Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich | Page 6

the bacon; and another one protest at the amount of glucose in the
olive oil; and another that there is too high a percentage of nitrogen in the anchovy. A
man of distorted imagination might think this tasting of chemicals in the food a sort of
nemesis of fate upon the members. But that would be very foolish, for in every case the
head waiter, who is the chief of the Chinese philosophers mentioned above, says that he'll
see to it immediately and have the percentage removed. And as for the members

themselves, they are about as much ashamed of manufacturing and merging things as the
Marquis of Salisbury is ashamed of the founders of the Cecil family.
What more natural, therefore, than that Mr. Lucullus Fyshe, before serving the soda to the
Duke, should try it on somebody else? And what better person could be found for this
than Mr. Furlong, the saintly young rector of St. Asaph's, who had enjoyed the kind of
expensive college education calculated to develop all the faculties. Moreover, a rector of
the Anglican Church who has been in the foreign mission field is the kind of person from
whom one can find out, more or less incidentally, how one should address and converse
with a duke, and whether you call him, "Your Grace," or "His Grace," or just "Grace," or
"Duke," or what. All of which things would seem to a director of the People's Bank and
the president of the Republican Soda Co. so trivial in importance that he would scorn to
ask about them.
So that was why Mr. Fyshe had asked Mr. Furlong to lunch with him, and to dine with
him later on in the same day at the Mausoleum Club to meet the Duke of Dulham. And
Mr. Furlong, realizing that a clergyman must be all things to all men and not avoid a man
merely because he is a duke, had accepted the invitation to lunch, and had promised to
come to dinner, even though it meant postponing the Willing Workers' Tango Class of St.
Asaph's until the following Friday.
Thus it had come about that Mr. Fyshe was seated at lunch, consuming a cutlet and a pint
of Moselle in the plain downright fashion of a man so democratic that he is practically a
revolutionary socialist, and doesn't mind saying so; and the young rector of St. Asaph's
was sitting opposite to him in a religious ecstasy over a salmi of duck.
"The Duke arrived this morning, did he not?" said Mr. Furlong.
"From New York," said Mr. Fyshe. "He is staying at the Grand Palaver. I sent a telegram
through one of our New York directors of the Traction, and his Grace has very kindly
promised to come over here to dine."
"Is he here for pleasure?" asked the rector.
"I understand he is--" Mr. Fyshe was going to say "about to invest a large part of his
fortune in American securities," but he thought better of it. Even with the clergy it is well
to be careful. So he substituted "is very much interested in studying American
conditions."
"Does he stay long?" asked Mr. Furlong.
Had Mr. Lucullus Fyshe replied quite truthfully, he would have said, "Not if I can get his
money out of him quickly," but he merely answered, "That I don't know."
"He will find much to interest him," went on the rector in a musing tone. "The position of
the Anglican Church in America should afford him an object of much consideration. I
understand," he added, feeling his way, "that his Grace is a man of deep piety."
"Very deep," said Mr. Fyshe.
"And of great philanthropy?"
"Very great."
"And I presume," said the rector, taking a devout sip of the unfinished soda, "that he is a
man of immense wealth?"
"I suppose so," answered Mr. Fyshe quite carelessly. "All these fellows are." (Mr. Fyshe
generally referred to the British aristocracy as "these fellows.") "Land you know feudal
estates; sheer robbery, I call it. How the working-class, the proletariat, stand for such
tyranny is more than I can see. Mark my words, Furlong, some day they'll rise and the

whole thing will come to a sudden end."
Mr. Fyshe was here launched upon his favourite topic; but he interrupted himself, just for
a moment, to speak to the waiter.
"What the devil do you mean," he said, "by serving asparagus half-cold?" "Very sorry,
sir," said the waiter, "shall I take it out?"
"Take it out? Of course take it out, and see that you don't serve me stuff of that sort again,
or I'll report you."
"Very sorry, sir," said the waiter.
Mr. Fyshe looked at the vanishing waiter with contempt upon his features. "These
pampered fellows are getting unbearable." he said.