Daughters of the Rich
The People in It
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Gerard Welden, M.F.H., An American sportsman
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Maud Barhyte, a New York girl of the fashionable set
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Sally Malakoff, afterward Mrs. Welden
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The Duc de Malakoff, Sally’s first husband
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Mrs. Kandy, Sally’s mother, a rich widow
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General Barhyte, Maud’s father, a rich widower
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The Comte de Dol, a French sportsman
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The Marquis Aquaviva, an Italian sportsman
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Prince Kara, a Russian sportsman
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Lord Ferrers, an English sportsman
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Mull Cantire, undersecretary, British Embassy, Paris
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Mme. Oppensheim, a mondaine
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Mme. de Cérisy, another mondaine
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The Princesse de Solférino, a third mondaine
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Louis Le Hillel, a swordsman
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Baron Louradour, another swordsman
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Dr. Binet-Valmer, one of the lights of French science
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Society people, maîtres d’hôtel, footmen, chauffeurs, trainers, stable lads, surgeons, lawyers, a coroner, a chief of police
Part I
(Entr’acte)
I
White Peacocks
“Nearly a crumpler,” said a fat-faced man to Welden, whose horse, stumbling in the main street of Santa Barbara, had almost sat down.
Welden, pulling him together, dismounted. Supple and vigorous, he had an attractive face, laughing eyes and the air of being someone. Moreover, if this street in Southern California had been Rotten Row, he could not have been more studiously attired. His breeches were perfect. His boots had been marrowboned into blonde mirrors. From one of them he flicked a speck with his crop.
“What shall I do with the brute, Wicks?” he asked. “And, by the way, if you expect me to buy him also, I will chuck the whole thing.”
Wicks, standing fat-faced and bareheaded in the sunshine, reddened with emotion. The fish was landed, he told himself, and none too soon.
Wicks was in real estate, with signs—signs which described him as the Alert and Indefatigable Wicks—strewn through Santa Barbara, strewn, too, through the adjacent suburbs of Montecito and Miramar. It had been a bad year, however. Of nibbles there had been few, of bites none at all. Instead of the usual regiment of opulent Easterners, so eager for a residence in the perfumery and sunshine of the Slope, that they took anything at any price, there had been but a handful of paupers, considering penurious bungalows.
Wicks, himself, had a bungalow, one unfortunately mortgaged. Also, he had his office before which, fat-faced and bareheaded, he stood. The rent was due and back, toward the Sierra Madre, in that bungalow, was Mrs. Wicks, two little Wickses, and a hired girl.
These luxuries mean money, and to Wicks money had become a haunting and elusive thing. Then, suddenly, by special grace, in the nick of time, just as the grocer was turning ugly, Welden, with all the aroma of wealth about him, had dropped from the cars, demanding something fit and on the sea.
“Something,” a woman who accompanied this providence melodiously interluded, “in which one, if one liked, could have a little frisk.”
As she spoke she had smiled, very infectiously, for Welden smiled too, and Wicks, who had not an idea what a little frisk might be, unless their visit could be so catalogued, smiled also. But the woman’s smile was not merely infectious, there was in it and about her a charm that was absolutely relaxing. She exhaled ease and an atmosphere indefinably foreign.
“Is she pretty?” the wife of Wicks’ bosom inquired that evening when, on the porch of the mortgaged bungalow, he told her the incidents of the day.
“Yes, and better. I should say she was—she was—” Here the Alert and Indefatigable groped mentally after a term which suddenly he nailed. “I should say she was princessly.”
“Princessly!” Mrs. Wicks dubiously repeated. “How was she dressed?”
But the question was beyond Wicks, as it is also beside the issue, which was in effect that these luminous people had concluded to consider White Peacocks, a house at Miramar, which an Englishman had leisurely built and then, on acceding to a title, had actively vacated, leaving it to Wicks to sell for a hundred thousand dollars. “Not a ha’-penny less,” the Englishman had enjoined, “and more if possible.” “Certainly, my lord,” Wicks had replied, “I will try for a hundred and fifty.”
Then, simultaneously with the Englishman’s departure, there had occurred in Wall Street a panic from which germinated a nightmare that sullenly overspread the entire land, and, until Welden appeared, no one had come that would consider at any price the purchase of the property.
But, on the first day, when in a motor, hired by the hour, Wicks had taken the Weldens there, he had felt that it was probably a go. At the start, that is, once the main street of Santa Barbara was behind them, and they were rolling along the ocean boulevard which leads to Miramar, he had mentioned, casually, as though it were an unimportant detail, the top price, adding immediately and mechanically, after a habit of his: “And such a bargain!” Then, mechanically also, he had played the flute to its charms.
White Peacocks needed no aria from him. It breathed for itself. The grounds, full of palms, of lilies, of masses and draperies of purple and scarlet blooms, were like an unglassed conservatory open to the air. They had the sea before them, the mountains behind, and the house with its thirty rooms, every one of which was scented the year around with geranium, with heliotrope and with brine, was agreeably furnished, comfortably arranged. Beyond, for servants, was another house; a stable, a garage; and in front of the main dwelling, on a lawn of vivid green, a dove-coloured peacock moved gingerly, almost moodily, but, at sight of them, expanded slowly yet demeasurably the fan of its extravagant tail.
It was the finishing touch.
Wicks, conscious of the impression produced, had been about to play the flute again, when Welden, who had been talking
