The Unforgiving Offender

The grill-room of the Otranto Country Club was filled with the usual Saturday afternoon throng--the card players, the tennis players, the golf players, and those who chose to do nothing.

Around a large circular table in the centre of the room were gathered a crowd of the younger members, who had sufficient youth in them to ignore rheumatism and neuralgia and the other penalties bred by damp flannels and wet shoes. They had come in from court or course, and not stopping for a bath and a rub and fresh garments had plunked themselves down in vacant chairs, and joined in throwing once around for the drinks. In an hour or so they would get the belated hot shower and the change of clothes, and be none the worse for the delay. Happy youth!

A little way off, around another table similar in size, were those who dressed first and drank afterward. They were not so noisy--their spirits did not bubble forth. Other tables were scattered through the room for such as wished a quiet chat with a friend or two--or a game of cards; though there were not many who could play amid such confusion.

The ninth and eighteenth holes were directly in view from the south windows and a foursome was on the former green. A caddy came scurrying across toward the Club-house; a moment later one of the servants hurried out with a pitcher of water. He poured four glasses and offered them to the players. The last to be handed the tray was a tall, heavy, elderly man with a jowly face and coarse features.

"If you've all got as much as you want," he said, "I'll take the rest," and ignoring the glass he grasped the pitcher, and burying his beefy nose in its depth, drained it of the last drop.

"A-h!" he ended, wiping his expansive mouth with the back of his hand. "I have never got over my boyhood liking to drink out of the pitcher. It tastes different. Don't you think so?"

"Why not have a pitcher served at your table instead of a glass, Emerson?" one of the players asked.

"I'd like to but mother won't let me!" Emerson laughed. "She says it's not au fait, or savoir faire, or on dit, or something or other."

"It's not '_deshabille_,' you mean?" some one suggested.

"Damn if I know what it is, but you understand!" Emerson laughed again. "My wife is a climber and she lugs me up with her, but I'm a powerful drag at times, I fear--especially in manners. However, I tell her that I put up the money and she and Marcia can supply the rest what's necessary."

They went down to the locker rooms, nodding to three men in the grill-room window as they passed.

"Poor old Emerson," said Pendleton, looking after them. "He is all right at heart but such a blundering bounder. Among the men he can get along, but the women are a bit trying to him, I fancy."

"The Emersons must have climbed over the bars while I was away--how did they arrange it?" asked Sheldon Burgoyne, who had been abroad for the last three years.

"Easy. They have a very good looking daughter who went to Dobbs Ferry--she got to know the nice girls there and made good with them. Her mother has the social bee and is a schemer. Emerson has the requisite collateral and--attention to this part, please--he owned a bit of ground which the Country Club simply had to have, and he consented to sell it--if, and when, we would elect him to membership. Naturally, we elected."

"I see," mused Burgoyne, watching his cigarette smoke float lazily out the window.

"What do you see?" Devereux smiled.

"The usual thing. Father is impossible, but a good sort--mother is a pusher and, I dare say, fat--yes?--and daughter is not only a beauty but also something of a winner. Is she captured yet?"

"Not officially!" Pendleton answered; "but I understand that she is not without suitors," with a bit of a smile.

"With papa having the stuff! I reckon not, Malvolio," returned Burgoyne. "Give a woman money, and looks and some slight social position, and you can trust her for the rest--even if the boys are backward, which in this instance isn't likely."

"The Emersons are not the only 'new' ones the Club has admitted recently," Pendleton remarked.

"Not by several dozen, my friend!" exclaimed Devereux. "In ten years society will have passed from the control of those who are to those who weren't."

"Progress!" said Burgoyne. "The march of improvement for the bettering of the species. New blood--new blood!"

"Just so! Aristocracy of dollars is replacing aristocracy of birth," Pendleton commented. "It's the way of the world, since time began--money is the basis of our social structure, on it we stand, without it we fall."

"Doesn't culture count at all?" Devereux asked.

"Culture isn't considered in the first instance," Pendleton replied. "It's an asset but it isn't in the least essential. Riches with culture are desirable, but riches alone are sufficient. Culture is decreasing as riches increase."

"Just a trifle iconoclastic!" laughed Burgoyne. "You always were an idol breaker, Pendleton."

"Is this proof of it?" Pendleton asked, indicating those in the grill-room.

"Hum!--I reckon not," Burgoyne confessed, letting his eyes run over the crowd.

"Here are sixty or seventy of our best people, and how many belonged two generations ago--or even one generation? You and Devereux and I, and a half dozen others perhaps. The rest were nobodies. Yet to-day they outnumber us ten to one.--They have bought their way into the old clubs--their children have bought their way into the exclusive dancing classes, their wives have bought their way through the fashionable charities into the fashionable cotillons. Money--money--money! Everything is money and money is everything. The golden key unlocks all doors."

"The old order changeth, giving place"--began Burgoyne.

"Sentimentalize, that's right!" Pendleton exclaimed. "It's about all that's left to us to do--except to go along with the bunch, and keep our hands in our pockets to keep theirs out."

"Aren't the new ones even honest?" Burgoyne asked.

"They haven't shown it as yet."

"Do you think our ancestors were any different?"

"Possibly not--but they are dead and we are entirely respectable!" smiled Pendleton. "Moreover it required a century for them to pry open the doors--and culture was acquired while they were prying. Now--the doors are jimmied open while you wait."

"I thought you said they opened them with a golden key," Burgoyne remarked.

"They pry them open with the gold key, Sir Captious--is that plain to you?"

"It's the survival of the fittest," suggested Devereux.

"On the basis of the dollar mark--yes."

"Which we have agreed is the universal basis now-a-days," said Burgoyne. "Tell me, who is the young woman who has just driven up in the cart?"