The Cavendishes were of those who (to quote Macloud's words) "did
belong and, thank God, showed it." Henry Cavendish had married
Josephine Marquand in the days before there were any idle-rich in
Northumberland, and when the only leisure class were in jail. Now, when
the idea, that it was respectable not to work, was in the ascendency,
he still went to his office with unfailing regularity--and the fact
that the Tuscarora Trust Company paid sixty per cent. on its capital
stock, and sold in the market (when you could get it) at three thousand
dollars a share, was due to his ability and shrewd financiering as
president. It was because he refused to give up the active management
even temporarily, that they had built their summer home on the Heights,
where there was plenty of pure air, unmixed with the smoke of the mills
and trains, and with the Club near enough to give them its life and
gayety when they wished.
The original Cavendish and the original Marquand had come to
Northumberland, as officers, with Colonel Harmer and his detachment of
Regulars, at the close of the Revolution, had seen the possibilities of
the place, and, after a time, had resigned and settled down to
business. Having brought means with them from Philadelphia, they
quickly accumulated more, buying up vast tracts of Depreciation lands
and numerous In-lots and Out-lots in the original plan of the town.
These had never been sold, and hence it was, that, by the natural rise
in value from a straggling forest to a great and thriving city, the
Cavendish and the Marquand estates were enormously valuable. And hence,
also, the fact that Elaine Cavendish's grandparents, on both sides of
the house, were able to leave her a goodly fortune, absolutely, and yet
not disturb the natural descent of the bulk of their possessions.
Having had wealth for generations, the Cavendishes were as natural and
unaffected in their use of it, as the majority of their neighbors were
tawdry and flashy. They did things because they wanted to do them, not
because someone else did them. And they did not do things that others
did, and never thought what the others might think.
Because an iron-magnate, with only dollars for ballast, had fifteen
bath pools of Sienna marble in his flaunting, gaudy "chateau," and was
immediately aped by the rest of the rattle-brained, moved the
Cavendishes not at all. Because the same bounder gave a bathing-suit
party (with the ocean one hundred and fifty miles away), at which
prizes were bestowed on the man and woman who dared wear the least
clothes, while the others of the _nouveaux riches_ applauded and
marvelled at his audacity and originality, simply made the Cavendishes
stay away. Because another mushroom millionaire bought books for his
library by the foot, had gold mangers and silver stalls for his horses,
and adorned himself with diamonds like an Indian Rajah, were no
incentives to the Cavendishes to do likewise. They pursued the even
tenor of the well-bred way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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