Free False Gods by Louis Auchincloss Page A

have been a small concession in the dark tweeds), seemed to proclaim that a white-haired gentleman of such opaquely gazing eyes, of so high and brown a brow, with a gnarled hand so firmly grasping the gold head of a rarely relinquished cane, had needed nothing but his presence to smite fatally the beasts whose horns and tusks now harmlessly threatened him.
    That he should spend his money in a forest where none but carefully selected guests, conveyed thither by a private railway, could see the results, rather than on a villa in Newport visible to other villas, was typical of his inverted snobbishness. I doubt that he feared anything on earth except that he might be taken as a fair representative of any group or class. In a Republican society, he was a politically active Democrat who delighted in alienating fellow tycoons by supporting (at least at the dinner table) government regulation of business. In a new plutocracy concerned with draping its genealogical nudity in purchased pedigrees, he liked to boast that the Stonors descended from sheep stealers in Norfolk and had bought their crest at Tiffany's. And confronted with the showy collections of old masters by means of which the financial leaders of the day hoped to hitch a ride to immortality, he would shrug and say that the souls of ancient commercial societies were best expressed in the beautiful gold coins that he displayed in glass cases in his office.
    There was to be a house party of young people at his camp a couple of weeks after he and his daughter returned from Europe, and it was even rumored that it might be the occasion of the announcement of Dorothy's engagement to Guy Thorp. Horace was invited, and so, surprisingly, was I.
    "I told you she liked you," Horace explained.
    "Maybe she wants someone to catch you if you faint dead away at the news."
    "Oh, Maury, is it possible? Can she really be going to marry that man? Why have you been urging me on so?"
    But I was more irritated than touched by his woebegone look. How could a man care so much and have so little fight in him? I took from his hand the letter in which my invitation was included and read it.
    "Well, at least she tells you just who's coming and when. Thorp isn't getting there until Monday, and we're asked for the preceding Friday. That gives you the whole weekend to make your play."
    "Oh, she's just giving herself time to reconcile me to the news before the hero arrives."
    "Fight, man, will you! Fight!"
    And fight he actually did. For one whole day. When we arrived in the Adirondacks we were greeted by a Dorothy who was friendly but reserved. On Saturday morning she took Horace off on an all-day ride in the woods, leaving me behind with the other guests, none of whom I knew and none of whom showed the least interest in getting to know me. Mr. Stonor, however, proved unexpectedly cordial. It appeared that he had read and enjoyed my father's books, and he invited me to go fishing with him on the lake that afternoon in a large rowboat oared by a guide who sat near the bow. Mr. Stonor paid scant attention to the sport, letting the guide, as we drifted, do the casting for him and hand him the rod only on the rare occasions when a fish was hooked. I did my own casting, of course, but I paused whenever it looked as if Mr. Stonor wanted to talk. After all, I was there to be of assistance to Horace. When he embarked at last on a topic that seemed to interest him, I dropped my rod, lit a pipe and listened.
    "You may have made the right decision to go into law, young man. Dorothy has described you as ambitious. When I was your age the future was all in business and banking. But now the railways are laid down, the frontier's gone and the oil wells are pumping. The captains and the kings have departed, and it's time for the little men to litigate over the spoils."
    "I gather you don't think much of lawyers. Dorothy hinted as much."
    "I don't think much of anybody, Leonard. I take the world as it comes. I was