Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich | Page 7

"By Gad, if I had my way I'd fire the
whole lot of them: lock 'em out, put 'em on the street. That would teach 'em. Yes, Furlong,
you'll live to see it that the whole working-class will one day rise against the tyranny of
the upper classes, and society will be overwhelmed."
But if Mr. Fyshe had realized that at that moment, in the kitchen of the Mausoleum Club,
in those sacred precincts themselves, there was a walking delegate of the Waiters'
International Union leaning against a sideboard, with his bowler hat over one corner of
his eye, and talking to a little group of the Chinese philosophers, he would have known
that perhaps the social catastrophe was a little nearer than even he suspected.
"Are you inviting anyone else tonight?" asked Mr. Furlong.
"I should have liked to ask your father," said Mr. Fyshe, "but unfortunately he is out of
town."
What Mr. Fyshe really meant was, "I am extremely glad not to have to ask your father,
whom I would not introduce to the Duke on any account."
Indeed, Mr. Furlong, senior, the father of the rector of St. Asaph's. who was President of
the New Amalgamated Hymnal Corporation, and Director of the Hosanna Pipe and
Steam Organ, Limited, was entirely the wrong man for Mr. Fyshe's present purpose. In
fact, he was reputed to be as smart a man as ever sold a Bible. At this moment he was out
of town, busied in New York with the preparation of the plates of his new Hindu
Testament (copyright); but had he learned that a duke with several millions to invest was
about to visit the city, he would not have left it for the whole of Hindustan.
"I suppose you are asking Mr. Boulder," said the rector.
"No," answered Mr. Fyshe very decidedly, dismissing the name absolutely.
Indeed, there was even better reason not to introduce Mr. Boulder to the Duke. Mr. Fyshe
had made that sort of mistake once, and never intended to make it again. It was only a
year ago, on the occasion of the visit of young Viscount FitzThistle to the Mausoleum
Club, that Mr. Fyshe had introduced Mr. Boulder to the Viscount and had suffered
grievously thereby. For Mr. Boulder had no sooner met the Viscount than he invited him
up to his hunting-lodge in Wisconsin, and that was the last thing known of the investment
of the FitzThistle fortune.
This Mr. Boulder of whom Mr. Fyshe spoke might indeed have been seen at that moment
at a further table of the lunch room eating a solitary meal, an oldish man with a great
frame suggesting broken strength, with a white beard and with falling under-eyelids that
made him look as if he were just about to cry. His eyes were blue and far away, and his
still, mournful face and his great bent shoulders seemed to suggest all the power and
mystery of high finance.
Gloom indeed hung over him. For, when one heard him talk of listed stocks and

cumulative dividends, there was as deep a tone in his quiet voice as if he spoke of eternal
punishment and the wages of sin.
Under his great hands a chattering viscount, or a sturdy duke, or a popinjay Italian
marquis was as nothing.
Mr. Boulder's methods with titled visitors investing money in America were deep. He
never spoke to them of money, not a word. He merely talked of the great American
forest--he had been born sixty-five years back, in a lumber state--and, when he spoke of
primeval trees and the howl of the wolf at night among the pines, there was the stamp of
reality about it that held the visitor spellbound; and when he fell to talking of his
hunting-lodge far away in the Wisconsin timber, duke, earl, or baron that had ever
handled a double-barrelled express rifle listened and was lost.
"I have a little place," Mr. Boulder would say in his deep tones that seemed almost like a
sob, "a sort of shooting box, I think you'd call it, up in Wisconsin; just a plain place"--he
would add, almost crying--"made of logs."
"Oh, really," the visitor would interject, "made of logs. By Jove, how interesting!"
All titled people are fascinated at once with logs, and Mr. Boulder knew it--at least
subconsciously.
"Yes, logs," he would continue, still in deep sorrow; "just the plain cedar, not squared,
you know, the old original timber; I had them cut right out of the forest."
By this time the visitor's excitement was obvious. "And is there game there?" he would
ask.
"We have the timber-wolf," said Mr. Boulder, his voice half choking at the sadness of the
thing, "and of course the jack wolf and the lynx."
"And are they ferocious?"