False Gods Read Online Free PDF Page B

and don't want to have a wedding reception."
    Roger's expression was dangerously impassive as he advanced into the room. "For whom are the Pratts in mourning?"
    "Oh, I don't know. Some old cousin three or four times removed. I told Jane that we didn't care about a reception. That we'd give a party for the bride and groom after the honeymoon."
    "Just a minute, Kitty. One doesn't forgo a wedding reception for one's only daughter because of the death of a distant cousin. Even for a close relation, one would simply postpone the wedding for a month or so."
    "Oh, Roger, you know these old New Yorkers. They mourn for years for the remotest kin!"
    "Do they? I saw Charles in the office this morning, and he was certainly not wearing a black tie or even a mourning band. In fact, I particularly noticed his very red cravat." And then his features suddenly hardened. "They're not in mourning at all, are they, Kitty? Not even for a cousin twice removed?"
    "Well, maybe they just don't like wedding receptions!" Kitty exclaimed with finely affected exasperation. "
You
should be glad anyway. You hate the damn things and probably wouldn't even go to it. And as for me, the only thing I'd like about it is it would probably bust our Bore Insurance Society!"
    But Roger was inexorable. "The reason Charles doesn't want to give a reception is that he doesn't wish to introduce his friends and relations to me. Isn't that it?"
    "Oh, Roger, what if it is? What do we care? We don't have to marry
him,
do we?"
    "But I care very much. And I shall look forward to having a general clarification with Charles Pratt no later than tomorrow. It will be my pleasure to inform him that if he feels ashamed of this alliance,
I
feel degraded. I shall further inform him that he has been paid by his partners through the years, not for his legal aptitude or his roster of clients, both of which are, to say the least, exiguous, but for his constituting the formal façade of piety which all good Yankee enterprises require."
    "Oh, that's just fine!" Kitty rose and faced him with clenched fists. "What fun you're going to have! You'll smash poor Osgood's wedding and maybe even break up your law firm. You'll have all New York society shouting for your head. And best of all, you'll bring me down in the general wreck! That's what you've always wanted, isn't it? Well, go ahead and try! I dissociate myself from you. Osgood and I will make it alone."
    "I shall always support you, Kitty."
    "I don't want your Yankee money!" she almost shrieked.
    But this was too much for Lemuel, who now rose and glanced at his watch. "If you don't mind my interrupting this little scene, Roger, Kitty and I must be off to the Mortimers'. I believe we shall meet the Pratts there."
    "Tell Charles I shall come to his office in the morning" was all that his brother-in-law grimly replied.
5
    The two years following Roger's rupture with his firm, which resulted from the irate Pratt's demand that their partners choose between the two of them, he spent alone in Castledale. Kitty remained in the New York house, which he supposed she would be able to maintain for a few years on the half of his savings that he had turned over to her. After that he had little interest in what happened. He no longer had any earned income, and the remainder of his capital was destined for the endowment of his museum. It was not a great sum, at least by the standards of the new rich, but costs in Virginia were still low, and, his foundation once legally established, he could move into the old overseer's lodge with Ned. But for the time being he was occupying the big house, a moody hermit amid the splendors of his continued restorations.
    He saw almost nobody but his ever-sympathetic brother. The local gentry would have been glad enough to welcome him had he taken the trouble to ingratiate himself, but his aloofness was repelling, and in time the rumors of the bad reputation that he enjoyed even in a city as wicked as New York began to