Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich | Page 5

patent leather shoes and heavy faces and congested cheeks. And
there is dancing and conversation among the shepherds and shepherdesses. with such
brilliant flashes of wit and repartee about the rise in Wabash and the fall in Cement that
the soul of Louis Quatorze would leap to hear it. And later there is supper at little tables,
when the shepherds and shepherdesses consume preferred stocks and gold-interest bonds
in the shape of chilled champagne and iced asparagus, and great platefuls of dividends
and special quarterly bonuses are carried to and fro in silver dishes by Chinese
philosophers dressed up to look like waiters.
But on ordinary days there are no ladies in the club, but only the shepherds. You may see
them sitting about in little groups of two and three under the palm trees drinking whiskey
and soda; though of course the more temperate among them drink nothing but whiskey
and Lithia water, and those who have important business to do in the afternoon limit
themselves to whiskey and Radnor, or whiskey and Magi water. There are as many kinds
of bubbling, gurgling, mineral waters in the caverns of the Mausoleum Club as ever
sparkled from the rocks of Homeric Greece. And when you have once grown used to
them, it is as impossible to go back to plain water as it is to live again in the forgotten
house in a side street that you inhabited long before you became a member.
Thus the members sit and talk in undertones that float to the ear through the haze of

Havana smoke. You may hear the older men explaining that the country is going to
absolute ruin, and the younger ones explaining that the country is forging ahead as it
never did before; but chiefly they love to talk of great national questions, such as the
protective tariff and the need of raising it, the sad decline of the morality of the working
man, the spread of syndicalism and the lack of Christianity in the labour class, and the
awful growth of selfishness among the mass of the people.
So they talk, except for two or three that drop off to directors' meetings; till the afternoon
fades and darkens into evening, and the noiseless Chinese philosophers turn on soft lights
here and there among the palm trees. Presently they dine at white tables glittering with
cut glass and green and yellow Rhine wines; and after dinner they sit again among the
palm-trees, half-hidden in the blue smoke, still talking of the tariff and the labour class
and trying to wash away the memory and the sadness of it in floods of mineral waters. So
the evening passes into night, and one by one the great motors come throbbing to the
door, and the Mausoleum Club empties and darkens till the last member is borne away
and the Arcadian day ends in well-earned repose.
"I want you to give me your opinion very, very frankly," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe on one
side of the luncheon table to the Rev. Fareforth Furlong on the other.
"By all means," said Mr. Furlong.
Mr. Fyshe poured out a wineglassful of soda and handed it to the rector to drink.
"Now tell me very truthfully," he said, "is there too much carbon in it?"
"By no means," said Mr. Furlong.
"And--quite frankly--not too much hydrogen?"
"Oh, decidedly not."
"And you would not say that the percentage of sodium bicarbonate was too great for the
ordinary taste?"
"I certainly should not," said Mr. Furlong, and in this he spoke the truth.
"Very good then," said Mr. Fyshe, "I shall use it for the Duke of Dulham this afternoon."
He uttered the name of the Duke with that quiet, democratic carelessness which meant
that he didn't care whether half a dozen other members lunching at the club could hear or
not. After all, what was a duke to a man who was president of the People's Traction and
Suburban Co.' and the Republican Soda and Siphon Co-operative, and chief director of
the People's District Loan and Savings? If a man with a broad basis of popular support
like that was proposing to entertain a duke, surely there could be no doubt about his
motives? None at all.
Naturally, too, if a man manufactures soda himself, he gets a little over-sensitive about
the possibility of his guests noticing the existence of too much carbon in it.
In fact, ever so many of the members of the Mausoleum Club manufacture things, or
cause them to be manufactured, or--what is the same thing--merge them when they are
manufactured. This gives them their peculiar chemical attitude towards their food. One
often sees a member suddenly call the head waiter at breakfast to tell him that there is too
much ammonia in