The Alternative

A shrieking wind, thick with the sleety snow that knows no mercy nor feels remorse, beat vainly and with savage insolence against the staid windows in the lounging room of one of New York's most desirable clubs--one of those characteristic homes for college men who were up for membership on the day they were born, if one may speak so broadly of the virtue that links the early eighteenth-century graduate with his great-grandson of the class of 1908. Not to say, of course, that the eighteenth-century graduate was so carefully preserved from the biting snowstorm as the fellow of to-day, but that he got his learning in the ancient halls that now grind out his descendants by the hundred, one way or another. It is going much too far to assert that every member of this autocratic club had a colonial ancestor in college, but you'd think so if you didn't pin him down to an actual confession to the contrary. It is likely to be the way with college men who do not owe their degrees to certain mushroom institutions in the West, where electricity and mechanics are considered to be quite as necessary to a young man's equipment as the acquaintance, by tradition, with somebody's great-grandaddy, no matter how eminent he may have been in his primogenial day.

All of which is neither here nor there. Ancestors for the future are in the club this night, enjoying the luxury, the coziness, the warmth, and the present good cheer of a great and glorious achievement: they are inside of solid walls on this bitter night, eating or tippling, smoking or toasting, reading or chatting with small regard for the ancient gentlemen who gave their Alma Mater its name, but who, if suddenly come to life, would pass away again in a jiffy, not so much through the shock of opulence as at the sight of the wicked high-ball.

At one of the windows, overlooking a broad street, stood two elderly gentlemen, conversing in no mild tones about the blizzard. Straight-backed, dignified gentlemen, they. They kept their hands clasped behind their backs, smoked very good cigars instead of cigarets, and spoke not of the chorus that gamboled just around a certain corner, but of the blizzard that did the same thing--in a less exalted manner--around all corners.

A thin, arrogant figure crossed from the hallway doors, his watery green eyes sweeping the group of young men at the lower end of the room. Evidently the person for whom he was looking was not among them. As he was turning toward the two elderly gentlemen in the window, one of the joyous spirits of 1908 saw him, and called out:

"Hello, Mr. Van Pycke! Lookin' for Buzzy?"

The thin old gentleman paused. He lifted his nose-glasses and deliberately set them upon the bridge of his long, aristocratic,--and we must say it,--somewhat rose-tinted nose. Then his slim fingers dropped to the end of his neat gray mustache. A coolly impersonal stare sought out the speaker.

"Good evening," he said, in the most suave manner possible. No one would have suspected that he was unable to recall the name of the youth who put the question. "Yes, I rather expected to find Bosworth here. He said something about dining here."

"He's upstairs in Peter Palmer's room."

"Thank you. I sha'n't disturb him. Disagreeable night, gentlemen."

The back of his spike-tailed coat confronted the group an instant later; he was crossing the room, headed for the gray-heads in the window.

"Good evening, Billings. How are you, Knapp? A beastly night."

The three did not shake hands. They had passed that stage long ago. They did nothing that they didn't have to do.

"I was just telling Knapp that it reminds me of the blizzard in--"

"Stop right there, Billings," interrupted Mr. Van Pycke. "It reminds me of every blizzard that has happened within my recollection. They're all alike--theoretically. A lot of wind, snow, and talk about the poor. Sit down here and have your liqueurs with me."

"I'm glad I don't have to go in all this to-night," said little Mr. Billings, '59, unconsciously pressing his knees together as he sat down at the small table.

"You're getting old, Billings."

"So are you, Van Pycke. Demmit, I'm not more than two years older than you. What's more, you have a grown son."

"My dear fellow, Bosworth is only twenty-five. A man doesn't have to be a Methuselah to have a grown son. They grow up like weeds. And some of them amount to about as much as--ahem! Ahem! Please press that button for me, will you, Knapp? I don't see why the devil they always have the button on the other side of the table. No, no! I'll sign for them, old chap. Don't think of it! Here, boy, let me have the ticket. Mr. Knapp rang, but he did it to oblige me. Now, see here, Knapp, I don't like that sort of--"

"My dear Van Pycke, permit me! Billings is having his coffee with me. It's coming now. I insist on adding the cordial."

"Very well, if you insist. Napoleon brandy with a single drop of Curaçao. Mind you,--a single drop, waiter. Ever try that fine old brandy, Knapp?"

"I can't afford it," said Knapp, bluntly.

"It's the only kind that I can drink," was all that Van Pycke said, lifting his thin eyebrows ever so slightly.

"Yes, it's a rotten night," put in Mr. Billings with excellent haste.

Knapp's face had gone a trifle red.

Down at the other end of the room the "young bucks" were discussing the seared trio under the smileless portrait of a college founder. They spoke in rather subdued tones, with frequent glances toward the door at their left.

"Old Van Pycke is the darndest sponge in the club. He never buys a drink, and yet he's always drinking," said one young man.

"His nose shows that all right. I hate a pink nose."

"You'd think he owned the club, the way he treats it," said another.

"Tell me about him," said a new member--from the West. "He's the most elegant, the most fastidious gentleman I've ever seen. An old family?"

"Rather! The Van Pyckes are as old as Bowling Green. Some of 'em came over in the Ark--or was it the 'Mayflower'?"

"Buzzy came over in the 'Lusitania' last year," ventured one of them.

The self-appointed historian, a drawler with ancestors in Trinity churchyard, went on: "Buckets of blue blood in 'em. The old man there is the last of his type. His son, Buzzy,--Bosworth Van Pycke,--he's the chap who gave the much-talked of supper for Carmen the other night--he's really a different sort. Or would be, I should have said, if he had half a chance. Buzzy's a good fellow--a regular--"

"You bet he is!" exclaimed two or three approvingly.

"The old man's got queer ideas about Buzzy. He insists on his being a regular gentleman."

"Nothing queer in that," interrupted the Westerner.

"Except that he thinks a fellow can't be a gentleman unless he's a loafer. He brought Buzzy up with the understanding that it wasn't necessary for him to be anything but a Van Pycke. The Van Pycke name, and all that sort of rot. It wouldn't be so bad if the old man had anything to back it up with. He hasn't a sou markee. That's the situation. For the last twenty years he's lived in the clubs, owing everybody and always being a gentleman about it. He has a small interest in the business of Rubenstein, Rosenthal & Meyer,--logical but not lineal descendants of the Van Pyckes who were gentlemen in dread of a rainy day,--but he doesn't get much out of it. Five or six thousand a year, I'd say. When Buzzy's maternal grandfather died, he left something in trust for the boy. Fixed it in such a way that he isn't to have the principal until he's fifty. By that time the old man over there will have passed in his checks. Catch the point? It was done to keep the amiable son-in-law from getting his fingers on the pile and squandering it as he squandered two or three other paternal and grand-paternal fortunes. Buzzy has about ten thousand a year from the trust fund. I know that he pays some of his father's debts--not all of 'em, of course; just the embarrassing kind that he hears about from creditors who really want their money. In a way, the old man has spoiled Buzzy. He has always pounded it into the boy's head that it isn't necessary to work--in fact, it's vulgar. When Buzzy first came into the club, two years ago, he was insufferable. At college, every one liked him. He was himself when out from under the old man's influence. After he left college, he set himself up as Van Pycke, gentleman. The old man told him the name was worth five millions at least. All he had to do was to wait around a bit and he'd have no trouble in marrying that amount or more. Marriage is the best business in the world for a gentleman, he argues. I've heard him say so myself.

"Well, Buzzy's pretty much of a frivoler, but he isn't a cad. He'd like to do right, I'm sure. He didn't get started right, that's all. He goes about drinking tea and making love and spending all he has--like a gentleman. Just sleeps, eats, and frivols, that's all. He'll never amount to a hang. It's a shame, too. He's a darned good sort."

At the little table down the room Van Pycke, senior, was holding forth in his most suave, convincing manner.

"Gentlemen, I don't know what New York is coming to. There are not ten real gentlemen between the Battery and Central Park. Nothing but money grabbers. They don't know how to live. They eat like the devil and drink as though they lived in an aquarium; and they say they're New Yorkers."

Mr. Van Pycke's patrician nose was a shade redder than usual. Billings, paying no heed to his remarks, was trying to remember how Van Pycke looked before his nose was thoroughly pickled. It was a long way back, thought Mr. Billings, vaguely.