo! A Lost Lamb! Her Vacant Chair. Senator Garston’s Disclosure. Sara Conyers’ Mission. Miss Garland’s Dishonorable Discharge. A Defiance to the Death. “Robbed!”

Mine and Countermine,

A Wedding in High Life,

For the Child’s Sake!

In the Dark Waters,

[5] IN THE SWIM.

CHAPTER I.

“YOUNG LOCHINVAR HAS COME OUT OF THE WEST.”

There was an expression of sullen discontent upon the handsome features of Mr. Harold Vreeland (gentleman unattached), as the inbound Hudson River train dashed along under the castled cliffs of Rhinebeck.

The afternoon was fair—the river of all rivers glittered gaily in the sun, and a dreamy peace rested on field and stream. But, the peace of this June afternoon of ’95 entered not into the young wayfarer’s soul.

The five years which the traveler from nowhere in particular had thrown away in the far wilds of the sporadic West had not yet robbed his chiseled features of the good looks which he had borne away from old Nassau.

And, though his glittering blue eye had been trained to a habitual impassiveness by much frontier poker, he had always abjured that Rocky Mountain whisky which “biteth like an adder.”

As he restlessly sought the smoking-car, after a [6] vain struggle with the all too-evident immorality of a saucy French novel, several quickly thrilled spinsters followed his retreating form with warm glances of furtive admiration and half-suppressed sighs.

Vreeland’s stalwart figure was clearly reminiscent of well-played football and long straining at the oar. His well-set head was bravely carried, his eye was searching and even audaciously daring in its social explorations.

At twenty-seven he had not lost the fascination of his soft and perfectly modulated voice nor the winning insinuation of his too frequent smile. The chin was far too softly molded for an ascetic, and an expression of lurking insincerity flickered in the pleasure-loving curves of his handsome mouth.

But, shapely and glowing with manly vigor, he was a very “proper man-at-arms” in the battle of life, his sweeping cavalry mustache lending an air of decision to his sun-burned features.

Though he was perfectly dressed up to the memories of his never-forgotten “varsity” grade, the “wanderjahre” had given to him a little of that easy swing which is the gift of wandering on boundless prairies, long nights spent al fresco under the glittering dome of stars, and a close commune with the sighing pines of the West.

The shade of bitterness deepened upon his moody face as he noted a three-masted steam yacht swinging along up the river, with the elastic quivering throb of her quadruple compounded engines. This queenly vessel bore the private signal of one American citizen whose personal finances beggar the resources of many modern kings.

“Those are the cold-hearted fellows who rule [7] America now with a rod of iron—the new money kings,” he growled. “Royal by the clink of the dollar, sovereign by the magic wand of monopoly, impregnable with the adamantine armor of trusts!”

And then, a lively hatred of the social grandees luxuriously grouped aft on that splendid yacht crept into his embittered soul.

He could see the Venetian awning which covered the clustered fair-faced patrician women from the fierce sun, which rudely burns by day.

And he knew, too, by distant rumors of that superb luxury in which the American women of the creed of the Golden Calf passed their happy days in a splendid and serene indolence, only lit up now and then with gleams of the passion play of high life.

“It’s no use to fight those fellows,” mused Vreeland, as he carefully trimmed a cigar. “They have come to stay, and I must try and fall into the train of some one of them.”

He looked back at all those unprofitable years spent beyond the rugged Rockies. There was a sense of shame and resentment as he recalled the shabby career of his talented father.

“Thank God, I am now alone in the world, ‘with no one nigh to hender!’” he bitterly reflected, unconsciously quoting Lowell’s “Zekle and Huldy.”

The train had rushed on past Poughkeepsie, and the parade music from West Point floated sweetly across the cool river as the train halted at Garrison’s for a few moments, before he had morosely reviewed all the dismal events which brought him a lonely stranger back to New York.

Erastus Vreeland, a lawyer of no mean accomplishment, had destined his only son for the bar.

[8] The elder Vreeland was a human spider, who had finally gravitated downward into the exercise of only the meaner craft of his much-abused profession.

For long years, in his little office on William Street he had legally carried on the intrigues of a daring band of clients who rightly should have ornamented the Academy of Belles-Lettres of New York at Sing Sing.

During the life of his hoodwinked wife, Vreeland père led a double existence of more or less moral turpitude, and, at last, a shameless and successful coup of rascality aroused the ire of a great financial company.

It was his “notice to quit,” and after the death of his wife, Erastus Vreeland “swung round the distant circle,” often followed by the déclassé lawyer.

Omaha, Leadville, Salt Lake, Los Angeles, and other Western cities finally knew his fox-like cunning and gradually weakening grip.

A political affray, the result of a heated election in Montana, had been the occasion of the elder Vreeland’s sudden taking off.

And so, the man who had never learned the homely adage that “corruption wins not more than honesty,” slept far away from his fathers on the rocky hillsides of Helena, in wild Montana. It was a miserable summation of failures.

The hegira of the father had left the son stranded in life at the start upon his finishing the four years at Princeton which had made him an expert in all the manly arts save any definite plan of money-getting.

A still self-deceiving man, Erastus Vreeland had hopefully invited his son to share the suggested exile, and thus, the plan of the law course for the junior was [9] perforce abandoned. It had not been long till father and son drifted coldly apart.

The mean, shabby moral nature of the demoralized elder could not long impose upon the quick-witted youth. The slights of the bench, the slurs of the bar, the wasp-like thrusts of a bold frontier press, all proved that the “trail of the serpent” followed on after the talented weakling whose professional honor was never proof against gold or gain secured from either side.

And so, with only a hypocritical pretense of a certain lingering friendly feeling, the two men had finally parted, dividing a few hundred dollars which were the remains of a retainer in a case, which deftly went wrong on its trial, sold out, to the benefit of lawyer Vreeland’s adversary. Then came the bloody finale—and, and—exit Vreeland pater!

Harold Vreeland sighed in disgust as he recalled the five lost years of his golden youthful promise.

“It’s all rot,” he muttered, “this idea that the loafer life of the far West gives either scope, strength, or courage to any man. It is all mere barbarism, and only a windy discounting of a future which never comes. A long, bootless struggle with the meaner conditions of life.”

He recalled his varied experiences as notary public, deputy county clerk, cashier of a shoddy bank—a concern which “folded its Arabian tents” in six months.

Real estate dealer he had been in several aspiring “boom towns,” and also, secretary of many frontier “wind” corporations, whose beautifully engraved stock certificates were now either carried around in the pocketbooks of dupes or else stuck up in Western saloons, to the huge edification of the ungodly.

[10] This strange wandering life had made him a fox in cunning, though not as yet a ravening wolf, for there was little to prey upon in those dreary distant Occidental preserves. But, his fangs were well sharpened for the fray.

He realized, as the lights of Haverstraw gleamed out “beyond the swelling tide,” that he was as yet without any definite plan of operations.

A singular incident, illustrative of the roughly good-humored social code of the wild West had caused him to seek the city of Manhattan.

The political clique which had coolly plotted the murder of his crafty father, with a last generous twinge of conscience, had sent all the private papers of the defunct lawyer over to his son, who was listlessly engaged at the time in endeavoring, on a net cash capital of a hundred and fifty dollars, to float a ten million dollar corporation, in order to utilize certain waste energy of those foaming falls of the Spokane River, which have so long caused both the salmon and the Indians a great deal of unnecessary trouble.

And then, young Vreeland wearily explored those ashes of life—the “papers in the case” of the defunct.

The unwelcome discovery of many evidences of his father’s shame and the revealing of all that secret life which had sent his patient mother to the shadowy bourne of heartbroken wives, was somewhat mitigated by the discovery of a paid-up policy of ten thousand dollars in the great “Acqueduct Life Insurance of New York City.”

There was, as usual, some strings and filaments hanging out loosely knotted up, and it had been a labor of months, involving a correspondence of some acerbity, for him to obtain letters of administration, [11] close up his father’s “estate,” and depart to Gotham to receive a check for seven thousand dollars in full settlement of the claim.

On the road over from Spokane, Mr. Harold Vreeland had carefully counted all his ships. He had even gone over all his own abortive attempts at opening any useful career, and so, on this summer evening, he gloomily felt how poorly prepared he was to fight the battle of life against the keen competition and increasing pressure of his peers in New York City.

“If I had only my father’s profession, I would have a chance to get in among these fellows, and I would soon have my share of the gate money,” he growled.

“But to take a place in the line of mere drudges, to sink down into the death in life of a hall room and a cheap boarding-house. Once planted there, I am there forever. And I have not a friend in the whole world!”

His mental harvest had only been one of husks, and he keenly felt the absence of any definite calling pour accrocher.

Suddenly his eye caught the gleam of a sunset upon a dozen drifting, glittering white sails on the river.

They all seemed to float on serenely, borne along upon the broad tide, with no visible man’s hand to guide.

“I will drift a while,” he murmured. “I have a few thousand dollars. Something will surely turn up. If it does not,” he resolutely said, “then, I will turn it up myself.”

“There are women here, too—women with hearts of flame, and who are to be won. I was a fool ever to go out to the frontier. Perhaps—”

[12] And his mind reverted to a lucky college chum who had married a woman nearly two generations older than himself, but a well-preserved Madame “Midas.”

“By Jove! anything is better than this beastly poverty,” he mused. “Even that.”

“This is no era for poor men. Poverty is the only crime nowadays.”

His cynicism was broken off by the approach of two men, who rose to rejoin friends in the train as it dashed along toward the Bronx River.

As they came up the smoking-car, Vreeland easily recognized Fred Hathorn, the stroke of the college crew in which he had once won hard-fought honors for the orange.

There was no mistaking the easy luxury which exhaled from Mr. Fred Hathorn of the great firm of Hathorn and Potter, bankers and brokers of dingy Wall Street, a man who had already arrived!

The first crucial glance of rapid inspection was not lost on Vreeland, as Hathorn, in an easy way cried: “Hello, Hod Vreeland! What brings you over here?”

With a perfunctory politeness, Mr. James Potter halted and calmly acknowledged Hathorn’s listless introduction.

The little blonde man-about-town, however, gazed longingly ahead at the car where certain fair dames now awaited their escorts.

Jimmy Potter was born to “no end of easy money,” and so his dashing senior partner’s genius for finance was strongly buttressed by the whirlwind of cash which clustered around Jimmy Potter’s lucky head.

All sorts of financial bees seemed to swarm around Potter and quietly settle in his hive.

[13] “What’s the use of making a row?” he often remarked. “Sit still, and what you want in life will come to you.” Mr. James Potter of New York was an Epicurean disciple.

The blood mounted to Vreeland’s forehead as he noted all the deprecating courtesy of Hathorn’s welcome.

“Damn him! I’ll give him a bit of a bluff,” he quickly decided, under the inspiration of some bold, familiar spirit.

There was an air of quiet comfort in the careless response of Vreeland.

“I have just fallen into a good bit of money by my father’s death, and so have come on here to enjoy myself. I may spend a couple of years abroad.”

Vreeland then blessed that daring, familiar spirit which so saucily suggested his “cheeky” retort, as the man who had been his chum and fellow of several Greek letter societies stopped short. “Wait for me at the station, old fellow. We are bothered yet with some ladies. They leave at the station. Then we will dine later at the club and talk over old times a bit. You’ll come, too, won’t you, Potter?”

Jimmy Potter carelessly nodded an assent from sheer laziness, and then the two members of the jeunesse dorée, passed on into the boudoir car.

There was a twinkle of triumph in Vreeland’s eye as he sank back in his seat.

“I got a dinner out of you at any rate, Mr. Snob,” he gleefully chuckled.

And, highly elated, he decided then and there, to vary his first plan of drifting with the tide, and to cautiously put his oar in a bit where it would help him on.

[14] His step was as light as the tread of a panther when he leaped out of the car at Forty-second Street.

“I’ll have a stolen glance at their women,” he quickly resolved. “Perhaps they may give dinners, too.”

And just then, there seemed to be the twinkle of a little star of Hope lighting up that devious, unknown path which he was so soon to tread.

“I’ll let him give me a Club card,” he mused, as the wearied passengers hurried along to brave the din of importunate jehus.

He was wondering how much of a social show he could make at need with his slender fortune, when the two men slowly approached with three “shining ones” of the golden strata of womanly New York.

“These people are all in the swim,” he murmured. “I will find the way! I am as good as any of them.”

And as he raised his eyes, he met the glances of the imperial-looking woman who was Fred Hathorn’s companion.

The lady’s eyes rested for a moment upon the handsome stranger, and then fell with a peculiar abruptness.

“If that woman plays any star part in his life, I will try and take her away from him,” resolved Vreeland, whose whole soul was now thrilling with the beautiful woman’s sudden, startled admission of interest in a passing stranger. The wine of life stirred in the young wanderer’s veins.

His audacious, familiar sprite suggested the profound bow which was Mr. Harold Vreeland’s first salutation upon the outskirts of the “Four Hundred.”

He had adroitly managed to convey the respectful homage of the salutation by his velvety eyes to the [15] very person intended, for, while Jimmy Potter was placidly listening to the brilliant chatter of two very vivacious rosebuds, Mrs. Elaine Willoughby turned to Hathorn:

“Fred, who is your Western friend?” she asked, with an assumed carelessness.

It was by sheer good luck that Hathorn, who was watching the young millionairess whom he was soon to marry, answered with an unusual warmth:

“An old college chum—Vreeland of Princeton, and a rattling good fellow.”

Fred Hathorn eyed with a certain qualminess the easy aplomb of his Crœsus partner, as Jimmy Potter pressed closely to the side of Hathorn’s destined bride, Miss Moneybags.

That young lady was destined to play the rôle of Queen of Diamonds in the ambitious young banker’s life.

He had resolutely set up the motto, “Aut Cæsar, aut nullus,” and he was just a bit shy of the beloved James trifling with his dashing fiancée.

“All sorts of things happen in New York,” mused the agnostic Hathorn, as he handed the ladies into a waiting victoria and then turned to rejoin the man who more than ever had now decided to paddle a bit, as well as to drift on with the tide of fortune.

There was a glow of satisfaction burning in the Western adventurer’s heart as, half an hour later, he noted Hathorn dash off his potent signature behind his guest’s name on the visitor’s book of the Old York Club. It was the open sesame to the regions of the blest—young New York par excellence.

The trio adjourned to the billiard room, and, then and there, Vreeland for the first time tasted the famous club cocktail.

[16] He was “living up to his blue china,” as he gravely bowed when Hathorn gave him a two-weeks’ card.

“I’ll have it renewed for you, old fellow,” lightly remarked the young banker.

“Pity our waiting list is so long. We must try to get your name advanced, by hook or crook.”

While Hathorn departed to give his personal orders for the dinner, Jimmy Potter drew apart to glance over a handful of cards, letters and billets d’amour which a grave old club steward had handed to him.

He critically selected two, the missives of “she who must be obeyed,” and then carelessly slipped the fardel of the others into the oblivion of his breast pocket.

He sat there, the ferret-eyed young millionaire, glowering after Hathorn’s retreating form. “Pity to see Alida VanSittart wasted on that cold human calculating machine! Fred is as indurated as a steel chisel.”

The little child of Pactolus felt his tiny veins still tingling with the exhalant magnetism of the budding heiress whom Hathorn had selected as a second spoke in that wheel of fortune of which the unconscious Jimmy was the main stay.

The aforesaid young patrician, Miss Alida, was “divinely tall” and of a ravishing moonlight beauty, two elements of ensnaring witchery to the dapper, blasé young Midas, whose little patent leathers had pattered vainly along after the stride of that elastic young goddess.

The alert Vreeland grimly eyed the eager Jimmy Potter, and noted the tell-tale quiver of the youth’s slim fingers as he fished out the two “star” leaders of his evening mail.

[17] “I would like just one night with that chap at poker, with no limit,” gravely mused Vreeland, with an inspirational sigh. “He looks soft.”

While the parvenu “sized up” his man, he was aware of a hum of murmured comment at a table near him.

Two men were following with their envious eyes the tall form of the fortunate Hathorn—“the very rose and expectancy of the state,” as he called his myrmidons around him.

“Lucky devil is Hathorn,” quoth A. “Saw him get out of the train to-night with Mrs. Wharton Willoughby. Potter over there and a gang of girls have been up at Lakemere. He still holds her fast.”