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diff --git a/old/7spnd10.txt b/old/7spnd10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a6b268f --- /dev/null +++ b/old/7spnd10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14321 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spenders, by Harry Leon Wilson + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Spenders + A Tale of the Third Generation + +Author: Harry Leon Wilson + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9981] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on November 5, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPENDERS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Steve Flynn, Virginia Paque, Peter Klumper, +Tonya Allen, Thierry Alberto and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +[Illustration: "_THE FAIR AND SOMETIMES UNCERTAIN DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE +OF MILBREY_." (See page 182.)] + + + + +THE SPENDERS + +A TALE OF THE THIRD GENERATION + +BY + +HARRY LEON WILSON + + + +_Illustrated by_ O'NEILL LATHAM + +1902 + + + + +To L. L. J. + + + + +FOREWORD + +The wanderers of earth turned to her--outcast of the older lands-- +With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying + hands; +And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main: +"Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again! +Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow, +Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow. +Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun, +Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won," +For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddled + crowd, +And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud; +For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track, +And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the trafficking + pack. +Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound; +The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground +Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth +That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth! + +SHARLOT MABRIDTH HALL. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + +I. The Second Generation Is Removed + +II. How the First Generation Once Righted Itself + +III. Billy Brue Finds His Man + +IV. The West Against the East + +V. Over the Hills + +VI. A Meeting and a Clashing + +VII. The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked + +VIII. Up Skiplap Canon + +IX. Three Letters, Private and Confidential + +X. The Price of Averting a Scandal + +XI. How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose + +XII. Plans for the Journey East + +XIII. The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun + +XIV. Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information + +XV. Some Light With a Few Side-lights + +XVI. With the Barbaric Hosts + +XVII. The Patricians Entertain + +XVIII. The Course of True Love at a House Party + +XIX. An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe + +XX. Doctor Von Herslich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied +Phenomena + +XXI. The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire + +XXII. The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines + +XXIII. The Summer Campaign Is Planned + +XXIV. The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee + +XXV. Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House + +XXVI. A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage + +XXVII. A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes + +XXVIII. Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man + +XXIX. Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something + +XXX. Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions + +XXXI. Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers + +XXXII. Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting + +XXXIII. The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street + +XXXIV. How the Chinook Came to Wall Street + +XXXV. The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken + +XXXVI. The God in the Machine + +XXXVII. The Departure of Uncle Peter--And Some German Philosophy + +XXXVIII. Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring + +XXXIX. An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured + +XL. Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty + +XLI. The New Argonauts + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"The fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey" + +"'Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?'" + +"The spell was broken" + +"'Why, you'd be Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off +their crowns to you'" + +"'Remember that saying of your pa's, "it takes all kinds of fools to +make a world"'" + +"'Say it that way--" Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't +see you"'" + + + + +THE SPENDERS + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +The Second Generation is Removed + + +When Daniel J. Bines died of apoplexy in his private car at Kaslo +Junction no one knew just where to reach either his old father or his +young son with the news of his death. Somewhere up the eastern slope of +the Sierras the old man would be leading, as he had long chosen to lead +each summer, the lonely life of a prospector. The young man, two years +out of Harvard, and but recently back from an extended European tour, +was at some point on the North Atlantic coast, beginning the season's +pursuit of happiness as he listed. + +Only in a land so young that almost the present dwellers therein have +made it might we find individualities which so decisively failed to +blend. So little congruous was the family of Bines in root, branch, and +blossom, that it might, indeed, be taken to picture an epic of Western +life as the romancer would tell it. First of the line stands the figure +of Peter Bines, the pioneer, contemporary with the stirring days of +Fremont, of Kit Carson, of Harney, and Bridger; the fearless strivers +toward an ever-receding West, fascinating for its untried dangers as +for its fabled wealth,--the sturdy, grave men who fought and toiled and +hoped, and realised in varying measure, but who led in sober truth a +life such as the colours of no taleteller shall ever be high enough to +reproduce. + +Next came Daniel J. Bines, a type of the builder and organiser who +followed the trail blazed by the earlier pioneer; the genius who, +finding the magic realm opened, forthwith became its exploiter to its +vast renown and his own large profit, coining its wealth of minerals, +lumber, cattle, and grain, and adventurously building the railroads +that must always be had to drain a new land of savagery. + +Nor would there be wanting a third--a figure of this present day, +containing, in potency at least, the stanch qualities of his two rugged +forbears,--the venturesome spirit that set his restless grandsire to +roving westward, the power to group and coordinate, to "think three +moves ahead" which had made his father a man of affairs; and, further, +he had something modern of his own that neither of the others +possessed, and yet which came as the just fruit of the parent vine: a +disposition perhaps a bit less strenuous, turning back to the risen +rather than forward to the setting sun; a tendency to rest a little +from the toil and tumult; to cultivate some graces subtler than those +of adventure and commercialism; to make the most of what had been done +rather than strain to the doing of needless more; to live, in short, +like a philosopher and a gentleman who has more golden dollars a year +than either philosophers or gentlemen are wont to enjoy. + +And now the central figure had gone suddenly at the age of fifty-two, +after the way of certain men who are quick, ardent, and generous in +their living. From his luxurious private car, lying on the side-track +at the dreary little station, Toler, private secretary to the +millionaire, had telegraphed to the headquarters of one important +railway company the death of its president, and to various mining, +milling, and lumbering companies the death of their president, +vice-president, or managing director as the case might be. For the +widow and only daughter word of the calamity had gone to a mountain +resort not far from the family home at Montana City. + +There promised to be delay in reaching the other two. The son would +early read the news, Toler decided, unless perchance he were off at +sea, since the death of a figure like Bines would be told by every +daily newspaper in the country. He telegraphed, however, to the young +man's New York apartments and to a Newport address, on the chance of +finding him. + +Locating old Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never +lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being now the +10th of June, it could be known with certainty only that in one of four +States he was prowling through some wooded canon, toiling over a windy +pass, or scaling a mountain sheerly, in his ancient and best loved +sport of prospecting. Knowing his habits, the rashest guesser would not +have attempted to say more definitely where the old man might be. + +The most promising plan Toler could devise was to wire the +superintendent of the "One Girl" Mine at Skiplap. The elder Bines, he +knew, had passed through Skiplap about June 1st, and had left, perhaps, +some inkling of his proposed route; if it chanced, indeed, that he had +taken the trouble to propose one. + +Pangburn, the mine superintendent, on receipt of the news, despatched +five men on the search in as many different directions. The old man was +now seventy-four, and Pangburn had noted when last they met that he +appeared to be somewhat less agile and vigorous than he had been twenty +years before; from which it was fair to reason that he might be playing +his solitary game at a leisurely pace, and would have tramped no great +distance in the ten days he had been gone. The searchers, therefore, +were directed to beat up the near-by country. To Billy Brue was +allotted the easiest as being the most probable route. He was to follow +up Paddle Creek to Four Forks, thence over the Bitter Root trail to +Eden, on to Oro Fino, and up over Little Pass to Hellandgone. He was to +proceed slowly, to be alert for signs along the way, and to make +inquiries of all he met. + +"You're likely to get track of Uncle Peter," said Pangburn, "over along +the west side of Horseback Ridge, just beyond Eden. When he pulled out +he was talking about some likely float-rock he'd picked up over that +way last summer. You'd ought to make that by to-morrow, seeing you've +got a good horse and the trail's been mended this spring. Now you +spread yourself out, Billy, and when you get on to the Ridge make a +special look all around there." + +Besides these directions and the telegram from Toler, Billy Brue took +with him a copy of the Skiplap _Weekly Ledge_, damp from the press and +containing the death notice of Daniel J. Bines, a notice sent out by +the News Association, which Billy Brue read with interest as he started +up the trail. The item concluded thus: + +"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her +husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is +prostrated with grief at the shock of his sudden death." + +Billy Brue mastered this piece of intelligence after six readings, but +he refrained from comment, beyond thanking God, in thought, that he +could mind his own business under excessive provocation to do +otherwise. He considered it no meddling, however, to remember that Mrs. +Daniel J. Bines, widow of his late employer, could appear neither young +nor beautiful to the most sanguine of newsgatherers; nor to remember +that he happened to know she had not accompanied her husband on his +last trip of inspection over the Kaslo Division of the Sierra Northern +Railway. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +How the First Generation Once Righted Itself + + +By some philosophers unhappiness is believed--rather than coming from +deprivation or infliction--to result from the individual's failure to +select from a number of possible occupations one that would afford him +entire satisfaction with life and himself. To this perverse blindness +they attribute the dissatisfaction with great wealth traditional of men +who have it. The fault, they contend, is not with wealth inherently. +The most they will admit against money is that the possession of much +of it tends to destroy that judicial calm necessary to a wise choice of +recreations; to incline the possessor, perhaps, toward those that are +unsalutary. + +Concerning the old man that Billy Brue now sought with his news of +death, a philosopher of this school would unhesitatingly declare that +he had sounded the last note of human wisdom. Far up in some mountain +solitude old Peter Bines, multimillionaire, with a lone pack-mule to +bear his meagre outfit, picked up float-rock, tapped and scanned +ledges, and chipped at boulders with the same ardour that had fired him +in his penniless youth. + +Back in 1850, a young man of twenty-four, he had joined the rush to +California, working his passage as deck-hand on a vessel that doubled +the Horn. Landing without capital at San Francisco, the little seaport +settlement among the shifting yellow sand-dunes, he had worked six +weeks along the docks as roustabout for money to take him back into the +hills whence came the big fortunes and the bigger tales of fortunes. +For six years he worked over the gravelly benches of the California +creeks for vagrant particles of gold. Then, in the late fifties, he +joined a mad stampede to the Frazer River gold-fields in British +Columbia, still wild over its first knowledge of silver sulphurets, he +was drawn back by the wonder-tales of the Comstock lode. + +Joining the bedraggled caravan over the Carson trail, he continued his +course of bitter hardship in the Washoe Valley. From a patch of barren +sun-baked rock and earth, three miles long and a third of a mile wide, +high up on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, he beheld more millions +taken out than the wildest enthusiast had ever before ventured to dream +of. But Peter Bines was a luckless unit of the majority that had +perforce to live on the hope produced by others' findings. The time for +his strike had not come. + +For ten years more, half-clad in flannel shirt and overalls, he lived +in flimsy tents, tattered canvas houses, and sometimes holes in the +ground. One abode of luxury, long cherished in memory, was a +ten-by-twelve redwood shanty on Feather River. It not only boasted a +window, but there was a round hole in the "shake" roof, fastidiously +cut to fit a stove-pipe. That he never possessed a stove-pipe had made +this feature of the architecture not less sumptuous and engaging. He +lived chiefly on salt pork and beans, cooked over smoky camp-fires. + +Through it all he was the determined, eager, confident prospector, +never for an instant prey to even the suggestion of a doubt that he +would not shortly be rich. Whether he washed the golden specks from the +sand of a sage-brush plain, or sought the mother-ledge of some +wandering golden child, or dug with his pick to follow a promising +surface lead, he knew it to be only the matter of time when his day +should dawn. He was of the make that wears unbending hope as its +birthright. + +Some day the inexhaustible placer would be found; or, on a mountainside +where the porphyry was stained, he would carelessly chip off a fragment +of rock, turn it up to the sun, and behold it rich in ruby silver; or, +some day, the vein instead of pinching out would widen; there would be +pay ore almost from the grass-roots--rich, yellow, free-milling gold, +so that he could put up a little arastra, beat out enough in a week to +buy a small stamp-mill, and then, in six months--ten years more of this +fruitless but nourishing certainty were his,--ten years of the awful +solitudes, shared sometimes by his hardy and equally confident wife, +and, at the last, by his boy, who had become old enough to endure with +his father the snow and ice of the mountain tops and the withering heat +of the alkali wastes. + +Footsore, hungry most of the time, alternately burned and frozen, he +lived the life cheerfully and tirelessly, with an enthusiasm that never +faltered. + +When his day came it brought no surprise, so freshly certain had he +kept of its coming through the twenty years of search. + +At his feet, one July morning in 1870, he noticed a piece of +dark-stained rock in a mass of driftstones. So small was it that to +have gone a few feet to either side would have been to miss it. He +picked it up and examined it leisurely. It was rich in silver. + +Somewhere, then, between him and the mountain top was the parent stock +from which this precious fragment had been broken. The sun beat hotly +upon him as it had on other days through all the hard years when +certainty, after all, was nothing more than a temperamental faith. All +day he climbed and searched methodically, stopping at noon to eat with +an appetite unaffected by his prospect. + +At sunset he would have stopped for the day, camping on the spot. He +looked above to estimate the ground he could cover on the morrow. +Almost in front of him, a few yards up the mountainside, he looked +squarely at the mother of his float: a huge boulder of projecting +silicate. It was there. + +During the following week he ascertained the dimensions of his vein of +silver ore, and located two claims. He named them "The Stars and +Stripes" and "The American Boy," paying thereby what he considered +tributes, equally deserved, to his native land and to his only son, +Daniel, in whom were centred his fondest hopes. + +A year of European travel had followed for the family, a year of +spending the new money lavishly for strange, long-dreamed-of +luxuries--a year in which the money was joyously proved to be real. +Then came a year of tentative residence in the East. That year was less +satisfactory. The novelty of being sufficiently fed, clad, and +sheltered was losing its fine edge. + +Penniless and constrained to a life of privation, Peter Bines had been +strangely happy. Rich and of consequence in a community where the ways +were all of pleasantness and peace, Peter Bines became restless, +discontented, and, at last, unmistakably miserable. + +"It can't be because I'm rich," he argued; "it's a sure thing my money +can't keep me from doin' jest what I want to do." + +Then a suspicion pricked him; for he had, in his years of solitude, +formed the habit of considering, in a leisurely and hospitable manner, +even the reverse sides of propositions that are commonly accepted by +men without question. + +"The money _can't_ prevent me from doin' what I jest want +to--certain--but, maybe, _don't_ it? If I didn't have it I'd fur sure +be back in the hills and happy, and so would Evalina, that ain't had +hardly what you could call a good day since we made the strike." + +On this line of reasoning it took Peter Bines no long time to conclude +that he ought now to enjoy as a luxury what he had once been +constrained to as a necessity. + +"Even when I was poor and had to hit the trail I jest loved them hills, +so why ain't it crafty to pike back to 'em now when I don't have to?" + +His triumphant finale was: + +"When you come to think about it, a rich man ain't really got any more +excuse fur bein' mis'able than a poor man has!" + +Back to the big hills that called him had he gone; away from the cities +where people lived "too close together and too far apart;" back to the +green, rough earth where the air was free and quick and a man could see +a hundred miles, and the people lived far enough apart to be +neighbourly. + +There content had blessed him again; content not slothful but inciting; +a content that embraced his own beloved West, fashioning first in fancy +and then by deed, its own proud future. He had never ceased to plan and +stimulate its growth. He not only became one with its manifold +interests, but proudly dedicated the young Daniel to its further +making. He became an ardent and bigoted Westerner, with a scorn for the +East so profound that no Easterner's scorn for the West hath ever by +any chance equalled it. + +Prospecting with the simple outfit of old became his relaxation, his +sport, and, as he aged, his hobby. It was said that he had exalted +prospecting to the dignity of an art, and no longer hunted gold as a +pot-hunter. He was even reputed to have valuable deposits "covered," +and certain it is that after Creede made his rich find on Mammoth +Mountain in 1890, Peter Bines met him in Denver and gave him +particulars about the vein which as yet Creede had divulged to no one. +Questioned later concerning this, Peter Bines evaded answering +directly, but suggested that a man who already had plenty of money +might have done wisely to cover up the find and be still about it; that +Nat Creede himself proved as much by going crazy over his wealth and +blowing out his brains. + +To a tamely prosperous Easterner who, some years after his return to +the West, made the conventional remark, "And isn't it amazing that you +were happy through those hard years of toil when you were so poor?" +Peter Bines had replied, to his questioner's hopeless bewilderment: +"No. But it _is_ surprisin' that I kept happy after I got rich--after I +got what I wanted. + +"I reckon you'll find," he added, by way of explaining, "that the +proportion of happy rich to unhappy rich is a mighty sight smaller than +the proportion of happy poor to the unhappy poor. I'm one of the former +minority, all right,--but, by cripes! it's because I know how to be +rich and still enjoy all the little comforts of poverty!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +Billy Brue Finds His Man + + +Each spring the old man grew restive and raw like an unbroken colt. And +when the distant mountain peaks began to swim in their summer haze, and +the little rushing rivers sang to him, pleading that he come once more +to follow them up, he became uncontrollable. Every year at this time he +alleged, with a show of irritation, that his health was being sapped by +the pernicious indulgence of sleeping on a bed inside a house. He +alleged, further, that stocks and bonds were but shadows of wealth, +that the old mines might any day become exhausted, and that security +for the future lay only in having one member of the family, at least, +looking up new pay-rock against the ever possible time of adversity. + +"They ain't got to makin' calendars yet with the rainy day marked on +'em," he would say. "A'most any one of them innocent lookin' Mondays or +Tuesdays or Wednesdays is liable to be _it_ when you get right up on to +it. I'll have to start my old bones out again, I see that. Things are +beginnin' to green up a'ready." When he did go it was always understood +to be positively for not more than two weeks. A list of his reasons for +extending the time each year to three or four months would constitute +the ideal monograph on human duplicity. When hard-pushed on his return, +he had once or twice been even brazen enough to assert that he had lost +his way in the mountain fastnesses. But, for all his protestations, no +one when he left in June expected to see him again before September at +the earliest. In these solitary tours he was busy and happy, working +and playing. "Work," he would say, "is something you want to get done; +play is something you jest like to be doin'. Snoopin' up these gulches +is both of 'em to me." + +And so he loitered through the mountains, resting here, climbing there, +making always a shrewd, close reading of the rocks. + +It was thus Billy Brue found him at the end of his second day's search. +A little off the trail, at the entrance to a pocket of the canon, he +towered erect to peer down when he heard the noise of the messenger's +ascent. Standing beside a boulder of grey granite, before a background +of the gnarled dwarf-cedars, his hat off, his blue shirt open at the +neck, his bare forearms brown, hairy, and muscular, a hammer in his +right hand, his left resting lightly on his hip, he might have been the +Titan that had forged the boulder at his side, pausing now for breath +before another mighty task. Well over six feet tall, still straight as +any of the pines before him, his head and broad shoulders in the easy +poise of power, there was about him from a little distance no sign of +age. His lines were gracefully full, his bearing had still the +alertness of youth. One must have come as near as Billy Brue now came +to detect the marks of time in his face. Not of age--merely of time; +for here was no senility, no quavering or fretful lines. The grey eyes +shone bright and clear from far under the heavy, unbroken line of brow, +and the mouth was still straight and firmly held, a mouth under sure +control from corner to corner. A little had the years brought out the +rugged squareness of the chin and the deadly set of the jaws; a little +had they pressed in the cheeks to throw the high bones into broad +relief. But these were the utmost of their devastations. Otherwise +Peter Bines showed his seventy-four years only by the marks of a +well-ordered maturity. His eyes, it is true, had that look of _knowing_ +which to the young seems always to betoken the futility of, and to warn +against the folly of, struggle against what must be; yet they were kind +eyes, and humourous, with many of the small lines of laughter at their +corners. Reading the eyes and mouth together one perceived gentleness +and sternness to be well matched, working to any given end in amiable +and effective compromise. "Uncle Peter" he had long been called by the +public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by +the same term, finding him too young to meet their ideal of a +grandfather. Billy Brue, riding up the trail, halted, nodded, and was +silent. The old man returned his salutation as briefly. These things by +men who stay much alone come to be managed with verbal economy. They +would talk presently, but greetings were awkward. + +Billy Brue took one foot from its stirrup and turned in his saddle, +pulling the leg up to a restful position. Then he spat, musingly, and +looked back down the canon aimlessly, throwing his eyes from side to +side where the grey granite ledges showed through the tall spruce and +pine trees. + +But the old man knew he had been sent for. + +"Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?" + +Billy Brue squirmed in the saddle, spat again, as with sudden resolve, +and said: + +"Why,--uh--Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead." + +The old man repeated the words, dazedly. + +"Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead;--why, who else is dead, too?" + +Billy Brue's emphasis, cunningly contrived by him to avoid giving +prominence to the word "dead," had suggested this inquiry in the first +moment of stupefaction. + +"Nobody else dead--jest Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead." + +"Jest Dan'l J.--my boy--my boy Dan'l dead!" + +His mighty shape was stricken with a curious rigidity, erected there as +if it were a part of the mountain, flung up of old from the earth's +inner tragedy, confounded, desolate, ancient. + +[Illustration: "'_WELL, BILLY BRUE, WHAT'S DOIN_'?'"] + +Billy Brue turned from the stony interrogation of his eyes and took a +few steps away, waiting. A little wind sprang up among the higher +trees, the moments passed, and still the great figure stood transfixed +in its curious silence. The leathers creaked as the horse turned. The +messenger, with an air of surveying the canon, stole an anxious glance +at the old face. The sorrowful old eyes were fixed on things that were +not; they looked vaguely as if in search. + +"Dan'l!" he said. + +It was not a cry; there was nothing plaintive in it. It was only the +old man calling his son: David calling upon Absalom. Then there was a +change. He came sternly forward. + +"Who killed my boy?" + +"Nobody, Uncle Peter; 'twas a stroke. He was goin' over the line and +they'd laid out at Kaslo fer a day so's Dan'l J. could see about a spur +the 'Lucky Cuss' people wanted--and maybe it was the climbin' brought +it on." + +The old man looked his years. As he came nearer Billy Brue saw tears +tremble in his eyes and roll unnoted down his cheeks. Yet his voice was +unbroken and he was, indeed, unconscious of the tears. + +"I was afraid of that. He lived too high. He et too much and he drank +too much and was too soft--was Dan'l.--too soft--" + +The old voice trembled a bit and he stopped to look aside into the +little pocket he had been exploring. Billy Brue looked back down the +canon, where the swift stream brawled itself into white foam far below. + +"He wouldn't use his legs; I prodded him about it constant--" + +He stopped again to brace himself against the shock. Billy Brue still +looked away. + +"I told him high altitudes and high livin' would do any man--" Again he +was silent. + +"But all he'd ever say was that times had changed since my day, and I +wasn't to mind him." He had himself better in hand now. + +"Why, I nursed that boy when he was a dear, funny little red baby with +big round eyes rollin' around to take notice; he took notice awful +quick--fur a baby. Oh, my! Oh, dear! Dan'l!" + +Again he stopped. + +"And it don't seem more'n yesterday that I was a-teachin' him to throw +the diamond hitch; he could throw the diamond hitch with his eyes shut +--I reckon by the time he was nine or ten. He had his faults, but they +didn't hurt him none; Dan'l J. was a man, now--" He halted once more. + +"The dead millionaire," began Billy Brue, reading from the obituary in +the Skiplap _Weekly Ledge_, "was in his fifty-second year. Genial, +generous to a fault, quick to resent a wrong, but unfailing in his +loyalty to a friend, a man of large ideas, with a genius for large +operations, he was the type of indefatigable enterprise that has +builded this Western empire in a wilderness and given rich sustenance +and luxurious homes to millions of prosperous, happy American citizens. +Peace to his ashes! And a safe trip to his immortal soul over the +one-way trail!" + +"Yes, yes--it's Dan'l J. fur sure--they got my boy Dan'l that time. Is +that all it says, Billy? Any one with him?" + +"Why, this here despatch is signed by young Toler--that's his +confidential man." + +"Nobody else?" + +The old man was peering at him sharply from under the grey protruding +brows. + +"Well, if you must know, Uncle Peter, this is what the notice says that +come by wire to the _Ledge_ office," and he read doggedly: + +"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her +husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is +prostrated by the shock of his sudden death." + +The old man became for the first time conscious of the tears in his +eyes, and, pulling down one of the blue woollen shirt sleeves, wiped +his wet cheeks. The slow, painful blush of age crept up across the iron +strength of his face, and passed. He looked away as he spoke. + +"I knew it; I knew that. My Dan'l was like all that Frisco bunch. They +get tangled with women sooner or later. I taxed Dan'l with it. I +spleened against it and let him know it. But he was a man and his own +master--if you can rightly call a man his own master that does them +things. Do you know what-fur woman this one was, Billy?" + +"Well, last time Dan'l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on +the car--kind of a coppery-lookin' blonde. Allie Ash, the brakeman on +No. 4, he tells me she used to be in Spokane, and now she'd got her +hooks on to some minin' property up in the Coeur d'Alene. Course, this +mightn't be the one." + +The old man had ceased to listen. He was aroused to the need for +action. + +"Get movin', Billy! We can get down to Eden to-night; we'll have the +moon fur two hours on the trail soon's the sun's gone. I can get 'em to +drive me over to Skiplap first thing to-morrow, and I can have 'em make +me up a train there fur Montana City. Was he--" + +"Dan'l J. has been took home--the noozepaper says." + +They turned back down the trail, the old man astride Billy Brue's +horse, followed by his pack-mule and preceded by Billy. + +Already, such was his buoyance and habit of quick recovery and +readjustment under reverses, his thoughts were turning to his grandson. +Daniel's boy--there was the grandson of his grandfather--the son of his +father--fresh from college, and the instructions of European travel, +knowing many things his father had not known, ready to take up the work +of his father, and capable, perhaps, of giving it a better finish. His +beloved West had lost one of its valued builders, but another should +take his place. His boy should come to him and finish the tasks of his +father; and, in the years to come, make other mighty tasks of +empire-building for himself and the children of his children. + +It did not occur to him that he and the boy might be as far apart in +sympathies and aims as at that moment they were in circumstance. For, +while the old man in the garb of a penniless prospector, toiled down +the steep mountain trail on a cheap horse, his grandson was reading the +first news of his father's death in one of the luxurious staterooms of +a large steam yacht that had just let down her anchor in Newport +Harbour. And each--but for the death--had been where most he wished to +be--one with his coarse fare and out-of-doors life, roughened and +seamed by the winds and browned by the sun to mahogany tints; aged but +playing with boyish zest at his primitive sport; the other, a +strong-limbed, well-marrowed, full-breathing youth of twenty-five, with +appetites all alert and sharpened, pink and pampered, loving luxury, +and prizing above all things else the atmosphere of wealth and its +refinements. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +The West Against the East + + +Two months later a sectional war was raging in the Bines home at +Montana City. The West and the East were met in conflict,--the old and +the new, the stale and the fresh. And, if the bitterness was dissembled +by the combatants, not less keenly was it felt, nor less determined was +either faction to be relentless. + +A glance about the "sitting-room" in which the opposing forces were +lined up, and into the parlour through the opened folding-doors, may +help us to a better understanding of the issue involved. Both rooms +were large and furnished in a style that had been supremely luxurious +in 1878. The house, built in that year, of Oregon pine, had been quite +the most pretentious piece of architecture in that section of the West. +It had been erected in the first days of Montana City as a convincing +testimonial from the owner to his faith in the town's future. The +plush-upholstered sofas and chairs, with their backs and legs of carved +black walnut, had come direct from New York. For pictures there were +early art-chromos, among them the once-prized companion pieces, "Wide +Awake" and "Fast Asleep." Lithography was represented by "The +Fisherman's Pride" and "The Soldier's Dream of Home." In the +handicrafts there were a photographic reproduction of the Lord's +Prayer, illustrated originally by a penman with uncommon genius for +scroll-work; a group of water-lilies in wax, floating on a mirror-lake +and protected by a glass globe; a full-rigged schooner, built cunningly +inside a bottle by a matricide serving a life-sentence in the +penitentiary at San Quinten; and a mechanical canarybird in a gilded +cage, acquired at the Philadelphia Centennial,--a bird that had +carolled its death--lay in the early winter of 1877 when it was wound +up too hard and its little insides snapped. In the parlour a few +ornamental books were grouped with rare precision on the centre-table +with its oval top of white marble. On the walls of the "sitting-room" +were a steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln striking the shackles from a +kneeling slave, and a framed cardboard rebus worked in red zephyr, the +reading of which was "No Cross, No Crown." + +Thus far nothing helpful has been found. + +Let us examine, then, the what-not in the "sitting-room" and the choice +Empire cabinet that faces it from the opposite wall of the parlour. + +The what-not as an American institution is obsolete. Indeed, it has +been rather long since writers referred to it even in terms of +opprobrious sarcasm. The what-not, once the cherished shrine of the +American home, sheltered the smaller household gods for which no other +resting-place could be found. The Empire cabinet, with its rounding +front of glass, its painted Watteau scenes, and its mirrored back, has +come to supplant the humbler creation in the fulfilment of all its +tender or mysterious offices. + +Here, perchance, may be found a clue in symbol to the family strife. + +The Bines what-not in the sitting-room was grimly orthodox in its +equipment. Here was an ancient box covered with shell-work, with a wavy +little mirror in its back; a tender motto worked with the hair of the +dead; a "Rock of Ages" in a glass case, with a garland of pink chenille +around the base; two dried pine cones brightly varnished; an old +daguerreotype in an ornamental case of hard rubber; a small old album; +two small China vases of the kind that came always in pairs, standing +on mats of crocheted worsted; three sea-shells; and the cup and saucer +that belonged to grandma, which no one must touch because they'd been +broken and were held together but weakly, owing to the imperfections of +home-made cement. + +The new cabinet, haughty in its varnished elegance, with its Watteau +dames and courtiers, and perhaps the knowledge that it enjoys +widespread approval among the elect,--this is a different matter. In +every American home that is a home, to-day, it demands attention. The +visitor, after eyeing it with cautious side-glances, goes jauntily up +to it, affecting to have been stirred by the mere impulse of elegant +idleness. Under the affectedly careless scrutiny of the hostess he +falls dramatically into an attitude of awed entrancement. Reverently he +gazes upon the priceless bibelots within: the mother-of-pearl fan, half +open; the tiny cup and saucer of Sevres on their brass easel; the +miniature Cupid and Psyche in marble; the Japanese wrestlers carved in +ivory; the ballet-dancer in bisque; the coral necklace; the souvenir +spoon from the Paris Exposition; the jade bracelet; and the silver +snuff-box that grandfather carried to the day of his death. If the +gazing visitor be a person of abandoned character he makes humourous +pretence that the householder has done wisely to turn a key upon these +treasures, against the ravishings of the overwhelmed and frenzied +connoisseur. He wears the look of one who is gnawed with envy, and he +heaves the sigh of despair. + +But when he notes presently that he has ceased to be observed he sneaks +cheerfully to another part of the room. + +The what-not is obsolete. The Empire cabinet is regnant. Yet, though +one is the lineal descendant of the other--its sophisticated +grandchild--they are hostile and irreconcilable. + +Twenty years hence the cabinet will be proscribed and its contents +catalogued in those same terms of disparagement that the what-not +became long since too dead to incur. Both will then have attained the +state of honourable extinction now enjoyed by the dodo. + +The what-not had curiously survived in the Bines home--survived unto +the coming of the princely cabinet--survived to give battle if it +might. + +Here, perhaps, may be found the symbolic clue to the strife's cause. + +The sole non-combatant was Mrs. Bines, the widow. A neutral was this +good woman, and a well-wisher to each faction. + +"I tell you it's all the same to me," she declared, "Montana City or +Fifth Avenue in New York. I guess I can do well enough in either place +so long as the rest of you are satisfied." + +It had been all the same to Mrs. Bines for as many years as a woman of +fifty can remember. It was the lot of wives in her day and environment +early to learn the supreme wisdom of abolishing preferences. Riches and +poverty, ease and hardship, mountain and plain, town and wilderness, +they followed in no ascertainable sequence, and a superiority of +indifference to each was the only protection against hurts from the +unexpected. + +This trained neutrality of Mrs. Bines served her finely now. She had no +leading to ally herself against her children in their wish to go East, +nor against Uncle Peter Bines in his stubborn effort to keep them West. +She folded her hands to wait on the others. + +And the battle raged. + +The old man, sole defender of the virtuous and stalwart West against an +East that he alleged to be effete and depraved, had now resorted to +sarcasm,--a thing that Mr. Carlyle thought was as good as the language +of the devil. + +"And here, now, how about this dog-luncheon?" he continued, glancing at +a New York newspaper clutched accusingly in his hand. "It was give, I +see, by one of your Newport cronies. Now, that's healthy doin's fur a +two-fisted Christian, ain't it? I want to know. Shappyronging a select +company of lady and gentlemen dogs from soup to coffee; pressing a +little more of the dog-biscuit on this one, and seein' that the other +don't misplay its finger-bowl no way. How I would love to read of a +Bines standin' up, all in purty velvet pants, most likely, to receive +at one of them bow-wow functions;--functions, I believe, is the name of +it?" he ended in polite inquiry. + +"There, there, Uncle Peter!" the young man broke in, soothingly; "you +mustn't take those Sunday newspapers as gospel truth; those stories are +printed for just such rampant old tenderfoots as you are; and even if +there is one foolish freak, he doesn't represent all society in the +better sense of the term." + +"Yes, and _you_!" Uncle Peter broke out again, reminded of another +grievance. "You know well enough your true name is Peter--Pete and +Petie when you was a baby and Peter when you left for college. And +you're ashamed of what you've done, too, for you tried to hide them +callin'-cards from me the other day, only you wa'n't quick enough. +Bring 'em out! I'm bound your mother and Pish shall see 'em. Out with +'em!" + +The young man, not without embarrassment, drew forth a Russia leather +card-case which the old man took from him as one having authority. + +"Here you are, Marthy Bines!" he exclaimed, handing her a card; "here +you are! read it! Mr. P. Percival Bines.' _Now_ don't you feel proud of +havin' stuck out for Percival when you see it in cold print? You know +mighty well his pa and me agreed to Percival only fur a middle name, +jest to please you--and he wa'n't to be called by it;--only jest Peter +or 'Peter P.' at most; and now look at the way he's gone and garbled +his good name." + +Mr. P. Percival Bines blushed furiously here, but rejoined, +nevertheless, with quiet dignity, that a man's name was something about +which he should have the ruling voice, especially where it was possible +for him to rectify or conceal the unhappy choice of his parents. + +"And while we're on names," he continued, "do try to remember in case +you ever get among people, that Sis's name is Psyche and not Pish." + +The blond and complacent Miss Bines here moved uneasily in her patent +blue plush rocker and spoke for the first time, with a grateful glance +at her brother. + +"Yes, Uncle Peter, for mercy's sake, _do_ try! Don't make us a +laughing-stock!" "But your name is Pish. A person's name is what their +folks name 'em, ain't it? Your ma comes acrost a name in a book that +she likes the looks of, and she takes it to spell Pish, and she ups and +names you Pish, and we all calls you Pish and Pishy, and then when you +toddle off to public school and let 'em know how you spell it they tell +you it's something else--an outlandish name if spellin' means anything. +If it comes to that you ought to change the spellin' instead of the +name that your poor pa loved." + +Yet the old man had come to know that he was fighting a lost +fight,--lost before it had ever begun. + +"It will be a good chance," ventured Mrs. Bines, timidly, "for Pishy--I +mean Sike--Sicky--to meet the right sort of people." + +"Yes, I should _say_--and the wrong sort. The ingagin' host of them +lady and gentlemen dogs, fur instance." + +"But Uncle Peter," broke in the young man, "you shouldn't expect a girl +of Psyche's beauty and fortune to vegetate in Montana City all her +life. Why, any sort of brilliant marriage is possible to her if she +goes among the right people. Don't you want the family to amount to +something socially? Is our money to do us no good? And do you think I'm +going to stay here and be a moss-back and raise chin whiskers and work +myself to death the way my father did?" + +"No, no," replied the old man, with a glance at the mother; "not _jest_ +the way your pa did; you might do some different and some better; but +all the same, you won't do any better'n he did any way you'll learn to +live in New York. Unless you was to go broke there," he added, +thoughtfully; "in that case you got the stuff in you and it'd come out; +but you got too much money to go broke." + +"And you'll see that I lead a decent enough life. Times have changed +since my father was a young man." + +"Yes; that's what your pa told me,--times had changed since I was a +young man; but I could 'a' done him good if he'd 'a' listened." + +"Well, we'll try it. The tide is setting that way from all over the +country. Here, listen to this editorial in the _Sun_." And he read from +his own paper: + +"A GOOD PLACE TO MOVE TO. + +"One of the most interesting evidences of the growth of New York is the +news that Mr. Anson Ledrick of the Consolidated Copper Company has +purchased an extensive building site on Riverside Drive and will +presently improve it with a costly residence. Mr. Ledrick's decision to +move his household effects to Manhattan Island is in accordance with a +very marked tendency of successful Americans. + +"There are those who are fond of depreciating New York; of assailing it +with all sorts of cheap and sensational vituperation; of picturing it +as the one great canker spot of the Western hemisphere, as +irretrievably sunk in wickedness and shame. The fact remains, however, +that the city, as never before, is the great national centre of wealth, +culture, and distinction of every kind, and that here the citizen, +successful in art, literature, or practical achievement, instinctively +seeks his abiding-place. + +"The restlessness of the average American millionaire while he remains +outside the city limits is frequently remarked upon. And even the +mighty overlords of Chicago, falling in with the prevailing fashion, +have forsaken the shores of the great inland sea and pitched their +tents with us; not to speak of the copper kings of Montana. Why is it +that these interesting men, after acquiring fortune and fame elsewhere, +are not content to remain upon the scene of their early triumphs? Why +is it that they immediately pack their carpet-bags, take the first +through train to our gates, and startle the investing public by the +manner in which they bull the price of New York building lots?" + +The old man listened absently. + +"And probably some day I'll read of you in that same centre of culture +and distinction as P. Percival Bines, a young man of obscure fam'ly, +that rose by his own efforts to be the dashin' young cotillion leader +and the well-known club-man, and that his pink teas fur dogs is barked +about by every fashionable canine on the island." + +The young man continued to read: "These men are not vain fools; they +are shrewd, successful men of the world. They have surveyed New York +City from a distance and have discovered that, in spite of Tammany and +in spite of yellow journals, New York is a town of unequalled +attractiveness. And so they come; and their coming shows us what we +are. Not only millionaires; but also painters and novelists and men and +women of varied distinction. The city palpitates with life and ambition +and hope and promise; it attracts the great and the successful, and +those who admire greatness and success. The force of natural selection +is at work here as everywhere; and it is rapidly concentrating in our +small island whatever is finest, most progressive, and best in the +American character." + +"Well, now do me a last favour before you pike off East," pleaded the +old man. "Make a trip with me over the properties. See 'em once anyway, +and see a little more of this country and these people. Mebbe they're +better'n you think. Give me about three weeks or a month, and then, by +Crimini, you can go off if you're set on it and be 'whatever is finest +and best in the American character' as that feller puts it. But some +day, son, you'll find out there's a whole lot of difference between a +great man of wealth and a man of great wealth. Them last is gettin' +terrible common." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +Over the Hills + + +So the old man and the young man made the round of the Bines +properties. The former nursed a forlorn little hope of exciting an +interest in the concerns most vital to him; to the latter the leisurely +tour in the private car was a sportive prelude to the serious business +of life, as it should be lived, in the East. Considering it as such he +endured it amiably, and indeed the long August days and the sharply +cool nights were not without real enjoyment for him. + +To feel impartially a multitude of strong, fresh wants--the imperative +need to live life in all its fulness, this of itself makes the heart to +sing. And, above the full complement of wants, to have been dowered by +Heaven with a stanch disbelief in the unattainable,--this is a fortune +rather to be chosen than a good name or great riches; since the name +and riches and all things desired must come to the call of it. + +Our Western-born youth of twenty-five had the wants and the sense of +power inherited from a line of men eager of initiative, the product of +an environment where only such could survive. Doubtless in him was the +soul and body hunger of his grandfather, cramping and denying through +hardship year after year, yet sustained by dreaming in the hardest +times of the soft material luxuries that should some day be his. +Doubtless marked in his character, too, was the slightly relaxed +tension of his father; the disposition to feast as well as the capacity +to fast; to take all, feel all, do all, with an avidity greater by +reason of the grinding abstinence and the later indulgence of his +forbears. A sage versed in the lore of heredity as modified by +environment may some day trace for us the progress across this +continent of an austere Puritan, showing how the strain emerges from +the wilderness at the Western ocean with a character so widely +differing from the one with which he began the adventurous +journey,--regarding, especially, a tolerance of the so-called good and +many of the bad things of life. Until this is done we may, perhaps, +consider the change to be without valid cause. + +Young Bines, at all events, was the flower of a pioneer stock, and him +the gods of life cherished, so that all the forces of the young land +about him were as his own. Yet, though his pulses rhymed to theirs he +did not perceive his relation to them: neither he nor the land was yet +become introspective. So informed was he with the impetuous spirit of +youth that the least manifestation of life found its answering thrill +in him. And it was sufficient to feel this. There was no time barren +enough of sensation to reason about it. Uncle Peter's plan for an +inspection of the Bines properties had at first won him by touching his +sense of duty. He anticipated no interest or pleasure in the trip. Yet +from the beginning he enjoyed it to the full. Being what he was, the +constant movement pleased him, the out-of-doors life, the occasional +sorties from the railroad by horse to some remote mining camp, or to a +stock ranch or lumber-camp. He had been away for six years, and it +pleased him to note that he was treated by the people he met with a +genuine respect and liking as the son of his father. In the East he had +been accustomed to a certain deference from very uncertain people +because he was the son of a rich man. Here he had prestige because he +was the son of Daniel Bines, organiser and man of affairs. He felt +sometimes that the men at mine, mill, or ranch looked him over with +misgiving, and had their cautious liking compelled only by the +assurance that he was indeed the son of Daniel. They left him at these +times with the suspicion that this bare fact meant enough with them to +carry a man of infelicitous exterior. + +He was pleased, moreover, to feel a new respect for Uncle Peter. He +observed that men of all degrees looked up to him, sought and relied +upon his judgment; the investing capitalist whom they met not less than +the mine foreman; the made man and the labourer. In the drawing-room at +home he had felt so agreeably superior to the old man; now he felt his +own inferiority in a new element, and began to view him with more +respect. He saw him to be the shrewd man of affairs, with a thorough +grasp of detail in every branch of their interests; and a deep man, as +well; a little narrow, perhaps, from his manner of life, but of +unfailing kindness, and with rather a young man's radicalism than an +old man's conservatism; one who, in an emergency, might be relied upon +to take the unexpected but effective course. + +For his own part, old Peter Bines learned in the course of the trip to +understand and like his grandson better. At bottom he decided the young +man to be sound after all, and he began to make allowance for his +geographical heresies. The boy had been sent to an Eastern college; +that was clearly a mistake, putting him out of sympathy with the West; +and he had never been made to work, which was another and a graver +mistake, "but he'd do more'n his father ever did if 'twa'n't fur his +father's money," the old man concluded. For he saw in their talks that +the very Eastern experience which he derided had given the young fellow +a poise and a certain readiness to grasp details in the large that his +father had been a lifetime in acquiring. + +For a month they loitered over the surrounding territory in the private +car, gliding through fertile valleys, over bleak passes, steaming up +narrow little canons along the down-rushing streams with their cool +shallow murmurs. + +They would learn one day that a cross-cut was to be started on the Last +Chance, or that the concentrates of the True Grit would thereafter be +shipped to the Careless Creek smelter. Next they would learn that a new +herd of Galloways had done finely last season on the Bitter Root ranch; +that a big lot of ore was sacked at the Irish Boy, that an +eighteen-inch vein had been struck in the Old Crow; that a concentrator +was needed at Hellandgone, and that rich gold-bearing copper and sand +bearing free gold had been found over on Horseback Ridge. + +Another day they would drive far into a forest of spruce and hemlock to +a camp where thousands of ties were being cut and floated down to the +line of the new railway. + +Sometimes they spent a night in one of the smaller mining camps off the +railroad, whereof facetious notes would appear in the nearest weekly +paper, such as: + +"The Hon. Peter Bines and his grandson, who is a chip of the old block, +spent Tuesday night at Rock Rip. Young Bines played the deal from soda +card to hock at Lem Tully's Turf Exchange, and showed Lem's dealer good +and plenty that there's no piker strain in him." + +Or, it might be: + +"Poker stacks continue to have a downward tendency. They were sold last +week as low as eighty chips for a dollar; It is sad to see this noble +game dragging along in the lower levels of prosperity, and we take as a +favourable omen the appearance of Uncle Peter Bines and his grandson +the other night. The prices went to par in a minute. Young Bines gave +signs of becoming as delicately intuitional in the matter of concealed +values as his father, the lamented Daniel J." + +Again it was: + +"Uncle Peter Bines reports from over Kettle Creek way that the +sagebrush whiskey they take a man's two bits for there would gnaw holes +in limestone. Peter is likelier to find a ledge of dollar bills than he +is good whiskey this far off the main trail. The late Daniel J. could +have told him as much, and Daniel J.'s boy, who accompanies Uncle +Peter, will know it hereafter." + +The young man felt wholesomely insignificant at these and other signs +that he was taken on sufferance as a son and a grandson. + +He was content that it should be so. Indeed there was little wherewith +he was not content. That he was habitually preoccupied, even when there +was most movement about them, early became apparent to Uncle Peter. +That he was constantly cheerful proved the matter of his musings to be +pleasant. That he was proner than most youths to serious meditation +Uncle Peter did not believe. Therefore he attributed the moods of +abstraction to some matter probably connected with his project of +removing the family East. It was not permitted Uncle Peter to know, nor +was his own youth recent enough for him to suspect, the truth. And the +mystery stayed inviolate until a day came and went that laid it bare +even to the old man's eyes. + +They awoke one morning to find the car on a siding at the One Girl +mine. Coupled to it was another car from an Eastern road that their +train had taken on sometime in the night. Percival noted the car with +interest as he paced beside the track in the cool clear air before +breakfast. The curtains were drawn, and the only signs of life to be +observed were at the kitchen end, where the white-clad cook could be +seen astir. Grant, porter on the Bines car, told him the other car had +been taken on at Kaslo Junction, and that it belonged to Rulon Shepler, +the New York financier, who was aboard with a party of friends. + +As Percival and Uncle Peter left their car for the shaft-house after +breakfast, the occupants of the other car were bestirring themselves. + +From one of the open windows a low but impassioned voice was exhausting +the current idioms of damnation in sweeping dispraise of all land-areas +north and west of Fifty-ninth Street, New York. + +Uncle Peter smiled grimly. Percival flushed, for the hidden protestant +had uttered what were his own sentiments a month before. + +Reaching the shaft-house they chatted with Pangburn, the +superintendent, and then went to the store-room to don blouses and +overalls for a descent into the mine. + +For an hour they stayed underground, traversing the various levels and +drifts, while Pangburn explained the later developments of the vein and +showed them where the new stoping had been begun. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +A Meeting and a Clashing + + +As they stepped from the cage at the surface Percival became aware of a +group of strangers between him and the open door of the +shaft-house,--people displaying in dress and manner the unmistakable +stamp of New York. For part of a minute, while the pupils of his eyes +were contracting to the light, he saw them but vaguely. Then, as his +sight cleared, he beheld foremost in the group, beaming upon him with +an expression of pleased and surprised recognition, the girl whose face +and voice had for nearly half a year peopled his lover's solitude with +fair visions and made its silence to be all melody. + +Had the encounter been anticipated his composure would perhaps have +failed him. Not a few of his waking dreams had sketched this, their +second meeting, and any one of the ways it had pleased him to plan it +would assuredly have found him nervously embarrassed. But so wildly +improbable was this reality that not the daringest of his imagined +happenings had approached it. His thoughts for the moment had been not +of her; then, all at once, she stood before him in the flesh, and he +was cool, almost unmoved. He suspected at once that her father was the +trim, fastidiously dressed man who looked as if he had been abducted +from a morning stroll down the avenue to his club; that the plump, +ruddy, high-bred woman, surveying the West disapprovingly through a +lorgnon, would be her mother. Shepler he knew by sight, with his big +head, massive shoulders, and curiously short, tapering body. Some other +men and a woman were scanning the hoisting machinery with superior +looks. + +The girl, before starting toward him, had waited hardly longer than it +took him to eye the group. And then came an awkward two seconds upon +her whose tact in avoiding the awkward was reputed to be more than +common. + +With her hand extended she had uttered, "Why, Mr.--" before it flashed +upon her that she did not know the name of the young man she was +greeting. + +The "Mister" was threatening to prolong itself into an "r" of +excruciating length and disgraceful finality, an "r" that is terminated +neatly by no one but hardened hotel-clerks. Then a miner saved the day. +"Mr. Bines," he said, coming up hurriedly behind Percival with several +specimens of ore, "you forgot these." + +"-r-r-r. Bines, how _do_ you do!" concluded the girl with an eye-flash +of gratitude at the humble instrument that had prevented an undue +hiatus in her salutation. They were apart from the others and for the +moment unnoticed. + +The young man took the hand so cordially offered, and because of all +the things he wished and had so long waited to say, he said nothing. + +"Isn't it jolly! I am Miss Milbrey," she added in a lower tone, and +then, raising her voice, "Mamma, Mr. Bines--and papa," and there +followed a hurried and but half-acknowledged introduction to the other +members of the party. And, behold! in that moment the young man had +schemed the edifice of all his formless dreams. For six months he had +known the unsurpassable luxury of wanting and of knowing what he +wanted. Now, all at once, he saw this to be a world in which dreams +come more than true. + +Shepler and the party were to go through the mine as a matter of +sight-seeing. They were putting on outer clothes from the store-room to +protect them from the dirt and damp. + +Presently Percival found himself again at the bottom of the shaft. +During the descent of twelve hundred feet he had reflected upon the +curious and interesting fact that her name should be Milbrey. He felt +dimly that this circumstance should be ranked among the most +interesting of natural phenomena,--that she should have a name, as the +run of mortals, and that it should be one name more than another. When +he discovered further that her Christian name was Avice the phenomenon +became stupendously bewildering. They two were in the last of the party +to descend. On reaching bottom he separated her with promptness and +guile from two solemn young men, copies of each other, and they were +presently alone. In the distance they could see the others following +ghostly lamps. From far off mysterious recesses came the muffled +musical clink of the sledges on the drills. An employee who had come +down with them started to be their guide. Percival sent him back. + +"I've just been through; I can find my way again." + +"Ver' well," said the man, "with the exception that it don't happen +something,--yes?" And he stayed where he was. + +Down one of the cross-cuts they started, stepping aside to let a car of +ore be pushed along to the shaft. + +"Do you know," began the girl, "I am so glad to be able to thank you +for what you did that night." + +"I'm glad you _are_ able. I was beginning to think I should always have +those thanks owing to me." + +"I might have paid them at the time, but it was all so unexpected and +so sudden,--it rattled me, quite." + +"I thought you were horribly cool-headed." + +"I wasn't." + +"Your manner reduced me to a groom who opened your carriage door." + +"But grooms don't often pick strange ladies up bodily and bear them out +of a pandemonium of waltzing cab-horses. I'd never noticed before that +cab-horses are so frivolous and hysterical." + +"And grooms know where to look for their pay." + +They were interrupting nervously, and bestowing furtive side-looks upon +each other. + +"If I'd not seen you," said the girl, "glanced at you--before--that +evening, I shouldn't have remembered so well; doubtless I'd not have +recognised you to-day." + +"I didn't know you did glance at me, and yet I watched you every moment +of the evening. You didn't know that, did you?" + +She laughed. + +"Of course I knew it. A woman has to note such things without letting +it be seen that she sees." + +"And I'd have sworn you never once so much as looked my way." + +"Don't we do it well, though?" + +"And in spite of all the time I gave to a study of your face I lost the +detail of it. I could keep only the effect of its expression and the +few tones of your voice I heard. You know I took those on a record so I +could make 'em play over any time I wanted to listen. Do you know, that +has all been very sweet to me, my helping you and the memory of it,--so +vague and sweet." + +"Aren't you afraid we're losing the others?" + +She halted and looked back. + +"No; I'm afraid we won't lose them; come on; you can't turn back now. +And you don't want to hear anything about mines; it wouldn't be at all +good for you, I'm sure. Quick, down this way, or you'll hear Pangburn +telling some one what a stope is, and think what a thing that would be +to carry in your head." + +"Really, a stope sounds like something that would 'get you' in the +night! I'm afraid!" + +Half in his spirit she fled with him down a dimly lighted incline where +men were working at the rocky wall with sledge and drill. There was +that in his manner which compelled her quite as literally as when at +their first meeting he had picked her up in his arms. + +As they walked single-file through the narrowing of a drift, she +wondered about him. He was Western, plainly. An employee in the mine, +probably a manager or director or whatever it was they called those in +authority in mines. Plainly, too, he was a man of action and a man who +engaged all her instinctive liking. Something in him at once coerced +her friendliest confidence. These were the admissions she made to +herself. She divined him, moreover, to be a blend of boldness and +timidity. He was bold to the point of telling her things +unconventionally, of beguiling her into remote underground passages +away from the party; yet she understood; she knew at once that he was a +determined but unspoiled gentleman; that under no provocation could he +make a mistake. In any situation of loneliness she would have felt safe +with him--"as with a brother"--she thought. Then, feeling her cheeks +burn, she turned back and said: + +"I must tell you he was my brother--that man--that night." + +He was sorry and glad all at once. The sorrow being the lesser and more +conventional emotion, he started upon an awkward expression of it, +which she interrupted. + +"Never mind saying that, thank you. Tell me something about yourself, +now. I really would like to know you. What do you see and hear and do +in this strange life?" + +"There's not much variety," he answered, with a convincing droop of +depression. "For six months I've been seeing you and hearing +you--seeing you and hearing you; not much variety in that--nothing +worth telling you about." + +Despite her natural caution, intensified by training, she felt herself +thrill to the very evident sincerity of his tones, so that she had to +affect mirth to seem at ease. + +"Dear, dear, what painful monotony; and how many men have said it since +these rocks were made; and now you say it,--well, I admit--" + +"But there's nothing new under the sun, you know." + +"No; not even a new excuse for plagiarism, is there?" + +"Well, you see as long as the same old thing keeps true the same old +way of telling it will be more or less depended upon. After a few +hundred years of experiment, you know, they hit on the fewest words +that tell the most, and everybody uses them because no one can improve +them. Maybe the prehistoric cave-gentleman, who proposed to his loved +one with a war club just back of her left ear, had some variation of +the formula suiting his simple needs, after he'd gotten her home and +brought her to and she said it was 'all so sudden;' and a man can work +in little variations of his own to-day. For example--" + +"I'm sure we'd best be returning." + +"For example, I could say, you know, that for keeping the mind active +and the heart working overtime the memory of you surpasses any tonic +advertised in the backs of the magazines. Or, that--" + +"I think that's enough; I see you _could_ vary the formula, in case--" + +"--_have_ varied it--but don't forget I prefer the original unvaried. +After all, there are certain things that you can't tell in too few +words. Now, you--" + +"You stubborn person. Really, I know all about myself. I asked you to +tell me about yourself." + +"And I began at once to tell you everything about myself--everything of +interest--which is yourself." + +"I see your sense of values is gone, poor man. I shall question you. +Now you are a miner, and I like men of action, men who do things; I've +often wondered about you, and seriously, I'm glad to find you here +doing something. I remembered you kindly, with real gratitude, indeed. +You didn't seem like a New York man either, and I decided you weren't. +Honestly, I am glad to find you here at your work in your miner's +clothes. You mustn't think we forget how to value men that work." + +On the point of saying thoughtlessly, "But I'm not working here--I own +the mine," he checked himself. Instead he began a defence of the man +who doesn't work, but who could if he had to. "For example," he +continued, "here we are at a place that you must be carried over; +otherwise you'd have to wade through a foot of water or go around that +long way we've come. I've rubber boots on, and so I pick you up this +way--" He held her lightly on his arm and she steadied herself with a +hand between his shoulders. + +"And staggering painfully under my burden, I wade out to the middle of +this subterranean lake." He stopped. + +"You see, I've learned to do things. I could pick you from that +slippery street and put you in your carriage, and I can pick you up now +without wasting words about it--" + +"But you're wasting time--hurry, please--and, anyway, you're a miner +and used to such things." + +He remained standing. + +"But I'm _not_ wasting time, and I'm not a miner in the sense you mean. +I own this mine, and I suppose for the most part I'm the sort of man +you seem to have gotten tired of; the man who doesn't have to do +anything. Even now I'm this close to work only because my grandfather +wanted me to look over the properties my father left." + +"But, hurry, please, and set me down." + +"Not until I warn you that I'm just as apt to do things as the kind of +man you thought I was. This is twice I've picked you up now. Look out +for me;--next time I may not put you down at all." + +She gave a low little laugh, denoting unruffled serenity. She was +glorying secretly in his strength, and she knew his boldness and +timidity were still justly balanced. And there was the rather +astonishing bit of news he had just given her. That needed a lot of +consideration. + +With slow, sure-footed steps he reached the farther side of the water +and put her on her feet. + +"There, I thought I'd reveal the distressing truth about myself while I +had you at my mercy." + +"I might have suspected, but I gave the name no thought. Bines, to be +sure. You are the son of the Bines who died some months ago. I heard +Mr. Shepler and my father talking about some of your mining properties. +Mr. Shepler thought the 'One Girl' was such a funny name for your +father to give a mine." + +Now they neared the foot of the shaft where the rest of the party +seemed to await them. As they came up Percival felt himself raked by a +broadside from the maternal lorgnon that left him all but disabled. The +father glowered at him and asked questions in the high key we are apt +to adopt in addressing foreigners, in the instinctive fallacy that any +language can be understood by any one if it be spoken loudly enough. +The mother's manner was a crushing rebuke to the young man for his +audacity. The father's manner was meant to intimate that natives of the +region in which they were then adventuring were not worthy of rebuke, +save such general rebukes as may be conveyed by displaying one's +natural superiority of manner. The other members of the party, +excepting Shepler, who talked with Pangburn at a little distance, took +cue from the Milbreys and aggressively ignored the abductor of an only +daughter. They talked over, around, and through him, as only may those +mortals whom it hath pleased heaven to have born within certain areas +on Manhattan Island. + +The young man felt like a social outcast until he caught a glance from +Miss Milbrey. That young woman was still friendly, which he could +understand, and highly amused, which he could not understand. While the +temperature was at its lowest the first load ascended, including Miss +Milbrey and her parents, a chatty blonde, and an uncomfortable little +man who, despite his being twelve hundred feet toward the centre +thereof, had three times referred bitterly to the fact that he was "out +of the world." "I shall see you soon above ground, shall I not?" Miss +Milbrey had asked, at which her mother shot Percival a parting volley +from her rapid-fire lorgnon, while her father turned upon him a back +whose sidelines were really admirable, considering his age and feeding +habits. The behaviour of these people appeared to intensify the +amusement of their child. The two solemn young men who remained +continued to chat before Percival as they would have chatted before the +valet of either. He began to sound the spiritual anguish of a pariah. +Also to feel truculent and, in his own phrase, "Westy." With him +"Westy" meant that you were as good as any one else "and a shade better +than a whole lot if it came to a show-down." He was not a little +mortified to find how easy it was for him to fall back upon that old +cushion of provincial arrogance. It was all right for Uncle Peter, but +for himself,--well, it proved that he was less finely Eastern than he +had imagined. + +As the cage came down for another ascent, he let the two solemn young +men go up with Shepler and Pangburn, and went to search for Uncle +Peter. + +"There, thank God, is a man!" he reflected. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked + + +He found Uncle Peter in the cross-cut, studying a bit of ore through a +glass, and they went back to ascend. + +"Them folks," said the old man, "must be the kind that newspaper meant, +that had done something in practical achievement. I bet that girl's +mother will achieve something practical with you fur cuttin' the girl +out of the bunch; she was awful tormented; talked two or three times +about the people in the humbler walks of life bein' strangely something +or other. You ain't such a humble walker now, are you, son? But say, +that yellow-haired woman, she ain't a bit diffident, is she? She's a +very hearty lady, I _must_ say!" + +"But did you see Miss Milbrey?" + +"Oh, that's her name is it, the one that her mother was so worried +about and you? Yes, I saw her. Peart and cunnin', but a heap too wise +fur you, son; take my steer on that. Say, she'd have your pelt nailed +to the barn while you was wonderin' which way you'd jump." + +"Oh, I know I'm only a tender, teething infant," the young man +answered, with masterly satire. "Well, now, as long's you got that bank +roll you jest look out fur cupboard love--the kind the old cat has when +she comes rubbin' up against your leg and purrin' like you was the +whole thing." + +The young man smiled, as they went up, with youth's godlike faith in +its own sufficiency, albeit he smarted from the slights put upon him. + +At the surface a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the +formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey, +the pleasing model of all a city's refinements, awaiting the boon of a +hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty +blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more +manner than manners. Percival felt they were all regarding him now with +affectionate concern. They pressed forward effusively. + +"So good of you, Mr. Bines, to take an interest in us--my daughter has +been so anxious to see one of these fascinating mines." "Awfully +obliged, Mr. Bines." "Charmed, old man; deuced pally of you to stay by +us down in that hole, you know." "So clever of you to know where to +find the gold--" + +He lost track of the speakers. Their speeches became one concerted +effusion of affability that was music to his ears. + +Miss Milbrey was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, +she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously +potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their +normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look +Percival had noted below. + +"And, Mr. Bines, do come in with that quaint old grandfather of yours +and lunch with us," urged Mrs. Milbrey, who had, as it were, spiked her +lorgnon. "Here's Mr. Shepler to second the invitation--and then we +shall chat about this very interesting West." + +Miss Milbrey nodded encouragement, seeming to chuckle inwardly. + +In the spacious dining compartment of the Shepler car the party was +presently at lunch. + +"You seem so little like a Western man," Mrs. Milbrey confided +graciously to Percival on her right. + +"We cal'late he'll fetch out all straight, though, in a year or so," +put in Uncle Peter, from over his chop, with guileless intent to defend +his grandson from what he believed to be an attack. "Of course a young +man's bound to get some foolishness into him in an Eastern college like +this boy went to." + +Percival had flushed at the compliment to himself; also at the old +man's failure to identify it as such. + +Mr. Milbrey caressed his glass of claret with ardent eyes and took the +situation in hand with the easy confidence of a master. + +"The West," said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In +truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all +the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for +deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but +so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not +suspect their--er--humble origin." + +"Meaning their Western origin?" inquired Shepler, blandly, with secret +intent to brew strife. + +"Well--er--to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble,--of +course--perhaps I should have said--" + +"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey," +interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap +in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was +twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"--he lowered his voice to +the pitch of impressiveness--"has over eighty pairs of trousers and +complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston." + +"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked +slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that +Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his +lines under the surface. + +"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men, +"he must still talk like a banjo." + +"And gargle all his 'r's,'" added the other, very earnestly. "They +never get over that, you know." + +"Instead of losin' 'em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself +feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it 'Ne' +Yawk,' and prob'ly he don't like it in Boston because they always call +'em 'rawroystahs.'" + +"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It _is_ +hard for the West and the East to forgive each other's dialects. The +inflated 'r' and the smothered 'r' never quite harmonise." + +"Western money talks good straight New York talk," ventured Miss +Milbrey, with the air of one who had observed in her time. + +Shepler grinned, and the parents of the young woman resisted with +indifferent success their twin impulses to frown. + +"But the service is so wretched in the West," suggested Oldaker, the +carefully dressed little man with the tired, troubled eyes, whom the +world had been deprived of. "I fancy, now, there's not a good waiter +this side of New York." + +"An American," said Percival, "never _can_ make a good waiter or a good +valet. It takes a Latin, or, still better, a Briton, to feel the +servility required for good service of that sort. An American, now, +always fails at it because he knows he is as good as you are, and he +knows that you know it, and you know that he knows you know it, and +there you are, two mirrors of American equality face to face and +reflecting each other endlessly, and neither is comfortable. The +American is as uncomfortable at having certain services performed for +him by another American as the other is in performing them. Give him a +Frenchman or an Italian or a fellow born within the sound of Bow Bells +to clean his boots and lay out his things and serve his dinner and he's +all right enough." + +"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter. + +"Fancy, now," said Mrs. Drelmer, "a creature in a waiter's jacket +having emotions of that sort!" + +"Our excellent country," said Mr. Milbrey, "is perhaps not yet what it +will be; there is undeniably a most distressing rawness where we might +expect finish. Now in Chicago," he continued in a tone suitably hushed +for the relation of occult phenomena, "we dined with a person who +served champagne with the oysters, soup, fish, and _entree_, and for +the remainder of the dinner--you may credit me or not--he proffered a +claret of 1875--. I need hardly remind you, the most delicate vintage +of the latter half of the century--and it was served _frappe_." There +was genuine emotion in the speaker's voice. + +"And papa nearly swooned when our host put cracked ice and two lumps of +sugar into his own glass--" + +"_Avice, dear!_" remonstrated the father in a tone implying that some +things positively must not be mentioned at table. + +"Well, you shouldn't expect too much of those self-made men in +Chicago," said Shepler. + +"If they'd only make themselves as well as they make their sausages and +things," sighed Mr. Milbrey. + +"And the self-made man _will_ talk shop," suggested Oldaker. "He thinks +you're dying to hear how he made the first thousand of himself." + +"Still, those Chicago chaps learn quickly enough when they settle in +New York," ventured one of the young men. + +"I knew a Chicago chap who lived East two years and went back not a +half bad sort," said the other. "God help him now, though; his father +made him go back to work in a butcher shop or something of the sort." + +"Best thing I ever heard about Chicago," said Uncle Peter, "a man from +your town told me once he had to stay in Chicago a year, and, says he, +'I went out there a New Yorker, and I went home an American,' he says." +The old man completed this anecdote in tones that were slightly +inflamed. + +"How extremely typical!" said Mrs. Milbrey. "Truly the West is the +place of unspoiled Americanism and the great unspent forces; you are +quite right, Mr. Bines." + +"Think of all the unspent forces back in that silver mine," remarked +Miss Milbrey, with a patent effort to be significant. + +"My perverse child delights to pose as a sordid young woman," the fond +mother explained to Percival, "yet no one can be less so, and you, Mr. +Bines, I am sure, would be the last to suspect her of it. I saw in you +at once those sterling qualities--" + +"Isn't it dreadfully dark down in that sterling silver mine?" observed +Miss Milbrey, apropos of nothing, apparently, while her mother attacked +a second chop that she had meant not to touch. + +"Here's hoping we'll soon be back in God's own country," said Oldaker, +raising his glass. + +"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter, and drained his glass eagerly as they +drank the toast. Whereat they all laughed and Mrs. Drelmer said, "What +a dear, lively wit, for an old gentleman." + +"Oldaker," said Shepler, "has really been the worst sufferer. This is +his first trip West." + +"Beg pardon, Shepler! I was West as far as Buffalo--let me see--in 1878 +or '79." + +"Dear me! is that so?" queried Uncle Peter. "I got East as fur as +Cheyenne that same year. We nearly run into each other, didn't we?" + +Shepler grinned again. + +"Oldaker found a man from New York on the train the other day, up in +one of the emigrant cars. He was a truck driver, and he looked it and +talked it, but Oldaker stuck by him all the afternoon." + +"Well, he'd left the old town three weeks after I had, and he'd been +born there the same year I was--in the Ninth ward--and he remembered as +well as I did the day Barnum's museum burned at Broadway and Ann. I +liked to hear him talk. Why, it was a treat just to hear him say +Broadway and Twenty-third Street, or Madison Square or City Hall Park. +The poor devil had consumption, too, and probably he'll never see them +again. I don't know if I shall ever have it, but I'd never leave the +old town as he was doing." + +"That's like Billy Brue," said Uncle Peter. "Billy loves faro bank jest +as this gentleman loves New York. When he gets a roll he _has_ to play. +One time he landed in Pocatello when there wa'n't but one game in town. +Billy found it and started in. A friend saw him there and called him +out. 'Billy,' says he, 'cash in and come out; that's a brace game.' +'Sure?' says Billy. 'Sure,' says the feller. 'All right,' says Billy, +'much obliged fur puttin' me on.' And he started out lookin' fur +another game. About two hours later the feller saw Billy comin' out of +the same place and Billy owned up he'd gone back there and blowed in +every cent. 'Why, you geezer,' says his friend, 'didn't I put you on +that they was dealin' brace there?' 'Sure,' says Billy, 'sure you did. +But what could I do? It was the only game in town!'" + +"That New York mania is the same sort," said Shepler, laughing, while +Mrs. Drelmer requested everybody to fancy immediately. + +"Your grandfather is so dear and quaint," said Mrs. Milbrey; "you must +certainly bring him to New York with you, for of course a young man of +your capacity and graces will never be satisfied out of New York." + +"Young men like yourself are assuredly needed there," remarked Mr. +Milbrey, warmly. + +"Surely they are," agreed Miss Milbrey, and yet with a manner that +seemed almost to annoy both parents. They were sparing no opportunity +to make the young man conscious of his real oneness with those about +him, and yet subtly to intimate that people of just the Milbreys' +perception were required to divine it at present. "These Westerners +fancy you one of themselves, I dare say," Mrs. Milbrey had said, and +the young man purred under the strokings. His fever for the East was +back upon him. His weeks with Uncle Peter going over the fields where +his father had prevailed had made him convalescent, but these New +Yorkers--the very manner and atmosphere of them--undid the work. He +envied them their easier speech, their matter-of-fact air of +omniscience, the elaborate and cultivated simplicity of their dress, +their sureness and sufficiency in all that they thought and said and +did. He was homesick again for the life he had glimpsed. The West was +rude, desolate, and depressing. Even Uncle Peter, whom he had come +warmly to admire, jarred upon him with his crudity and his Western +assertiveness. + +And there was the woman of the East, whose presence had made the day to +seem dream-like; and she was kind, which was more than he would have +dared to hope, and her people, after their first curious chill of +indifference, seemed actually to be courting him. She, the fleeting and +impalpable dream-love, whom the thought of seeing ever again had been +wildly absurd, was now a human creature with a local habitation, the +most beautiful name in the world, and two parents whose complaisance +was obvious even through the lover's timidity. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +Up Skiplap Canon + + +The meal was ending in smoke, the women, excepting Miss Milbrey, having +lighted cigarettes with the men. The talk had grown less truculently +sectional. The Angstead twins told of their late fishing trip to Lake +St. John for salmon, of projected tours to British Columbia for +mountain sheep, and to Manitoba for elk and moose. + +Mr. Milbrey described with minute and loving particularity the +preparation of _oeufs de Faisan, avec beurre au champagne._ + +Mrs. Milbrey related an anecdote of New York society, not much in +itself, but which permitted the disclosure that she habitually +addressed by their first names three of the foremost society leaders, +and that each of these personages adopted a like familiarity toward +her. + +Mrs. Drelmer declared that she meant to have Uncle Peter Bines at one +of her evenings the very first time he should come to New York, and +that, if he didn't let her know of his coming, she would be offended. +Oldaker related an incident of the ball given to the Prince of Wales, +travelling as Baron Renfrew, on the evening of October 12, 1860, in +which his father had figured briefly before the royal guest to the +abiding credit of American tact and gentility. + +Shepler was amused until he became sleepy, whereupon he extended the +freedom of his castle to his guests, and retired to his stateroom. + +Uncle Peter took a final shot at Oldaker. He was observed to be +laughing, and inquiry brought this: + +"I jest couldn't help snickerin' over his idee of God's own country. He +thinks God's own country is a little strip of an island with a row of +well-fed folks up and down the middle, and a lot of hungry folks on +each side. Mebbe he's right. I'll be bound, it needs the love of God. +But if it is His own country, it don't make Him any connysoor of +countries with me. I'll tell you that." + +Oldaker smiled at this assault, the well-bred, tolerant smile that +loyal New Yorkers reserve for all such barbaric belittling of their +empire. Then he politely asked Uncle Peter to show Mrs. Drelmer and +himself through the stamp mill. + +At Percival's suggestion of a walk, Miss Milbrey was delighted. + +After an inspection of the Bines car, in which Oldaker declared he +would be willing to live for ever, if it could be anchored firmly in +Madison Square, the party separated. Out into the clear air, already +cooling under the slanting rays of the sun, the young man and the girl +went together. Behind them lay the one street of the little mining +camp, with its wooden shanties on either side of the railroad track. +Down this street Uncle Peter had gone, leading his charges toward the +busy ant-hill on the mountainside. Ahead the track wound up the canon, +cunningly following the tortuous course of the little river to be sure +of practicable grades. On the farther side of the river a mountain road +paralleled the railway. Up this road the two went, followed by a +playful admonition from Mrs. Milbrey: "Remember, Mr. Bines, I place my +child in your keeping." + +Percival waxed conscientious about his charge and insisted at once upon +being assured that Miss Milbrey would be warm enough with the scarlet +golf-cape about her shoulders; that she was used to walking long +distances; that her boots were stoutly soled; and that she didn't mind +the sun in their faces. The girl laughed at him. + +Looking up the canon with its wooded sides, cool and green, they could +see a grey, dim mountain, with patches of snow near its top, in the far +distance, and ranges of lesser eminences stepping up to it. "It's a +hundred miles away," he told her. + +Down the canon the little river flickered toward them, like a billowy +silver ribbon "trimmed with white chiffon around the rocks," declared +the girl. In the blue depths of the sky, an immense height above, +lolled an eagle, lazy of wing, in lordly indolence. The suggestions to +the eye were all of spacious distances and large masses--of the room +and stuff for unbounded action. + +"Your West is the breathingest place," she said, as they crossed a +foot-bridge over the noisy little stream and turned up the road. "I +don't believe I ever drew a full breath until I came to these +altitudes." + +"One _has_ to breathe more air here--there's less oxygen in it, and you +must breathe more to get your share, and so after awhile one becomes +robust. Your cheeks are already glowing, and we've hardly started. +There, now, there are your colours, see--" + +Along the edge of the green pines and spruce were lavender asters. A +little way in the woods they could see the blue columbines and the +mountain phlox, pink and red. + +"There are your eyes and your cheeks." + +"What a dangerous character you'd be if you were sent to match silks!" + +On the dry barren slopes of gravel across the river, full in the sun's +glare, grew the Spanish bayonet, with its spikes of creamy white +flowers. + +"There I am, more nearly," she pointed to them; "they're ever so much +nearer my disposition. But about this thin air; it must make men work +harder for what comes easier back in our country, so that they may +become able to do more--more capable. I am thinking of your +grandfather. You don't know how much I admire him. He is so stanch and +strong and fresh. There's more fire in him now than in my father or +Launton Oldaker, and I dare say he's a score of years older than either +of them. I don't think you quite appreciate what a great old fellow he +is." + +"I admire Uncle Peter much more, I'm sure, than he admires me. He's +afraid I'm not strong enough to admire that Eastern climate of +yours--social and moral." + +"I suppose it's natural for you to wish to go. You'd be bored here, +would you not? You couldn't stay in these mountains and be such a man +as your grandfather. And yet there ought to be so much to do here; it's +all so fresh and roomy and jolly. Really I've grown enthusiastic about +it." + +"Ah, but think of what there is in the East--and you are there. To +think that for six months I've treasured every little memory of +you--such a funny little lot as they were--to think that this morning I +awoke thinking of you, yet hardly hoping ever to see you, and to think +that for half the night we had ridden so near each other in sleep, and +there was no sign or signal or good omen. And then to think you should +burst upon me like some new sunrise that the stupid astronomers hadn't +predicted. + +"You see," he went on, after a moment, "I don't ask what you think of +me. You couldn't think anything much as yet, but there's something +about this whole affair, our meeting and all, that makes me think it's +going to be symmetrical in the end. I know it won't end here. I'll tell +you one way Western men learn. They learn not to be afraid to want +things out of their reach, and they believe devoutly--because they've +proved it so often--that if you want a thing hard enough and keep +wanting it, nothing can keep it away from you." + +A bell had been tinkling nearer and nearer on the road ahead. Now a +heavy wagon, filled with sacks of ore, came into view, drawn by four +mules. As they stood aside to let it pass he scanned her face for any +sign it might show, but he could see no more than a look of interest +for the brawny driver of the wagon, shouting musically to his straining +team. + +"You are rather inscrutable," he said, as they resumed the road. + +She turned and smiled into his eyes with utter frankness. + +"At least you must be sure that I like you; that I am very friendly; +that I want to know you better, and want you to know me better. You +don't know me at all, you know. You Westerners have another way, of +accepting people too readily. It may work no harm among yourselves, but +perhaps Easterners are a bit more perilous. Sometimes, now, a _very_ +Eastern person doesn't even accept herself--himself--very trustingly; +she--he--finds it so hard to get acquainted with himself." + +The young man provided one of those silences of which a few discerning +men are instinctively capable and for which women thank them. + +"This road," she said, after a little time of rapid walking, "leads +right up to the end of the world, doesn't it? See, it ends squarely in +the sun." They stopped where the turn had opened to the west a long +vista of grey and purple hills far and high. They stood on a ridge of +broken quartz and gneiss, thrown up in a bygone age. To their left a +few dwarf Scotch firs threw shadows back toward the town. The ball of +red fire in the west was half below the rim of the distant peak. + +"Stand so,"--she spoke in a slightly hushed tone that moved him a step +nearer almost to touch her arm,--"and feel the round little earth +turning with us. We always think the sun drops down away from us, but +it stays still. Now remember your astronomy and feel the earth turn. +See--you can actually _see_ it move--whirling along like a child's ball +because it can't help itself, and then there's the other motion around +the sun, and the other, the rushing of everything through space, and +who knows how many others, and yet we plan our futures and think we +shall do finely this way or that, and always forget that we're taken +along in spite of ourselves. Sometimes I think I shall give up trying; +and then I see later that even that feeling was one of the unknown +motions that I couldn't control. The only thing we know is that we are +moved in spite of ourselves, so what is the use of bothering about how +many ways, or where they shall fetch us?" + +"Ah, Miss Khayyam, I've often read your father's verses." + +"No relation whatever; we're the same person--he was I." + +"But don't forget you can see the earth moving by a rising as well as +by a setting star, by watching a sun rise--" + +"A rising star if you wish," she said, smiling once more with perfect +candour and friendliness. + +They turned to go back in the quick-coming mountain dusk. + +As they started downward she sang from the "Persian Garden," and he +blended his voice with hers: + + "Myself when young did eagerly frequent + Doctor and Saint and heard great argument + About it and about: but evermore + Came out by the same door where in I went." + + "With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow, + And with my own hand wrought to make it grow; + And this was all the Harvest that I reaped--' + I came like Water and like Wind I go.'" + +"I shall look forward to seeing you--and your mother and sister?--in +New York," she said, when they parted, "and I am sure I shall have more +to say when we're better known to each other." + +"If you were the one woman before, if the thought of you was more than +the substance of any other to me,--you must know how it will be now, +when the dream has come true. It's no small thing for your best dream +to come true." + +"Dear me! haven't we been sentimental and philosophic? I'm never like +this at home, I assure you. I've really been thoughtful." + +From up the canon came the sound of a puffing locomotive that presently +steamed by them with its three dingy little coaches, and, after a stop +for water and the throwing of a switch, pushed back to connect with the +Shepler car. + +The others of the party crowded out on to the rear platform as Percival +helped Miss Milbrey up the steps. Uncle Peter had evidently been +chatting with Shepler, for as they came out the old man was saying, +"'Get action' is my motto. Do things. Don't fritter. Be something and +be it good and hard. Get action early and often." + +Shepler nodded. "But men like us are apt to be unreasonable with the +young. We expect them to have their own vigour and our wisdom, and the +infirmities of neither." + +The good-byes were hastily said, and the little train rattled down the +canon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched +her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away +narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the +last, but still looking steadily toward him--almost wistfully, it +seemed to him once. + +"Well," he said cheerfully to Uncle Peter. + +"You know, son, I don't like to cuss, but except one or two of them +folks I'd sooner live in the middle kittle of hell than in the place +that turns 'em out. They rile me--that talk about 'people in the +humbler walks of life.' Of course I _am_ humble, but then, son, if you +come right down to it, as the feller said, I ain't so _damned_ humble!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +Three Letters, Private and Confidential + + +From Mr. Percival Bines to Miss Psyche Bines, Montana City. + +On car at Skiplap, Tuesday Night. + +Dear Sis:--When you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said +you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly, +until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put you +next, here goes. + +One night last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I +happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was +running. It's a rowdy little place--a music hall--but nice people go +there because, though it's stuffy, it's kept decent. + +_She_ was in a box with two men--one old and one young--and an older +woman. As soon as I saw her she had me lashed to the mast in a high +sea, with the great salt waves dashing over me. I never took much stock +in the tales about its happening at first sight, but they're as +matter-of-fact as market reports. Soon as I looked at her it seemed to +me I'd known her always. I was sure we knew each other better than any +two people between the Battery and Yonkers, and that I wasn't acting +sociable to sit down there away from her and pretend we were Strangers +Yet. Actually, it rattled me so I had to take the full count. If I +hadn't been wedged in between a couple of people that filled all the +space, and then some, it isn't any twenty to one that I wouldn't have +gone right up to her and asked her what she meant by cutting me. I was +udgy enough for it. But I kept looking and after awhile I was able to +sit up and ask what hit me. + +She was dressed in something black and kind of shiny and wore a big +black hat fussed up with little red roses, and her face did more things +to me in a minute than all the rest I've ever seen. It was _full_ of +little kissy places. Her lips were very red and her teeth were very +white, and I couldn't tell about her eyes. But she was bred up to the +last notch, I could see that. + +Well, I watched her through the tobacco smoke until the last curtain +fell. They were putting on wraps for a minute or so, and I noticed that +the young fellow in the party, who'd been drinking all through the +show, wasn't a bit too steady to do an act on the high-wire. They left +the box and came down the stairs and I bunched into the crowd and let +myself ooze out with them, wondering if I'd ever see her again. + +I fetched up at an exit on the side street, and there they were +directly in front of me. I just naturally drifted to one side and +continued my little private corner in crude rubber. It was drizzling in +a beastly way, the street was full of carriages, numbers were being +called, cab-drivers were insulting each other hoarsely, people dashing +out to see if their carriages weren't coming--everything in a whirl of +drizzle and dark and yells, with the horses' hoofs on the pavement +sounding like castanets. The two older people got into a carriage and +were driven off, while she and the young fellow waited for theirs. I +could see then that he was good and soused. He was the same lad they +throw on the screen when the "Old Homestead" Quartet sings "Where Is My +Wandering Boy To-night?" I could see she was annoyed and a little +worried, because he was past taking notice. + +The man kept yelling the number of their carriage from time to time, +while the others he'd called were driving up--it was 249 if any one +ever tries to worm it out of you--and then I saw from her face that 249 +had wriggled pretty near to the curb, but was still kept away by +another carriage. She said something to the drunken cub and started to +reach the carriage by going out into the street behind the one in its +way. At the same time their carriage started forward, and the +inebriate, instead of going with her, started the other way to meet it, +and so, there she was alone on the slippery pavement in this muddle of +prancing horses and yelling terriers. If you can get any bets that I +was more than two seconds getting out there to her, take them all, and +give better than track odds if necessary. Then I guess she got rattled, +for when I would have led her back to the curb she made a dash the +other way and all but slipped under a team of bays that were just +aching to claw the roses off her hat. I saw she was helpless and +"turned around," so I just naturally grabbed her and she was so +frightened by this time that she grabbed me, and the result was that I +carried her to the sidewalk and set her down. Their carriage still +stood there with little Georgie Rumlets screaming to the driver to go +on. I had her inside in a jiffy, and they were off. Not a word about +"My Preserver!" though, of course, with the fright and noise and her +mortification, that was natural. + +After that, you can believe it or not, she was the girl. And I never +dreamed of seeing her any place but New York again. + +Well, this morning when I came up from below at the mine _she_ was +standing there as if she had been waiting for me. She is Miss Avice +Milbrey, of New York. Her father and mother--fine people, the real +thing, I judge--were with her, members of a party Rulon Shepler has +with him on his car. They've been here all day; went through the mine; +had lunch with them, and later a walk with _her_, they leaving at 5.30 +for the East. We got on fairly well, considering. She is a wonder, if +anybody cross-examines you. She is about your height, I should judge, +about five feet four, though not so plump as you; still her look of +slenderness is deceptive. She's one of the build that aren't so big as +they look, nor yet so small as they look. Thoroughbred is the word for +her, style and action, as the horse people say, perfect. The poise of +her head, her mettlesome manner, her walk, show that she's been bred up +like a Derby winner. Her face is the one all the aristocrats are copied +from, finely cut nose, chin firm but dainty, lips just delicately full +and the reddest ever, and her colour when she has any a rose-pink. I +don't know that I can give you her eyes. You only see first that +they're deep and clear, but as near as anything they are the warm +slatish lavender blue you see in the little fall asters. She has so +much hair it makes her head look small, a sort of light chestnut, with +warmish streaks in it. Transparent is another word for her. You can +look right through her--eyes and skin are so clear. Her nature too is +the frank, open kind, "step in and examine our stock; no trouble to +show goods" and all that, and she is so beautifully unconscious of her +beauty that it goes double. At times she gave me a queer little +impression of being older at the game than I am, though she can't be a +day over twenty, but I guess that's because she's been around in +society so much. Probably she'd be called the typical New York girl, if +you wanted to talk talky talk. + +Now I've told you everything, except that the people all asked kindly +after you, especially her mother and a Mrs. Drelmer, who's a four-horse +team all by herself. Oh, yes! No, I can't remember very well; some kind +of a brown walking skirt, short, and high boots and one of those blue +striped shirt-waists, the squeezy looking kind, and when we went to +walk, a red plaid golf cape; and for general all-around dearness--say, +the other entries would all turn green and have to be withdrawn. If any +one thinks this thing is going to end here you make a book on it right +away; take all you can get. Little Willie Lushlets was her brother--a +lovely boy if you get to talking reckless. With love to Lady +Abercrombie, and trusting, my dear Countess, to have the pleasure of +meeting you at Henley a fortnight hence, I remain, + +Most cordially yours, + +E. MALVERN DEVYR ST. TREVORS, + +_Bart. & Notary Public._ + +_From Mrs. Joseph Drelmer to the Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, New York._ + +EN ROUTE, August 28th. + +MY DEAR MAUBURN:--Ever hear of the tribe of Bines? If not, you need to. +The father, immensely wealthy, died a bit ago, leaving a widow and two +children, one of the latter being a marriageable daughter in more than +the merely technical sense. There is also a grandfather, now a little +descended into the vale of years, who, they tell me, has almost as many +dollars as you or I would know what to do with, a queer old chap who +lounges about the mountains and looks as if he might have anything but +money. We met the son and the old man at one of their mines yesterday. +They have a private car as large as Shepler's and even more sybaritic, +and they'd been making a tour of inspection over their properties. They +lunched with us. Knowing the Milbreys, you will divine the warmth of +their behaviour toward the son. It was too funny at first. Avice was +the only one to suspect at once that he was the very considerable +personage he is, and so she promptly sequestered him, with a skill born +of her long practice, in the depths of the earth, somewhere near China, +I fancy. Her dear parents were furious. Dressed as one of the miners +they took him to be an employee. The whole party, taking the cue from +outraged parenthood, treated him icily when he emerged from one of +those subterranean galleries with that tender sprig of girlishness. +That is, we were icy until, on the way up, he remaining in the depths, +Avice's dear mother began to rebuke the thoughtless minx for her +indiscretion of strolling through the earth with a working person. Then +Avice, sweet chatterbox, with joyful malice revealed that the young +man, whose name none of us had caught, was Bines, and that he owned the +mine we were in, and she didn't know how many others, nor did she +believe he knew himself. You should have felt the temperature rise. It +went up faster than we were going. + +By the time we reached the surface the two Milbreys wore looks that +would have made the angel of peace and good-will look full of hatred +and distrust. Nothing would satisfy them but that we wait to thank the +young Croesus for his courtesy. I waited because I remembered the +daughter, and Oldaker and the Angstead twins waited out of decency. And +when the genius of the mine appeared from out his golden catacombs we +fell upon him in desperate kindness. + +Later in the day I learned from him that he expects to bring his mother +and sister to New York this fall, and that they mean to make their home +there hereafter. Of course that means that the girl has notions of +marriage. What made me think so quickly of her is that in San +Francisco, at a theatre last winter, she was pointed out to me, and +while I do you not the injustice of supposing it would make the least +difference to you, she is rather a beauty, you'll find; figure fullish, +yellow hair, and a good-natured, well-featured, pleasing sort of face; +a bit rococo in manner, I suspect; a little too San Francisco, as so +many of these Western beauties are, but you'd not mind that, and a year +in New York will tone her down anyway. + +Now if your dear uncle will only confer a lasting benefit upon the +world and his title upon you, by paying the only debt he is ever liable +to pay, I am persuaded you could be the man here. I know nothing of how +the fortune was left, nor of its extent, except that it's said to be +stiffish, and out here that means a big, round sum. The reason I write +promptly is that you may not go out of the country just now. That sweet +little Milbrey chit--really, Avice is far too old now for ingenue +parts--has not only grappled the son with hooks of steel, but from +remarks the good mother dropped concerning the fine qualities of her +son, she means to convert the daughter's _dot_ into Milbrey prestige, +also. What a glorious double stroke it would be, after all their years +of trying. However, with your title, even in prospective, Fred Milbrey +is no rival for you to fear, providing you are on the ground as soon as +he, which is why I wish you to stay in New York. + +I am indeed gratified that you have broken off whatever affair there +may have been between you and that music-hall person. Really, you know, +though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that +sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone +back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no +attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect? +Why _should_ she have wanted to marry you? + +I shall see you probably in another fortnight. + +You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where +they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what +we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them +winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such +beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is _so_ impulsively democratic." +Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge +our train has just rattled over. Sincerely, + +JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER. + +_From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York._ + +Muetterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last +spring--the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display +of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping. +Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of +marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains +lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in +learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all +animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm +the fittest--twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just +how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate +the exact disturbing effect of the _ensemble_ upon any poor male, and +feeling confident of my excessively eligible _parti_ when I decide for +him--in this situation, striven for so earnestly, I feel like bolting +the bars. How my trainer and jockey would weep tears of rage and +despair if they guessed it! + +There, there--I know your shrewd grey eyes are crackling with curiosity +and, you want to know what it's all about, whether to scold me or +mother me, and will I please omit the _entrees_ and get to the roast +mutton. But you dear, dear old aunt, you, there is more vagueness than +detail, and I know I'll strain your patience before I've done. But, to +relieve your mind, nothing at all has really happened. After all, it's +mostly a _troublesome state of mind_, that I shall doubtless find gone +when we reach Jersey City,--and in two ways this Western trip is +responsible for it. Do you know the journey itself has been +fascinating. Too bad so many of us cross the ocean twenty times before +we know anything of this country. We loiter in Paris, do the stupid +German watering-places, the Norway fjords, down to Italy for the +museums, see the _chateaux_ of the Loire, or do the English +race-tracks, thinking we're 'mused; and all the time out here where the +sun goes down is an intensely interesting and beautiful country of our +own that we overlook. You know I'd never before been even as far as +Chicago. Now for the first time I can appreciate lots of those things +in Whitman, that-- + +"I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and free +poems, also. Now I see the secret of making the best persons: It is +to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth." + +I mayn't have quoted correctly, but you know the sort of thing I mean, +that sounds so _breezy_ and _stimulating_. And they've helped me +understand the immensity of the landscapes and the ideas out here, the +big, throbbing, rough young life, and under it all, as Whitman says, "a +meaning--Democracy, _American_ Democracy." Really it's been +interesting, _the jolliest time of my life,_ and it's got me all +unsettled. More than once in watching some scene typical of the region, +the plain, busy, earnest people, I've actually thrilled to think that +this was _my country_--felt that queer little tickling tingle that +locates your spine for you. I'm sure there's no _ennui_ here. Some one +said the other day, "_Ennui_ is a disease that comes from living on +other people's money." I said no, that I'd often had as fine an attack +as if I'd been left a billion, that _ennui_ is when you don't know what +to do next and wouldn't do it if you did. Well, here they always _do_ +know what to do next, and as one of them told me, "_We always get up +early the day before to do it_." + +Auntie, dear, the trip has made me _more restless and dissatisfied_ +than ever. It makes me want to _do_ something--to _risk_ something, to +want to _want_ something more than I've ever learned to want. + +That's one reason I'm acting badly. The other will interest you more. + +It's no less a reason than _the athletic young Bayard_ who cheated +those cab-horses of their prey that night Fred didn't drink all the +Scotch whiskey in New York. Our meeting, and the mater's treatment of +him before she discovered who he was, are too delicious to write. I +must wait to tell you. + +It is enough to say that now I heard his name it recalled nothing to +me, and I took him from his dress to be a _workingman_ in the mine we +visiting, though from his speech and manner of a gentleman, someone in +authority. Dear, he was _so_ dear and so Westernly breezy and +progressive and enterprising and so _appallingly candid_. I've been the +"one woman", the "unknown but remembered ideal" since that encounter. +Of course, that was to be said, but strangely enough he meant it. He +was actually and unaffectedly making love to me. He's not so large or +tall, but quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not +beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad +high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest +quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever +saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would _eat it off +even_ clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, +or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not +used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating +eyes, to show if I'm worth the _asking price_. But here was real love +being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others because +I _liked him at once_). I don't mind telling you he moved me, partly +because I had wondered about him from that night, and partly because of +all I had come to feel about this new place and the new people, and +because he seemed such a fine, active specimen of Western manhood. I +won't tell you all the wild, lawless thoughts that scurried and +_sneaked_ through my mind--they don't matter now--for all at once it +came out that he was the only son of that wealthy Bines who died awhile +ago--you remember the name was mentioned that night at your house when +they were discussing the exodus of Western millionaires to New York; +some one named the father as one who liked coming to New York to +dissipate occasionally, but who was still rooted in the soil where his +millions grew. + +There was the son before me, just _an ordinary man of millions_, after +all--and my little toy balloon of romance that I'd been floating so +gaily on a string of sentiment was pricked to nothing in an instant. I +felt my nostrils expand with the excitement of the chase, and +thereafter I was my _coldly professional self_. If that young man has +not now a high estimate of my charms of person and mind, then have my +ways forgot their cunning and I be no longer the daughter of Margaret +Milbrey, _nee_ van Schoule. + +But, Muetterchen, now comes the disgraceful part. I'm afraid of myself, +even in spite of our affairs being so bad. Dad has doubtless told you +something must be done very soon, and I seem to be the only one to do +it. And yet I am shying at the gate. This trip has unsettled me, I tell +you, letting me, among other things, see my old self. Before I always +rather liked the idea of marriage, that is, after I'd been out a couple +of years--not too well, but well enough--and now some way I rebel, not +from scruples, but from pure selfishness. I'm beginning to find that I +want to _enjoy myself_ and to find, further, that I'm not indisposed to +_take chances_--as they say out here. Will you understand, I wonder? +And do women who sell themselves ever find any real pleasure in the +bargain? The most eloquent examples, the ones that sell themselves to +_many men,_ lead wretched lives. But does the woman who sells herself +to _but one_ enjoy life any more? She's surely as bad, from any +standpoint of morals, and I imagine sometimes she is less happy. At any +rate, she has less _freedom_ and more _obligations_ under her contract. +You see I am philosophising pretty coldly. Now be _horrified_ if you +will. + +I am selfish by good right, though. "Haven't we spent all our surplus +in keeping you up for a good marriage?" says the mater, meaning by a +good marriage that I shall bring enough money into the family to _"keep +up its traditions."_ I am, in other words, an investment from which +they expect large returns. I told her I hoped she could trace her +selfishness to its source as clearly as I could mine, and as for the +family traditions, Fred was preserving those in an excellent medium. +Which was very ugly in me, and I cried afterwards and told her how +sorry I was. + +Are you shocked by my cold calculations? Well, I am trying to let you +understand me, and I-- + +"...have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth." + +I am cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires, +but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a +disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only +more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any thought to the +husband, certainly never concerned myself with any notions of duty or +obligation toward him. The girls I know are taught painstakingly how to +get a husband, but nothing of how to be a wife. The husband in my case +was to be an inconvenience, but doubtless an amusing one. For all his +oppression, if there were that, and even for _the mere offence of his +existence,_ I should wreak my spite merrily on his vulgar dollars. + +But you are saying that I like the present eligible. That's the +trouble. I like him so well I haven't the heart to marry him. When I +was twenty I could have loved him devotedly, I believe. Now something +seems to be gone, some freshness or fondness. I can still love--I know +it only too well night and day--but it must be a different kind of man. +He is so very young and reverent and tender, and in a way so +unsophisticated. He is so afraid of me, for all his pretence of +boldness. + +Is it because I must be taken by sheer force? I'll not be surprised if +it is. Do we not in our secret soul of souls nourish this beatitude: +"Blessed is the man who _destroys all barriers"?_ Florence Akemit said +as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the +matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently +challenging--threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing +not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man +who brutally and honestly beats them down, and _destroys them utterly?_ +So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if an _untidy +litter_ is left we make a row. We reconstruct the barrier and that +particular assailant is thenceforth deprived of a combatant's rights. +What a dear you are that I can say these things to you! Were girls so +frank in your time? + +Well, my knight of the "golden cross" (_joke; laughter and loud +applause, and cries of "Go on!"_) has a little, much indeed, of the +impetuous in him, but, alas! not enough. He has a pretty talent for it, +but no genius. If I were married to him to-morrow, as surely as I am a +woman I should be made to inflict pain upon him the next day, with an +insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had +thought me--perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had +inspired--rational creatures, aren't we?--beg pardon--not we, then, but +I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that--for money? +Do I want the money _badly enough?_ Would I not even rather be +penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest +impulse, body and soul--_perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power +over me?_ Do you know, I suspect sometimes that I've been trained down +too fine, as to my nerves, I mean. I doubt if it's safe to pamper and +trim and stimulate and refine a woman in that hothouse atmosphere--at +least _if she's a healthy woman_. She's too apt sometime to break her +gait, get the bit of tradition between her teeth, and then let her +impulses run away with her. + +Oh, Muetterchen, I am so sick and sore, and yet filled with a strange +new zest for this old puzzle of life. Will I ever be the same again? +This man is going to ask me to marry him the moment I am ready for him +to. Shall I be kind enough to tell him no, or shall I steel myself to +go in and hurt him--_make him writhe?_ + +And yet do you know what he gave me while I was with him? I wonder if +women feel it commonly? It was a desire for _motherhood_--a curiously +vivid and very definite longing--entirely irrespective of him, you +understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all +moved toward him, he made me sheerly _want_ to be a mother! Or is it +only that men we don't love make us feel motherly? + +Am I wholly irrational and selfish and bad, or what am I? I know you'll +love me, whatever it is, and I wish now I could snuggle on that soft, +cushiony shoulder of yours and go to sleep. + +Can anything be more pitiful than "a fine old family" afflicted with +_dry-rot_ like ours? I'm always amused when I read about the suffering +in the tenements. The real anguish is up in the homes like ours. We +have _to do without so very many more things,_ and mere hunger and cold +are easy compared to the suffering we feel. + +Perhaps when I'm back to that struggle for appearances, I'll relent and +"barter my charms" as the old novels used to say, sanely and decently +like a well brought-up New York girl--_with certain reservations,_ to a +man who can support the family in the style to which it wants to become +accustomed. Yet there may be a way out. There is a Bines daughter, for +example, and mamma, who never does one half where she can as well do +two, will marry her to Fred if she can. On the other hand, Joe Drelmer +was putting in words for young Mauburn, who will be Lord Casselthorpe +when his disreputable old uncle dies. + +She hasn't yet spent what she got for introducing the Canovass prince +to that oldest Elarton girl, so if she secures this prize for Mauburn, +she'll be comfortable for a couple of more years. Perhaps I could turn +my hand to something like that. I know the ropes as well as she does. + +There, it _is_ a punishment of a letter, isn't it, dear? But I've known +_every bad place in it,_ and I've religiously put in your "Come, come, +child!" every time it belonged, so you've not still to scold me, for +which be comforted a little; and give me only a few words of cheerful +approval if your conscience will let you. I need that, after all, more +than advice. Look for us in a week. With a bear-hug for you, + +AVICE. + +P.S. Is it true that Ned Ristine and his wife have fixed it up and are +together again since his return? Not that I'm interested especially, +but I chanced to hear it gossiped the other day here on the car. +Indeed, I hope you know _how thoroughly I detest that man_! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +The Price of Averting a Scandal + + +As the train resumed speed after stopping at a station, Grant, the +porter, came back to the observation room of the Bines car with a +telegram for Uncle Peter. The old man read it and for a time mused +himself into seeming oblivion. Across the car, near by, Percival +lounged in a wicker arm-chair and stared cheerfully out into the +gathering night. He, too, was musing, his thoughts keeping pleasantly +in time with the rhythmic click of the wheels over the rail-joints. +After a day in the open air he was growing sleepy. + +Uncle Peter aroused him by making his way back to the desk, the +roll-top of which he lifted with a sudden rattle. He called to +Percival. Sitting down at the desk he read the telegram again and +handed it to the young man, who read: + +"Party will try to make good; no bluff. Won't compromise inside limit +set. Have seen paper and wish another interview before following +original instructions. Party will wait forty-eight hours before acting. +Where can you be seen? Wire office to-night. + +"TAFE & COPLEN." + +The young man looked up with mild interest. Uncle Peter was writing on +a telegraph blank. + +"TAFE & COPLEN, Butte, Montana. + +"Due Butte 7.30 A.M. to-morrow. Join me on car nought sixteen, go to +Montana City. + +"PETER BINES. + +"D.H.F. 742." + +To the porter who answered his ring he handed the message to be put off +at the first stop. + +"But what's it all about?" asked Percival, seeing by Uncle Peter's +manner that he was expected to show concern. + +Uncle Peter closed the desk, lighted one of his best cigars, and +dropped into a capacious chair. The young man seated himself opposite. + +"Well, son, it's a matter I cal'lated first off to handle myself, but +it looks now as if you better be in on it. I don't know just how much +you knew about your pa's ways, but, anyhow, you wouldn't play him to +grade much higher above standard than the run of 'em out here that has +had things comin' too easy for 'em. He was all right, Dan'l J. was. God +knows I ain't discountin' the comfort I've always took in him. He'd +stand acid all right, at any stage of the game. Don't forget that about +your pa." + +The young man reflected. + +"The worst story I ever heard of pa was about the time he wanted to +draw twenty thousand dollars from the bank in Tacoma. They telegraphed +the Butte National to wire his description, and the answer was 'tall +and drunk.'" + +"Well, son, his periodicals wa'n't all. Seems as if this crowd has a +way fur women, and they generally get the gaff because they're so +blamed easy. You don't hear of them Eastern big men gettin' it so +often, but I've seen enough of 'em to know it ain't because they're any +straighter. They're jest a little keener on business propositions. They +draw a fine sight when it comes to splittin' pennies, while men out +here like your pa is lavish and careless. You know about lots of the +others. + +"There's Sooley Pentz, good-hearted a man as ever sacked ore, and +plenty long-headed enough for the place he's bought in the Senate, but +Sooley is restless until he's bought up one end of every town he goes +into, from Eden plumb over to Washington, D. C.,--and 'tain't ever the +Sunday-school end Sooley buys either. If he was makin' two million a +month instead of one Sooley'd grieve himself to death because they +don't make that five-dollar kind of wine fast enough. + +"Then there was Seth Larby. We're jest gettin' to the details of Seth's +expense account after he found the Lucky Cuss. I see the courts have +decided against the widow and children, and so they'll have to worry +off about five or six millions for the poor lady he duped so +outrageously--with a checker on the chips. + +"As fur old Nate Kranil, a lawyer from Cheyenne was tellin' me his +numerous widows by courtesy was goin' to form an association and share +his leavin's pro raty. Said they'd all got kind of acquainted and made +up their minds they was such a reg'lar band of wolves that none of 'em +was able to do any of the others in the long run, so they'd divide +even. + +"Then there was Dave Kisber, and--" + +"Never mind any more--" Percival broke in. "Do you mean that my father +was mixed up like those old Indians?" + +"Looks now as if he was. That telegram from Coplen is concernin' of a +lady--a party that was with him when he died. The press report sent out +that the young and beautiful Mrs. Bines was with her husband, and was +prostrated with grief. Your ma and Pishy was up to Steamin' Springs at +the time, and I kep' it from them all right." + +"But _how_ was he entangled?--to what extent?" + +"That's what we'll get more light on in the morning. She made a play +right after the will was filed fur probate, and I told Coplen to see +jest what grounds she had, and I'd settle myself if she really had any +and wa'n't unreasonable." + +"It's just a question of blackmail, isn't it? What did you offer?" + +"Well, she has a slew of letters--gettin' them is a matter of sentiment +and keepin' the thing quiet. Then she claims to have a will made last +December and duly witnessed, givin' her the One Girl outright, and a +million cash. So you can see she ain't anything ordinary. I told Coplen +to offer her a million cash for everything rather'n have any fuss. I +was goin' to fix it up myself and keep quiet about it." + +"And this telegram looks as if she wanted to fight." + +"Well, mebbe that and mebbe it means that she knows we _don't_ want to +fight considerable more than a million dollars' worth." + +"How much do you think she'll hold out for?" + +"Can't tell; you don't know how big pills she's been smokin'." + +"But, damn it all, that's robbery!" + +"Yes--but it's her deal. You remember when Billy Brue was playin' +seven-up with a stranger in the Two-Hump saloon over to Eden, and +Chiddie Fogle the bartender called him up front and whispered that he'd +jest seen the feller turn a jack from the bottom. 'Well,' says Billie, +looking kind of reprovin' at Chiddie, 'it was _his deal,_ wa'n't it?' +Now it's sure this blond party's deal, and we better reckon ahead a +mite before we start any roughhouse with her. You're due to find out if +you hadn't better let her turn her jack and trust to gettin' even on +your deal. You got a claim staked out in New York, and a scandal like +this might handicap you in workin' it. And 'tain't as if hushin' her up +was something we couldn't well afford. And think of how it would +torment your ma to know of them doin's, and how 'twould shame Pish in +company. Of course, rob'ry is rob'ry, but mebbe it's our play to be +sporty like Billy Brue was." + +"Pretty bad, isn't it? I never suspected pa was in anything of this +sort." + +"Well, I knew Dan'l J. purty well, and I spleened against some of his +ways, but that's done fur. Now the folks out in this part of the +country have come to expect it from a man like him. They don't mind so +much. But them New York folks--well, I thought mebbe you'd like to take +a clean bill of health when you settle in that centre of culture and +enlightenment,--and remember your ma and Pish." + +"Of course the exposure would mean a lot of cheap notoriety--" + +"Well, and not so all-fired cheap at that, even if we beat. I've heard +that lawyers are threatenin' to stop this thing of workin' entirely fur +their health. There's that to weigh up." + +"But I hate to be done." + +"Well, wouldn't you be worse done if you let a matter of money, when +you're reekin' with it, keep you from protectin' your pa's name? Do you +want folks to snicker when they read that 'lovin' husband and father' +business on his gravestone? My! I guess that young woman and her folks +we met the other day'd be tickled to death to think they knew you after +they'd read one of them Sunday newspaper stories with pictures of us +all, and an extry fine one of the millionaire's dupe, basely enticed +from her poor but honest millinery business in Spokane." + +Percival shuddered. + +"Well, let's see what Coplen has to say in the morning. If it can be +settled within reason I suppose we better give up." + +"That's my view now, and the estate bein' left as simply as it was, we +can make in the payments unbeknownst to the folks." + +They said good-night, and Percival went off to dream that a cab-horse +of mammoth size was threatening to eat Miss Milbrey unless he drove it +to Spokane Falls and bought two million millinery shops. + +When he was jolted to consciousness they were in the switching yard at +Butte, and the car was being coupled to the rear of the train made up +for Montana City. He took advantage of the stop to shave. By the time +he was dressed they were under way again, steaming out past the big +smelters that palled the sky with heavy black smoke. + +At the breakfast-table he found Uncle Peter and Coplen. + +"I'm inclined," said the lawyer, as Percival peeled a peach, "to agree +with your grandfather. This woman--if I may use the term--is one of the +nerviest leg-pullers you're ever likely to strike." + +"Lord! I should hope so," said Percival, with hearty emphasis. + +"She studied your father and she knew him better than any of us, I +judge. She certainly knew he was liable to go at any time, in exactly +the way he did go. Why, she even had a doctor down from 'Frisco to +Monterey when they were there about a year ago--introduced him as an +old friend and had him stay around three days--just to give her a +private professional opinion on his chances. As to this will, the +signature is undoubtedly genuine, but my judgment is she procured it in +some way on a blank sheet of paper and had the will written above on +sheets like it. As it conforms to the real will word for word, +excepting the bequests to her, she must have had access to that before +having this one written. Of course that helps to make it look as if the +testator had changed his mind only as to the one legatee--makes it look +plausible and genuine. The witnesses were of course parties to the +fraud, but I seriously question our ability to prove there was fraud. +We think they procured a copy of the will we kept in our safe at Butte +through the clerk that Tafe fired awhile back because of his drinking +habits and because he was generally suspicious of him. Of course that's +only surmise." + +"But can't we fight it?" demanded Percival, hungrily attacking the +crisp, brown little trout. + +"Well, if we allowed it to come to a contest, we might expose the whole +thing, and then again we might not. I tell you she's clever. She's +shown it at every step. Now then, if you do fight," and the lawyer +bristled, as if his fighting spirit were not too far under the control +of his experience-born caution, "why, you have litigation that's bound +to last for years, and it would be pretty expensive. I admit the case +is tempting to a lawyer, but in the end you don't know what you'll get, +especially with this woman. Why, do you know she's already, we've +found, made up to two different judges that might be interested in any +litigation she'd have, and she's cultivating others. The role of +Joseph," he continued, "has never, to the best of my belief, been +gracefully played in the world's history, and you may have noticed that +the members of the Montana judiciary seem to be particularly awkward in +their essays at it. In the end, then, you'll be out a lot of money even +if you win. On the other hand, you have a chance to settle it for good +and all, getting back everything--excepting the will, which, of course, +we couldn't touch or even concede the existence of, but which would, if +such an instrument _were_ extant, be destroyed in the presence of a +witness whose integrity I could rely upon--well--as upon my own. The +letters which she has, and which I have seen, are also such as would +tend to substantiate her claims and make the large bequests to her seem +plausible--and they're also such letters as--I should infer--the family +would rather wish not to be made public, as they would be if it came to +trial." + +"Jest what I told him," remarked Uncle Peter. + +"What she'll hold out for I don't know, but I'd suggest this, that I +meet her attorney and put the case exactly as I've found it out as to +the will, letting them suspect, perhaps, that we have admissions of +some sort from Hornby, the clerk, that might damage them. Then I can +put it that, while we have no doubt of our ability to dispose of the +will, we do wish to avoid the scandal that would ensue upon a +publication of the letters they hold and the exposure of her relations +with the testator, and that upon this purely sentimental ground we are +willing to be bled to a reasonable extent. The One Girl is a valuable +mine, but my opinion is she'll be glad to get two million if we seem +reluctant to pay that much." + +With that gusto of breakfast-appetite which arouses the envy of persons +whose alimentation is not what it used to be, Percival had devoured +ruddy peaches and purple grapes, trout that had breasted their swift +native currents that very morning, crisp little curls of bacon, muffins +that were mere flecks of golden foam, honey with the sweetness of a +thousand fragrant blossoms, and coffee that was oily with richness. For +a time he had seemed to make no headway against his hill-born appetite. +The lawyer, who had broken his fast with a strip of dry toast and a cup +of weak tea, had watched him with unfeigned and reminiscent interest. +Grant, who stood watchful to replenish his plate, and whose pleasure it +was to see him eat, regarded him with eyes fairly dewy from sympathy. +To A. L. Jackson, the cook, on a trip for hot muffins, he observed, "He +eats jes' like th' ole man. I suttin'y do love t' see that boy behave +when he got his fresh moral appetite on him. He suttin'y do ca'y +hisse'f mighty handsome." + +With Coplen's final recommendation to settle Percival concluded his +meal, and after surveying with fondly pleasant regret the devastation +he had wrought, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigar. He was +no longer in a mood to counsel fight, even though he disliked to +submit. + +"You know," he reminded Uncle Peter, "what that editorial in the Rock +Rip _Champion_ said about me when we were over there: 'We opine that +the Junior Bines will become a warm piece of human force if he isn't +ground-sluiced too early in the game.' Well--and here I'm +ground-sluiced the first rattle out of the box." + +But the lawyer went over the case again point by point, and Percival +finally authorised him to make the best settlement possible. He cared +as little for the money as Uncle Peter did, large sum though it was. +And then his mother and sister would be spared a great humiliation, and +his own standing where most he prized it would not be jeopardised. + +"Settle the best you can," was his final direction to Coplen. The +lawyer left them at the next station to wait for a train back to Butte. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose + + +As the train moved on after leaving Coplen, Percival fell to thinking +of the type of man his father had been. + +"Uncle Peter," he said, suddenly, "they don't _all_ cut loose, do they? +Now _you_ never did?" + +"Yes, I did, son. I yanked away from all the hitchin' straps of decency +when I first struck it, jest like all the rest of 'em. Oh, I was an +Indian in my time--a reg'ler measly hop-pickin' Siwash at that. + +"You don't know, of course, what livin' out in the open on bacon and +beans does fur a healthy man's cravin's. He gets so he has visions day +and night of high-livin'--nice broiled steaks with plenty of fat on +'em, and 'specially cake and preserves and pies like mother used to +make--fat, juicy mince pies that would assay at least eight hundred +dollars a ton in raisins alone, say nothing of the baser metals. He +sees the crimp around the edges made with a fork, and the picture of a +leaf pricked in the middle to vent the steam, and he gets to smellin' +'em when they're pulled smokin' hot out of the oven. And frosted cake, +the layer kind--about five layers, with stratas of jelly and custard +and figs and raisins and whatever it might be. I saw 'em fur years, +with a big cuttin' out to show the cross-section. + +"But a man that has to work by the day fur enough to take him through +the prospectin' season can't blow any of his dust on frivolous things +like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I +never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either. + +"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to +them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a +stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into +the bake-shop windows and just gloat.--'rubber' they call it now'days. +My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed +that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest +kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin' +was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights. + +"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The +bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did +torment a body so! It was kep' by a Chink, and the star play in the +window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the +place--on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it +looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that +concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with--and +a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much--showin' a +cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that +jest made a man want to give up. + +"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window +and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The Chink was +standin' in the door the first day. + +"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me. + +"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head. + +"Next day I was there again, yearnin'. The Chink see me and come out. + +"'One doll' li'l piece", he says. + +"I says, 'No, you slant-eyed heathen,' or some such name as that. But +when you're looking fur tests of character, son, don't let that one +hide away from you. I'd play that fur the heftiest moral courage _I've_ +ever showed, anyway. + +"The third day it was gone and a lemon pie was there, all with nice +kind of brownish snow on top. I was on my way out then, pushin' the +mule. I took one lingerin' last look and felt proud of myself when I +saw the hump in the pack made by my bag of beans. + +"'That-like flummery food's no kind of diet to be trackin' up pay-rock +on,' I says to kind of cheer myself. + +"Four weeks later I struck it. And six weeks after that I had things in +shape so't I was able to leave. I was nearer to other places 'twas +bigger, but I made fur Grand Bar, lettin' on't I wanted to see about a +claim there. I'd 'a' felt foolish to have anyone know jest why I was +makin' the trip. + +"On the way I got to havin' night-mares, 'fear that Chink would be +gone. I knew if he was I'd go down to my grave with something comin' to +me because I'd never found jest that identical cake I'd been famishin' +fur. + +"When I got up front of the window, you can believe it or not, but that +Chink was jest settin' down another like it. Now you know how that +Monte Cristo carried on after he'd proved up. Well, I got into his +class, all right. I walked in past a counter where the Chink had +crullers and gingerbread and a lot of low-grade stuff like that, and I +set down to a little table with this here marble oil-cloth on it. + +"'Bring her back,' I says, kind of tremblin', and pointin' to the +window. + +"The Chink pattered up and come back with a little slab of it on a tin +plate. I jest let it set there. + +"'Bring it all,' I says; 'I want the hull ball of wax.' + +"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of cautious. + +"I pulled out my buckskin pouch. 'Bring her back and take it out of +that,' I says--'when I get through,' I says. + +"He grinned and hurried back with it. Well, son, nothing had ever +tasted so good to me, and I ain't say'n' that wa'n't the biggest worth +of all my money't I ever got. I'd been trainin' fur that cake fur +twenty odd year, and proddin' my imagination up fur the last ten weeks. + +"I et that all, and I et another one with jelly, and a bunch of little +round ones with frostin' and raisins, and a bottle of brandied peaches, +and about a dozen cream puffs, and half a lemon pie with frostin' on +top, and four or five Charlotte rushes. The Chink had learned to make +'em all in 'Frisco. + +"That meal set me back $34.75. When I went out I noticed the plain +sponge cakes and fruit cakes and dried-apple pies--things that had been +out of my reach fur twenty years, and--My! but they did look common and +unappetisin'. I kind of shivered at the sight of 'em. + +"I ordered another one of the big cakes and two more lemon pies fur the +next day. + +"Fur four days I led a life of what they call 'unbridled +licentiousness' while that Chink pandered to me. I never was any hand +fur drink, but I cut loose in that fancy-food joint, now I tell you. + +"The fifth day I begun to taper off. I begun to have a suspicion the +stuff was made of sawdust with plasty of Paris fur frostin'. The sixth +day I was sure it was sawdust, and my shameful debauch comes to an end +right there. I remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his +chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of +corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out--twelve of the +chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I +felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me +plumb nervous to ketch sight of a saw-buck. + +"It took jest three weeks fur me to get right inside again. My, but +meat victuals and all like that did taste mighty scrumptious when I +could handle 'em again. + +"After that when I'd been out in the hills fur a season I'd get that +hankerin' back, and when I come in I'd have a little frosted-cake orgy +now and then. But I kep' myself purty well in hand. I never overdone it +like that again, fur you see I'd learned something. First off, there +was the appetite. I soon see the gist of my fun had been the _wantin'_ +the stuff, the appetite fur it, and if you nursed an appetite along and +deluded it with promises it would stay by you like one of them meachin' +yellow dogs. But as soon as you tried to do the good-fairy act by it, +and give it all it hankered fur, you killed it off, and then you +wouldn't be entertained by it no more, and kep' stirred up and busy. + +"And so I layed out to nurse my appetite, and aggravate it by never +givin' it quite all it wanted. When I was in the hills after a day's +tramp I'd let it have its fling on such delicacies as I could turn out +of the fryin'-pan myself, but when I got in again I'd begin to act +bossy with it. It's _wantin'_ reasonably that keeps folks alive, I +reckon. The mis-a-blest folks I've ever saw was them that had killed +all their wants by overfeedin' 'em. + +"Then again, son, in this world of human failin's there ain't anything +ever _can_ be as pure and blameless and satisfyin' as the stuff in a +bake-shop window looks like it is. Don't ever furget that. It's jest +too good to be true. And in the next place--pastry's good in its way, +but the best you can ever get is what's made fur you at home--I'm +talkin' about a lot of things now that you don't probably know any too +much about. Sometimes the boys out in the hills spends their time +dreamin' fur other things besides pies and cakes, but that system of +mine holds good all through the deal--you can play it from soda to hock +and not lose out. And that's why I'm outlastin' a lot of the boys and +still gettin' my fun out of the game. + +"It's a good system fur you, son, while you're learnin' to use your +head. Your pa played it at first, then he cut loose. And you need it +worse'n ever he did, if I got you sized up right. He touched me on one +side, and touched you on the other. But you can last longer if you jest +keep the system in mind a little. Remember what I say about the window +stuff." + +Percival had listened to the old man's story with proper amusement, and +to the didactics with that feeling inevitable to youth which says +secretly, as it affects to listen to one whom it does not wish to +wound, "Yes, yes, I know, but you were living in another day, long ago, +and you are not _me!_" + +He went over to the desk and began to scribble a name on the pad of +paper. + +"If a man really loves one woman he'll behave all right," he observed +to Uncle Peter. + +"Oh, I ain't preachin' like some do. Havin' a good time is all right; +it's the only thing, I reckon, sometimes, that justifies the misery of +livin'. But cuttin' loose is bad jedgment. A man wakes up to find that +his natural promptin's has cold-decked him. If I smoked the best +see-gars now all the time, purty soon I'd get so't I wouldn't +appreciate 'em. That's why I always keep some of these out-door +free-burners on hand. One of them now and then makes the others taste +better." + +The young man had become deaf to the musical old voice. + +He was writing: + +"MY DEAR MISS MILBREY:--I send you the first and only poem I ever +wrote. I may of course be a prejudiced critic, but it seems to me to +possess in abundance those graces of metre, rhyme, high thought in +poetic form, and perfection of finish which the critics unite in +demanding. To be honest with you--and why should I conceal that conceit +which every artist is said secretly to feel in his own production?--I +have encountered no other poem in our noble tongue which has so moved +and captivated me. + +"It is but fair to warn you that this is only the first of a volume of +similar poems which I contemplate writing. And as the theme appears now +to be inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the +number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this +author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has +been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady _Lyre,_ in the hope that +he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and +ideal perfection for which the humbler bards have hitherto striven in +vain. + +"Sincerely and seriously yours, + +"P. PERCIVAL BINES" + +Thus ran the exalted poem on a sheet of note-paper: + + "AVICE MILBREY. + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey. + And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +Plans for the Journey East + + +Until late in the afternoon they rode through a land that was bleak and +barren of all grace or cheer. The dull browns and greys of the +landscape were unrelieved by any green or freshness save close by the +banks of an occasional stream. The vivid blue of a cloudless sky served +only to light up its desolation to greater disadvantage. It was a grim +unsmiling land, hard to like. + +"This may be God's own country," said Percival once, looking out over a +stretch of grey sage-brush to a mass of red sandstone jutting up, high, +sharp, and ragged, in the distance--"but it looks to me as if He got +tired of it Himself and gave up before it was half finished." + +"A man has to work here a few years to love it," said Uncle Peter, +shortly. + +As they left the car at Montana City in the early dusk, that thriving +metropolis had never seemed so unattractive to Percival; so rough, new, +garish, and wanting so many of the softening charms of the East. +Through the wide, unpaved streets, lined with their low wooden +buildings, they drove to the Bines mansion, a landmark in the oldest +and most fashionable part of the town. For such distinctions are made +in Western towns as soon as the first two shanties are built. The Bines +house had been a monument to new wealth from the earliest days of the +town, which was a fairly decent antiquity for the region. But the house +and the town grated harshly now upon the young man. He burned with a +fever of haste to be off toward the East--over the far rim of hills, +and the farther higher mountain range, to a land that had warmed +genially under three hundred years of civilised occupancy--where people +had lived and fraternised long enough to create the atmosphere he +craved so ardently. + +While Chinese Wung lighted the hall gas and busied himself with their +hats and bags, Psyche Bines came down the stairs to greet them. Never +had her youthful freshness so appealed to her brother. The black gown +she wore emphasised her blond beauty. As to give her the aspect of +mourning one might have tried as reasonably to hide the radiance of the +earth in springtime with that trifling pall. + +Her brother kissed her with more than his usual warmth. Here was one to +feel what he felt, to sympathise warmly with all those new yearnings +that were to take him out of the crude West. She wanted, for his own +reasons, all that he wanted. She understood him; and she was his ally +against the aged and narrow man who would have held them to life in +that physical and social desert. + +"Well, sis, here we are!" he began. "How fine you're looking! And how +is Mrs. Throckmorton? Give her my love and ask her if she can be ready +to start for the effete East in twenty minutes." + +It was his habit to affect that he constantly forgot his mother's name. +He had discovered years before that he was sometimes able thus to +puzzle her momentarily. + +"Why, Percival!" exclaimed this excellent lady, coming hurriedly from +the kitchen regions, "I haven't a thing packed. Twenty minutes! +Goodness! I do declare!" + +It was an infirmity of Mrs. Bines that she was unable to take otherwise +than literally whatever might be said to her; an infirmity known and +played upon relentlessly by her son. + +"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, with a show of irritation. "I suppose we'll +be delayed then. That's like a woman. Never ready on time. Probably we +can't start now till after dinner. Now hurry! You know that boat leaves +the dock for Tonsilitis at 8.23--I hope you won't be seasick." + +"Boat--dock--" Mrs. Bines stopped to convince herself beyond a +certainty that no dock nor boat could be within many hundred miles of +her by any possible chance. + +"Never mind," said Psyche; "give ma half an hour's notice and she can +start for any old place." + +"Can't she though!" and Percival, seizing his astounded mother, waltzed +with her down the hall, leaving her at the far end with profusely +polite assurances that he would bring her immediately a lemon-ice, an +ice-pick, and a cold roast turkey with pink stockings on. + +"Never mind, Mrs. Cartwright," he called back to her--"oh, beg +pardon--Bines? yes, yes, to be sure--well, never mind, Mrs. Brennings. +We'll give you time to put your gloves and a bottle of horse-radish and +a nail-file and hammer into that neat travelling-bag of yours. + +"Now let me go up and get clean again. That lovely alkali dust has +worked clear into my bearings so I'm liable to have a hot box just as +we get the line open ninety miles ahead." + +At dinner and afterwards the new West and the old aligned themselves +into hostile camps, as of yore. The young people chatted with lively +interest of the coming change, of the New York people who had visited +the mine, of the attractions and advantages of life in New York. + +Uncle Peter, though he had long since recognised his cause as lost, +remained doggedly inimical to the migration. The home was being broken +up and he was depressed. + +"Anyhow, you'll soon be back," he warned them. "You won't like it a +mite. I tried it myself thirty years ago. I'll jest camp here until you +do come back. My! but you'll be glad to get here again." + +"Why not have Billy Brue come stay with you," suggested Mrs. Bines, who +was hurting herself with pictures of the old man's loneliness, "in case +you should want a plaster on your back or some nutmeg tea brewed, or +anything? That Wung is so trifling." + +"Maybe I might," replied the old man, "but Billy Brue ain't exactly +broke to a shack like this. I know just what he'd do all his spare +time; he'd set down to that new-fangled horseless piano and play it to +death." + +Uncle Peter meant the new automatic piano in the parlour. As far as the +new cabinet was from the what-not this modern bit of mechanism was from +the old cottage organ--the latter with its "Casket of Household +Melodies" and the former with its perforated paper repertoire of "The +World's Best Music," ranging without prejudice from Beethoven's Fifth +Symphony to "I Never Did Like a Nigger Nohow," by a composer who shall +be unnamed on this page. + +"And Uncle Peter won't have any one to bother him when he makes a +litter with all those old plans and estimates and maps of his," said +Psyche; "you'll be able to do a lot more work, Uncle Peter, this +winter." + +"Yes, only I ain't got any more work to do than I ever had, and I +always managed to do that, no matter how you did clean up after me and +mix up my papers. I'm like old Nigger Pomeroy. He was doin' a job of +whitewashin' one day, and he had an old whitewash brush with most of +the hair gone out of it. I says to him, 'Pomeroy, why don't you get you +a new brush? you could do twice as much work.' And Pomeroy says, +'That's right, Mr. Bines, but the trouble is I ain't got twice as much +work to do.' So don't you folks get out on _my_ account," he concluded, +politely. + +"And you know we shall be in mourning," said Psyche to her brother. + +"I've thought of that. We can't do any entertaining, except of the most +informal kind, and we can't go out, except very informally; but, then, +you know, there aren't many people that have us on their lists, and +while we're keeping quiet we shall have a chance to get acquainted a +little." + +"I hear they do have dreadful times with help in New York," said Mrs. +Bines. + +"Don't let that bother you, ma," her son reassured her. "We'll go to +the Hightower Hotel, first. You remember you and pa were there when it +first opened. It's twice as large now, and we'll take a suite, have our +meals served privately, our own servants provided by the hotel, and you +won't have a thing to worry you. We'll be snug there for the winter. +Then for the summer we'll go to Newport, and when we come back from +there we'll take a house. Meantime, after we've looked around a bit, +we'll build, maybe up on one of those fine corners east of the Park." + +"I almost dread it," his mother rejoined. "I never _did_ see how they +kept track of all the help in that hotel, and if it's twice as +monstrous now, however _do_ they do it--and have the beds all made +every day and the meals always on time?" + +"And you can _get_ meals there," said Percival. + +"I've been needing a broiled lobster all summer--and now the oysters +will be due--fine fat Buzzard's Bays--and oyster crabs." + +"He ain't been able to touch a morsel out here," observed Uncle Peter, +with a palpably false air of concern. "I got all worried up about him, +barely peckin' at a crumb or two." + +"I never could learn to eat those oysters out of their shells," Mrs. +Bines confessed. "They taste so much better out of the can. Once we had +them raw and on two of mine were those horrid little green crabs, +actually squirming. I was going to send them back, but your pa laughed +and ate them himself--ate them alive and kicking." + +"And terrapin!" exclaimed Percival, with anticipatory relish. + +"That terrapin stew does taste kind of good," his mother admitted, +"but, land's sakes! it has so many little bits of bones in it I always +get nervous eating it. It makes me feel as if all my teeth was coming +out." + +"You'll soon learn all those things, ma," said her daughter--"and not +to talk to the waiters, and everything like that. She always asks them +how much they earn, and if they have a family, and how many children, +and if any of them are sick, you know," she explained to Percival. + +"And I s'pose you ain't much of a hand fur smokin' cigarettes, are you, +ma?" inquired Uncle Peter, casually. + +"Me!" exclaimed Mrs. Bines, in horror; "I never smoked one of the nasty +little things in my life." + +"Son," said the old man to Percival, reproachfully, "is that any way to +treat your own mother? Here she's had all this summer to learn +cigarette smokin', and you ain't put her at it--all that time wasted, +when you _know_ she's got to learn. Get her one now so she can light +up." + +"Why, Uncle Peter Bines, how absurd!" exclaimed his granddaughter. + +"Well, them ladies smoked the other day, and they was some of the +reg'ler original van Vanvans. You don't want your poor ma kep' out of +the game, do you? Goin' to let her set around and toy with the coppers, +or maybe keep cases now and then, are you? Or, you goin' to get her a +stack of every colour and let her play with you? Pish, now, havin' been +to a 'Frisco seminary--she can pick it up, prob'ly in no time; but ma +ought to have practice here at home, so she can find out what brand she +likes best. Now, Marthy, them Turkish cigarettes, in a nice silver box +with some naked ladies painted on the outside, and your own monogram +'M.B.' in gold letters on every cigarette--" + +"Don't let him scare you, ma," Percival interrupted. "You'll get into +the game all right, and I'll see that you have a good time." + +"Only I hope the First M.E. Church of Montana City never hears of her +outrageous cuttin's-up," said Uncle Peter, as if to himself. "They'd +have her up and church her, sure--smokin' cigarettes with her gold +monogram on, at _her_ age!" "And of course we must go to the Episcopal +church there," said Psyche. "I think those Episcopal ministers are just +the smartest looking men ever. So swell looking, and anyway it's the +only church the right sort of people go to. We must be awfully high +church, too. It's the very best way to know nice people." + +"I s'pose if every day'd be Sunday by-and-bye, like the old song says, +it'd be easier fur you, wouldn't it?" asked the old man. "You and Petie +would be 401 and 402 in jest no time at all." + +Uncle Peter continued to be perversely frivolous about the most +exclusive metropolitan society in the world. But Uncle Peter was a +crabbed old man, lingering past his generation, and the young people +made generous allowance for his infirmities. + +"Only there's one thing," said his sister to Percival, when later they +were alone, "we must be careful about ma; she _will_ persist in making +such dreadful breaks, in spite of everything I can do. In San Francisco +last June, just before we went to Steaming Springs, there was one hot +day, and of course everybody was complaining. Mrs. Beale remarked that +it wasn't the heat that bothered us so, but the humidity. It was so +damp, you know. Ma spoke right up so everybody could hear her, and +said, 'Yes; isn't the humidity dreadful? Why, it's just running off me +from every pore!'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun + + +It was mid-October. The two saddle-horses and a team for carriage use +had been shipped ahead. In the private car the little party was +beginning its own journey Eastward. From the rear platform they had +watched the tall figure of Uncle Peter Bines standing in the bright +autumn sun, aloof from the band of kerchief-waving friends, the droop +of his head and shoulders showing the dejection he felt at seeing them +go. He had resisted all entreaties to accompany them. + +His last injunction to Percival had been to marry early. + +"I know your stock and I know _you_" he said; "and you got no call to +be rangin' them pastures without a brand. You never was meant fur a +maverick. Only don't let the first woman that comes ridin' herd get her +iron on you. No man knows much about the critters, of course, but I've +noticed a few things in my time. You pick one that's full-chested, +that's got a fairish-sized nose, and that likes cats. The full chest +means she's healthy, the nose means she ain't finicky, and likin' cats +means she's kind and honest and unselfish. Ever notice some women when +a cat's around? They pretend to like 'em and say 'Nice kitty!' but you +can see they're viewin' 'em with bitter hate and suspicion. If they +have to stroke 'em they do it plenty gingerly and you can see 'em +shudderin' inside like. It means they're catty themselves. But when one +grabs a cat up as if she was goin' to eat it and cuddles it in her neck +and talks baby-talk to it, you play her fur bein' sound and true. Pass +up the others, son. + +"And speakin' of the fair sex," he added, as he and Percival were alone +for a moment, "that enterprisin' lady we settled with is goin' to do +one thing you'll approve of. + +"She's goin'," he continued, in answer to Percival's look of inquiry, +"to take her bank-roll to New York. She says it's the only place fur +folks with money, jest like you say. She tells Coplen that there wa'n't +any fit society out here at all,--no advantages fur a lady of capacity +and ambitions. I reckon she's goin' to be 403 all right." + +"Seems to me she did pretty well here; I don't see any kicks due her." + +"Yes, but she's like all the rest. The West was good enough to make her +money in, but the East gets her when spendin' time comes." + +As the train started he swung himself off with a sad little "Be good to +yourself!" + +"Thank the Lord we're under way at last!" cried Percival, fervently, +when the group at the station had been shut from view. "Isn't it just +heavenly!" exclaimed his sister. + +"Think of having all of New York you want--being at home there--and not +having to look forward to this desolation of a place." + +Mrs. Bines was neither depressed nor elated. She was maintaining that +calm level of submission to fate which had been her lifelong habit. The +journey and the new life were to be undertaken because they formed for +her the line of least resistance along which all energy must flow. Had +her children elected to camp for the remainder of their days in the +centre of the desert of Gobi, she would have faced that life with as +little sense of personal concern and with no more misgivings. + +Down out of the maze of hills the train wound; and then by easy grades +after two days of travel down off the great plateau to where the plains +of Nebraska lay away to a far horizon in brown billows of withered +grass. + +Then came the crossing of the sullen, sluggish Missouri, that highway +of an earlier day to the great Northwest; and after that the better +wooded and better settled lands of Iowa and Illinois. + +"Now we're getting where Christians live," said Percival, with warm +appreciation. + +"Why, Percival," exclaimed his mother, reprovingly, "do you mean to say +there aren't any Christians in Montana City? How you talk! There are +lots of good Christian people there, though I must say I have my doubts +about that new Christian Science church they started last spring." "The +term, Mrs. Thorndike, was used in its social rather than its +theological significance," replied her son, urbanely. "Far be it from +me to impugn the religion of that community of which we are ceasing to +be integers at the pleasing rate of sixty miles an hour. God knows they +need their faith in a different kind of land hereafter!" + +And even Mrs. Bines was not without a sense of quiet and rest induced +by the gentler contours of the landscape through which they now sped. + +"The country here does seem a lot cosier," she admitted. + +The hills rolled away amiably and reassuringly; the wooded slopes in +their gay colouring of autumn invited confidence. Here were no +forbidding stretches of the grey alkali desert, no grim bare mountains, +no solitude of desolation. It was a kind land, fat with riches. The +shorn yellow fields, the capacious red barns, the well-conditioned +homes, all told eloquently of peace and plenty. So, too, did the +villages--those lively little clearing-houses for immense farming +districts. To the adventurer from New York they seem always new and +crude. To our travellers from a newer, cruder region they were actually +aesthetic in their suggestions of an old and well-established +civilisation. + +In due time they were rattling over a tangled maze of switches, dodging +interminable processions of freight-cars, barely missing crowded +passenger trains whose bells struck clear and then flatted as the +trains flew by; defiling by narrow water-ways, crowded with small +shipping; winding through streets lined with high, gloomy warehouses, +amid the clang and clatter, the strangely-sounding bells and whistles +of a thousand industries, each sending up its just contribution of +black smoke to the pall that lay always spread above; and steaming at +last into a great roomy shed where all was system, and where the big +engine trembled and panted as if in relief at having run in safety a +gantlet so hazardous. + +"Anyway, I'd rather live in Montana City than Chicago," ventured Mrs. +Bines. + +"Whatever pride you may feel in your discernment, Mrs. Cadwallader, is +amply justified," replied her son, performing before the amazed lady a +bow that indicated the lowest depths of slavish deference. + +"I am now," he continued, "going out to pace the floor of this +locomotive-boudoir for a few exhilarating breaths of smoke, and pretend +to myself that I've got to live in Chicago for ever. A little +discipline like that is salutary to keep one from forgetting the great +blessing which a merciful Providence has conferred upon one." + +"I'll walk a bit with you," said his sister, donning her jacket and a +cap. + +"Lest my remarks have seemed indeterminate, madam," sternly continued +Percival at the door of the car, "permit me to add that if Chicago were +heaven I should at once enter upon a life of crime. Do not affect to +misunderstand me, I beg of you. I should leave no avenue of salvation +open to my precious soul. I should incur no risk of being numbered +among the saved. I should be _b-a-d_, and I should sit up nights to +invent new ways of evil. If I had any leisure left from being as wicked +as I could be, I should devote it to teaching those I loved how to +become abandoned. I should doubtless issue a pamphlet, 'How to Merit +Perdition Without a Master. Learn to be Wicked in your Own Home in Ten +Lessons. Instructions Sent Securely Sealed from Observation. Thousands +of Testimonials from the Most Accomplished Reprobates of the Day.' I +trust Mrs. Llewellen Leffingwell-Thompson, that you will never again so +far forget yourself as to utter that word 'Chicago' in my presence. If +you feel that you must give way to the evil impulse, go off by yourself +and utter the name behind the protection of closed doors--where this +innocent girl cannot hear you. Come, sister. Otherwise I may behave in +a manner to be regretted in my calmer moments. Let us leave the woman +alone, now. Besides, I've got to go out and help the hands make up that +New York train. You never can tell. Some horrible accident might happen +to delay us here thirty minutes. Cheer up, ma; it's always darkest just +before leaving Chicago, you know." + +Thus flippantly do some of the younger sons of men blaspheme this +metropolis of the mid-West--a city the creation of which is, by many +persons of discrimination, held to be the chief romance and abiding +miracle of the nineteenth century. Let us rejoice that one such +partisan was now at hand to stem the torrent of abuse. As Percival held +back the door for his sister to pass out, a stout little ruddy-faced +man with trim grey sidewhiskers came quickly up the steps and barred +their way with cheery aggressiveness. + +"Ah! Mr. Higbee--well, well!" exclaimed Percival, cordially. + +"Thought it might be some of you folks when I saw the car," said +Higbee, shaking hands all around. + +"And Mrs. Bines, too! and the girl, looking like a Delaware peach when +the crop's 'failed.' How's everybody, and how long you going to be in +the good old town?" + +"Ah! we were just speaking of Chicago as you came in," said Percival, +blandly. "_Isn't_ she a great old town, though--a wonder!" + +"My boy," said Higbee, in low, solemn tones that came straight from his +heart, "she gets greater every day you live. You can see her at it, +fairly. How long since you been here?" + +"I came through last June, you know, after I left your yacht at +Newport." + +"Yes, yes; to be sure; so you did--poor Daniel J.--but say, you +wouldn't know the town now if you haven't seen it since then. Why, I +run over from New York every thirty days or so and she grows out of my +ken every time, like a five-year-old boy. Say, I've got Mrs. Higbee up +in the New York sleeper, but if you're going to be here a spell we'll +stop a few days longer and I'll drive you around--what say?--packing +houses--Lake Shore Drive--Lincoln Park--" + +He waited, glowing confidently, as one submitting irresistible +temptations. + +Percival beamed upon him with moist eyes. + +"By Jove, Mr. Higbee! that's clever of you--it's royal! Sis and I would +like nothing better--but you see my poor mother here is almost down +with nervous prostration and we've got to hurry her to New York without +an hour's delay to consult a specialist. We're afraid"--he glanced +anxiously at the astounded Mrs. Bines, and lowered his voice--"we're +afraid she may not be with us long." + +"Why, Percival," began Mrs. Bines, dazedly, "you was just saying--" + +"Now don't fly all to pieces, ma!--take it easy--you're with friends, +be sure of that. You needn't beg us to go on. You know we wouldn't +think of stopping when it may mean life or death to you. You see just +the way she is," he continued to the sympathetic Higbee--"we're afraid +she may collapse any moment. So we must wait for another time; but I'll +tell you what you do; go get Mrs. Higbee and your traps and come let us +put you up to New York. We've got lots of room--run along now--and +we'll have some of that ham, 'the kind you have always bought,' for +lunch. A.L. Jackson is a miserable cook, too, if I don't know the +truth." Gently urging Higbee through the door, he stifled a systematic +inquiry into the details of Mrs. Bines's affliction. + +"Come along quick! I'll go help you and we'll have Mrs. Higbee back +before the train starts." + +"Do you know," Mrs. Bines thoughtfully observed to her daughter, "I +sometimes mistrust Percival ain't just right in his head; you remember +he did have a bad fall on it when he was two years and five months +old--two years, five months, and eighteen days. The way he carries on +right before folks' faces! That time I went through the asylum at Butte +there was a young man kept going on with the same outlandish rigmarole +just like Percival. The idea of Percival telling me to eat a lemon-ice +with an ice-pick, and 'Oh, why don't the flesh-brushes wear nice, +proper clothes-brushes!' and be sure and hammer my nails good and hard +after I get them manicured. And back home he was always wanting to know +where the meat-augers were, saying he'd just bought nine hundred new +ones and he'd have to order a ton more if they were all lost. I don't +believe there is such a thing as a meat-auger. I don't know what on +earth a body could do with one. And that other young man," she +concluded, significantly, "they had him in a little bit of a room with +an iron-barred door to it like a prison-cell." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information + + +The Higbees were presently at home in the Bines car. Mrs. Higbee was a +pleasant, bustling, plump little woman, sparkling-eyed and sprightly. +Prominent in her manner was a helpless little confession of inadequacy +to her ambitions that made her personality engaging. To be energetic +and friendly, and deeply absorbed in people who were bold and +confident, was her attitude. + +She began bubbling at once to Mrs. Bines and Psyche of the latest +fashions for mourners. Crepe was more swagger than ever before, both as +trimming and for entire costumes. + +"House gowns, my dear, and dinner gowns, made entirely of crepe in the +Princesse style, will exactly suit your daughter--and on the dinner +gowns she can wear a trimming of that dull jet passementerie." + +From gowns she went naturally to the difficulty of knowing whom to meet +in a city like New York--and how to meet them--and the watchfulness +required to keep daughter Millie from becoming entangled with leading +theatrical gentlemen. Amid Percival's lamentations that he must so soon +leave Chicago, the train moved slowly out of the big shed to search in +the interwoven puzzle of tracks for one that led to the East. + +As they left the centre of the city Higbee drew Percival to one of the +broad side windows. + +"Pull up your chair and sit here a minute," he said, with a mysterious +little air of importance. "There's a thing this train's going to pass +right along here that I want you to look at. Maybe you've seen better +ones, of course--and then again--" + +It proved to be a sign some twenty feet high and a whole block long. +Emblazoned upon its broad surface was "Higbee's Hams." At one end and +towering another ten feet or so above the mammoth letters was a +white-capped and aproned chef abandoning his mercurial French +temperament to an utter frenzy of delight over a "Higbee's Ham" which +had apparently just been vouchsafed to him by an invisible benefactor. + +"There, now!" exclaimed Higbee; "what do you call that--I want to +know--hey?" + +"Great! Magnificent!" cried Percival, with the automatic and ready +hypocrisy of a sympathetic nature. "That certainly is great." + +"Notice the size of it?" queried Higbee, when they had flitted by. + +"_Did_ I!" exclaimed the young man, reproachfully. + +"We went by pretty fast--you couldn't see it well. I tell you the way +they're allowed to run trains so fast right here in this crowded city +is an outrage. I'm blamed if I don't have my lawyer take it up with the +Board of Aldermen--slaughtering people on their tracks right and +left--you'd think these railroad companies owned the earth--But that +sign, now. Did you notice you could read every letter in the label on +that ham? You wouldn't think it was a hundred yards back from the +track, would you? Why, that label by actual measure is six feet, four +inches across--and yet it looks as small--and everything all in the +right proportion, it's wonderful. It's what I call art," he concluded, +in a slightly dogmatic tone. + +"Of course it's art," Percival agreed; "er--all--hand-painted, I +suppose?" + +"Sure! that painting alone, letters and all, cost four hundred and +fifty dollars. I've just had it put up. I've been after that place for +years, but it was held on a long lease by Max, the Square Tailor--you +know. You probably remember the sign he had there--'Peerless Pants Worn +by Chicago's Best Dressers' with a man in his shirt sleeves looking at +a new pair. Well, finally, I got a chance to buy those two back lots, +and that give me the site, and there she is, all finished and up. +That's partly what I come on this time to see about. How'd you like the +wording of that sign?" + +"Fine--simple and effective," replied Percival. + +"That's it--simple and effective. It goes right to the point and it +don't slop over beyond any, after it gets there. We studied a good deal +over that sign. The other man, the tailor, had too many words for the +board space. My advertisin' man wanted it to be, first, 'Higbee's Hams, +That's All.' But, I don't know--for so big a space that seemed to me +kind of--well--kind of flippant and undignified. Then I got it down to +'Eat Higbee's Hams.' That seemed short enough--but after studying it, I +says, What's the use of saying 'eat'? No one would think, I says, that +a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa-cushions with--so off +comes 'eat' as being superfluous, and leaving it simple and +dignified--'Higbee's Hams.'" + +"By the way," said Percival, when they were sitting together again, +later in the day, "where is Henry, now?" + +Higbee chuckled. + +"That's the other thing took me back this time--the new sign and +getting Hank started. Henry is now working ten hours a day out to the +packinghouse. After a year of that, he'll be taken into the office and +his hours will be cut down to eight. Eight hours a day will seem like +sinful idleness to Henry by that time." + +Percival whistled in amazement. + +"I thought you'd be surprised. But the short of it is, Henry found +himself facing work or starvation. He didn't want to starve a little +bit, and he finally concluded he'd rather work for his dad than any one +else. + +"You see Henry was doing the Rake's Progress act there in New +York--being a gilded youth and such like. Now being a gilded youth and +'a well-known man about town' is something that wants to be done in +moderation, and Henry didn't seem to know the meaning of the word. I +put up something like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for Hank's +gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't +doing him any good. He was making a monkey of himself with it, Henry +was. A good bit of that hundred and eighty went into a comic opera +company that was one of the worst I ever _did_ see. Henry had no +judgment. He was _too_ easy. Well, along this summer he was on the +point of making a break that would--well, I says to him, says I, 'Hank, +I'm no penny-squeezer; I like good stretchy legs myself,' I says; 'I +like to see them elastic so they'll give a plenty when they're pulled; +but,' I says, 'if you take that step,' I says, 'if you declare +yourself, then the rubber in your legs,' I says, 'will just naturally +snap; you'll find you've overplayed the tension,' I says, 'and there +won't be any more stretch left in them.' + +"The secret is, Hank was being chased by a whole family of +wolves--that's the gist of it--fortune-hunters--with tushes like the +ravening lion in Afric's gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone +broke, mind you, but hyenas into the bargain--the father and the mother +and the girl, too. + +"They'd got their minds made up to marry the girl to a good wad of +money--and they'll do it, too, sooner or later, because she's a corker +for looks, all right--and they'd all made a dead set for Hank; so, +quick as I saw how it was, I says, 'Here,' I says, 'is where I save my +son and heir from a passel of butchers,' I says, 'before they have him +scalded and dressed and hung up outside the shop for the holiday +trade,' I says, 'with the red paper rosettes stuck in Henry's chest,' I +says." + +"Are the New York girls so designing?" asked Percival. + +"Is Higbee's ham good to eat?" replied Higbee, oracularly. + +"So," he continued, "when I made up my mind to put my foot down I just +casually mentioned to the old lady--say, she's got an eye that would +make liquid air shiver--that cold blue like an army overcoat--well, I +mentioned to her that Henry was a spendthrift and that he wasn't ever +going to get another cent from me that he didn't earn just the same as +if he wasn't any relation of mine. I made it plain, you bet; she found +just where little Henry-boy stood with his kind-hearted, liberal old +father. + +"Say, maybe Henry wasn't in cold storage with the whole family from +that moment. I see those fellows in the laboratories are puttering +around just now trying to get the absolute zero of temperature--say, +Henry got it, and he don't know a thing about chemistry. + +"Then I jounced Hank. I proceeded to let him know he was up against +it--right close up against it, so you couldn't see daylight between +'em. 'You're twenty-five,' I says, 'and you play the best game of pool, +I'm told, of any of the chappies in that Father-Made-the-Money club you +got into,' I says; 'but I've looked it up,' I says, 'and there ain't +really what you could call any great future for a pool champion,' I +says, 'and if you're ever going to learn anything else, it's time you +was at it,' I says. 'Now you go back home and tell the manager to set +you to work,' I says, 'and your wages won't be big enough to make you +interesting to any skirt-dancer, either,' I says. 'And you make a study +of the hog from the ground up. Exhaust his possibilities just like your +father done, and make a man of yourself, and then sometime,' I says, +'you'll be able to give good medicine to a cub of your own when he +needs it.'" + +"And how did poor Henry take all that?" + +"Well, Hank squealed at first like he was getting the knife; but +finally when he see he was up against it, and especially when he see +how this girl and her family throwed him down the elevator-shaft from +the tenth story, why, he come around beautifully. He's really got +sense, though he doesn't look it--Henry has--though Lord knows I didn't +pull him up a bit too quick. But he come out and went to work like I +told him. It's the greatest thing ever happened to him. He ain't so +fat-headed as he was, already. Henry'll be a man before his dad's +through with him." + +"But weren't the young people disappointed?" asked Percival; "weren't +they in love with each other?" + +"In _love?_" In an effort to express scorn adequately Mr. Higbee came +perilously near to snorting. "What do you suppose a girl like that +cares for love? She was dead in love with the nice long yellow-backs +that I've piled up because the public knows good ham when they taste +it. As for being in love with Henry or with any man--say, young fellow, +you've got something to learn about those New York girls. And this one, +especially. Why, it's been known for the three years we've been there +that she's simply hunting night and day for a rich husband. She tries +for 'em all as fast as they get in line." + +"Henry was unlucky in finding that kind. They're not all like +that--those New York girls are not," and he had the air of being able +if he chose to name one or two luminous exceptions. + +"Silas," called Mrs. Higbee, "are you telling Mr. Bines about our Henry +and that Milbrey girl?" + +"Yep," answered Higbee, "I told him." + +"About what girl?--what was her name?" asked Percival, in a lower tone. + +"Milbrey's that family's name--Horace Milbrey--" + +"Why," Percival interrupted, somewhat awkwardly, "I know the +family--the young lady--we met the family out in Montana a few weeks +ago." + +"Sure enough--they were in Chicago and had dinner with us on their way +out." "I remember Mr. Milbrey spoke of what fine claret you gave him." + +"Yes, and I wasn't stingy with ice, either, the way those New York +people always are. Why, at that fellow's house he gives you that claret +wine as warm as soup. + +"But as for that girl," he added, "say, she'd marry me in a minute if I +wasn't tied up with the little lady over there. Of course she'd rather +marry a sub-treasury; she's got about that much heart in +her--cold-blooded as a German carp. She'd marry me--she'd marry _you_, +if you was the best thing in sight. But say, if you was broke, she'd +have about as much use for you as Chicago's got for St. Louis." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +Some Light With a Few Side-lights + + +The real spring in New York comes when blundering nature has painted +the outer wilderness for autumn. What is called "spring" in the city by +unreflecting users of the word is a tame, insipid season yawning into +not more than half-wakefulness at best. The trees in the gas-poisoned +soil are slow in their greening, the grass has but a pallid city +vitality, and the rows of gaudy tulips set out primly about the +fountains in the squares are palpably forced and alien. + +For the sumptuous blending and flaunt of colour, the spontaneous +awakening of warm, throbbing new life, and all those inspiring miracles +of regeneration which are performed elsewhere in April and May, the +city-pent must wait until mid-October. + +This is the spring of the city's year. There be those to hint +captiously that they find it an affair of false seeming; that the +gorgeous colouring is a mere trick of shop-window cunning; that the +time is juiceless and devoid of all but the specious delights of +surface. Yet these, perhaps, are unduly imaginative for a world where +any satisfaction is held by a tenure precarious at best. And even these +carpers, be they never so analytical, can at least find no lack of +springtime fervour in the eager throngs that pass entranced before the +window show. They, the free-swinging, quick-moving men and women--the +best dressed of all throngs in this young world--sun-browned, +sun-enlivened, recreated to a fine mettle for enjoyment by their months +of mountain or ocean sport--these are, indeed, the ones for whom this +afterspring is made to bloom. And, since they find it to be a shifting +miracle of perfections, how are they to be quarrelled with? + +In the big polished windows waxen effigies of fine ladies, gracefully +patient, display the latest dinner-gown from Paris, or the creamiest of +be-ribboned tea-gowns. Or they pose in attitudes of polite adieux and +greeting, all but smothered in a king's ransom of sable and ermine. Or, +to the other extreme, they complacently permit themselves to be +observed in the intimate revelations of Parisian lingerie, with its +misty froth of embroideries, its fine-spun webs of foamy lace. + +In another window, behold a sprightly and enlivening ballet of shapely +silken hosiery, fitting its sculptured models to perfection, ranging in +tints from the first tender green of spring foliage to the rose-pink of +the spring sun's after-glow. + +A few steps beyond we may study a window where the waxen ladies have +been dismembered. Yet a second glance shows the retained portions to be +all that woman herself considers important when she tries on the +bird-toque or the picture hat, or the gauze confection for afternoons. +The satisfied smiles of these waxen counterfeits show them to have been +amply recompensed, with the headgear, for their physical +incompleteness. + +But if these terraces of colour and grace that line the sides of this +narrow spring valley be said to contain only the dry husks of +adornment, surely there may be found others more technically +springlike. + +Here in this broad window, foregathered in a congress of colours +designed to appetise, are the ripe fruits of every clime and every +season: the Southern pomegranate beside the hardy Northern apple, +scarlet and yellow; the early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs +from the Orient and pines from the Antilles; dates from Tunis and tawny +persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from the +hothouse--tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and +royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow +blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable +stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas--of more +integrity, perhaps, than the same colourings simulated by the +confectioner's craft, in the near-by window-display of impossible +sweets. + +And still more of this belated spring will gladden the eye in the +florist's window. In June the florist's shop is a poor place, +sedulously to be shunned. Nothing of note blooms there then. The +florist himself is patently ashamed of himself. The burden of +sustaining his traditions he puts upon a few dejected shrubs called +"hardy perennials" that have to labour the year around. All summer it +is as if the place feared to compete with nature when colour and grace +flower so cheaply on every southern hillside. But now its glories bloom +anew, and its superiority over nature becomes again manifest. Now it +assembles the blossoms of a whole long year to bewilder and allure. Its +windows are shaded glens, vine-embowered, where spring, summer, and +autumn blend in all their regal and diverse abundance; and the closing +door of the shop fans out odours as from a thousand Persian gardens. + +But spring is not all of life, nor what at once chiefly concerns us. +There are people to be noted: a little series of more or less related +phenomena to be observed. + +One of the people, a young man, stands conveniently before this same +florist's window, at that hour when the sun briefly flushes this narrow +canon of Broadway from wall to wall. + +He had loitered along the lively highway an hour or more, his nerves +tingling responsively to all its stimuli. And now he mused as he stared +at the tangled tracery of ferns against the high bank of wine-red +autumn foliage, the royal cluster of white chrysanthemums and the big +jar of American Beauties. + +He had looked forward to this moment, too--when he should enter that +same door and order at least an armful of those same haughty roses sent +to an address his memory cherished. Yet now, the time having come, the +zest for the feat was gone. It would be done; it were ungraceful not to +do it, after certain expressions; but it would be done with no heart +because of the certain knowledge that no one--at least no one to be +desired--could possibly care for him, or consider him even with +interest for anything but his money--the same kind of money Higbee made +by purveying hams--"and she wouldn't care in the least whether it was +mine or Higbee's, so there was a lot of it." + +Yet he stepped in and ordered the roses, nor did the florist once +suspect that so lavish a buyer of flowers could be a prey to emotions +of corroding cynicism toward the person for whom they were meant. + +From the florist's he returned directly to the hotel to find his mother +and Psyche making homelike the suite to which they had been assigned. A +maid was unpacking trunks under his sister's supervision. Mrs. Bines +was in converse with a person of authoritative manner regarding the +service to be supplied them. Two maids would be required, and madame +would of course wish a butler-- + +Mrs. Bines looked helplessly at her son who had just entered. + +"I think--we've--we've always did our own buttling," she faltered. + +The person was politely interested. + +"I'll attend to these things, ma," said Percival, rather suddenly. +"Yes, we'll want a butler and the two maids, and see that the butler +knows his business, please, and--here--take this, and see that we're +properly looked after, will you?" + +As the bill bore a large "C" on its face, and the person was rather a +gentleman anyway, this unfortunate essay at irregular conjugation never +fell into a certain class of anecdotes which Mrs. Bines's best friends +could now and then bring themselves to relate of her. + +But other matters are forward. We may next overtake two people who +loiter on this bracing October day down a leaf-strewn aisle in Central +Park. + +"You," said the girl of the pair, "least of all men can accuse me of +lacking heart." + +"You are cold to me now." + +"But look, think--what did I offer--you've had my trust,--everything I +could bring myself to give you. Look what I would have sacrificed at +your call. Think how I waited and longed for that call." + +"You know how helpless I was." + +"Yes, if you wanted more than my bare self. I should have been +helpless, too, if I had wanted more than--than you." + +"It would have been folly--madness--that way." + +"Folly--madness? Do you remember the 'Sonnet of Revolt' you sent me? +Sit on this bench; I wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want +you to hear it while you keep your later attitude in mind. + +"Life--what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of +every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the +hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the +self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights, +eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale--'" + +"But I know the verse." + +"No; hear it out;--hear what you sent me: + + "'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see + The man who sells his soul in some wild cause: + The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss, + All that he was and all he thought to be: + The rebel stark against his country's laws: + God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'" + +She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones. + +"Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving +you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here +never really forget those things--and we'd have been helpless--some day +you'll thank me for thinking for you." + +"Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?" + +"Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you." +"And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a +woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready. +Surely that showed my spirit--and you haven't known me these years +without knowing it would have to be that or nothing." + +"Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're +not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?" + +Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn. + +"No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind +so little; there's been so little depth to it all; you couldn't dare. +It was foolish to think I could show you my mind." + +"But you still care for me?" + +"No; no, I don't. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When +I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let +us go back. No, no, please don't touch me--ever again." + +Farther down-town in the cosy drawing-room of a house in a side street +east of the Avenue, two other persons were talking. A florid and +profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the +hearth-rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better. + +"But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can't take a curate +with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come +downstairs and marry me directly--not when I've not seen her, you +know!" "Nonsense!" replied the lady, unimpressed. "You can do it +nearly that way, if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite +in that manner, I assure you. They call it 'hustling.'" + +"_Dear_ me!" + +"Yes, indeed, 'dear you.' And another thing, I want you to forestall +that Milbrey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away than +Tuxedo or Meadowbrook. Now, they arrived yesterday; they'll be +unpacking to-day and settling to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and +you shall be with me." + +"And you forget that--that devil--suppose she's as good as her threat?" + +"Absurd! how could she be?" + +"You don't know her, you know, nor the old beggar either, by Jove!" + +"All the more reason for haste. We'll call to-morrow. Wait. Better +still, perhaps I can enlist the Gwilt-Athelston; I'm to meet her +to-morrow. I'll let you know. Now I must get into my teaharness, so run +along." + +We are next constrained to glance at a strong man bowed in the hurt of +a great grief. Horace Milbrey sits alone in his gloomy, high-ceilinged +library. His attire is immaculate. His slender, delicate hands are +beautifully white. The sensitive lines of his fine face tell of the +strain under which he labours. What dire tragedies are those we must +face wholly alone--where we must hide the wound, perforce, because no +comprehending sympathy flows out to us; because instinct warns that no +help may come save from the soul's own well of divine fortitude. Some +hope, tenderly, almost fearfully, held and guarded, had perished on the +day that should have seen its triumphant fruition. He raised his +handsome head from the antique, claw-footed desk, sat up in his chair, +and stared tensely before him. His emotion was not to be suppressed. Do +tears tremble in the eyes of the strong man? Let us not inquire too +curiously. If they tremble down the fine-skinned cheek, let us avert +our gaze. For grief in men is no thing to make a show of. + +A servant passed the open door bearing an immense pasteboard box with +one end cut out to accommodate the long stems of many roses. + +"Jarvis!" + +"Yes, sir!" + +"What is it?" + +"Flowers, sir, for Miss Avice." + +"Let me see--and the card?" + +He took the card from the florist's envelope and glanced at the name. + +"Take them away." + +The stricken man was once more alone; yet now it was as if the tender +beauty of the flowers had balmed his hurt--taught him to hope anew. Let +us in all sympathy and hope retire. + +For cheerfuller sights we might observe Launton Oldaker in a musty +curio-shop, delighted over a pair of silver candlesticks with square +bases and fluted columns, fabricated in the reign of that fortuitous +monarch, Charles the Second; or we might glance in upon the Higbees in +their section of a French chateau, reproduced up on the stately +Riverside Drive, where they complete the details of a dinner to be +given on the morrow. + +Or perhaps it were better to be concerned with a matter more weighty +than dinners and antique candlesticks. The search need never be vain, +even in this world of persistent frivolity. As, for example: + +"Tell Mrs. Van Geist if she can't come down, I'll run up to her." + +"Yes, Miss Milbrey." + +Mrs. Van Geist entered a moment later. + +"Why, Avice, child, you're glowing, aren't you?" + +"I must be, I suppose--I've just walked down from 59th Street, and +before that I walked in the Park. Feel how cold my cheeks +are,--Muetterchen." + +"It's good for you. Now we shall have some tea, and talk." + +"Yes--I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes." + +"Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought. +There, take the big chair." + +"It always feels like you--like your arms, Muetterchen--and I am tired." + +"And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afraid of +cream." + +"I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream." + +"You told me you weren't afraid of that--that cad--any more." + +"I'm not--I just told him so. But I'm afraid of it all; I'm tired +trying not to drift--tired trying not to try, and tired trying to +try--Oh, dear--sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it? Have you any +one to-night? No? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some +one home to say I'll be here. I can always think so much better +here--and you, dear old thing, to mother me!" + +"Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly." + +"He will go to the house of mourning." + +"What's the latest?" + +"Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was +striving so bravely and nobly to bear up. No one knows what that man +suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about everything. Just before +I left, he was saying that, when one considers the number of American +homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are +you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it." + +"Nothing has happened?" + +"Well, there'll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but a +very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the +cruellest blows of his life. I fancy he didn't sleep at all last night, +and he looked thoroughly bowled over this morning." + +"But what is it?" + +"Well--oh, it's awful!--first of all there were six dozen of +early-bottled, 1875 Chateau Lafitte--that was the bitterest--but he had +to see the rest go, too--Chateau Margeaux of '80--some terribly ancient +port and Madeira--the dryest kind of sherry--a lot of fine, full +clarets of '77 and '78--oh, you can't know how agonising it was to +him--I've heard them so often I know them all myself." + +"But what on earth about them?" + +"Nothing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar--auctioned off, you +know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every +bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it. +Sometimes he sounded like a French lesson--and he's been under a +fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great +day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn't bid in a single +drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully +all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that +Chateau Lafitte go--and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of +that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar +_nouveaux riches_ when he came home--he talked quite like an anarchist. +But by to-night he'll be blaming me for his misfortunes. That's why I +chose to stay here with you." + +"Poor Horace. Whatever are you going to do?" + +"Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could do anything but +one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West." + +"You called him your 'athletic Bayard' once." + +"The other's more to the point at present. And what else can I do? Oh, +if some one would just be brave enough to live the raw, quivering life +with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go +by the board--but I am so alone and so helpless and no man is equal to +it, nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a 'half +portion' of life." + +"Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those +flying-machines that are constantly being tested by the credulous +inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things +come tumbling." + +"Very well; then I shall be wise--I suppose I shall be--and I'll do it +quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at +once, and be accepted--so that I shall be able to look my dear old +father in the face again--and then, after I'm married--well, don't +blame me for anything that happens." + +"I'm sure you'll be happy with him--it's only your silly notions. He's +in love with you." + +"That makes me hesitate. He really is a man--I like him--see this +letter--a long review from the Arcady _Lyre_ of the 'poem' he wrote, a +poem consisting of 'Avice Milbrey.' The reviewer has been quite +enthusiastic over it, too,--written from some awful place in Montana." + +"What more could you ask? He'll be kind." + +"You don't understand, Muetterchen. He seems too decent to marry that +way--and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me +out--oh, think of what marriage _is_--he'd _have_ to find it out--I +couldn't _act_ long--doubtless he wouldn't even be kind to me then." + +"You are morbid, child." + +"But I will do it; I shall; I will be a credit to my training--and I +shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn--well, a great deal +that he doesn't know about women." + +She stared into the fire and added, after a moment's silence: + +"Oh, if a man only _could_ live up to the verses he cuts out of +magazines!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +With the Barbaric Hosts + + +History repeats itself so cleverly, with a variance of stage-settings +and accessories so cunning, that the repetition seldom bores, and is, +indeed, frequently undetected. Thus, the descent of the Barbarians upon +a decadent people is a little _tour de force_ that has been performed +again and again since the oldest day. But because the assault nowadays +is made not with force of arms we are prone to believe it is no longer +made at all;--as if human ways had changed a bit since those ugly, +hairy tribes from the Northern forests descended upon the Roman empire. +And yet the mere difference that the assault is now made with force of +money in no way alters the process nor does it permit the result to +vary. On the surface all is cordiality and peaceful negotiation. +Beneath is the same immemorial strife, the life-and-death +struggle,--pitiless, inexorable. + +What would have been a hostile bivouac within the city's gates, but for +the matter of a few centuries, is now, to select an example which +remotely concerns us, a noble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the +lordly Hudson and the majestic Palisades that form its farther wall. +And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly +reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes, +fighting for captive vestals, and bickering in uncouth tongues over the +golden spoils, what have we now to make the parallel convince? Why, the +same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined, +all-conquering, animal force; a red-faced, big-handed lot, imbued with +hearty good nature and an easy tolerance for the ways of those upon +whom they have descended. + +Here are chiefs of renown from the farthest fastnesses; they and their +curious households: the ironmonger from Pittsburg, the gold-miner from +Dawson, the copper chief from Butte, the silver chief from Denver, the +cattle chief from Oklahoma, lord of three hundred thousand good acres +and thirty thousand cattle, the lumber prince from Michigan, the +founder of a later dynasty in oil, from Texas. And, for the unaesthetic +but effective Attila, an able fashioner of pork products from Chicago. + +Here they make festival, carelessly, unafraid, unmolested. For, in the +lapse of time, the older peoples have learned not only the folly of +resisting inevitables, but that the huge and hairy invaders may be +treated and bartered with not unprofitably. Doubtless it often results +from this amity that the patrician strain is corrupted by the alien +admixture,--but business has been business since as many as two persons +met on the face of the new earth. + +For example, this particular shelter is builded upon land which one of +the patrician families had held for a century solely because it could +not be disposed of. Yet the tribesmen came, clamouring for palaces, and +now this same land, with some adjoining areas of trifling extent, +produces an income that will suffice to maintain that family almost in +its ancient and befitting estate. + +In this mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand +dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and +entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of +ornamentation, the building is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blois, +those splendid palaces of Francis I. Inside are all the line and colour +and device of elegant opulence, modern to the last note. + +To this palace of an October evening comes the tribe of Bines, and many +another such, for a triumphal feast in the abode of Barbarian Silas +Higbee. The carriages pass through a pair of lordly iron gates, swung +from massive stone pillars, under an arch of wrought iron with its +antique lamp, and into the echoing courtyard flanked by trim hedges of +box. + +Alighting, the barbaric guests of Higbee are ushered through a +marble-walled vestibule, from which a wrought-iron and bronze screen +gives way to the main entrance-hall. The ceiling here reproduces that +of a feudal castle in Rouen, with some trifling and effective touches +of decoration in blue, scarlet, and gold. The walls are of white Caen +stone, with ornate windows and balconies jutting out above. In one +corner is a stately stone mantel with richly carved hood, bearing in +its central panel the escutcheon of the gallant French monarch. Up a +little flight of marble steps, guarded by its hand-rail of heavy metal, +shod with crimson velvet, one reaches the elevator. This pretty +enclosure of iron and glass, of classic detail in the period of Henry +II., of Circassian walnut trim, with crotch panels, has more the aspect +of boudoir than elevator. The deep seat is of walnut, upholstered with +fat cushions of crimson velvet edged in dull gold galloon. Over the +seat is a mirror cut into small squares by wooden muntins. At each side +are electric candles softened by red silk shades. One's last view +before the door closes noiselessly is of a bay-window opposite, set +with cathedral glass casement-lights, which sheds soft colours upon the +hall-bench of carven stone and upon the tessellated floor. + +The door to the Higbee domain is of polished mahogany, set between +lights of antique verte Italian glass, and bearing an ancient brass +knocker. From the reception-room, with its walls of green empire silk, +one passes through a foyer hall, of Cordova leather hangings, to the +drawing-room with its three broad windows. Opposite the entrance to +this superb room is a mantel of carved Caen stone, faced with golden +Pavanazza marble, with old Roman andirons of gold ending in the +fleur-de-lis. The walls are hung with blue Florentine silk, embossed in +silver. Beyond a bronze grill is the music-room, a library done in +Austrian oak with stained burlap panelled by dull-forged nails, a +conservatory, a billiard-room, a smoking-room. This latter has walls of +red damask and a mantel with "_Post Tenebras Lux_" cut into one of its +marble panels,--a legend at which the worthy lessee of all this +splendour is wont often to glance with respectful interest. + +The admirable host--if one be broad-minded--is now in the drawing-room, +seconding his worthy wife and pretty daughter who welcome the +dinner-guests. + +For a man who has a fad for ham and doesn't care who knows it, his +bearing is all we have a right to expect that it should be. Among the +group of arrivals, men of his own sort, he is speaking of the +ever-shifting fashion in beards, to the evangel of a Texas oil-field +who flaunts to the world one of those heavy moustaches spuriously +extended below the corners of the mouth by means of the chin-growth of +hair. Another, a worthy tribesman from Snohomish, Washington, wears a +beard which, for a score of years, has been let to be its own true +self; to express, fearlessly, its own unique capacity for variation +from type. These two have rallied their host upon his modishly trimmed +side-whiskers. + +"You're right," says Mr. Higbee, amiably, "I ain't stuck any myself on +this way of trimming up a man's face, but the madam will have it this +way--says it looks more refined and New Yorky. And now, do you know, +ever since I've wore 'em this way--ever since I had 'em scraped from +around under my neck here--I have to go to Florida every winter. Come +January or February, I get bronchitis every blamed year!" + +Two of the guests only are alien to the barbaric throng. + +There is the noble Baron Ronault de Palliac, decorated, reserved, +observant,--almost wistful. For the moment he is picturing dutifully +the luxuries a certain marriage would enable him to procure for his +noble father and his aged mother, who eagerly await the news of his +quest for the golden fleece. For the baron contemplates, after the +fashion of many conscientious explorers, a marriage with a native +woman; though he permits himself to cherish the hope that it may not be +conditioned upon his adopting the manners and customs of the particular +tribe that he means to honour. Monsieur the Baron has long since been +obliged to confess that a suitable _mesalliance_ is none too easy of +achievement, and, in testimony of his vicissitudes, he has written for +a Paris comic paper a series of grimly satiric essays upon New York +society. Recently, moreover, he has been upon the verge of accepting +employment in the candy factory of a bourgeois compatriot. But hope has +a little revived in the noble breast since chance brought him and his +title under the scrutiny of the bewitching Miss Millicent Higbee and +her appreciative mother. + +And to-night there is not only the pretty Miss Higbee, but the winning +Miss Bines, whose _dot_, the baron has been led to understand, would +permit his beloved father unlimited piquet at his club, to say nothing +of regenerating the family chateau. Yet these are hardly matters to be +gossiped of. It is enough to know that the Baron Ronault de Palliac +when he discovers himself at table between Miss Bines and the adorable +Miss Higbee, becomes less saturnine than has for some time been his +wont. He does not forget previous disappointments, but desperately +snaps his swarthy jaws in commendable superiority to any adverse fate. + +"_Je ne donne pas un damn_," he says to himself, and translates, as was +his practice, to better his English--"I do not present a damn. I shall +take what it is that it may be." + +The noble Baron de Palliac at this feast of the tribesmen was like the +captive patrician of old led in chains that galled. The other alien, +Launton Oldaker, was present under terms of honourable truce, willingly +and without ulterior motive saving--as he confessed to himself--a +consuming desire to see "how the other half lives." He was no longer +the hunted and dismayed being Percival had met in that far-off and +impossible Montana; but was now untroubled, remembering, it is true, +that this "slumming expedition," as he termed it, had taken him beyond +the recognised bounds of his beloved New York, but serene in the +consciousness that half an hour's drive would land him safely back at +his club. + +Oldaker observed Miss Psyche Bines approvingly. + +"We are so glad to be in New York!" she had confided to him, sitting at +her right. + +"My dear young woman," he warned her, "you haven't reached New York +yet." The talk being general and loud, he ventured further. + +"This is Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver--almost anything but +New York." + +"Of course I know these are not the swell old families." + +Oldaker sipped his glass of old Oloroso sherry and discoursed. + +"And our prominent families, the ones whose names you read, are not New +York any more, either. They are rather London and Paris. Their +furniture, clothing, plate, pictures, and servants come from one or the +other. Yes, and their manners, too, their interests and sympathies and +concerns, their fashions--and--sometimes, their--er--morals. They are +assuredly not New York any more than Gobelin tapestries and Fortuny +pictures and Louis Seize chairs are New York." + +"How queerly you talk. Where is New York, then?" + +Oldaker sighed thoughtfully between two spoonfuls of _tortue verte, +claire_. + +"Well, I suppose the truth is that there isn't much of New York left in +New York. As a matter of fact I think it died with the old Volunteer +Fire Department. Anyway the surviving remnant is coy. Real old New +Yorkers like myself--neither poor nor rich--are swamped in these days +like those prehistoric animals whose bones we find. There comes a time +when we can't live, and deposits form over us and we're lost even to +memory." + +But this talk was even harder for Miss Bines to understand than the +English speech of the Baron Ronault de Palliac, and she turned to that +noble gentleman as the turbot with sauce Corail was served. + +The dining-room, its wall wainscotted from floor to ceiling in Spanish +oak, was flooded with soft light from the red silk dome that depended +from its crown of gold above the table. The laughter and talk were as +little subdued as the scheme of the rooms. It was an atmosphere of +prodigal and confident opulence. From the music-room near by came the +soft strains of a Haydn quartet, exquisitely performed by finished and +expensive artists. + +"Say, Higbee!" it was the oil chief from Texas, "see if them fiddlers +of yours can't play 'Ma Honolulu Lulu!'" + +Oldaker, wincing and turning to Miss Bines for sympathy, heard her say: + +"Yes, do, Mr. Higbee! I do love those ragtime songs--and then have them +play 'Tell Me, Pretty Maiden,' and the 'Intermezzo.'" + +He groaned in anguish. + +The talk ran mostly on practical affairs: the current values of the +great staple commodities; why the corn crop had been light; what wheat +promised to bring; how young Burman of the Chicago Board of Trade had +been pinched in his own wheat corner for four millions--"put up" by his +admiring father; what beef on the hoof commanded; how the Federal Oil +Company would presently own the State of Texas. + +Almost every Barbarian at the table had made his own fortune. Hardly +one but could recall early days when he toiled on farm or in shop or +forest, herded cattle, prospected, sought adventure in remote and +hazardous wilds. + +"'Tain't much like them old days, eh, Higbee?" queried the Crown Prince +of Cripple Creek--"when you and me had to walk from Chicago to Green +Bay, Wisconsin, because we didn't have enough shillings for +stage-fare?" He gazed about him suggestively. + +"Corn-beef and cabbage was pretty good then, eh?" and with sure, +vigorous strokes he fell to demolishing his _filet de dinde a la +Perigueux_, while a butler refilled his glass with Chateau Malescot, +1878. + +"Well, it does beat the two rooms the madam and me started to keep +house in when we was married," admitted the host. "That was on the +banks of the Chicago River, and now we got the Hudson flowin' right +through the front yard, you might say, right past our own +yacht-landing." + +From old days of work and hardship they came to discuss the present and +their immediate surroundings, social and financial. + +Their daughters, it appeared, were being sought in marriage by the sons +of those among whom they sojourned. + +"Oh, they're a nice band of hand-shakers, all right, all right," +asserted the gentleman from Kansas City. "One of 'em tried to keep +company with our Caroline, but I wouldn't stand for it. He was a +crackin' good shinny player, and he could lead them cotillion-dances +blowin' a whistle and callin', 'All right, Up!' or something, like a +car-starter,--but, 'Tell me something good about him,' I says to an old +friend of his family. Well, he hemmed and hawed--he was a New York +gentleman, and says he, 'I don't know whether I could make you +understand or not,' he says, 'but he's got Family,' jest like that, +bearin' down hard on 'Family'--'and you've got money,' he says, 'and +Money and Family need each other badly in this town,' he says. 'Yes,' +says I, 'I met up with a number of people here,' I says, 'but I ain't +met none yet that you'd have to blindfold and back into a lot of +money,' I says, 'family or no family,' I says. 'And that young man,' he +says, 'is a pleasant, charming fellow; why,' he says, 'he's the +best-coated man in New York.' Well, I looked at him and I says, 'Well,' +says I, 'he may be the best-coated man in New York, but he'll be the +best-booted man in New York, too,' I says, 'if he comes around trying +to spark Caroline any more,--or would be if I had my way. His chin's +pushed too far back under his face,' I says, 'and besides,' I says, +'Caroline is being waited on by a young hardware drummer, a good steady +young fellow travelling out of little old K.C.,' I says, 'and while he +ain't much for fam'ly,' I says, he'll have one of his own before he +gets through,' I says; 'we start fam'lies where I come from,' I says." + +"Good boy! Good for you," cheered the self-made Barbarians, and drank +success to the absent disseminator of hardware. + +With much loud talk of this unedifying character the dinner progressed +to an end; through _selle d'agneau_, floated in '84 champagne, terrapin +convoyed by a special Madeira of 1850, and canvas-back duck with +_Romanee Conti_, 1865, to a triumphant finale of Turkish coffee and +1811 brandy. + +After dinner the ladies gossiped of New York society, while the +barbaric males smoked their big oily cigars and bandied reminiscences. +Higbee showed them through every one of the apartment's twenty-two +rooms, from reception-hall to laundry, manipulating the electric lights +with the skill of a stage-manager. + +The evening ended with a cake-walk, for the musical artists had by rare +wines been mellowed from their classic reserve into a mood of ragtime +abandon. And if Monsieur the Baron with his ceremonious grace was less +exuberant than the Crown Prince of Cripple Creek, who sang as he +stepped the sensuous measure, his pleasure was not less. He joyed to +observe that these men of incredible millions had no hauteur. + +"I do not," wrote the baron to his noble father the marquis, that +night, "yet understand their joke; why should it be droll to wish that +the man whose coat is of the best should also wear boots of the best? +but as for what they call _une promenade de gateau_, I find it very +enjoyable. I have met a Mlle. Bines to whom I shall at once pay my +addresses. Unlike Mlle. Higbee, she has not the father from Chicago nor +elsewhere. _Quel diable d'homme!_" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +The Patricians Entertain + + +To reward the enduring who read politely through the garish revel of +the preceding chapter, covers for fourteen are now laid with correct +and tasteful quietness at the sophisticated board of that fine old New +York family, the Milbreys. Shaded candles leave all but the glowing +table in a gloom discreetly pleasant. One need not look so high as the +old-fashioned stuccoed ceiling. The family portraits tone agreeably +into the halflight of the walls; the huge old-fashioned walnut +sideboard, soberly ornate with its mirrors, its white marble top and +its wood-carved fruit, towers majestically aloft in proud scorn of the +frivolous Chippendale fad. + +Jarvis, the accomplished and incomparable butler, would be subdued and +scholarly looking but for the flagrant scandal of his port-wine nose. +He gives finishing little fillips to the white chrysanthemums massed in +the central epergne on the long silver plateau, and bestows a last +cautious survey upon the cut-glass and silver radiating over the dull +white damask. Finding the table and its appointments faultless, he +assures himself once more that the sherry will come on irreproachably +at a temperature of 60 degrees; that the Burgundy will not fall below +65 nor mount above 70; for Jarvis wots of a palate so acutely sensitive +that it never fails to record a variation of so much as one degree from +the approved standard of temperature. + +How restful this quiet and reserve after the colour and line tumult of +the Higbee apartment. There the flush and bloom of newness were +oppressive to the right-minded. All smelt of the shop. Here the dull +tones and decorous lines caress and soothe instead of overwhelming the +imagination with effects too grossly literal. Here is the veritable +spirit of good form. + +Throughout the house this contrast might be noted. It is the +brown-stone, high-stoop house, guarded by a cast-iron fence, built in +vast numbers when the world of fashion moved North to Murray Hill and +Fifth Avenue a generation ago. One of these houses was like all the +others inside and out, built of unimaginative "builder's architecture." +The hall, the long parlour, the back parlour or library, the high +stuccoed ceilings--not only were these alike in all the houses, but the +furnishings, too, were apt to be of a sameness in them all, rather +heavy and tasteless, but serving the ends that such things should be +meant to serve, and never flamboyant. Of these relics of a simpler day +not many survive to us, save in the shameful degeneracy of +boarding-houses. But in such as are left, we may confidently expect to +find the traditions of that more dignified time kept unsullied;--to +find, indeed, as we find in the house of Milbrey, a settled air of +gloom that suggests insolvent but stubbornly determined exclusiveness. + +Something of this air, too, may be noticed in the surviving tenants of +these austere relics. Yet it would hardly be observed in this house on +this night, for not only do arriving guests bring the aroma of a later +prosperity, but the hearts of our host and hostess beat high with a new +hope. For the fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of +Milbrey, after many ominous mutterings, delays, and frank rebellions, +has declared at last her readiness to be a credit to her training by +conferring her family prestige, distinction of manner and charms of +person upon one equipped for their suitable maintenance. + +Already her imaginative father is ravishing in fancy the mouldiest +wine-cellars of Continental Europe. Already the fond mother has +idealised a house in "Millionaire's Row" east of the Park, where there +shall be twenty servants instead of three, and there shall cease that +gnawing worry lest the treacherous north-setting current sweep them +west of the Park into one of those hideously new apartment houses, +where the halls are done in marble that seems to have been sliced from +a huge Roquefort cheese, and where one must vie, perhaps, with a +shop-keeper for the favours of an irreverent and materialistic janitor. + +The young woman herself entertains privately a state of mind which she +has no intention of making public. It is enough, she reasons, that her +action should outwardly accord with the best traditions of her class; +and indeed, her family would never dream of demanding more. + +Her gown to-night is of orchard green, trimmed with apple-blossoms, a +single pink spray of them caught in her hair. The rounding, satin grace +of her slender arms, sloping to the opal-tipped fingers, the exquisite +line from ear to shoulder strap, the melting ripeness of her chin and +throat, the tender pink and white of her fine skin, the capricious, +inciting tilt of her small head, the dainty lift of her short +nose,--these allurements she has inventoried with a calculating and +satisfied eye. She is glad to believe that there is every reason why it +will soon be over. + +And, since the whole loaf is notoriously better than a half, here is +the engaging son of the house, also firmly bent upon the high emprise +of matrimony; handsome, with the chin, it may be, slightly receding; +but an unexcelled leader of cotillions, a surpassing polo-player, +clever, winning, and dressed with an effect that has long made him +remarked in polite circles, which no mere money can achieve. Money, +indeed, if certain ill-natured gossip of tradesmen be true, has been an +inconsiderable factor in the encompassment of this sartorial +distinction. He waits now, eager for a first glimpse of the young woman +whose charms, even by report, have already won the best devotion he has +to give. A grievous error it is to suppose that Cupid's artillery is +limited to bow and arrows. + +And now, instead of the rude commercial horde that laughed loudly and +ate uncouthly at the board of the Barbarian, we shall sit at table with +people born to the only manner said to be worth possessing;--if we +except, indeed, the visiting tribe of Bines, who may be relied upon, +however, to behave at least unobtrusively. + +As a contrast to the oppressively Western matron from Kansas City, here +is Mistress Fidelia Oldaker on the arm of her attentive son. She would +be very old but for the circumstance that she began early in life to be +a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her +back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair +name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the +dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the +single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a +bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence, +her vivacity unimpaired, her energy amazing, and her coquetry +faultless. From which we should learn, and be grateful therefor, that +when a girl is brought up in the way she ought to go she will never be +able to depart from it. + +Here also is Cornelia Van Geist, sister of our admirable +hostess--relict of a gentleman who had been first or second cousin to +half the people in society it were really desirable to know, and whose +taste in wines, dinners, and sports had been widely praised at his +death by those who had had the fortune to be numbered among his +friends. Mrs. Van Geist has a kind, shrewd face, and her hair, which +turned prematurely grey while she was yet a wife, gives her a look of +age that her actual years belie. + +Here, too, is Rulon Shepler, the money-god, his large, round head +turning upon his immense shoulders without the aid of a +neck--sharp-eyed, grizzled, fifty, short of stature, and with as few +illusions concerning life as the New York financier is apt to retain at +his age. + +If we be forced to wait for another guest of note, it is hardly more +than her due; for Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is truly a personage, and the +best people on more than one continent do not become unduly provoked at +being made to wait for her. Those less than the very best frankly +esteem it a privilege. Yet the great lady is not careless of +engagements, and the wait is never prolonged. Mrs. Milbrey has time to +say to her sister, "Yes, we think it's going; and really, it will do +very well, you know. The girl has had some nonsense in her mind for a +year past--none of us can tell what--but now she seems actually +sensible, and she's promised to accept when the chap proposes." But +there is time for no more gossip. + +The belated guest arrives, enveloped in a vast cloak, and accompanied +by her two nephews, whom Percival Bines recognises for the solemn and +taciturn young men he had met in Shepler's party at the mine. + +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, albeit a decorative personality, is constructed +on the same broad and generously graceful lines as her own victoria. +The great lady has not only two chins, but what any fair-minded +observer would accept as sufficient promise of a good third. Yet hardly +could a slighter person display to advantage the famous Gwilt-Athelstan +jewels. The rope of pierced diamonds with pigeon-blood rubies strung +between them, which she wears wound over her corsage, would assuredly +overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and +diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the +stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have +clasped becomingly a figure that was _svelte_--or "skinny," as the +great lady herself is frank enough to term all persons even remotely +inclined to be _svelte_. + +But let us sit and enliven a proper dinner with talk upon topics of +legitimate interest and genuine propriety. + +Here will be no discussion of the vulgar matter of markets, staples, +and prices, such as we perforce endured through the overwined and +too-abundant repast of Higbee. Instead of learning what beef on the +hoof brings per hundred-weight, f.o.b. at Cheyenne, we shall here glean +at once the invaluable fact that while good society in London used to +be limited to those who had been presented at court, the presentations +have now become so numerous that the limitation has lost its +significance. Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan thus discloses, as if it were a +trifle, something we should never learn at the table of Higbee though +we ate his heavy dinners to the day of ultimate chaos. And while we +learned at that distressingly new table that one should keep one's +heifers and sell off one's steer calves, we never should have been +informed there that Dinard had just enjoyed the gayest season of its +history under the patronage of this enterprising American; nor that +Lady de Muzzy had opened a tea-room in Grafton Street, and Cynthia, +Marchioness of Angleberry, a beauty-improvement parlour on the Strand +"because she needs the money." + +"Lots of 'em takin' to trade nowadays; it's a smart sayin' there now +that all the peers are marryin' actresses and all the peeresses goin' +into business." Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan nodded little shocks of brilliance +from her tiara and hungrily speared another oyster. + +"Only trouble is, it's such rotten hard work collectin' bills from +their intimate friends; they simply _won't_ pay." + +Nor at the barbaric Higbee's should we have been vouchsafed, to +treasure for our own, the knowledge that Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan had +merely run over for the cup-fortnight, meaning to return directly to +her daughter, Katharine, Duchess of Blanchmere, in time for the Melton +Mowbray hunting-season; nor that she had been rather taken by the new +way of country life among us, and so tempted to protract her gracious +sojourn. + +"Really," she admits, "we're comin' to do the right thing over here; a +few years were all we needed. Hardly a town-house to be opened before +Thanksgivin', I understand; and down at the Hills some of the houses +will stay open all winter. It's coachin', ridin', and golf and +auto-racin' and polo and squash; really the young folks don't go in at +all except to dance and eat; and it's quite right, you know. It's quite +decently English, now. Why, at Morris Park the other day, the crowd on +the lawn looked quite like Ascot, actually." + +Nor could we have learned in the hostile camp the current gossip of +Tuxedo, Meadowbrook, Lenox, Morristown, and Ardsley; of the mishap to +Mrs. "Jimmie" Whettin, twice unseated at a recent meet; of the woman's +championship tournament at Chatsworth; or the good points of the new +runner-up at Baltusrol, daily to be seen on the links. Where we might +incur knowledge of Beaumont "gusher" or Pittsburg mill we should never +have discovered that teas and receptions are really falling into +disrepute; that a series of dinner-dances will be organised by the +mothers of debutantes to bring them forward; and that big subscription +balls are in disfavour, since they benefit no one but the caterers who +serve poor suppers and bad champagne. + +Mrs. takes only Scotch whiskey and soda. + +"But I'm glad," she confides to Horace Milbrey on her left, "that you +haven't got to followin' this fad of havin' one wine at dinner; I know +it's English, but it's downright shoddy." + +Her host's eyes swam with gratitude for this appreciation. + +"I stick to my peg," she continued; "but I like to see a Chablis with +the oysters and good dry sherry with the soup, and a Moselle with the +fish, and then you're ready to be livened with a bit of champagne for +the roast, and steadied a bit by Burgundy with the game. Phim sticks to +it, too; tells me my peg is downright encouragement to the bacteria. +But I tell him I've no quarrel with _my_ bacteria. 'Live and let live' +is my motto, I tell him,--and if the microbes and I both like Scotch +and soda, why, what harm. I'm forty-two and not so much of a fool that +I ain't a little bit of a physician. I know my stomach, I tell him." + +"What about these Western people?" she asked Oldaker at her other side, +after a little. + +"Decent, unpretentious folks, somewhat new, but with loads of money." + +"I've heard how the breed's stormin' New York in droves; but they tell +me some of us need the money." + +"I dined with one last night, a sugar-cured ham magnate from Chicago." + +"_Dear_ me! how shockin'!" + +"But they're good, whole-souled people." + +"And well-_heeled_--and that's what we need, it seems. Some of us been +so busy bein' well-familied that we've forgot to make money." + +"It's a good thing, too. Nature has her own building laws about +fortunes. When they get too sky-scrapy she topples them over. These +people with their thrifty habits would have _all_ the money in time if +their sons and daughters didn't marry aristocrats with expensive tastes +who know how to be spenders. Nature keeps things fairly even, one way +or another." + +"You're thinkin' about Kitty and the duke." + +"No, not then I wasn't, though that's one of the class I mean. I was +thinking especially about these Westerners." + +"Well, my grandfather made the best barrels in New York, and I'm +mother-in-law of a chap whose ancestors for three hundred and fifty +years haven't done a stroke of work; but he's the Duke of Blanchmere, +and I hope our friends here will come as near gettin' the worth of +their money as we did. And if that chap"--she glanced at +Percival--"marries a certain young woman, he'll never have a dull +moment. I'd vouch for that. I'm quite sure she's the devil in her." + +"And if the yellow-haired girl marries the fellow next her--" + +"He might do worse." + +"Yes, but might _she_? He's already doing worse, and he'll keep on +doing it, even if he does marry her." + +"Nonsense--about that, you know; all rot! What can you expect of these +chaps? So does the duke do worse, but you'll never hear Kitty complain +so long as he lets her alone and she can wear the strawberry leaves. I +fancy I'll have those young ones down to the Hills for Hallowe'en and +the week-end. Might as well help 'em along." + +At the other end of the table, the fine old ivory of her cheeks gently +suffused with pink until they looked like slightly crumpled leaves of a +la France rose, Mrs. Oldaker was flirting brazenly with Shepler, and +prattling impartially to him and to one of the twin nephews of old days +in social New York; of a time when the world of fashion occupied a +little space at the Battery and along Broadway; of its migration to the +far north of Great Jones Street, St. Mark's Place, and Second Avenue. +In Waverly Place had been the flowering of her belle-hood, and the day +when her set moved on to Murray Hill was to her still recent and +revolutionary. + +Between the solemn Angstead twins, Mrs. Bines had sat in silence until +by some happy chance it transpired that "horse" was the word to unlock +their lips. As Mrs. Bines knew all about horses the twins at once +became voluble, showing her marked attention. The twins were notably +devoid of prejudice if your sympathies happened to run with theirs. + +Miss Bines and young Milbrey were already on excellent terms. Percival +and Miss Milbrey, on the other hand, were doing badly. Some disturbing +element seemed to have put them aloof. Miss Milbrey wondered somewhat; +but her mind was easy, for her resolution had been taken. + +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan extended her invitation to the young people, who +accepted joyfully. + +"Come down and camp with us, and help Phim keep the batteries of his +autos run out. You know they deteriorate when they're left +half-charged, and it's one of the cares of his life to see to the whole +six of 'em when they come in. He gets in one and the men get in the +others, and he leads a solemn parade around the stables until they've +been run out. Tell me the leisure class isn't a hard-workin' class, +now." + +Over coffee and chartreuse in the drawing-room there was more general +talk of money and marriage, and of one for the other. + +"And so he married money," concluded Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan of one they +had discussed. + +"Happy marriage!" Shepler called out. + +"No; money talks! and this time, on my word, now, it made you want to +put on those thick sealskin ear-muffs. Poor chap, and he'd been talkin' +to me about the monotony of married life. 'Monotony, my boy,' I said to +him, 'you don't _know_ lovely woman!' and now he wishes jolly well that +he'd not done it, you know." + +Here, too, was earned by Mrs. Bines a reputation for wit that she was +never able quite to destroy. There had been talk of a banquet to a +visiting celebrity the night before, for which the _menu_ was one of +unusual costliness. Mr. Milbrey had dwelt with feeling upon certain of +its eminent excellences, such as loin of young bear, a la Granville, +and the boned quail, stuffed with goose-livers. + +"Really," he concluded, "from an artistic standpoint, although large +dinners are apt to be slurred and slighted, it was a creation of +undoubted worth." + +"And the orchestra," spoke up Mrs. Bines, who had read of the banquet, +"played 'Hail to the _Chef!_'" + +The laughter at this sally was all it should have been, even the host +joining in it. Only two of those present knew that the good woman had +been warned not to call "chef" "chief," as Silas Higbee did. The fact +that neither should "chief" be called "chef" was impressed upon her +later, in a way to make her resolve ever again to eschew both of the +troublesome words. + +When the guests had gone Miss Milbrey received the praise of both +parents for her blameless attitude toward young Bines. + +"It will be fixed when we come back from Wheatly," said that knowing +young woman, "and now don't worry any more about it." + +"And, Fred," said the mother, "do keep straight down there. She's a +commonplace girl, with lots of mannerisms to unlearn, but she's pretty +and sweet and teachable." + +"And she'll learn a lot from Fred that she doesn't know now," finished +that young man's sister from the foot of the stairway. + +Back at their hotel Psyche Bines was saying: + +"Isn't it queer about Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan? We've read so much about +her in the papers. I thought she must be some one awful to meet--I was +that scared--and instead, she's like any one, and real chummy besides; +and, actually, ma, don't you think her dress was dowdy--all except the +diamonds? I suppose that comes from living in England so much. And +hasn't Mrs. Milbrey twice as grand a manner, and the son--he's a +precious--he knows everything and everybody; I shall like him." + +Her brother, who had flung himself into a cushioned corner, spoke with +the air of one who had reluctantly consented to be interviewed and who +was anxious to be quoted correctly: + +"Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is all right. She reminds me of what Uncle Peter +writes about that new herd of short-horns: 'This breed has a mild +disposition, is a good feeder, and produces a fine quality of flesh.' +But I'll tell you one thing, sis," he concluded with sudden emphasis, +"with all this talk about marrying for money I'm beginning to feel as +if you and I were a couple of white rabbits out in the open with all +the game laws off!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +The Course of True Love at a House Party + + +Among sundry maxims and observations of King Solomon, collated by the +discerning men of Hezekiah, it will be recalled that the way of a man +with a maid is held up to wonder. "There be," says the wise king, who +composed a little in the crisp manner of Mr. Kipling, "three things +which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not: the way of +an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a +ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." Why he +neglected to include the way of a maid with a man is not at once +apparent. His unusual facilities for observation must seemingly have +inspired him to wonder at the maid's way even more than at the man's; +and wise men later than he have not hesitated to confess their entire +lack of understanding in the matter. But if Solomon included this item +in his summary, the men of Hezekiah omitted to report the fact, and by +their chronicles we learn only that the woman "eateth and wipeth her +mouth and saith 'I have done no wickedness.'" Perhaps it was Solomon's +mischance to observe phenomena of this character too much in the mass. + +Miss Milbrey's way, at any rate, with the man she had decided to marry, +would undoubtedly have made more work for the unnamed Boswells of the +king, could it have been brought to his notice. + +For, as she journeyed to the meeting-place on a bright October +afternoon, she confessed to herself that it was of a depth beyond her +own fathoming. Lolling easily back in the wicker chair of the car that +bore her, and gazing idly out over the brown fields and yellow forests +of Long Island as they swirled by her, she found herself wishing once +that her eyes were made like those of a doll. She had lately discovered +of one that when it appeared to fall asleep, it merely turned its eyes +around to look into its own head. With any lesser opportunity for +introspection she felt that certain doubts as to her own motives and +processes would remain for ever unresolved. It was not that she could +not say "I have done no wickedness;" let us place this heroine in no +false light. She was little concerned with the morality of her course +as others might appraise it. The fault, if fault it be, is neither ours +nor hers, and Mr. Darwin wrote a big book chiefly to prove that it +isn't. From the force of her environment and heredity Miss Milbrey had +debated almost exclusively her own chances of happiness under given +conditions; and if she had, for a time, questioned the wisdom of the +obvious course, entirely from her own selfish standpoint, it is all +that, and perhaps more than, we were justified in expecting from her. +Let her, then, cheat the reader of no sympathy that might flow to a +heroine struggling for a high moral ideal. Merely is she clear-headed +enough to have discovered that selfishness is not the thing of easy +bonds it is reputed to be; that its delights are not certain; that one +does not unerringly achieve happiness by the bare circumstance of being +uniformly selfish. Yet even this is a discovery not often made, nor one +to be lightly esteemed; for have not the wise ones of Church and State +ever implied that the way of selfishness is a way of sure delight, to +be shunned only because its joys endure not? So it may be, after all, +no small merit we claim for this girl in that, trained to selfishness +and a certain course, she yet had the wit to suspect that its joys have +been overvalued even by its professional enemies. It is no small merit, +perhaps, even though, after due and selfish reflection, she determined +upon the obvious course. + +If sometimes her heart was sick with the hunger to love and be loved by +the one she loved, so that there were times when she would have +bartered the world for its plenary feeding, it is all that, we insist, +and more, than could be expected of this sort of heroine. + +And so she had resolved upon surrender--upon an outward surrender. +Inwardly she knew it to be not more than a capitulation under duress, +whose terms would remain for ever secret except to those clever at +induction. And now, as the train took her swiftly to her fate, she made +the best of it. + +There would be a town-house fit for her; a country-house at Tuxedo or +Lenox or Westbury, a thousand good acres with greeneries, a game +preserve, trout pond, and race-course; a cottage at Newport; a place in +Scotland; a house in London, perhaps. Then there would be jewels such +as she had longed for, a portrait by Chartran, she thought. And there +was the dazzling thought of going to Felix or Doucet with credit +unlimited. + +And he--would the thought of him as it had always come to her keep on +hurting with a hurt she could neither explain nor appease? Would he +annoy her, enrage her perhaps, or even worse, tire her? He would be +very much in earnest, of course, and so few men could be in earnest +gracefully. But would he be stupid enough to stay so? And if not, would +he become brutal? She suspected he might have capacities for that. +Would she be able to hide all but her pleasant emotions from him,--hide +that want, the great want, to which she would once have done sacrifice? + +Well, it was easier to try than not to try, and the sacrifice--one +could always sacrifice if the need became imperative. + +"And I'm making much of nothing," she concluded. "No other girl I know +would do it. And papa shall 'give me away.' What a pretty euphemism +that is, to be sure!" + +But her troubled musings ended with her time alone. From a whirl over +the crisp, firm macadam, tucked into one of Phimister Gwilt-Athelstan's +automobiles with four other guests, with no less a person than her +genial host for chauffeur, she was presently ushered into the great +hall where a huge log-fire crackled welcome, and where blew a lively +little gale of tea-chatter from a dozen people. + +Tea Miss Milbrey justly reckoned among the little sanities of life. Her +wrap doffed and her veil pushed up, she was in a moment restored to her +normal ease, a part of the group, and making her part of the talk that +touched the latest news from town, the flower show, automobile show, +Irving and Terry, the morning's meet, the weekly musicale and +dinner-dance at the club; and at length upon certain matters of +marriage and divorce. + +"Ladies, ladies--this is degenerating into a mere hammer-fest." Thus +spoke a male wit who had listened. "Give over, and be nice to the +absent." + +"The end of the fairy story was," continued the previous speaker, +unheeding, "and so they were divorced and lived happily ever after." + +"I think she took the Chicago motto, 'Marry early and often,'" said +another, "but here she comes." + +And as blond and fluffy little Mrs. Akemit, a late divorcee, joined the +group the talk ranged back to the flourishing new hunt at Goshen, the +driving over of Tuxedo people for the meet, the nasty accident to +Warner Ridgeway when his blue-ribbon winner Musette fell upon him in +taking a double-jump. + +Miss Milbrey had taken stock of her fellow guests. Especially was she +interested to note the presence of Mrs. Drelmer and her protege, +Mauburn. It meant, she was sure, that her brother's wooing of Miss +Bines would not be uncontested. + +Another load of guests from a later train bustled in, the Bineses among +them, and there was more tea and fresher gossip, while the butler +circulated again with his tray for the trunk-keys. + +The breezy hostess now took pains to impress upon all that only by +doing exactly as they pleased, as to going and coming, could they hope +to please her. Had she not, by this policy, conquered the cold, +Scottish exclusiveness of Inverness-shire, so that the right sort of +people fought to be at her house-parties during the shooting, even +though she would persist in travelling back and forth to London in +gowns that would be conspicuously elaborate at an afternoon reception, +and even though, in any condition of dress, she never left quite enough +of her jewels in their strong-box? + +During the hour of dressing-sacque and slippers, while maids fluttered +through the long corridors on hair-tending and dress-hooking +expeditions, Mrs. Drelmer favoured her hostess with a confidential chat +in that lady's boudoir, and, over Scotch and soda and a cigarette, +suggested that Mr. Mauburn, in a house where he could really do as he +pleased, would assuredly take Miss Bines out to dinner. + +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan was instantly sympathetic. + +"Only I can't take sides, you know, my dear, and young Milbrey will +think me shabby if he doesn't have first go; but I'll be impartial; +Milbrey shall take her in, and Mauburn shall be at her other side, and +may God have mercy on her soul! These people have so much money, I +hear, it amounts to financial embarrassment, but with those two chaps +for the girl, and Avice Milbrey for that decent young chap, I fancy +they'll be disembarrassed, in a measure. But I mustn't 'play +favourites,' as those slangy nephews of mine put it." + +And so it befell at dinner in the tapestried dining-room that Psyche +Bines received assiduous attention from two gentlemen whom she +considered equally and superlatively fascinating. While she looked at +one, she listened to the other, and her neck grew tired with turning. +Of anything, save the talk, her mind was afterward a blank; but why is +not that the ideal dinner for any but mere feeders? + +Nor was the dazzled girl conscious of others at the table,--of Florence +Akemit, the babyish blond, listening with feverish attention to the +German savant, Doctor von Herzlich, who had translated Goethe's +"Iphigenie in Tauris" into Greek merely as recreation, and who was now +justifying his choice of certain words and phrases by citing passages +from various Greek authors; a choice which the sympathetic listener, +after discreet intervals for reflection, invariably commended. + +"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man, you!" she exclaimed, resolving to +sit by some one less wonderful another time. + +Or there was Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, like a motherly Venus rising from a +sea of pink velvet and white silk lace, asserting that some one or +other would never get within sniffing-distance of the Sandringham set. + +Or her husband, whose face, when he settled it in his collar, made the +lines of a perfect lyre, and of whom it would presently become +inaccurate to say that he was getting bald. He was insisting that "too +many houses spoil the home," and that, with six establishments, he was +without a place to lay his head, that is, with any satisfaction. + +Or there was pale, thin, ascetic Winnie Wilberforce, who, as a +theosophist, is understood to believe that, in a former incarnation, he +came near to having an affair with a danseuse; he was expounding the +esoterics of his cult to a high-coloured brunette with many turquoises, +who, in turn, was rather inclined to the horse-talk of one of the +nephews. + +Or there were Miss Milbrey and Percival Bines, of whom the former had +noted with some surprise that the latter was studying her with the eyes +of rather cold calculation, something she had never before detected in +him. + +After dinner there were bridge and music from the big pipe-organ in the +music-room, and billiards and some dancing. + +The rival cavaliers of Miss Bines, perceiving simultaneously that +neither would have the delicacy to withdraw from the field, cunningly +inveigled each other into the billiard-room, where they watchfully +consumed whiskey and soda together with the design of making each other +drunk. This resulted in the two nephews, who invariably hunted as a +pair, capturing Miss Bines to see if she could talk horse as ably as +her mother, and, when they found that she could, planning a coaching +trip for the morrow. + +It also resulted in Miss Bines seeing no more of either cavalier that +night, since they abandoned their contest only after every one but a +sleepy butler had retired, and at a time when it became necessary for +the Englishman to assist the American up the stairs, though the latter +was moved to protest, as a matter of cheerful generality, that he was +"aw ri'--entirely cap'le." At parting he repeatedly urged Mauburn, with +tears in his eyes, to point out one single instance in which he had +ever proved false to a friend. + +To herself, when the pink rose came out of her hair that night, Miss +Milbrey admitted that it wasn't going to be so bad, after all. + +She had feared he might rush his proposal through that night; he had +been so much in earnest. But he had not done so, and she was glad he +could be restrained and deliberate in that "breedy" sort of way. It +promised well, that he could wait until the morrow. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe + + +Miss Milbrey, the next morning, faced with becoming resignation what +she felt would be her last day of entire freedom. She was down and out +philosophically to play nine holes with her host before breakfast. + +Her brother, awakening less happily, made a series of discoveries +regarding his bodily sensations that caused him to view life with +disaffection. Noting that the hour was early, however, he took cheer, +and after a long, strong, cold drink, which he rang for, and a pricking +icy shower, which he nerved himself to, he was ready to ignore his +aching head and get the start of Mauburn. + +The Englishman, he seemed to recall, had drunk even more than he, and, +as it was barely eight o'clock, would probably not come to life for a +couple of hours yet. He made his way to the breakfast-room. The thought +of food was not pleasant, but another brandy and soda, beading +vivaciously in its tall glass, would enable him to watch with fortitude +the spectacle of others who might chance to be eating. And he would +have at least two hours of Miss Bines before Mauburn's head should ache +him back to consciousness. + +He opened the door of the spacious breakfast-room. Through the broad +windows from the south-east came the glorious shine of the morning sun +to make him blink; and seated where it flooded him as a calcium was +Mauburn, resplendent in his myriad freckles, trim, alive, and obviously +hungry. Around his plate were cold mutton, a game pie, eggs, bacon, +tarts, toast, and sodden-looking marmalade. Mauburn was eating of these +with a voracity that published his singleness of mind to all who might +observe. + +Milbrey steadied himself with one hand upon the door-post, and with the +other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes. +But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only +more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the +sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ice, and a siphon +beckoned. + +Between two gulps of coffee Mauburn grinned affably. + +"Mornin', old chap! Feelin' a bit seedy? By Jove! I don't wonder. I'm +not so fit myself. I fancy, you know, it must have been that beastly +anchovy paste we had on the biscuits." + +Milbrey's burning eyes beheld him reach out for another slice of the +cold, terrible mutton. + +"Life," said Milbrey, as he inflated his brandy from the siphon, "is an +empty dream this morning." + +"Wake up then, old chap!" Mauburn cordially urged, engaging the game +pie in deadly conflict; "try a rasher; nothing like it; better'n +peggin' it so early. Never drink till dinner-time, old chap, and you'll +be able to eat in the morning like--like a blooming baby." And he +proceeded to crown this notion of infancy's breakfast with a jam tart +of majestic proportions. + +"Where are the people?" inquired Milbrey, eking out his own moist +breakfast with a cigarette. + +"All down and out except some of the women. Miss Bines just drove off a +four-in-hand with the two Angsteads--held the reins like an old whip, +too, by Jove; but they'll be back for luncheon;--and directly after +luncheon she's promised to ride with me. I fancy we'll have a little +practice over the sticks." + +"And I fancy I'm going straight back to bed,--that is, if it's all +right to fancy a thing you're certain about." + +Outside most of the others had scattered for life in the open, each to +his taste. Some were on the links. Some had gone with the coach. A few +had ridden early to the meet of the Essex hounds near Easthampton, +where a stiff run was expected. Others had gone to follow the hunt in +traps. A lively group came back now to read the morning papers by the +log-fire in the big cheery hall. Among these were Percival and Miss +Milbrey. When they had dawdled over the papers for an hour Miss Milbrey +grew slightly restive. + +"Why doesn't he have it over?" she asked herself, with some impatience. +And she delicately gave Percival, not an opportunity, but opportunities +to make an opportunity, which is a vastly different form of procedure. + +But the luncheon hour came and people straggled back, and the afternoon +began, and the request for Miss Milbrey's heart and hand was still +unaccountably deferred. Nor could she feel any of those subtle +premonitions that usually warn a woman when the event is preparing in a +lover's secret heart. + +Reminding herself of his letters, she began to suspect that, while he +could write unreservedly, he might be shy and reluctant of speech; and +that shyness now deterred him. So much being clear, she determined to +force the issue and end the strain for both. + +Percival had shown not a little interest in pretty Mrs. Akemit, and was +now talking with that fascinating creature as she lolled on a low seat +before the fire in her lacy blue house-gown. At the moment she was +adroitly posing one foot and then the other before the warmth of the +grate. It may be disclosed without damage to this tale that the feet of +Mrs. Akemit were not cold; but that they were trifles most daintily +shod, and, as her slender silken ankles curved them toward the blaze +from her froth of a petticoat, they were worth looking at. + +Miss Milbrey disunited the chatting couple with swiftness and aplomb. + +"Come, Mr. Bines, if I'm to take that tramp you made me promise you, +it's time we were off." + +Outside she laughed deliciously. "You know you did make me promise it +mentally, because I knew you'd want to come and want me to come, but I +was afraid Mrs. Akemit mightn't understand about telepathy, so I +pretended we'd arranged it all in words." + +"Of course! Great joke, wasn't it?" assented the young man, rather +awkwardly. + +Down the broad sweep of roadway, running between its granite coping, +they strode at a smart pace. + +"You know you complimented my walking powers on that other walk we +took, away off there where the sun goes down." + +"Yes, of course," he replied absently. + +"Now, he's beginning," she said to herself, noting his absent and +somewhat embarrassed manner. + +In reality he was thinking how few were the days ago he would have held +this the dearest of all privileges, and how strange that he should now +prize it so lightly, almost prefer, indeed, not to have it; that he +should regard her, of all women, "the fairest of all flesh on earth" +with nervous distrust. + +She was dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as +she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands +were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of +her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these +impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: _"She's hunting +night and day for a rich husband; she tries for them as fast as they +come; she'd rather marry a sub-treasury--she'd marry me in a +minute--she'd marry_ YOU; _but if you were broke she'd have about as +much use for you...."_ + +Her glance was frank, friendly, and encouraging. Her deep eyes were +clear as a trout-brook. He thought he saw in them once almost a +tenderness for him. + +She thought, "He _does_ love me!" + +Outside the grounds they turned down a bridle-path that led off through +the woods--off through the golden sun-wine of an October day. The air +bore a clean autumn spice, and a faint salty scent blended with it from +the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect +silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance, +suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the +pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear +an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling +nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a +lightning flash of vivid turquoise and heard a jay's harsh scream. + +In this stillness their voices instinctively lowered, while their eyes +did homage to the wondrous play of colour about them. Over a yielding +brown carpet they went among maple and chestnut and oak, with their +bewildering changes through crimson, russet, and amber to pale yellow; +under the deep-stained leaves of the sweet-gum they went, and past the +dogwood with scarlet berries gemming the clusters of its dim red +leaves. + +But through all this waiting, inciting silence Miss Milbrey listened in +vain for the words she had felt so certain would come. + +Sometimes her companion was voluble; again he was taciturn--and through +it all he was doggedly aloof. + +Miss Milbrey had put herself bravely in the path of Destiny. Destiny +had turned aside. She had turned to meet it, and now it frankly fled. +Destiny, as she had construed it, was turned a fugitive. She was +bruised, puzzled, and not a little piqued. During the walk back, when +this much had been made clear, the silence was intolerably oppressive. +Without knowing why, they understood perfectly now that neither had +been ingenuous. + +"She would love the money and play me for a fool," he thought, under +the surface talk. Youth is prone to endow its opinions with all the +dignity of certain knowledge. + +"Yet I am certain he loves me," thought she. On the other hand, youth +is often gifted with a credulity divine and unerring. + +At the door as they came up the roadway a trap was depositing a man +whom Miss Milbrey greeted with evident surprise and some restraint. He +was slight, dark, and quick of movement, with finely cut nostrils that +expanded and quivered nervously like those of a high-bred horse in +tight check. + +Miss Milbrey introduced him to Percival as Mr. Ristine. + +"I didn't know you were hereabouts," she said. + +"I've run over from the Bloynes to dine and do Hallowe'en with you," he +answered, flashing his dark eyes quickly over Percival and again +lighting the girl with them. + +"Surprises never come singly," she returned, and Percival noted a +curious little air of defiance in her glance and manner. + +Now it is possible that Solomon's implied distinction as to the man's +way with a maid was not, after all, so ill advised. + +For young Bines, after dinner, fell in love with Miss Milbrey all over +again. The normal human mind going to one extreme will inevitably +gravitate to its opposite if given time. Having put her away in the +conviction that she was heartless and mercenary--having fasted in the +desert of doubt--he now found himself detecting in her an unmistakable +appeal for sympathy, for human kindness, perhaps for love. He forgot +the words of Higbee and became again the confident, unquestioning +lover. He noted her rather subdued and reserved demeanour, and the +suggestions of weariness about her eyes. They drew him. He resolved at +once to seek her and give his love freedom to tell itself. He would no +longer meanly restrain it. He would even tell her all his distrust. Now +that they had gone she should know every ignoble suspicion; and, +whether she cared for him or not, she would comfort him for the hurt +they had been to him. + +The Hallowe'en frolic was on. Through the long hall, lighted to +pleasant dusk by real Jack-o'-lanterns, stray couples strolled, with +subdued murmurs and soft laughter. In the big white and gold parlour, +in the dining-room, billiard-room, and in the tropic jungle of the +immense palm-garden the party had bestowed itself in congenial groups, +ever intersecting and forming anew. Little flutters of high laughter +now and then told of tests that were being made with roasting +chestnuts, apple-parings, the white of an egg dropped into water, or +the lighted candle before an open window. + +Percival watched for the chance to find Miss Milbrey alone. His sister +had just ventured alone with a candle into the library to study the +face of her future husband in a mirror. The result had been, in a +sense, unsatisfactory. She had beheld looking over her shoulder the +faces of Mauburn, Fred Milbrey, and the Angstead twins, and had +declared herself unnerved by the weird prophecy. + +Before the fire in the hall Percival stood while Mrs. Akemit reclined +picturesquely near by, and Doctor von Herzlich explained, with +excessive care as to his enunciation, that protoplasm can be analysed +but cannot be reconstructed; following this with his own view as to why +the synthesis does not produce life. + +"You wonderful man!" from Mrs. Akemit; "I fairly tremble when I think +of all you know. Oh, what a delight science must be to her votaries!" + +The Angstead twins joined the group, attracted by Mrs. Akemit's inquiry +of the savant if he did not consider civilisation a failure. The twins +did. They considered civilisation a failure because it was killing off +all the big game. There was none to speak of left now except in Africa; +and they were pessimistic about Africa. + +Percival listened absently to the talk and watched Miss Milbrey, now +one of the group in the dining-room. Presently he saw her take a +lighted candle from one of the laughing girls and go toward the +library. + +His heart-beats quickened. Now she should know his love and it would be +well. He walked down the hall leisurely, turned into the big parlour, +momentarily deserted, walked quickly but softly over its polished floor +to a door that gave into the library, pushed the heavy portiere aside +and stepped noiselessly in. + +The large room was lighted dimly by two immense yellow pumpkins, their +sides cut into faces of grinning grotesqueness. At the far side of the +room Miss Milbrey had that instant arrived before an antique oval +mirror whose gilded carvings reflected the light of the candle. She +held it above her head with one rounded arm. He stood in deep shadow +and the girl had been too absorbed in the play to note his coming. He +took one noiseless step toward her, but then through the curtained +doorway by which she had come he saw a man enter swiftly and furtively. + +Trembling on the verge of laughing speech, something held him back, +some unexplainable instinct, making itself known in a thrill that went +from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle. +The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl. +Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the +very swiftness of what followed. + +In the mirror under the candle-light he saw the man's dark face come +beside the other, heard a little cry from the girl as she half-turned; +then he saw the man take her in his arms, saw her head fall on to his +shoulder, and her face turn to his kiss. + +He tried to stop breathing, fearful of discovery, grasping with one +hand the heavy fold of the curtain back of him to steady himself. + +There was the space of two long, trembling breaths; then he heard her +say, in a low, tense voice, as she drew away: + +"Oh, you are my bad angel--why?--why?" + +She fled toward the door to the hall. + +"Don't come this way," she called back, in quick, low tones of caution. + +The man turned toward the door where Percival stood, and in the +darkness stumbled over a hassock. Instantly Percival was on the other +side of the portiere, and, before the other had groped his way to the +dark corner where the door was, had recrossed the empty parlour and was +safely in the hall. + +He made his way to the dining-room, where supper was under way. + +"Mr. Bines has seen a ghost," said the sharp-eyed Mrs. Drelmer. + +"Poor chap's only starved to death," said Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan. "Eat +something, Mr. Bines; this supper is go-as-you-please. Nobody's to wait +for anybody." + +Strung loosely about the big table a dozen people were eating hot +scones and bannocks with clotted cream and marmalade, and drinking +mulled cider. + +"And there's cold fowl and baked beans and doughnuts and all, for those +who can't eat with a Scotch accent," said the host, cheerfully. + +Percival dropped into one of the chairs. + +"I'm Scotch enough to want a Scotch high-ball." + +"And you're getting it so high it's top-heavy," cautioned Mrs. Drelmer. + +Above the chatter of the table could be heard the voices of men and the +musical laughter of women from the other rooms. + +"I simply can't get 'em together," said the hostess. + +"It's nice to have 'em all over the place," said her husband, "fair +women and brave men, you know." + +"The men _have_ to be brave," she answered, shortly, with a glance at +little Mrs. Akemit, who had permitted Percival to seat her at his side, +and was now pleading with him to agree that simple ways of life are +requisite to the needed measure of spirituality. + +Then came strains of music from the rich-toned organ. + +"Oh, that dear Ned Ristine is playing," cried one; and several of the +group sauntered toward the music-room. + +The music flooded the hall and the room, so that the talk died low. + +"He's improvising," exclaimed Mrs. Akemit. "How splendid! He seems to +be breathing a paean of triumph, some high, exalted spiritual triumph, +as if his soul had risen above us--how precious!" + +When the deep swell had subsided to silvery ripples and the last +cadence had fainted, she looked at Percival with moistened parted lips +and eyes half-shielded, as if her full gaze would betray too much of +her quivering soul. + +Then Percival heard the turquoised brunette say: "What a pity his wife +is such an unsympathetic creature!" + +"But Mr. Ristine is unmarried, is he not?" he asked, quickly. + +There was a little laugh from Mrs. Drelmer. + +"Not yet--not that I've heard of." + +"I beg pardon!" + +"There have been rumours lots of times that he was going to be +_unmarried_, but they always seem to adjust their little difficulties. +He and his wife are now staying over at the Bloynes." + +"Oh! I see," answered Percival; "you're a jester, Mrs. Drelmer." + +"Ristine," observed the theosophic Wilberforce, in the manner of a +hired oracle, "is, in his present incarnation, imperfectly monogamous." + +Some people came from the music-room. + +"Miss Milbrey has stayed by the organist," said one; "and she's +promised to make him play one more. Isn't he divine?" + +The music came again. + +"Oh!" from Mrs. Akemit, again in an ecstasy, '"' he's playing that +heavenly stuff from the second act of 'Tristan and Isolde'--the one +triumphant, perfect love-poem of all music." + +"That Scotch whiskey is good in some of the lesser emergencies," +remarked Percival, turning to her; "but it has its limitations. Let's +you and me trifle with a nice cold quart of champagne!" + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +Doctor Von Herzlich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied +Phenomena + + +The Hightower Hotel is by many observers held to be an instructive +microcosm of New York, more especially of upper Broadway, with correct +proportions of the native and the visiting provincial. With correct +proportions, again, of the money-making native and the money-spending +native, male and female. A splendid place is this New York; splendid +but terrible. London for the stranger has a steady-going, hearty +hospitality. Paris on short notice will be cosily and coaxingly +intimate. New York is never either. It overwhelms with its lavish +display of wealth, it stuns with its tireless, battering energy. But it +stays always aloof, indifferent if it be loved or hated; if it crush or +sustain. + +The ground floor of the Hightower Hotel reproduces this magnificent, +brutal indifference. One might live years in its mile or so of stately +corridors and its acre or so of resplendent cafes, parlours, +reception-rooms, and restaurants, elbowed by thousands, suffocated by +that dense air of human crowdedness, that miasma of brain emanations, +and still remain in splendid isolation, as had he worn the magic ring +of Gyges. Here is every species of visitor: the money-burdened who +"stop" here and cultivate an air of being blase to the wealth of +polished splendours; and the less opulent who "stop" cheaply elsewhere +and venture in to tread the corridors timidly, to stare with honest, +drooping-jawed wonder at its marvels of architecture and decoration, +and to gaze with becoming reverence at those persons whom they shrewdly +conceive to be social celebrities. + +This mixture of many and strange elements is never at rest. Its units +wait expectantly, chat, drink, eat, or stroll with varying airs through +reception-room, corridor, and office. It is an endless function, +attended by all of Broadway, with entertainment diversely contrived for +every taste by a catholic-minded host with a sincere desire to please +the paying public. + +"Isn't it a huge bear-garden, though?" asks Launton Oldaker of the +estimable Doctor von Herzlich, after the two had observed the scene in +silence for a time. + +The wise German dropped an olive into his Rhine wine, and gazed +reflectively about the room. Men and women sat at tables drinking. +Beyond the tables at the farther side of the room, other men were +playing billiards. It was four o'clock and the tide was high. + +"It is yet more," answered the doctor. "In my prolonged studies of +natural phenomena this is the most valuable of all which I have been +privileged to observe." + +He called them "brifiletched" and "awbsairf" with great nicety. Perhaps +his discernment was less at fault. + +"Having," continued the doctor, "granted myself some respite from toil +in the laboratory at Marburg, I chose to pleasure voyage, to study yet +more the social conditions in this loveworthy land. I suspected that +much tiredness of travel would be involved. Yet here I find all +conditions whatsoever--here in that which you denominate 'bear-garden'. +They have been reduced here for my edification, yes? But your term is a +term of inadequate comprehensiveness. It is to me more what you call a +'beast-garden,' to include all species of fauna. Are there not here +moths and human flames? are there not cunning serpents crawling with +apples of knowledge to unreluctant, idling Eves, yes? Do we not hear +the amazing converse of parrots and note the pea-fowl negotiating +admiration from observers? Mark at that yet farther table also the +swine and the song-bird; again, mark our draught-horses who have +achieved a competence, yes? You note also the presence of wolves and +lambs. And, endly, mark our tailed arborean ancestors, trained to the +wearing of garments and a single eye-glass. May I ask, have you +bestowed upon this diversity your completest high attention? _Hanh_!" + +This explosion of the doctor's meant that he invited and awaited some +contradiction. As none ensued, he went on: + +"For wolf and lamb I direct your attention to the group at yonder +table. I notice that you greeted the young man as he entered--a common +friend to us then--Mr. Bines, with financial resources incredibly +unlimited? Also he is possessed of an unexperienced freedom from +suspectedness-of-ulterior-motive-in-others--one may not in English as +in German make the word to fit his need of the moment--that +unsuspectedness, I repeat, which has ever characterised the lamb about +to be converted into nutrition. You note the large, loose gentleman +with wide-brimmed hat and beard after my own, somewhat, yes? He would +dispose of some valuable oil-wells which he shall discover at Texas the +moment he shall have sufficiently disposed of them. A wolf he is, yes? +The more correctly attired person at his right, with the beak of a hawk +and lips so thin that his big white teeth gleam through them when they +are yet shut, he is what he calls himself a promoter. He has made +sundry efforts to promote myself. I conclude 'promoter' is one other +fashion of wolf-saying. The yet littler and yet younger man at his left +of our friend, the one of soft voice and insinuating manner, much +resembling a stray scion of aristocracy, discloses to those with whom +he affably acquaints himself the location of a luxurious gaming house +not far off; he will even consent to accompany one to its tables; and +still yet he has but yesterday evening invited me the all-town to see. + +"As a scientist, I remind you, I permit myself no prejudices. I observe +the workings of unemotional law and sometimes record them. You have a +saying here that there are three generations between shirt-sleeves and +shirt-sleeves. I observe the process of the progress. It is benign as +are all processes. I have lately observed it in England. There, by +their law of entail, the same process is unswifter,--yet does it +unvary. The poor aristocrats, almost back to shirt-sleeves, with their +taxes and entailed lands, seek for the money in shops of dress and +bonnet and ale, and graciously rent their castles to the +but-newly-opulent in American oil or the diamonds of South Africa. Here +the posterity of your Mynherr Knickerbocker do likewise. The ancestor +they boast was a toiler, a market-gardener, a fur-trader, a boatman, +hardworking, simple-wayed, unspending. The woman ancestor +kitchen-gardened, spun, wove, and nourished the poultry. Their +descendants upon the savings of these labours have forgotten how to +labour themselves. They could not yet produce should they even +relinquish the illusion that to produce is of a baseness, that only to +consume is noble. I gather reports that a few retain enough of the +ancient strain to become sturdy tradesmen and gardeners once more. +Others seek out and assimilate this new-richness, which, in its turn, +will become impoverished and helpless. Ah, what beautiful showing of +Evolution! + +"See the pendulum swing from useful penury to useless opulence. Why +does it not halt midway, you inquire? Because the race is so young. +Ach! a mere two hundred and forty million years from our +grandfather-grandmother amoeba in the ancestral morass! What can one be +expecting? Certain faculties develop in response to the pressure of +environment. Omit the pressure and the faculties no longer ensue. Yes? +Withdraw the pressure, and the faculties decay. Sightless moles, their +environment demands not the sight; nor of the fishes that inhabit the +streams of your Mammoth Cave. Your aristocrats between the +sleeve-of-the-shirt periods likewise degenerate. There is no need to +work, they lose the power. No need to sustain themselves, they become +helpless. They are as animals grown in an environment that demands no +struggle of them. Yet their environment is artificial. They live on +stored energy, stored by another. It is exhausted, they perish. All but +the few that can modify to correspond with the changed environment, as +when your social celebrities venture into trade, and the also few that +in their life of idleness have acquired graces of person and manner to +let them find pleasure in the eyes of marryers among the but-now-rich." + +The learned doctor submitted to have his glass refilled from the cooler +at his side, dropped another olive into the wine, and resumed before +Oldaker could manage an escape. + +"And how long, you ask, shall the cosmic pendulum swing between these +extremes of penurious industry and opulent idleness?" + +Oldaker had not asked it. But he tried politely to appear as if he had +meant to. He had really meant to ask the doctor what time it was and +then pretend to recall an engagement for which he would be already +late. + +"It will so continue," the doctor placidly resumed, "until the race +achieves a different ideal. Now you will say, but there can be no ideal +so long as there is no imagination; and as I have directly--a +moment-soon--said, the race is too young to have achieved imagination. +The highest felicity which we are yet able to imagine is a felicity +based upon much money; our highest pleasures the material pleasures +which money buys, yes? We strive for it, developing the money-getting +faculty at the expense of all others; and when the money is obtained we +cannot enjoy it. We can imagine to do with it only delicate-eating and +drinking and dressing for show-to-others and building houses immense +and splendidly uncalculated for homes of rational dwelling. Art, +science, music, literature, sociology, the great study and play of our +humanity, they are shut to us. + +"Our young friend Bines is a specimen. It is as if he were a child, +having received from another a laboratory full of the most beautiful +instruments of science. They are valuable, but he can do but common +things with them because he knows not their possibilities. Or, we may +call it stored energy he has; for such is money, the finest, subtlest, +most potent form of stored energy; it may command the highest fruits of +genius, the lowest fruits of animality; it is also volatile, elusive. +Our young friend has many powerful batteries of it. But he is no +electrician. Some he will happily waste without harm to himself. Much +of it, apparently, he will convert into that champagne he now drinks. +For a week since I had the pleasure of becoming known to him he has +drunk it here each day, copiously. He cannot imagine a more salutary +mode of exhausting his force. I am told he comes of a father who died +at fifty, and who did in many ways like that. This one, at the rate I +have observed, will not last so long. He will not so long correspond +with an environment even so unexacting as this. And his son, perhaps +his grandson, will become what you call broke; will from lack of +pressure to learn some useful art, and from spending only, become +useless and helpless. For besides drink, there is gambling. He plays +what you say, the game of poker, this Bines. You see the gentleman, +rounded gracefully in front, who has much the air of seeming to stand +behind himself,--he drinks whiskey at my far right, yes? He is of a +rich trust, the magnate-director as you say, and plays at cards nightly +with our young friend. He jested with him in my presence before you +entered, saying, 'I will make you look like'--I forget it now, but his +humourous threat was to reduce our young friend to the aspect of some +inconsiderable sum in the money of your country. I cannot recall the +precise amount, but it was not so much as what you call one dollar. +Strange, is it not, that the rich who have too much money gamble as +feverishly as the poor who have none, and therefore have an excuse? And +the love of display-for-display. If one were not a scientist one might +be tempted to say there is no progress. The Peruvian grandee shod his +mules with pure gold, albeit that metal makes but inferior shodding for +beasts of burden. The London factory girl hires the dyed feathers of +the ostrich to make her bonnet gay; and your money people are as +display-loving. Lucullus and your latest millionaire joy in the same +emotion of pleasure at making a show. Ach! we are truly in the race's +childhood yet. The way of evolution is so unfast, yes? Ah! you will go +now, Mr. Oldaker. I shall hope to enjoy you more again. Your +observations have interested me deeply; they shall have my most high +attention. Another time you shall discuss with me how it must be that +the cosmic process shall produce a happy mean between stoic and +epicure, by learning the valuable arts of compromise, yes? How Zeno +with his bread and dates shall learn not to despise a few luxuries, and +Vitellius shall learn that the mind may sometimes feast to advantage +while the body fasts." + +Through the marbled corridors and regal parlours, down long +perspectives of Persian rugs and onyx pillars, the function raged. + +The group at Percival's table broke up. He had an appointment to meet +Colonel Poindexter the next morning to consummate the purchase of some +oil stock certain to appreciate fabulously in value. He had promised to +listen further to Mr. Isidore Lewis regarding a plan for obtaining +control of a certain line of one of the metal stocks. And he had +signified his desire to make one of a party the affable younger man +would guide later in the evening to a sumptuous temple of chance, to +which, by good luck, he had gained the entree. The three gentlemen +parted most cordially from him after he had paid the check. + +To Mr. Lewis, when Colonel Poindexter had also left, the young man with +a taste for gaming remarked, ingenuously: + +"Say, Izzy, on the level, there's the readiest money that ever +registered at this joint. You don't have to be Mr. William Wisenham to +do business with him. You can have all you want of that at track odds." + +"I'm making book that way myself," responded the cheerful Mr. Lewis; +"fifty'll get you a thousand any time, my lad. It's a lead-pipe at +twenty to one. But say, with all these Petroleum Pete oil-stock +grafters and Dawson City Daves with frozen feet and mining-stock in +their mitts, a man's got to play them close in to his bosom to win out +anything. Competition is killing this place, my boy." + +In the Turkish room Percival found Mrs. Akemit, gowned to perfection, +glowing, and wearing a bunch of violets bigger than her pretty head. + +"I've just sent cards to your mother and sister," she explained, as she +made room for him upon the divan. + +To them came presently Mrs. Drelmer, well-groomed and aggressively +cheerful. + +"How de do! Just been down to Wall Street seeing how my other half +lives, and now I'm famished for tea and things. Ah! here are your +mother and our proud Western beauty!" And she went forward to greet +them. + +"It's more than _her_ other half knows about her," was Mrs. Akemit's +observation to the violets on her breast. + +"Come sit with me here in this corner, dear," said Mrs. Drelmer to +Psyche, while Mrs. Bines joined her son and Mrs. Akemit. "I've so much +to tell you. And that poor little Florence Akemit, isn't it too bad +about her. You know one of those bright French women said it's so +inconvenient to be a widow because it's necessary to resume the modesty +of a young girl without being able to feign her ignorance. No wonder +Florence has a hard time of it; but isn't it wretched of me to gossip? +And I wanted to tell you especially about Mr. Mauburn. You know of +course he'll be Lord Casselthorpe when the present Lord Casselthorpe +dies; a splendid title, really quite one of the best in all England; +and, my dear, he's out-and-out smitten with you; there's no use in +denying it; you should hear him rave to me about you; really these +young men in love are so inconsiderate of us old women. Ah! here is +that Mrs. Errol who does those fascinating miniatures of all the smart +people. Excuse me one moment, my dear; I want her to meet your mother." + +The fashionable miniature artist was presently arranging with the dazed +Mrs. Bines for miniatures of herself and Psyche. Mrs. Drelmer, +beholding the pair with the satisfied glance of one who has performed a +kindly action, resumed her _tete-a-tete_ with Psyche. + +Percival, across the room, listened to Mrs. Akemit's artless disclosure +that she found life too complex--far too hazardous, indeed, for a poor +little creature in her unfortunate position, so liable to cruel +misjudgment for thoughtless, harmless acts, the result of a young zest +for life. She had often thought most seriously of a convent, indeed she +had--"and, really, Mr. Bines, I'm amazed that I talk this way--so +freely to you--you know, when I've known you so short a time; but +something in you compels my confidences, poor little me! and my poor +little confidences! One so seldom meets a man nowadays with whom one +can venture to talk about any of the _real_ things!" + +A little later, as Mrs. Drelmer was leaving, the majestic figure of the +Baron Ronault de Palliac framed itself in the handsome doorway. He +sauntered in, as if to give the picture tone, and then with purposeful +air took the seat Mrs. Drelmer had just vacated. Miss Bines had been +entertained by involuntary visions of herself as Lady Casselthorpe. She +now became in fancy the noble Baroness de Palliac, speaking faultless +French and consorting with the rare old families of the Faubourg St. +Germain. For, despite his artistic indirection, the baron's manner was +conclusive, his intentions unmistakable. + +And this day was much like many days in the life of the Bines and in +the life of the Hightower Hotel. The scene from parlour to cafe was +surveyed at intervals by a quiet-mannered person with watchful eyes, +who appeared to enjoy it as one upon whom it conferred benefits. Now he +washed his hands in the invisible sweet waters of satisfaction, and +murmured softly to himself, "Setters and Buyers!" Perhaps the term fits +the family of Bines as well as might many another coined especially for +it. + +When the three groups in the Turkish room dissolved, Percival with his +mother and sister went to their suite on the fourth floor. + +"Think of a real live French nobleman!" cried Psyche, with enthusiasm, +"and French must be such a funny language--he talks such funny English. +I wish now I'd learned more of it at the Sem, and talked more with that +French Delpasse girl that was always toasting marshmallows on a +hat-pin." + +"That lady Mrs. Drelmer introduced me to," said Mrs. Bines, "is an +artist, miniature artist, hand-painted you know, and she's going to +paint our miniatures for a thousand dollars each because we're friends +of Mrs. Drelmer." + +"Oh, yes," exclaimed Psyche, with new enthusiasm, "and Mrs. Drelmer has +promised to teach me bridge whist if I'll go to her house to-morrow. +Isn't she kind? Really, every one must play bridge now, she tells me." + +"Well, ladies," said the son and brother, "I'm glad to see you both +getting some of the white meat. I guess we'll do well here. I'm going +into oil stock and lead, myself." + +"How girlish your little friend Mrs. Akemit is!" said his mother. "How +did she come to lose her husband?" + +"Lost him in South Dakota," replied her son, shortly. + +"Divorced, ma," explained Psyche, "and Mrs. Drelmer says her family's +good, but she's too gay." + +"Ah!" exclaimed Percival, "Mrs. Drelmer's hammer must be one of those +cute little gold ones, all set with precious stones. As a matter of +fact, she's anything but gay. She's sad. She couldn't get along with +her husband because he had no dignity of soul." + +He became conscious of sympathising generously with all men not thus +equipped. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire + + +To be idle and lavish of money, twenty-five years old, with the +appetites keen and the need for action always pressing; then to have +loved a girl with quick, strong, youthful ardour, and to have had the +ideal smirched by gossip, then shattered before his amazed eyes,--this +is a situation in which the male animal is apt to behave inequably. In +the language of the estimable Herr Doctor von Herzlich, he will seek +those avenues of modification in which the least struggle is required. +In the simpler phrasing of Uncle Peter Bines, he will "cut loose." + +During the winter that now followed Percival Bines behaved according to +either formula, as the reader may prefer. He early ascertained his +limitations with respect to New York and its people. + +"Say, old man," he asked Herbert Delancey Livingston one night, across +the table at their college club, "are all the people in New York +society impecunious?" + +Livingston had been with him at Harvard, and Livingston's family was so +notoriously not impecunious that the question was devoid of any +personal element. Livingston, moreover, had dined just unwisely enough +to be truthful. + +"Well, to be candid with you, Bines," the young man had replied, in a +burst of alcoholic confidence, "about all that you are likely to meet +are broke--else you wouldn't meet 'em, you know," he explained +cheerfully. "You know, old chap, a few of you Western people have got +into the right set here; there's the Nesbits, for instance. On my word +the good wife and mother hasn't the kinks out of her fingers yet, nor +the callouses from her hands, by Jove! She worked so hard cooking and +washing woollen shirts for miners before Nesbit made his strike. As for +him--well caviare, I'm afraid, will always be caviare to Jimmy Nesbit. +And now the son's married a girl that had everything but money--my boy, +Nellie Wemple has fairly got that family of Nesbits awestricken since +she married into it, just by the way she can spend money--but what was +I saying, old chap? Oh, yes, about getting in--it takes time, you know; +on my word, I think they were as much as eight years, and had to start +in abroad at that. At first, you know, you can only expect to meet a +crowd that can't afford to be exclusive any longer." + +From which friendly counsel, and from certain confirming observations +of his own, Percival had concluded that his lot in New York was to +spend money. This he began to do with a large Western carelessness that +speedily earned him fame of a sort. Along upper Broadway, his advent +was a golden joy. Tradesmen learned to love him; florists, jewelers, +and tailors hailed his coming with honest fervour; waiters told moving +tales of his tips; cabmen fought for the privilege of transporting him; +and the hangers-on of rich young men picked pieces of lint assiduously +and solicitously from his coat. + +One of his favourite resorts was the sumptuous gambling-house in +Forty-fourth Street. The man who slides back the panel of the stout +oaken door early learned to welcome him through the slit, barred by its +grill of wrought iron. The attendant who took his coat and hat, the +waiter who took his order for food, and the croupier who took his +money, were all gladdened by his coming; for his gratuities were as +large when he lost as when he won Even the reserved proprietor, +accustomed as he was to a wealthy and careless clientele, treated +Percival with marked consideration after a night when the young man +persuaded him to withdraw the limit at roulette, and spent a large sum +in testing a system for breaking the wheel, given to him by a friend +lately returned from Monte Carlo. + +"I think, really the fellow who gave me that system is an ass," he +said, lighting a cigarette when the play was done. "Now I'm going down +and demolish eight dollars' worth of food and drink--you won't be all +to the good on that, you know." + +His host decided that a young man who was hungry, after losing a +hundred thousand dollars in five hours' play, was a person to be not +lightly considered. + +And, though he loved the rhythmic whir and the ensuing rattle of the +little ivory ball at the roulette wheel, he did not disdain the quieter +faro, playing that dignified game exclusively with the chocolate-coloured +chips, which cost a thousand dollars a stack. Sometimes he won; but not +often enough to disturb his host's belief that there is less of chance in +his business than in any other known to the captains of industry. + +There were, too, sociable games of poker, played with Garmer, of the +Lead Trust, Burman, the intrepid young wheat operator from Chicago, and +half a dozen other well-moneyed spirits; games in which the limit, to +use the Chicagoan's phrase, was "the beautiful but lofty North Star." +At these games he lost even more regularly than at those where, with +the exception of a trifling percentage, he was solely at the mercy of +chance. But he was a joyous loser, endearing himself to the other +players; to Garmer, whom Burman habitually accused of being "closer +than a warm night," as well as to the open-handed son of the +chewing-gum magnate, who had been raised abroad and who protested +nightly that there was an element of beastly American commercialism in the +game. When Percival was by some chance absent from a sitting, the others +calculated the precise sum he probably would have lost and humourously +acquainted him with the amount by telegraph next morning,--it was apt to +be nine hundred and some odd dollars,--requesting that he cover by check +at his early convenience. + +Yet the diversion was not all gambling. There were Jong sessions at +all-night restaurants where the element of chance in his favour, +inconspicuous elsewhere, was wholly eliminated; suppers for hungry +Thespians and thirsty parasites, protracted with song and talk until +the gas-flames grew pale yellow, and the cabmen, when the party went +out into the wan light, would be low-voiced, confidential, and +suggestive in their approaches. + +Broadway would be weirdly quiet at such times, save for the occasional +frenzied clatter of a hurrying milk-wagon. Even the cars seemed to move +with less sound than by day, and the early-rising workers inside, +holding dinner-pails and lunch-baskets, were subdued and silent, yet +strangely observing, as if the hour were one in which the vision was +made clear to appraise the values of life justly. To the north, whence +the cars bulked silently, would be an awakening sky of such tender +beauty that the revellers often paid it the tribute of a moment's +notice. + +"Pure turquoise," one would declare. + +"With just a dash of orange bitters in it," another might add. + +And then perhaps they burst into song under the spell, blending their +voices into what the professional gentlemen termed "barber-shop +harmonies," until a policeman would saunter across the street, +pretending, however, that he was not aware of them. + +Then perhaps a ride toward the beautiful northern sky would be +proposed, whereupon three or four hansom or coupe loads would begin a +journey that wound up through Central Park toward the northern light, +but which never attained a point remoter than some suburban road-house, +where sleepy cooks and bartenders would have to be routed out to +collaborate toward breakfast. + +Oftener the party fell away into straggling groups with notions for +sleep, chanting at last, perhaps: + +"While beer brings gladness, don't forget That water only makes you +wet!" + +Percival would walk to the hotel, sobered and perhaps made a little +reflective by the unwonted quiet. But they were pleasant, careless +folk, he concluded always. They permitted him to spend his money, but +he was quite sure they would spend it as freely as he if they had it. +More than one appreciative soubrette, met under such circumstances, was +subsequently enabled to laud the sureness of his taste in jewels,--he +cared little for anything but large diamonds, it transpired. It was a +feeling tribute paid to his munificence by one of these in converse +with a sister artist, who had yet to meet him: + +"Say, Myrtle, on the dead, he spends money just like a young Jew trying +to be white!" + +Under this more or less happy surface of diversion, however, was an +experience decidedly less felicitous. He knew he should not, must not, +hold Avice Milbrey in his mind; yet when he tried to put her out it +hurt him. + +At first he had plumed himself upon his lucky escape that night, when +he would have declared his love to her. To have married a girl who +cared only for his money; that would have been dire enough. But to +marry a girl like _that!_ He had been lucky indeed! + +Yet, as the weeks went by the shock of the scene wore off. The scene +itself remained clear, with the grinning grotesquerie of the +Jack-o'-lanterns lighting it and mocking his simplicity. But the first +sharp physical hurt had healed. He was forced to admit that the girl +still had power to trouble him. At times his strained nerves would +relax to no other device than the picturing of her as his own. Exactly +in the measure that he indulged this would his pride smart. With a +budding gift for negation he could imagine her caring for nothing but +his money; and there was that other picture, swift and awful, a +pantomime in shadow, with the leering yellow faces above it. + +In the far night, when he awoke to sudden and hungry aloneness, he +would let his arms feel their hunger for her. The vision of her would +be flowers and music and sunlight and time and all things perfect to +mystify and delight, to satisfy and--greatest of all boons--to +unsatisfy. The thought of her became a rest-house for all weariness; a +haven where he was free to choose his nook and lie down away from all +that was not her, which was all that was not beautiful. He would go +back to seek the lost sweetness of their first meeting; to mount the +poor dead belief that she would care for him--that he could make her +care for him--and endow the thing with artificial life, trying to +capture the faint breath of it; but the memory was always fleeting, +attenuated, like the spirit of the memory of a perfume that had been +elusive at best. And always, to banish what joy even this poor device +might bring, came the more vivid vision of the brutal, sordid facts. He +forced himself to face them regularly as a penance and a corrective. + +They came before him with especial clearness when he met her from time +to time during the winter. He watched her in talk with others, noting +the contradiction in her that she would at one moment appear knowing +and masterful, with depths of reserve that the other people neither +fathomed nor knew of; and at another moment frankly girlish, with an +appealing feminine helplessness which is woman's greatest strength, +coercing every strong masculine instinct. + +When the reserve showed in her, he became afraid. What was she not +capable of? In the other mood, frankly appealing, she drew him +mightily, so that he abandoned himself for the moment, responding to +her fresh exulting youth, longing to take her, to give her things, to +make her laugh, to enfold and protect her, to tell her secrets, to +feather her cheek with the softest kiss, to be the child-mate of her. + +Toward him, directly, when they met she would sometimes be glacial and +forbidding, sometimes uninterestedly frank, as if they were but the +best of commonplace friends. Yet sometimes she made him feel that she, +too, threw herself heartily to rest in the thought of their loving, and +cheated herself, as he did, with dreams of comradeship. She left him at +these times with the feeling that they were deaf, dumb, and blind to +each other; that if some means of communication could be devised, +something surer than the invisible play of secret longings, all might +yet be well. They talked as the people about them talked, words that +meant nothing to either, and if there were mute questionings, naked +appeals, unuttered declarations, they were only such as language serves +to divert attention from. Speech, doubtless, has its uses as well as +its abuses. Politics, for example, would be less entertaining without +it. But in matters of the heart, certain it is that there would be +fewer misunderstandings if it were forbidden between the couple under +the penalty of immediate separation. In this affair real meanings are +rarely conveyed except by silences. Words are not more than tasteless +drapery to obscure their lines. The silence of lovers is the plainest +of all speech, warning, disconcerting indeed, by its very bluntness, +any but the truly mated. An hour's silence with these two people by +themselves might have worked wonders. + +Another diversion of Percival's during this somewhat feverish winter +was Mrs. Akemit. Not only was she a woman of finished and expert +daintiness in dress and manner and surroundings, but she soothed, +flattered, and stimulated him. With the wisdom of her thirty-two years, +devoted chiefly to a study of his species, she took care never to be +exigent. She had the way of referring to herself as "poor little me," +yet she never made demands or allowed him to feel that she expected +anything from him in the way of allegiance. + +Mrs. Akemit was not only like St. Paul, "all things to all men," but +she had gone a step beyond that excellent theologue. She could be all +things to one man. She was light-heartedly frivolous, soberly +reflective, shallow, profound, cynical or naive, ingenuous, or +inscrutable. She prized dearly the ecclesiastical background provided +by her uncle, the bishop, and had him to dine with the same unerring +sense of artistry that led her to select swiftly the becoming shade of +sofa-cushion to put her blond head back upon. + +The good bishop believed she had jeopardised her soul with divorce. He +feared now she meant to lose it irrevocably through remarriage. As a +foil to his austerity, therefore, she would be audaciously gay in his +presence. + +"Hell," she said to him one evening, "is given up _so_ reluctantly by +those who don't expect to go there." And while the bishop frowned into +his salad she invited Percival to drink with her in the manner of a +woman who is mad to invite perdition. If the good man could have beheld +her before a background of frivolity he might have suffered less +anxiety. For there her sense of contrast-values led her to be grave and +deep, to express distaste for society with its hollowness, and to +expose timidly the cruel scars on a soul meant for higher things. + +Many afternoons Percival drank tea with her in the little red +drawing-room of her dainty apartment up the avenue. Here in the half +light which she had preferred since thirty, in a soft corner with which +she harmonised faultlessly, and where the blaze from the open fire +coloured her animated face just enough, she talked him usually into the +glow of a high conceit with himself. When she dwelt upon the +shortcomings of man, she did it with the air of frankly presuming him +to be different from all others, one who could sympathise with her +through knowing the frailties of his sex, yet one immeasurably superior +to them. When he was led to talk of himself--of whom, it seemed, she +could never learn enough--he at once came to take high views of +himself: to gaze, through her tactful prompting, with a gentle, purring +appreciation upon the manifest spectacle of his own worth. + +Sometimes, away from her, he wondered how she did it. Sometimes, in her +very presence, his sense of humour became alert and suspicious. Part of +the time he decided her to be a charming woman, with a depth and +quality of sweetness unguessed by the world. The rest of the time he +remembered a saying about alfalfa made by Uncle Peter: "It's an +innocent lookin', triflin' vegetable, but its roots go right down into +the ground a hundred feet." + +"My dear," Mrs. Akemit had once confided to an intimate in an hour of +_negligee_, "to meet a man, any man, from a red-cheeked butcher boy to +a bloodless monk, and not make him feel something new for +you--something he never before felt for any other woman--really it's as +criminal as a wrinkled stocking, or for blondes to wear shiny things. +Every woman can do it, if she'll study a little how to reduce them to +their least common denominator--how to make them primitive." + +Of another member of Mrs. Akemit's household Percival acknowledged the +sway with never a misgiving. He had been the devoted lover of Baby +Akemit from the afternoon when he had first cajoled her into +autobiography--a vivid, fire-tipped little thing with her mother's +piquancy. He gleaned that day that she was "a quarter to four years +old;" that she was mamma's girl, but papa was a friend of Santa Claus; +that she went to "ball-dances" every day clad in "dest a stirt 'cause +big ladies don't ever wear waist-es at night;" that she had once ridden +in a merry-go-round and it made her "all homesick right here," patting +her stomach; and that "elephants are horrid, but you mustn't be cruel +to them and cut their eyes out. Oh, no!" + +Her Percival courted with results that left nothing to be desired. She +fell to the floor in helpless, shrieking laughter when he came. In his +honour she composed and sang songs to an improvised and spirited +accompaniment upon her toy piano. His favourites among these were +"'Cause Why I Love You" and "Darling, Ask Myself to Come to You." She +rendered them with much feeling. If he were present when her bed-time +came she refused to sleep until he had consented to an interview. + +Avice Milbrey had the fortune to witness one of these bed-time +_causeries_. One late afternoon the young man's summons came while he +was one of a group that lingered late about Mrs. Akemit's little +tea-table, Miss Milbrey being of the number. + +He followed the maid dutifully out through the hall to the door of the +bedroom, and entered on all-fours with what they two had agreed was the +growl of a famished bear. + +The familiar performance was viewed by the mother and by Miss Milbrey, +whom the mother had urged to follow. Baby Akemit in her crib, modestly +arrayed in blue pajamas, after simulating the extreme terror required +by the situation, fell to chatting, while her mother and Miss Milbrey +looked on from the doorway. + +Miss Akemit had once been out in the woods, it appeared, and a +"biting-wolf" chased her, and she ran and ran until she came to a river +all full of pigs and fishes and berries, so she jumped in and had +supper, and it wasn't a "biting-wolf" at all--and then-- + +But the narrative was cut short by her mother. + +"Come, Pet! Mr. Bines wishes to go now." + +Miss Akemit, it appeared, was bent upon relating the adventures of +Goldie Locks, subsequent to her leap from the window of the bears' +house. She had, it seemed, been compelled to ride nine-twenty miles on +a trolley, and, reaching home too late for luncheon, had been obliged +to eat in the kitchen with the cook. + +"Mr. Bines can't stay, darling!" + +Baby Akemit calculated briefly, and consented to his departure if Mr. +Bines would bring her something next time. + +Mr. Bines promised, and moved away after the customary embrace, but she +was not through: + +"Oh! oh! go out like a bear! dere's a bear come in here!" + +And so, having brought the bear in, he was forced to drop again and +growl the beast out, whereupon, appeased by this strict observance of +the unities, the child sat up and demanded: + +"You sure you'll bring me somefin next time?" + +"Yes, sure, Lady Grenville St. Clare." "Well, you sure you're _comin'_ +next time?" + +Being reassured on this point, and satisfied that no more bears were at +large, she lay down once more while Percival and the two observers +returned to the drawing-room. + +"You love children so!" Miss Milbrey said. And never had she been so +girlishly appealing to all that was strong in him as a man. The frolic +with the child seemed to have blown away a fog from between them. Yet +never had the other scene been more vivid to him, and never had the +pain of her heartlessness been more poignant. + +When he "played" with Baby Akemit thereafter, the pretence was not all +with the child. For while she might "play" at giving a vexatiously +large dinner, for which she was obliged to do the cooking because she +had discharged all the servants, or when they "played" that the big +couch was a splendid ferry-boat in which they were sailing to Chicago +where Uncle David lived--with many stern threats to tell the janitor of +the boat if the captain didn't behave himself and sail faster--Percival +"played" that his companion's name was Baby Bines, and that her mother, +who watched them with loving eyes, was a sweet and gracious young woman +named Avice. And when he told Baby Akemit that she was "the only +original sweetheart" he meant it of some one else than her. + +When the play was over he always conducted himself back to sane reality +by viewing this some one else in the cold light of truth. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines + + +The fame of the Bines family for despising money was not fed wholly by +Percival's unremitting activities. Miss Psyche Bines, during the +winter, achieved wide and enviable renown as a player of bridge whist. +Not for the excellence of her play; rather for the inveteracy and size +of her losses and the unconcerned cheerfulness with which she defrayed +them. She paid the considerable sums with an air of gratitude for +having been permitted to lose them. Especially did she seem grateful +for the zealous tutelage and chaperonage of Mrs. Drelmer. + +"Everybody in New York plays bridge, my dear, and of course you must +learn," that capable lady had said in the beginning. + +"But I never was bright at cards," the girl confessed, "and I'm afraid +I couldn't learn bridge well enough to interest you good players." + +"Nonsense!" was Mrs. Drelmer's assurance. "Bridge is easy to learn and +easy to play. I'll teach you, and I promise you the people you play +with shall never complain." + +Mrs. Drelmer, it soon appeared, knew what she was talking about. + +Indeed, that well-informed woman was always likely to. Her husband was +an intellectual delinquent whom she spoke of largely as being "in Wall +Street," and in that feat of jugglery known as "keeping up +appearances," his wife had long been the more dexterous performer. + +She was apt not only to know what she talked about, but she was a woman +of resource, unafraid of action. She drilled Miss Bines in the +rudiments of bridge. If the teacher became subsequently much the +largest winner of the pupil's losings, it was, perhaps, not more than +her fit recompense. For Miss Bines enjoyed not only the sport of the +game, but her manner of playing it, combined with the social prestige +of her amiable sponsor, procured her a circle of acquaintances that +would otherwise have remained considerably narrower. An enthusiastic +player of bridge, of passable exterior, mediocre skill, and unlimited +resources, need never want in New York for very excellent society. Not +only was the Western girl received by Mrs. Drelmer's immediate circle, +but more than one member of what the lady called "that snubby set" +would now and then make a place for her at the card-table. A few of +Mrs. Drelmer's intimates were so wanting in good taste as to intimate +that she exploited Miss Bines even to the degree of an understanding +expressed in bald percentage, with certain of those to whom she secured +the girl's society at cards. Whether this ill-natured gossip was true +or false, it is certain that the exigencies of life on next to nothing +a year, with a husband who could boast of next to nothing but Family, +had developed an unerring business sense in Mrs. Drelmer; and certain +it also is that this winter was one when the appearances with which she +had to strive were unwontedly buoyant. + +Miss Bines tirelessly memorised rules. She would disclose to her placid +mother that the lead of a trump to the third hand's go-over of hearts +is of doubtful expediency; or that one must "follow suit with the +smallest, except when you have only two, neither of them better than +the Jack. Then play the higher first, so that when the lower falls your +partner may know you are out of the suit, and ruff it." + +Mrs. Bines declared that it did seem to her very much like out-and-out +gambling. But Percival, looking over the stubs of his sister's +check-book, warmly protested her innocence of this charge. + +"Heaven knows sis has her shortcomings," he observed, patronisingly, in +that young woman's presence, "but she's no gambler; don't say it, ma, I +beg of you! She only knows five rules of the game, and I judge it's +cost her about three thousand dollars each to learn those. And the only +one she never forgets is, 'When in doubt, lead your highest check.' But +don't ever accuse her of gambling. Poor girl, if she keeps on playing +bridge she'll have writer's cramp; that's all I'm afraid of. I see +there's a new rapid-fire check-book on the market, and an improved +fountain pen that doesn't slobber. I'll have to get her one of each." + +Yet Psyche Bines's experience, like her brother's, was not without a +proper leaven of sentiment. There was Fred Milbrey, handsome, clever, +amusing, knowing every one, and giving her a pleasant sense of intimacy +with all that was worth while in New York. Him she felt very friendly +to. + +Then there was Mauburn, presently to be Lord Casselthorpe, with his +lazy, high-pitched drawl; good-natured, frank, carrying an atmosphere +of high-class British worldliness, and delicately awakening within her +while she was with him a sense of her own latent superiority to the +institutions of her native land. She liked Mauburn, too. + +More impressive than either of these, however, was the Baron Ronault de +Palliac. Tall, swarthy, saturnine, a polished man of all the world, of +manners finished, elaborate, and ceremonious, she found herself feeling +foreign and distinguished in his presence, quite as if she were the +heroine of a romantic novel, and might at any instant be called upon to +assist in royalist intrigues. The baron, to her intuition, nursed +secret sorrows. For these she secretly worshipped him. It is true that +when he dined with her and her mother, which he was frequently gracious +enough to do, he ate with a heartiness that belied this secret sorrow +she had imagined. But he was fascinating at all times, with a grace at +table not less finished than that with which he bowed at their meetings +and partings. It was not unpleasant to think of basking daily in the +shine of that grand manner, even if she did feel friendlier with +Milbrey, and more at ease with Mauburn. + +If the truth must be told, Miss Bines was less impressionable than +either of the three would have wished. Her heart seemed not easy to +reach; her impulses were not inflammable. Young Milbrey early confided +to his family a suspicion that she was singularly hard-headed, and the +definite information that she had "a hob-nailed Western way" of +treating her admirers. + +Mauburn, too, was shrewd enough to see that, while she frankly liked +him, he was for some reason less a favourite than the Baron de Palliac. + +"It'll be no easy matter marrying that girl," he told Mrs. Drelmer. +"She's really a dear, and awfully good fun, but she's not a bit silly, +and I dare say she'll marry some chap because she likes him, and not +because he's anybody, you know." + +"Make her like you," insisted his adviser. + +"On my word, I wish she did. And I'm not so sure, you know, she doesn't +fancy that Frenchman, or even young Milbrey." + +"I'll keep you before her," promised Mrs. Drelmer, "and I wish you'd +not think you can't win her. 'Tisn't like you." + +Miss Bines accordingly heard that it was such a pity young Milbrey +drank so, because his only salvation lay in making a rich marriage, and +a young man, nowadays, had to keep fairly sober to accomplish that. +Really, Mrs. Drelmer felt sorry for the poor weak fellow. "Good-hearted +chap, but he has no character, my dear, so I'm afraid there's no hope +for him. He has the soul of a merchant tailor, actually, but not the +tailor's manhood. Otherwise he'd be above marrying some unsuspecting +girl for her money and breaking her heart after marriage. Now, Mauburn +is a type so different; honest, unaffected, healthy, really he's a man +for any girl to be proud of, even if he were not heir to a title--one +of the best in all England, and an ornament of the most exclusively +correct set; of a line, my dear, that is truly great--not like that +shoddy French nobility, discredited in France, that sends so many of +its comic-opera barons here looking for large dowries to pay their +gambling debts and put furniture in their rattle-trap old chateaux, and +keep them in absinthe and their other peculiar diversions. And Mauburn, +you lucky minx, simply adores you--he's quite mad about you, really!" + +In spite of Mrs. Drelmer's two-edged sword, Miss Bines continued rather +more favourable to the line of De Palliac. The baron was so splendid, +so gloomy, so deferential. He had the air of laying at her feet, as a +rug, the whole glorious history of France. And he appeared so well in +the victoria when they drove in the park. + +It is true that the heart of Miss Bines was as yet quite untouched; and +it was not more than a cool, dim, aesthetic light in which she surveyed +the three suitors impartially, to behold the impressive figure of the +baron towering above the others. Had the baron proposed for her hand, +it is not impossible that, facing the question directly, she would have +parried or evaded. + +But certain events befell unpropitiously at a time when the baron was +most certain of his conquest; at the very time, indeed, when he had +determined to open his suit definitely by extending a proposal to the +young lady through the orthodox medium of her nearest male relative. + +"I admit," wrote the baron to his expectant father, "that it is what +one calls '_very chances_' in the English, but one must venture in this +country, and your son is not without much hope. And if not, there is +still Mlle. Higbee." + +The baron shuddered as he wrote it. He preferred not to recognise even +the existence of this alternative, for the reason that the father of +Mlle. Higbee distressed him by an incompleteness of suavity. + +"He conducts himself like a pork," the baron would declare to himself, +by way of perfecting his English. + +The secret cause of his subsequent determination not to propose for the +hand of Miss Bines lay in the hopelessly middle-class leanings of the +lady who might have incurred the supreme honour of becoming his +mother-in-law. Had Mrs. Bines been above talking to low people, a +catastrophe might have been averted. But Mrs. Bines was not above it. +She was quite unable to repress a vulgar interest in the menials that +served her. + +She knew the butler's life history two days after she had ceased to be +afraid of him. She knew the distressing family affairs of the maids; +how many were the ignoble progeny of the elevator-man, and what his +plebeian wife did for their croup; how much rent the hall-boy's +low-born father paid for his mean two-story dwelling in Jersey City; +and how many hours a day or night the debased scrub-women devoted to +their unrefining toil. + +Brazenly, too, she held converse with Philippe, the active and voluble +Alsatian who served her when she chose to dine in the public restaurant +instead of at her own private table. Philippe acquainted her with the +joys and griefs of his difficult profession. There were fourteen +thousand waiters in New York, if, by waiters, you meant any one. Of +course there were not so many like Philippe, men of the world who had +served their time as assistants and their three years as sub-waiters; +men who spoke English, French, and German, who knew something of +cooking, how to dress a salad, and how to carve. Only such, it +appeared, could be members of the exclusive Geneva Club that procured a +place for you when you were idle, and paid you eight dollars a week +when you were sick. + +Having the qualifications, one could earn twenty-five dollars a month +in salary and three or four times as much in gratuities. Philippe's +income was never less than one hundred and twenty dollars a month; for +was he not one who had come from Europe as a master, after two seasons +at Paris where a man acquires his polish--his perfection of manner, his +finish, his grace? Philippe could never enough prize that post-graduate +course at the _Maison d'Or_, where he had personally known--madame +might not believe it--the incomparable Casmir, a _chef_ who served two +generations of epicures, princes, kings, statesmen, travelling +Americans,--all the truly great. + +With his own lips Casmir had told him, Philippe, of the occasion when +Dumas, _pere_, had invited him to dinner that they might discuss the +esoterics of salad dressing and sauces; also of the time when the +Marquis de St. Georges embraced Casmir for inventing the precious soup +that afterwards became famous as _Potage Germine_. And now the skilled +and puissant Casmir had retired. It was a calamity. The _Maison +d'Or_--Paris--would no longer be what they had been. + +For that matter, since one must live, Philippe preferred it to be in +America, for in no other country could an adept acquire so much money. +And Philippe knew the whole dining world. With Celine and the baby, +Paul, Philippe dwelt in an apartment that would really amaze madame by +its appointments of luxury, in East 38th Street, and only the four +flights to climb. And Paul was three, the largest for his age, quite +the largest, that either Philippe or Celine had ever beheld. Even the +brother of Celine and his wife, who had a restaurant of their +own--serving the _table d'hote_ at two and one-half francs the plate, +with wine--even these swore they had never seen an infant so big, for +his years, as Paul. + +And so Mrs. Bines grew actually to feel an interest in the creature and +his wretched affairs, and even fell into the deplorable habit of +saying, "I must come to see you and your wife and Paul some pleasant +day, Philippe," and Philippe, being a man of the world, thought none +the less of her for believing that she did not mean it. + +Yet it befell on an afternoon that Mrs. Bines found herself in a +populous side-street, driving home from a visit to the rheumatic +scrub-woman who had now to be supported by the papers her miserable +offspring sold. Mrs. Bines had never seen so many children as flooded +this street. She wondered if an orphan asylum were in the +neighbourhood. And though the day was pleasantly warm, she decided that +there were about her at least a thousand cases of incipient pneumonia, +for not one child in five had on a hat. They raged and dashed and +rippled from curb to curb so that they might have made her think of a +swift mountain torrent at the bottom of a gloomy canyon, but that the +worthy woman was too literal-minded for such fancies. She only warned +the man to drive slowly. + +And then by a street sign she saw that she was near the home of +Philippe. It was three o'clock, and he would be resting from his work. +The man found the number. The waves parted and piled themselves on +either side in hushed wonder as she entered the hallway and searched +for the name on the little cards under the bells. She had never known +the surname, and on two of the cards "Ph." appeared. She rang one of +the bells, the door mysteriously opened with a repeated double click, +and she began the toilsome climb. The waves of children fell together +behind her in turbulent play again. + +At the top she breathed a moment and then knocked at a door before her. +A voice within called: + +"_Entres!_" and Mrs. Bines opened the door. + +It was the tiny kitchen of Philippe. Philippe, himself, in +shirt-sleeves, sat in a chair tilted back close to the gas-range, the +_Courier des Etats Unis_ in his hands and Paul on his lap. Celine +ironed the bosom of a gentleman's white shirt on an ironing board +supported by the backs of two chairs. + +Hemmed in the corner by this board and by the gas-range, seated at a +table covered by the oilcloth that simulates the marble of Italy's most +famous quarry, sat, undoubtedly, the Baron Ronault de Palliac. A +steaming plate of spaghetti _a la Italien_ was before him, to his left +a large bowl of salad, to his right a bottle of red wine. + +For a space of three seconds the entire party behaved as if it were +being photographed under time-exposure. Philippe and the baby stared, +motionless. Celine stared, resting no slight weight on the hot +flat-iron. The Baron Ronault de Palliac stared, his fork poised in +mid-air and festooned with gay little streamers of spaghetti. + +Then came smoke, the smell of scorching linen, and a cry of horror from +Celine. + +"_Ah, la seule chemise blanche de Monsieur le Baron!_" + +The spell was broken. Philippe was on his feet, bowing effusively. + +"Ah! it is Madame Bines. _Je suis tres honore_--I am very honoured to +welcome you, madame. It is madame, _ma femme_, Celine,--and--Monsieur +le Baron de Palliac--" + +Philippe had turned with evident distress toward the latter. But +Philippe was only a waiter, and had not behind him the centuries of +schooling that enable a gentleman to remain a gentleman under adverse +conditions. + +The Baron Ronault de Palliac arose with unruffled aplomb and favoured +the caller with his stateliest bow. He was at the moment a graceful and +silencing rebuke to those who aver that manner and attire be +interdependent. The baron's manner was ideal, undiminished in volume, +faultless as to decorative qualities. One fitted to savour its +exquisite finish would scarce have noted that above his waist the noble +gentleman was clad in a single woollen undergarment of revolutionary +red. + +Or, if such a one had observed this trifling circumstance, he would, +assuredly, have treated it as of no value to the moment; something to +note, perhaps, and then gracefully to forget. + +The baron's own behaviour would have served as a model. One swift +glance had shown him there was no way of instant retreat. That being +impossible, none other was graceful; hence none other was to be +considered. He permitted himself not even a glance at the shirt upon +whose fair, defenceless bosom the iron of the overcome Celine had +burned its cruel brown imprimature. Mrs. Bines had greeted him as he +would have wished, unconscious, apparently, that there could be cause +for embarrassment. + +[Illustration: "THE SPELL WAS BROKEN."] + +"Ah! madame," he said, handsomely, "you see me, I unfast with the fork. +You see me here, I have envy of the simple life. I am content of to do +it--_comme ca_--as that, see you," waving in the direction of his +unfinished repast. "All that magnificence of your grand hotel, there is +not the why of it, the most big of the world, and suchly stupefying, +with its 'infernil rackit' as you say. And of more--what droll of idea, +enough curious, by example! to dwell with the good Philippe and his +_femme aimable_. Their hotel is of the most littles, but I rest here +very volunteerly since longtime. Is it that one can to comprehend +liking the vast hotel American?" + +"Monsieur le Baron lodges with us; we have so much of the chambers," +ventured Celine. + +"Monsieur le Baron wishes to retire to his apartment," said Philippe, +raising the ironing-board. "Will madame be so good to enter our _petit +salon_ at the front, _n'est-ce-pas?_" + +The baron stepped forth from his corner and bowed himself graciously +out. + +"Madame, my compliments--and to the adorable Mademoiselle Bines! _Au +revoir_, madame--to the soontime--_avant peu_--before little!" + +On the farther side of his closed door the Baron Ronault de Palliac +swore--once. But the oath was one of the most awful that a Frenchman +may utter in his native tongue: "Sacred Name of a Name!" + +"But the baron wasn't done eating," protested Mrs. Bines. + +"Ah, yes, madame!" replied Philippe. "Monsieur le Baron has consumed +enough for now. _Paul, mon enfant, ne touche pas la robe de madame!_ He +is large, is he not, madame, as I have told you? A monster, yes?" + +Mrs. Bines, stooping, took the limp and wide-eyed Paul up in her arms. +Whereupon he began to talk so fast to her in French that she set him +quickly down again, with the slightly helpless air of one who has +picked up an innocent-looking clock only to have the clanging alarm go +suddenly off. + +"Madame will honour our little salon," urged Philippe, opening the door +and bowing low. + +"_Quel dommage!_" sighed Celine, moving after them; "_la seule chemise +blanche de Monsieur le Baron. Eh bien! il faut lui en acheter une +autre!_" + +At dinner that evening Mrs. Bines related her adventure, to the +unfeigned delight of her graceless son, and to the somewhat troubled +amazement of her daughter. + +"And, do you know," she ventured, "maybe he isn't a regular baron, +after all!" + +"Oh, I guess he's a regular one all right," said Percival; "only +perhaps he hasn't worked at it much lately." + +"But his sitting there eating in that--that shirt--" said his sister. + +"My dear young woman, even the nobility are prey to climatic rigours; +they are obliged, like the wretched low-born such as ourselves, to +wear--pardon me--undergarments. Again, I understand from Mrs. +Cadwallader here that the article in question was satisfactory and +fit--red, I believe you say, Mrs. Terwilliger?" + +"Awful red!" replied his mother--"and they call their parlour a +saloon." + +"And of necessity, even the noble have their moments of _deshabille_." + +"They needn't eat their lunch that way," declared his sister. + +"Is _deshabille_ French for underclothes?" asked Mrs. Bines, struck by +the word. + +"Partly," answered her son. + +"And the way that child of Philippe's jabbered French! It's wonderful +how they can learn so young." + +"They begin early, you know," Percival explained. "And as to our friend +the baron, I'm ready to make book that sis doesn't see him again, +except at a distance." + +Sometime afterwards he computed the round sum he might have won if any +such bets had been made; for his sister's list of suitors, to adopt his +own lucent phrase, was thereafter "shy a baron." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +The Summer Campaign Is Planned + + +Winter waned and spring charmed the land into blossom. The city-pent, +as we have intimated, must take this season largely on faith. If one +can find a patch of ground naked of stone or asphalt one may feel the +heart of the earth beat. But even now the shop-windows are more +inspiring. At least they copy the outer show. Tender-hued shirt-waists +first push up their sprouts of arms through the winter furs and +woollens, quite as the first violets out in the woodland thrust +themselves up through the brown carpet of leaves. Then every window +becomes a summery glade of lawn, tulle, and chiffon, more lavish of +tints, shades, and combinations, indeed, than ever nature dared to be. + +Outside, where the unspoiled earth begins, the blossoms are clouding +the trees with a mist of pink and white, and the city-dweller knows it +from the bloom and foliage of these same windows. + +Then it is that the spring "get away" urge is felt by each prisoner, by +those able to obey it, and by those, alike, who must wear it down in +the groomed and sophisticated wildness of the city parks. + +On a morning late in May Mrs. Bines and her daughter were at breakfast. + +"Isn't Percival coming?" asked his mother. "Everything will be cold." + +"Can't say," Psyche answered. "I don't even know if he came in last +night. But don't worry about cold things. You can't get them too cold +for Perce at breakfast, nowadays. He takes a lot of ice-water and a +little something out of the decanter, and maybe some black coffee." + +"Yes, and I'm sure it's bad for him. He doesn't look a bit healthy and +hasn't since he quit eating breakfast. He used to be such a hearty +eater at breakfast, steaks and bacon and chops and eggs and waffles. It +was a sight to see him eat; and since he's quit taking anything but +that cold stuff he's lost his colour and his eyes don't look right. I +know what he's got hold of--it's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I heard about +it from Mrs. Balldridge when we came here last fall. I never did +believe in it, either." + +The object of her solicitude entered in dressing-gown and slippers. + +"I'm just telling Psyche that this no-breakfast fad is hurting your +health, my son. Now do come and eat like you used to. You began to look +bad as soon as you left off your breakfast. It's a silly fad, that's +what it is. You can't tell _me!_" + +The young man stared at his mother until he had mastered her meaning. +Then he put both hands to his head and turned to the sideboard as if to +conceal his emotion. + +"That's it," he said, as he busied himself with a tall glass and the +cracked ice. "It's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I didn't think you knew +about it. The fact is," he continued, pouring out a measure of brandy, +and directing the butler to open a bottle of soda, "we all eat too +much. After a night of sound sleep we awaken refreshed and buoyant, all +our forces replenished; thirsty, of course, but not hungry"--he sat +down to the table and placed both hands again to his head--"and we have +no need of food. Yet such is the force of custom that we deaden +ourselves for the day by tanking up on coarse, loathsome stuff like +bacon. Ugh! Any one would think, the way you two eat so early in the +day, that you were a couple of cave-dwellers,--the kind that always +loaded up when they had a chance because it might be a week before they +got another." + +He drained his glass and brightened visibly. + +"Now, why not be reasonable?" he continued, pleadingly. "You know there +is plenty of food. I have observed it being brought into town in huge +wagon-loads in the early morning on many occasions. Why do you want to +eat it all at one sitting? No one's going to starve you. Why stupefy +yourselves when, by a little nervy self-denial, you can remain as fresh +and bright and clear-headed as I am at this moment? Why doesn't a fire +make its own escape, Mrs. Carstep-Jamwuddle?" + +"I don't believe you feel right, either. I just know you've got an +awful headache right now. Do let the man give you a nice piece of this +steak." + +"Don't, I beg of you, Lady Ashmorton! The suggestion is extremely +repugnant to me. Besides, I'm behaving this way because I arose with +the purely humourous fancy that my head was a fine large accordeon, and +that some meddler had drawn it out too far. I'm sportively pretending +that I can press it back into shape. Now you and sis never get up with +any such light poetic notion as that. You know you don't--don't attempt +to deceive me." He glanced over the table with swift disapproval. + +"Strawberries, oatmeal, rolls, steak three inches thick, bacon, +omelette--oh, that I should live to see this day! It's disgraceful! And +at your age--before your own innocent woman-child, and leading her into +the same excesses. Do you know what that breakfast is? No; I'll tell +you. That breakfast is No. 78 in that book of Mrs. Rorer's, and she +expressly warns everybody that it can be eaten safely only by +steeple-climbers, piano-movers, and sea-captains. Really, Mrs. +Wrangleberry, I blush for you." + +"I don't care how you go on. You ain't looked well for months." + +"But think of my great big heart--a heart like an ox,"--he seemed on +the verge of tears--"and to think that you, a woman I have never +treated with anything but respect since we met in Honduras in the fall +of '93--to think _you_ should throw it up to my own face that I'm not +beautiful. Others there are, thank God, who can look into a man's heart +and prize him for what he is--not condemn him for his mere superficial +blemishes." + +"And I just know you've got in with a fast set. I met Mr. Milbrey +yesterday in the corridor--" + +"Did he tell you how to make a lovely asparagus short-cake or +something?" + +"He told me those men you go with so much are dreadful gamblers, and +that when you all went to Palm Beach last February you played poker for +money night and day, and you told me you went for your health!" + +"Oh, he did, did he? Well, I didn't get anything else. He's a dear old +soul, if you've got the copper handy. If that man was a woman he'd be a +warm neighbourhood gossip. He'd be the nice kind old lady that _starts_ +things, that's what Hoddy Milbrey would be." + +"And you said yourself you played poker most of the time when you went +to Aiken on the car last month." + +"To be honest with you, ma, we did play poker. Say, they took it off of +me so fast I could feel myself catching cold." + +"There, you see--and you really ought to wear one of those chamois-skin +chest protectors in this damp climate." + +"Well, we'll see. If I can find one that an ace-full won't go through +I'll snatch it so quick the man'll think he's being robbed. Now I'll +join you ladies to the extent of some coffee, and then I want to know +what you two would rather do this summer _than_." + +"Of course," said Psyche, "no one stays in town in summer." + +"Exactly. And I've chartered a steam yacht as big as this hotel--all +but--But what I want to know is whether you two care to bunk on it or +whether you'd rather stay quietly at some place, Newport perhaps, and +maybe take a cruise with me now and then." + +"Oh, that would be good fun. But here's ma getting so I can't do a +thing with her, on account of all those beggars and horrid people down +in the slums." + +Mrs. Bines looked guilty and feebly deprecating. It was quite true that +in her own way she had achieved a reputation for prodigality not +inferior to that acquired by her children in ways of their own. + +"You know it's so, ma," the daughter went on, accusingly. "One night +last winter when you were away we dined at the Balldridge's, in +Eighty-sixth Street, and the pavements were so sleety the horses +couldn't stand, so Colonel Balldridge brought us home in the Elevated, +about eleven o'clock. Well, at one of the stations a big policeman got +on with a little baby all wrapped up in red flannel. He'd found it in +an area-way, nearly covered with snow--where some one had left it, and +he was taking it down to police-headquarters, he said. Well, ma went +crazy right away. She made him undo it, and then she insisted on +holding it all the way down to Thirty-third Street. One man said it +might be President of the United States, some day; and Colonel +Balldridge said, 'Yes, it has unknown possibilities--it may even be a +President's wife'--just like that. But I thought ma would be demented. +It was all fat and so warm and sleepy it could hardly hold its eyes +open, and I believe she'd have kept it then and there if the policeman +would have let her. She made him promise to get it a bottle of warm +milk the first thing, and borrowed twenty dollars of the colonel to +give to the policeman to get it things with, and then all the way down +she talked against the authorities for allowing such things--as if they +could help it--and when we got home she cried--you _know_ you did, +ma--and you pretended it was toothache--and ever since then she's been +perfectly daft about babies. Why, whenever she sees a woman going along +with one she thinks the poor thing is going to leave it some place; and +now she's in with those charity workers and says she won't leave New +York at all this summer." + +"I don't care," protested the guilty mother, "it would have frozen to +death in just a little while, and it's done so often. Why, up at the +Catholic Protectory they put out a basket at the side door, so a body +can leave their baby in it and ring the bell and run away; and they get +one twice a week sometimes; and this was such a sweet, fat little baby +with big blue eyes, and its forehead wrinkled, and it was all puckered +up around its little nose--" + +"And that isn't the worst of it," the relentless daughter broke in. +"She gets begging letters by the score and gives money to all sorts of +people, and a man from the Charities Organisation, who had heard about +it, came and warned her that they were impostors--only she doesn't +care. Do you know, there was a poor old blind woman with a dismal, +wheezy organ down at Broadway and Twenty-third Street--the organ would +hardly play at all, and just one wretched tune--only the woman wasn't +blind at all we found out--and ma bought her a nice new organ that cost +seventy-five dollars and had it taken up to her. Well, she found out +through this man from the Organisation that the woman had pawned the +new organ for twenty dollars and was still playing on the old one. She +didn't want a new one because it was too cheerful; it didn't make +people sad when they heard it, like her old one did. And yesterday ma +bought an Indian--" + +"A what?" asked her brother, in amazement. + +"An Indian--a tobacco sign." + +"You don't mean it? One of those lads that stand out in front and peer +under their hands to see what palefaces are moving into the house +across the street? Say, ma, what you going to do with him? There isn't +much room here, you know." + +"I didn't buy him for myself," replied Mrs. Bines, with dignity; "I +wouldn't want such an object." + +"She bought it," explained his sister, "for an Italian woman who keeps +a little tobacco-shop down in Rivington Street. A man goes around to +repaint them, you know, but hers was so battered that this man told her +it wasn't worth painting again, and she'd better get another, and the +woman said she didn't know what to do because they cost twenty-five +dollars and one doesn't last very long. The bad boys whittle him and +throw him down, and the people going along the street put their shoes +up to tie them and step on his feet, and they scratch matches on his +face, and when she goes out and says that isn't right they tell her +she's too fresh. And so ma gave her twenty-five dollars for a new one." + +"But she has to support five children, and her husband hasn't been able +to work for three years, since he fell through a fire-escape where he +was sleeping one hot night," pleaded Mrs. Bines, "and I think I'd +rather stay here this summer. Just think of all those poor babies when +the weather gets hot. I never thought there were so many babies in the +world." + +"Well, have your own way," said her son. "If you've started out to look +after all the babies in New York you won't have any time left to play +the races, I'll promise you that." + +"Why, my son, I never--" + +"But sis here would probably rather do other things." + +"I think," said Psyche, "I'd like Newport--Mrs. Drelmer says I +shouldn't think of going any place else. Only, of course, I can't go +there alone. She says she would be glad to chaperone me, but her +husband hasn't had a very good year in Wall Street, and she's afraid +she won't be able to go herself." + +"Maybe," began Mrs. Bines, "if you'd offer--" + +"Oh! she'd be offended," exclaimed Psyche. + +"I'm not so sure of that," said her brother, "not if you suggest it in +the right way--put it on the ground that you'll be quite helpless +without her, and that she'd oblige you world without end and all that. +The more I see of people here the more I think they're quite reasonable +in little matters like that. They look at them in the right light. Just +lead up to it delicately with Mrs. Drelmer and see. Then if she's +willing to go with you, your summer will be provided for; except that +we shall both have to look in upon Mrs. Juzzlebraggin here now and then +to see that she doesn't overplay the game and get sick herself, and +make sure that they don't get her vaccination mark away from her. And, +ma, you'll have to come off on the yacht once or twice, just to give it +tone." + +It appeared that Percival had been right in supposing that Mrs. Drelmer +might be led to regard Psyche's proposal in a light entirely rational. +She was reluctant, at first, it is true. + +"It's awfully dear of you to ask me, child, but really, I'm afraid it +will be quite impossible. Oh!--for reasons which you, of course, with +your endless bank-account, cannot at all comprehend. You see we old New +York families have a secure position _here_ by right of birth; and even +when we are forced to practice little economies in dress and household +management it doesn't count against us--so long as we _stay_ here. Now, +Newport is different. One cannot economise gracefully there--not even +one of _us_. There are quiet and very decent places for those of us +that must. But at Newport one must not fall behind in display. A sense +of loyalty to the others, a _noblesse oblige_, compels one to be as +lavish as those flamboyant outsiders who go there. One doesn't want +them to report, you know, that such and such families of our smart set +are falling behind for lack of means. So, while we of the real stock +are chummy enough here, where there is only _us_ in a position to +observe ourselves, there is a sort of tacit agreement that only those +shall go to Newport who are able to keep up the pace. One need not, for +one season or so, be a cottager; but, for example, in the matter of +dress, one must be sinfully lavish. Really, child, I could spend three +months in the Engadine for the price of one decent month at Newport; +the parasols, gloves, fans, shoes, 'frillies'--enough to stock the Rue +de la Paix, to say nothing of gowns--but why do I run on? Here am I +with a few little simple summer things, fit enough indeed for the quiet +place we shall reach for July and August, but ab-so-lute-ly impossible +for Newport--so say no more about it, dear. You're a sweet--but it's +madness to think of it." + +"And I had," reported Psyche to her mother that night, "such a time +getting her to agree. At first she wouldn't listen at all. Then, after +I'd just fairly begged her, she admitted she might because she's taken +such a fancy to me and hates to leave me--but she was sensitive about +what people might say. I told her they'd never have a chance to say a +word; and she was anxious Perce shouldn't know, because she says he's +so cynical about New York people since that Milbrey girl made such a +set for him; and at last she called me a dear and consented, though +she'd been looking forward to a quiet summer. To-morrow early we start +out for the shops." + +So it came that the three members of the Bines family pursued during +the summer their respective careers of diversion under conditions most +satisfactory to each. + +The steam yacht _Viluca_, chartered by Percival, was put into +commission early in June. Her first cruise of ten days was a signal +triumph. His eight guests were the men with whom he had played poker so +tirelessly during the winter. Perhaps the most illuminating log of that +cruise may be found in the reply of one of them whom Percival invited +for another early in July. + +"Much obliged, old man, but I haven't touched a drop now in over three +weeks. My doctor says I must let it be for at least two months, and I +mean to stick by him. Awfully kind of you, though!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee + + +From the landing on a still morning in late July, Mrs. Drelmer surveyed +the fleet of sailing and steam yachts at anchor in Newport harbour. She +was beautifully and expensively gowned in nun's grey chiffon; her toque +was of chiffon and lace, and she held a pale grey parasol, its ivory +handle studded with sapphires. She fixed a glass upon one of the white, +sharp-nosed steam yachts that rode in the distance near Goat Island. +"Can you tell me if that's the _Viluca?_" she asked a sailor landing +from a dinghy, "that boat just astern of the big schooner?" + +"No ma'am; that's the _Alta_, Commodore Weckford." + +"Looking for some one?" inquired a voice, and she turned to greet Fred +Milbrey descending the steps. + +"Oh! Good-morning! yes; but they've not come in, evidently. It's the +_Viluca_--Mr. Bines, you know; he's bringing his sister back to me. And +you?" + +"I'm expecting the folks on Shepler's craft. Been out two weeks now, +and were to have come down from New London last night. They're not in +sight either. Perhaps the gale last night kept them back." + +Mrs. Drelmer glanced above to where some one seemed to be waiting for +him. + +"Who's your perfectly gorgeous companion? You've been so devoted to her +for three days that you've hardly bowed to old friends. Don't you want +her to know any one?" + +The young man laughed with an air of great shrewdness. + +"Come, now, Mrs. Drelmer, you're too good a friend of Mauburn's--about +his marrying, I mean. You fixed him to tackle me low the very first +half of one game we know about, right when I was making a fine run down +the field, too. I'm going to have better interference this time." + +"Silly! Your chances are quite as good as his there this moment." + +"You may think so; I know better." + +"And of course, in any other affair, I'd never think of--" + +"P'r'aps so; but I'd rather not chance it just yet." + +"But who is she? What a magnificent mop of hair. It's like that rich +piece of ore Mr. Bines showed us, with copper and gold in it." + +"Well, I don't mind telling you she's the widow of a Southern +gentleman, Colonel Brench Wybert." + +"Ah, indeed! I did notice that two-inch band of black at the bottom of +her accordeon-plaited petticoat. I'll wager that's a _Rue de la Paix_ +idea of mourning for one's dead husband. And she confides her grief to +the world with such charming discretion. Half the New York women can't +hold their skirts up as daintily as she does it. I dare say, now, her +tears could be dried?--by the right comforter?" + +Milbrey looked important. + +"And I don't mind telling you the late Colonel Brench Wybert left her a +fortune made in Montana copper. Can't say how much, but two weeks ago +she asked the governor's advice about where to put a spare million and +a half in cash. Not so bad, eh?" + +"Oh, this new plutocracy! Where _do_ they get it?" + +"How old, now, should you say she was?" + +Mrs. Drelmer glanced up again at the colour-scheme of heliotrope seated +in a victoria upholstered in tan brocade. + +"Thirty-five, I should say--about." + +"Just twenty-eight." + +"Just about what I should say--she'd say." + +"Come now, you women can't help it, can you? But you can't deny she's +stunning?" + +"Indeed I can't! She's a beauty--and, good luck to you. Is that the +_Viluca_ coming in? No; it has two stacks; and it's not your people +because the _Lotus_ is black. I shall go back to the hotel. Bertie +Trafford brought me over on the trolley. I must find him first and do +an errand in Thames Street." + +At the head of the stairs they parted, Milbrey joining the lady who had +waited for him. + +Hers was a person to gladden the eye. Her figure, tall and full, was of +a graceful and abundant perfection of contours; her face, precisely +carved and showing the faintly generous rounding of maturity, was warm +in colouring, with dark eyes, well shaded and languorous; her full lips +betrayed their beauty in a ready and fascinating laugh; her voice was a +rich, warm contralto; and her speech bore just a hint of the soft +r-less drawl of the South. + +She had blazed into young Milbrey's darkness one night in the palm-room +of the Hightower Hotel, escorted by a pleased and beefy youth of his +acquaintance, who later told him of their meeting at the American +Embassy in Paris, and who unsuspectingly presented him. Since their +meeting the young man had been her abject cavalier. The elder Milbrey, +too, had met her at his son's suggestion. He had been as deeply +impressed by her helplessness in the matter of a million and a half +dollars of idle funds as she had been by his aristocratic bearing and +enviable position in New York society. + +"Sorry to have kept you waiting. The _Lotus_ hasn't come in sight yet. +Let's loaf over to the beach and have some tall, cold ones." + +"Who was your elderly friend?" she asked, as they were driven slowly up +the old-fashioned street. + +"Oh! that's Joe Drelmer. She's not so old, you know; not a day over +forty, Joe can't be; fine old stock; she was a Leydenbroek and her +husband's family is one of the very oldest in New York. Awfully +exclusive. Down to meet friends, but they'd not shown up, either. That +reminds me; they're friends of ours, too, and I must have you meet +them. They're from your part of the country--the Bines." + +"The--ah--" + +"Bines; family from Montana; decent enough sort; didn't know but you +might have heard of them, being from your part of the country." + +"Ah, I never think of that vulgar West as 'my part of the country' at +all. _My_ part is dear old Virginia, where my father, General Tulver, +and his father and his father's father all lived the lives of country +gentlemen, after the family came here from Devonshire. It was there +Colonel Wybert wooed me, though we later removed to New Orleans." Mrs. +Wybert called it "New _Aw_-leens." + +"But it was not until my husband became interested in Montana mines +that we ventured into that horrid West. So _do_ remember not to +confound me with your Western--ah--Bones,--was it not?" + +"No, Bines; they'll be here presently, and you can meet them, anyway." + +"Is there an old fellow--a queer old character, with them?" + +"No, only a son and daughter and the mother." + +"Of course I sha'n't mind meeting any friends of yours," she said, with +charming graciousness, "but, really, I always understood that you +Knickerbockers were so vastly more exclusive. I do recall this name +now. I remember hearing tales of the family in Spokane. They're a type, +you know. One sees many of the sort there. They make a strike in the +mines and set up ridiculous establishments regardless of expense. You +see them riding in their carriages with two men in the box--red-handed, +grizzled old vulgarians who've roughed it in the mountains for twenty +years with a pack-mule and a ham and a pick-axe--with their jug of +whiskey--and their frowsy red-faced wives decked out in impossible +finery. Yes, I do recall this family. There is a daughter, you say?" + +"Yes; Miss Psyche Bines." + +"Psyche; ah, yes; it's the same family. I recollect perfectly now. You +know they tell the funniest tales of them out there. Her mother found +the name 'Psyche' in a book, and liked it, but she pronounced it +'Pishy,' and so the girl was called until she became old enough to go +to school and learned better." + +"Dear me; fancy now!" + +"And there are countless tales of the mother's queer sayings. Once a +gentleman whom they were visiting in San Francisco was showing her a +cabinet of curios. 'Now, don't you find the Pompeiian figurines +exquisite?' he asked her. The poor creature, after looking around her +helplessly, declared that she _did_ like them; but that she liked the +California nectarines better--they were so much juicier." + +"You don't tell me; gad! that was a good one. Oh, well, she's a meek, +harmless old soul, and really, my family's not the snobbish sort, you +know." + +In from the shining sea late that afternoon steamed the _Viluca_. As +her chain was rattling through the hawse-hole, Percival, with his +sister and Mauburn, came on deck. + +"Why, there's the _Chicago_--Higbee's yacht." + +"That's the boat," said Mauburn, "that's been piling the white water up +in front of her all afternoon trying to overhaul us." + +"There's Millie Higbee and old Silas, now." + +"And, as I live," exclaimed Psyche, "there's the Baron de Palliac +between them!" + +"Sure enough," said her brother. "We must call ma up to see him dressed +in those sweet, pretty yachting flannels. Oh, there you are!" as Mrs. +Bines joined them. "Just take this glass and treat yourself to a look +at your old friend, the baron. You'll notice he has one +on--see--they're waving to us." + +"Doesn't the baron look just too distinguished beside Mr. Higbee?" said +Psyche, watching them. + +"And doesn't Higbee look just too Chicago beside the baron?" replied +her brother. + +The Higbee craft cut her way gracefully up to an anchorage near the +_Viluca_, and launches from both yachts now prepared to land their +people. At the landing Percival telephoned for a carriage. While they +were waiting the Higbee party came ashore. + +"Hello!" said Higbee; "if I'd known that was you we was chasing I'd +have put on steam and left you out of sight." + +"It's much better you didn't recognise us; these boiler explosions are +so messy." + +"Know the baron here?" + +"Of course we know the baron. Ah, baron!" + +"Ah, ha! very charmed, Mr. Bines and Miss Bines; it is of a long time +that we are not encountered." + +He was radiant; they had never before seen him thus. Mrs. Higbee +hovered near him with an air of proud ownership. Pretty Millie Higbee +posed gracefully at her side. + +"This your carriage?" asked Higbee; "I must telephone for one myself. +Going to the Mayson? So are we. See you again to-night. We're off for +Bar Harbour early to-morrow." + +"Looks as if there were something doing there," said Percival, as they +drove off the wharf. + +"Of course, stupid!" said his sister; "that's plain; only it isn't +doing, it's already done. Isn't it funny, ma?" + +"For a French person," observed Mrs. Bines, guardedly, "I always liked +the baron." + +"Of course," said her son, to Mauburn's mystification, "and the noblest +men on this earth have to wear 'em." + +The surmise regarding the Baron de Palliac and Millie Higbee proved to +be correct. Percival came upon Higbee in the meditative enjoyment of +his after-dinner cigar, out on the broad piazza. + +"I s'pose you're on," he began; "the girl's engaged to that Frenchy." + +"I congratulate him," said Percival, heartily. + +"A real baron," continued Higbee. "I looked him up and made sure of +that; title's good as wheat. God knows that never would 'a' got me, but +the madam was set on it, and the girl too, and I had to give in. It +seemed to be a question of him or some actor. The madam said I'd had my +way about Hank, puttin' his poor stubby nose to the grindstone out +there in Chicago, and makin' a plain insignificant business man out of +him, and I'd ought to let her have her way with the girl, being that I +couldn't expect her to go to work too. So Mil will work the society +end. I says to the madam, I says, 'All right, have your own way; and +we'll see whether you make more out of the girl than I make out of the +boy,' I says. But it ain't going to be _all_ digging up. I've made the +baron promise to go into business with me, and though I ain't told him +yet, I'm going to put out a line of Higbee's thin-sliced ham and bacon +in glass jars with his crest on 'em for the French trade. This baron'll +cost me more'n that sign I showed you coming out of the old town, and +he won't give any such returns, but the crest on them jars, printed in +three colours and gold, will be a bully ad; and it kept the women +quiet," he concluded, apologetically. + +"The baron's a good fellow," said Percival. + +"Sure," replied Higbee. "They're all good fellows. Hank had the makin's +of a good fellow in him. And say, young man, that reminds me; I hear +all kinds of reports about your getting to be one yourself. Now I knew +your father, Daniel J. Bines, and I liked him, and I like you; and I +hope you won't get huffy, but from what they tell me you ain't doing +yourself a bit of good." + +"Don't believe all you hear," laughed Percival. + +"Well, I'll tell you one thing plain, if you was my son, you'd fade +right back to the packing-house along with Henry-boy. It's a pity you +ain't got some one to shut down on you that way. They tell me you got +your father's capacity for carrying liquor, and I hear you're known +from one end of Broadway to the other as the easiest mark that ever +came to town. They say you couldn't walk in your sleep without spending +money. Now, excuse my plain speaking, but them are two reputations that +are mighty hard to live up to beyond a certain limit. They've put lots +of good weight-carriers off the track before they was due to go. I hear +you got pinched in that wheat deal of Burman's?" + +"Oh, only for a few hundred thousand. The reports of our losses were +exaggerated. And we stood to win over--" + +"Yes--you stood to win, and then you went 'way back and set down,' as +the saying is. But it ain't the money. You've got too much of that, +anyway, Lord knows. It's this everlasting hullabaloo and the drink that +goes with it, and the general trifling sort of a dub it makes out of a +young fellow. It's a pity you ain't my son; that's all I got to say. I +want to see you again along in September after I get back from San +Francisco; I'm going to try to get you interested in some business. +That'd be good for you." + +"You're kind, Mr. Higbee, and really I appreciate all you say; but +you'll see me settle down pretty soon, quick as I get my bearings, and +be a credit to the State of Montana." + +"I say," said Mauburn, coming up, "do you see that angel of the flaming +hair with that young Milbrey chap?" + +The two men gazed where he was indicating. + +"By Jove! she _is_ a stunner, isn't she?" exclaimed Percival. + +"Might be one of Shepler's party," suggested Higbee. "He has the +Milbrey family out with him, and I see they landed awhile ago. You can +bet that party's got more than her good looks, if the Milbreys are +taking any interest in her. Well, I've got to take the madam and the +young folks over to the Casino. So long!" + +Fred Milbrey came up. + +"Hello, you fellows!" + +"Who is she?" asked the two in faultless chorus. + +"We're going over to hear the music awhile. Come along and I'll present +you." + +"Rot the luck!" said Mauburn; "I'm slated to take Mrs. Drelmer and Miss +Bines to a musicale at the Van Lorrecks, where I'm certain to fall +asleep trying to look as if I quite liked it, you know." + +"You come," Milbrey urged Percival. "My sister's there and the governor +and mother." + +But for the moment Percival was reflecting, going over in his mind the +recent homily of Higbee. Higbee's opinion of the Milbreys also came +back to him. + +"Sorry, old man, but I've a headache, so you must excuse me for +to-night. But I'll tell you, we'll all come over in the morning and go +for a dip with you." + +"Good! Stop for us at the Laurels, about eleven, or p'r'aps I'll stroll +over and get you. I'm expecting some mail to be forwarded to this +hotel." + +He rejoined his companion, who had been chatting with a group of women +near the door, and they walked away. + +"_Isn't_ she a stunner!" exclaimed Mauburn. + +"She is a _peach!_" replied Percival, in tones of deliberate and +intense conviction. "Whoever she is, I'll meet her to-morrow and ask +her what she means by pretending to see anything in Milbrey. This thing +has gone too far!" + +Mauburn looked wistful but said nothing. After he had gone away with +Mrs. Drelmer and Psyche, who soon came for him, Percival still sat +revolving the paternal warnings of Higbee. He considered them +seriously. He decided he ought to think more about what he was doing +and what he should do. He decided, too, that he could think better with +something mechanical to occupy his hands. He took a cab and was driven +to the local branch of his favourite temple of chance. His host +welcomed him at the door. + +"Ah, Mr. Bines, a little recreation, eh? Your favourite dealer, Dutson, +is here to-night, if you prefer bank." + +Passing through the crowded, brightly-lighted rooms to one of the faro +tables, where his host promptly secured a seat for him, he played +meditatively until one o'clock; adding materially to his host's reasons +for believing he had done wisely to follow his New York clients to +their summer annex. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House + + +In the shade of the piazza at the Hotel Mayson next morning there was a +sorting out of the mail that had been forwarded from the hotel in New +York. The mail of Mrs. Bines was a joy to her son. There were three +conventional begging letters, heart-breaking in their pathos, and +composed with no mean literary skill. There was a letter from one of +the maids at the Hightower for whose mother Mrs. Bines had secured +employment in the family of a friend; a position, complained the +daughter, "in which she finds constant hard labour caused by the +quantity expected of her to attend to." There was also a letter from +the lady's employer, saying she would not so much mind her laziness if +she did not aggravate it by drink. Mrs. Bines sighed despairingly for +the recalcitrant. + +"And who's this wants more help until her husband's profession picks up +again?" asked Percival. + +"Oh, that's a poor little woman I helped. They call her husband 'the +Terrible Iceman.'" + +"But this is just the season for icemen!" + +"Well," confessed his mother, with manifest reluctance, "he's a +prize-fighter or something." + +Percival gasped. + +"--and he had a chance to make some money, only the man he fought +against had some of his friends drug this poor fellow before +their--their meeting--and so of course he lost. If he hadn't been +drugged he would have won the money, and now there's a law passed +against it, and of course it isn't a very nice trade, but I think the +law ought to be changed. He's got to live." + +"I don't see why; not if he's the man I saw box one night last winter. +He didn't have a single excuse for living. And what are these +tickets,--'Grand Annual Outing and Games of the Egg-Candlers & Butter +Drivers' Association at Sulzer's Harlem River Park. Ticket Admitting +Lady and Gent, One dollar.' Heavens! What is it?" + +"I promised to take ten tickets," said Mrs. Bines. "I must send them a +check." + +"But what are they?" her son insisted; "egg-candlers may be all right, +but what are butter-drivers? Are you quite sure it's respectable? Why, +I ask you, should an honest man wish to drive butter? That shows you +what life in a great city does for the morally weak. Look out you don't +get mixed up in it yourself, that's all I ask. They'll have you driving +butter first thing you know. Thank heaven! thus far no Bines has ever +candled an egg--and as for driving butter--" he stopped, with a shudder +of extreme repugnance. + +"And here's a notice about the excursions of the St. John's Guild. I've +been on four already, and I want you to get me back to New York right +away for the others. If you could only see all those babies we take out +on the floating hospital, with two men in little boats behind to pick +up those that fall overboard--and really it's a wonder any of them live +through the summer in that cruel city. Down in Hester Street the other +day four of them had a slice of watermelon from Mr. Slivinsky's stand +on the corner, and when I saw them they were actually eating the hard, +green rind. It was enough to kill a horse." + +"Well, have your own fun," said her son, cheerfully. "Here's a letter +from Uncle Peter I must read." + +He drew his chair aside and began the letter: + +"MONTANA CITY, July 21st, 1900. + +"DEAR PETE:--Your letter and Martha's rec'd, and glad to hear from you. +I leave latter part of this week for the mtns. Late setting out this +season acct. rhumatiz caught last winter that laid me up all spring. It +was so mortal dull here with you folks gone that I went out with a +locating party to get the M. P. branch located ahead of the Short Line +folks. So while you were having your fun there I was having mine here, +and I had it good and plenty. + +"The worst weather I ever did see, and I have seen some bad. Snow six +to eight feet on a level and the mercury down as low as 62 with an +ornery fierce wind. We lost four horses froze to death, and all but two +of the men got froze up bad. We reached the head of Madison Valley Feb. +19, north of Red Bank Canyon, but it wasn't as easy as it sounds. + +"Jan. 8, after getting out of supplies, we abandoned our camp at +Riverside and moved 10 m. down the river carrying what we could on our +backs. Met pack train with a few supplies that night, and next day I +took part of the force in boat to meet over-due load of supplies. We +got froze in the ice. Left party to break through and took Billy Brue +and went ahead to hunt team. Billy and me lived four days on one lb. +bacon. The second day Billy took some sickness so he could not eat +hardly any food; the next day he was worse, and the last day he was so +bad he said the bare sight of food made him gag. I think he was a liar, +because he wasn't troubled none after we got to supplies again, but I +couldn't do anything with him, and so I lived high and come out slick +and fat. Finally we found the team coming in. They had got stuck in the +river and we had to carry out the load on our backs, waist-deep in +running water. I see some man in the East has a fad for breaking the +ice in the river and going swimming. I would not do it for any fad. +Slept in snow-drift that night in wet clothes, mercury 40 below. Was 18 +days going 33 miles. Broke wagon twice, then broke sled and crippled +one horse. Packed the other five and went on till snow was too deep. +Left the horses where four out of five died and carried supplies the +rest of the way on our backs. Moved camp again on our backs and got +caught in a blizzard and nearly all of us got our last freezeup that +time. Finally a Chinook opened the river and I took a boat up to get +the abandoned camp. Got froze in harder than ever and had to walk out. +Most of the men quit on account of frozen feet, etc., etc. They are a +getting to be a sissy lot these days, rather lie around a hot stove all +winter. + +"I had to pull chain, cut brush, and shovel snow after the 1st Feb. Our +last stage was from Fire Hole Basin to Madison Valley, 45 m. It was +hell. Didn't see the sun but once after Feb. 1, and it stormed +insessant, making short sights necessary, and with each one we would +have to dig a hole to the ground and often a ditch or a tunnel through +the snow to look through. The snow was soft to the bottom and an +instrument would sink through." + +"Here's a fine letter to read on a hot day," called Percival. "I'm +catching cold." He continued. + +"We have a very good line, better than from Beaver Canon, our maps +filed and construction under way; all grading done and some track laid. +That's what you call hustling. The main drawback is that Red Bank +Canon. It's a regular avalanche for eight miles. The snow slides just +fill the river. One just above our camp filled it for 1/4 mile and 40 +feet deep and cut down 3 ft. trees like a razor shaves your face. I had +to run to get out of the way. Reached Madison Valley with one tent and +it looked more like mosquito bar than canvas. The old cloth wouldn't +hardly hold the patches together. I slept out doors for six weeks. I +got frost-bit considerable and the rhumatiz. I tell you, at 75 I ain't +the man I used to be. I find I need a stout tent and a good warm +sleeping bag for them kind of doings nowdays. + +"Well, this Western country would be pretty dull for you I suppose +going to balls and parties every night with the Astors and Vanderbilts. +I hope you ain't cut loose none. + +"By the way, that party that ground-sluiced us, Coplen he met a party +in Spokane the other day that seen her in Paris last spring. She was +laying in a stock of duds and the party gethered that she was going +back to New York--" + +The Milbreys, father and son, came up and greeted the group on the +piazza. + +"I've just frozen both ears reading a letter from my grandfather," said +Percival. "Excuse me one moment and I'll be done." + +"All right, old chap. I'll see if there's some mail for me. Dad can +chat with the ladies. Ah, here's Mrs. Drelmer. Mornin'!" + +Percival resumed his letter: + +"--going back to New York and make the society bluff. They say she's +got the face to do it all right. Coplen learned she come out here with +a gambler from New Orleans and she was dealing bank herself up to +Wallace for a spell while he was broke. This gambler he was the +slickest short-card player ever struck hereabouts. He was too good. He +was so good they shot him all up one night last fall over to Wardner. +She hadn't lived with him for some time then, though Coplen says they +was lawful man and wife, so I guess maybe she was glad when he got it +good in the chest-place--" + +Fred Milbrey came out of the hotel office. + +"No mail," he said. "Come, let's be getting along. Finish your letter +on the way, Bines." + +"I've just finished," said Percival, glancing down the last sheet. + +"--Coplen says she is now calling herself Mrs. Brench Wybert or some +such name. I just thought I'd tell you in case you might run acrost her +and--" + +"Come along, old chap," urged Milbrey; "Mrs. Wybert will be waiting." +His father had started off with Psyche. Mrs. Bines and Mrs. Drelmer +were preparing to follow. + +"I beg your pardon," said Percival, "I didn't quite catch the name." + +"I say Mrs. Wybert and mother will be waiting--come along!" + +"What name?" + +"Wybert--Mrs. Brench Wybert--my friend--what's the matter?" + +"We can't go;--that is--we can't meet her. Sis, come back a moment," he +called to Psyche, and then: + +"I want a word with you and your father, Milbrey." + +The two joined the elder Milbrey and the three strolled out to the +flower-bordered walk, while Psyche Bines went, wondering, back to her +mother. + +"What's all the row?" inquired Fred Milbrey. + +"You've been imposed upon. This woman--this Mrs. Brench Wybert--there +can be no mistake; you are sure that's the name?" + +"Of course I'm sure; she's the widow of a Southern gentleman, Colonel +Brench Wybert, from New Orleans." + +"Yes, the same woman. There is no doubt that you have been imposed +upon. The thing to do is to drop her quick--she isn't right." + +"In what way has my family been imposed upon, Mr. Bines?" asked the +elder Milbrey, somewhat perturbed; "Mrs. Wybert is a lady of family and +large means--" + +"Yes, I know, she has, or did have a while ago, two million dollars in +cold cash." + +"Well, Mr. Bines--?" + +"Can't you take my word for it, that she's not right--not the woman for +your wife and daughter to meet?" + +"Look here, Bines," the younger Milbrey spluttered, "this won't do, you +know. If you've anything to say against Mrs. Wybert, you'll have to say +it out and you'll have to be responsible to me, sir." + +"Take my word that you've been imposed upon; she's not--not the kind of +person you would care to know, to be thrown--" + +"I and my family have found her quite acceptable, Mr. Bines," +interposed the father, stiffly. "Her deportment is scrupulously +correct, and I am in her confidence regarding certain very extensive +investments--she cannot be an impostor, sir!" + +"But I tell you she isn't right," insisted Percival, warmly. + +"Oh, I see," said the younger Milbrey--his face clearing all at once. +"It's all right, dad, come on!" + +"If you insist," said Percival, "but none of us can meet her." + +"It's all right, dad--I understand--" + +"Nor can we know any one who receives her." + +"Really, sir," began the elder Milbrey, "your effrontery in assuming to +dictate the visiting list of my family is overwhelming." + +"If you won't take my word I shall have to dictate so far as I have any +personal control over it." + +"Don't mind him, dad--I know all about it, I tell you--I'll explain +later to you." + +"Why," exclaimed Percival, stung to the revelation, "that woman, this +woman now waiting with your wife and daughter, was my--" + +"Stop, Mr. Bines--not another word, if you please!" The father raised +his hand in graceful dismissal. "Let this terminate the acquaintance +between our families! No more, sir!" and he turned away, followed by +his son. As they walked out through the grounds and turned up the +street the young man spoke excitedly, while his father slightly bent +his head to listen, with an air of distant dignity. + +"What's the trouble, Perce?" asked his sister, as he joined the group +on the piazza. + +"The trouble is that we've just had to cut that fine old New York +family off our list." + +"What, not the Milbreys!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer. + +"The same. Now mind, sis, and you, ma--you're not to know them +again--and mind this--if any one else wants to present you to a Mrs. +Wybert--a Mrs. Brench Wybert--don't you let them. Understand?" + +"I thought as much," said Mrs. Drelmer; "she acted just the least +little bit _too_ right." + +"Well, I haven't my hammer with me--but remember, now, sis, it's for +something else than because her father's cravats were the ready-to-wear +kind, or because her worthy old grandfather inhaled his soup. Don't +forget that." + +"As there isn't anything else to do," he suggested, a few moments +later, "why not get under way and take a run up the coast?" + +"But I must get back to my babies," said Mrs. Bines, plaintively. "Here +I've been away four days." + +"All right, ma, I suppose we shall have to take you there, only let's +get out of here right away. We can bring sis and you back, Mrs. +Drelmer, when those people we don't know get off again. There's +Mauburn; I'll tell him." + +"I'll have my dunnage down directly," said Mauburn. + +Up the street driving a pony-cart came Avice Milbrey. Obeying a quick +impulse, Percival stepped to the curb as she came opposite to him. She +pulled over. She was radiant in the fluffs of summer white, her hat and +gown touched with bits of the same vivid blue that shone in her eyes. +The impulse that had prompted him to hail her now prompted wild words. +His long habit of thought concerning her enabled him to master this +foolishness. But at least he could give her a friendly word of warning. +She greeted him with the pretty reserve in her manner that had long +marked her bearing toward him. + +"Good-morning! I've borrowed this cart of Elsie Vainer to drive down to +the yacht station for lost mail. Isn't the day perfect--and isn't this +the dearest fat, sleepy pony, with his hair in his eyes?" + +"Miss Milbrey, there's a woman who seems to be a friend of your +family--a Mrs.--" + +"Mrs. Wybert; yes, you know her?" + +"No, I'd never seen her until last night, nor heard that name until +this morning; but I know of her." + +"Yes?" + +"It became necessary just now--really, it is not fair of me to speak to +you at all--" + +"Why, pray?--not fair?" + +"I had to tell your father and brother that we could not meet Mrs. +Wybert, and couldn't know any one who received her." + +"There! I knew the woman wasn't right directly I heard her speak. +Surely a word to my father was enough." + +"But it wasn't, I'm sorry to say. Neither he nor your brother would +take my word, and when I started to give my reasons--something it would +have been very painful for me to do--your father refused to listen, and +declared the acquaintance between our families at an end." + +"Oh!" + +"It hurt me in a way I can't tell you, and now, even this talk with you +is off-side play. Miss Milbrey!" + +"Mr. Bines!" + +"I wouldn't have said what I did to your father and brother without +good reason." + +"I am sure of that, Mr. Bines." + +"Without reasons I was sure of, you know, so there could be no chance +of any mistake." + +"Your word is enough for me, Mr. Bines." + +"Miss Milbrey--you and I--there's always been something between +us--something different from what is between most people. We've never +talked straight out since I came to New York--I'll be sorry, perhaps, +for saying as much as I am saying, after awhile--but we may not talk +again at all--I'm afraid you may misunderstand me--but I must say it--I +should like to go away knowing you would have no friendship,--no +intimacy whatever with that woman." + +"I promise you I shall not, Mr. Bines; they can row if they like." + +"And yet it doesn't seem fair to have you promise as if it were a +consideration for _me_, because I've no right to ask it. But if I felt +sure that you took my word quite as if I were a stranger, and relied +upon it enough to have no communication or intercourse of any sort +whatsoever with her, it would be a great satisfaction to me." + +"I shall not meet her again. And--thank you!" There was a slight +unsteadiness once in her voice, and he could almost have sworn her eyes +showed that old brave wistfulness. + +"--and quite as if you were a stranger." + +"Thank you! and, Miss Milbrey?" + +"Yes?" + +"Your brother may become entangled in some way with this woman." + +"It's entirely possible." + +Her voice was cool and even again. + +"He might even marry her." + +"She has money, I believe; he might indeed." + +"Always money!" he thought; then aloud: + +"If you find he means to, Miss Milbrey, do anything you can to prevent +it. It wouldn't do at all, you know." + +"Thank you, Mr. Bines; I shall remember." + +"I--I think that's all--and I'm sorry we're not--our families are not +to be friends any more." + +She smiled rather painfully, with an obvious effort to be conventional. + +"_So_ sorry! Good-bye!" + +He looked after her as she drove off. She sat erect, her head straight +to the front, her trim shoulders erect, and the whip grasped firmly. He +stood motionless until the fat pony had jolted sleepily around the +corner. + +"Bines, old boy!" he said to himself, "you nearly _made_ one of +yourself there. I didn't know you had such ready capabilities for being +an ass." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage + + +At five o'clock that day the prow of the _Viluca_ cut the waters of +Newport harbour around Goat Island, and pointed for New York. + +"Now is your time," said Mrs. Drelmer to Mauburn. "I'm sure the girl +likes you, and this row with the Milbreys has cut off any chance that +cub had. Why not propose to her to-night?" + +"I _have_ seemed to be getting on," answered Mauburn. "But wait a bit. +There's that confounded girl over there. No telling what she'll do. She +might knock things on the head any moment." + +"All the more reason for prompt action, and there couldn't very well be +anything to hurt you." + +"By Jove! that's so; there couldn't, very well, could there? I'll take +your advice." + +And so it befell that Mauburn and Miss Bines sat late on deck that +night, and under the witchery of a moon that must long since have +become hardened to the spectacle, the old, old story was told, to the +accompaniment of the engine's muffled throb, and the soft purring of +the silver waters as they slipped by the boat and blended with the +creamy track astern. So little variation was there in the time-worn +tale, and in the maid's reception of it, that neither need here be told +of in detail. + +Nor were the proceedings next morning less tamely orthodox. Mrs. Bines +managed to forget her relationship of elder sister to the poor long +enough to behave as a mother ought when the heart of her daughter has +been given into a true-love's keeping. Percival deported himself +cordially. + +"I'm really glad to hear it," he said to Mauburn. "I'm sure you'll make +sis as good a husband as she'll make you a wife; and that's very good, +indeed. Let's fracture a cold quart to the future Lady Casselthorpe." + +"And to the future Lord Casselthorpe!" added Mrs. Drelmer, who was +warmly enthusiastic. + +"Such a brilliant match," she murmured to Percival, when they had +touched glasses in the after-cabin. "I know more than one New York girl +who'd have jumped at the chance." + +"We'll try to bear our honours modestly," he answered her. + +The yacht lay at her anchorage in the East River. Percival made +preparations to go ashore with his mother. + +"Stay here with the turtle-doves," he said to Mrs. Drelmer, "far enough +off, of course, to let them coo, and I'll be back with any people I can +pick up for a cruise." + +"Trust me to contract the visual and aural infirmities of the ideal +chaperone," was Mrs. Drelmer's cheerful response. "And if you should +run across that poor dear of a husband of mine, tell him not to slave +himself to death for his thoughtless butterfly of a wife, who toils +not, neither does she spin. Tell him," she added, "that I'm playing +dragon to this engaged couple. It will cheer up the poor dear." + +The city was a fiery furnace. But its prisoners were not exempt from +its heat, like certain holy ones of old. On the dock where Percival and +his mother landed was a listless throng of them, gasping for the faint +little breezes that now and then blew in from the water. A worn woman +with unkempt hair, her waist flung open at the neck, sat in a spot of +shade, and soothed a baby already grown too weak to be fretful. Mrs. +Bines spoke to her, while Percival bought a morning paper from a tiny +newsboy, who held his complete attire under one arm, his papers under +the other, and his pennies in his mouth, keeping meantime a shifty +side-glance on the policeman a block away, who might be expected to +interfere with his contemplated plunge. + +"That poor soul's been there all night," said Mrs. Bines. "She's afraid +her baby's going to die; and yet she was so cheerful and polite about +it, and when I gave her some money the poor thing blushed. I told her +to bring the baby down to the floating hospital to-morrow, but I +mistrust it won't be alive, and--oh, there's an ambulance backed up to +the sidewalk; see what the matter is." + +As Percival pushed through the outer edge of the crowd, a battered +wreck of a man past middle age was being lifted into the ambulance. His +eyes were closed, his face a dead, chalky white, and his body hung +limp. + +"Sunstroke?" asked Percival. + +The overworked ambulance surgeon, who seemed himself to be in need of +help, looked up. + +"Nope; this is a case of plain starvation. I'm nearer sunstroke myself +than he is--not a wink of sleep for two nights now. Fifty-two runs +since yesterday at this time, and the bell still ringing. Gee! but it's +hot. This lad won't ever care about the weather again, though," he +concluded, jumping on to the rear step and grasping the rails on either +side while the driver clanged his gong and started off. + +"Was it sunstroke?" asked Mrs. Bines. + +"Man with stomach trouble," answered her son, shortly. + +"They're so careless about what they eat this hot weather," Mrs. Bines +began, as they walked toward a carriage; "all sorts of heavy foods and +green fruit--" + +"Well, if you must know, this one had been careless enough not to eat +anything at all. He was starved." + +"Oh, dear! What a place! here people are starving, and look at us! Why, +we wasted enough from breakfast to feed a small family. It isn't right. +They never would allow such a thing in Montana City." + +They entered the carriage and were driven slowly up a side street where +slovenly women idled in windows and doorways and half-naked children +chased excitedly after the ice-wagons. + +"I used to think it wasn't right myself until I learned not to question +the ways of Providence." + +"Providence, your grandmother! Look at those poor little mites fighting +for that ice!" + +"We have to accept it. It seems to be proof of the Creator's +versatility. It isn't every one who would be nervy enough and original +enough to make a world where people starve to death right beside those +who have too much." + +"That's rubbish!" + +"You're blasphemous! and you're overwrought about the few cases of need +here. Think of those two million people that have just starved to death +in India." + +"That wasn't my fault." + +"Exactly; if you'd been there the list might have been cut down four or +five thousand; not more. It was the fault of whoever makes the weather. +It didn't rain and their curry crop failed--or whatever they raise--and +there you are; and we couldn't help matters any by starving ourselves +to death." + +"Well, I know of a few matters here I can help. And just look at all +those empty houses boarded up!" she cried later, as they crossed +Madison Avenue. "Those poor things bake themselves to death down in +their little ovens, and these great cool places are all shut up. Why, +that poor little baby's hands were just like bird's claws." + +"Well, don't take your sociology too seriously," Percival warned her, +as they reached the hotel. "Being philanthropic is obeying an instinct +just as selfish as any of the others. A little of it is all right--but +don't be a slave to your passions. And be careful of your health." + +In his mail at the Hightower was a note from Mrs. Akemit: + +"NEW LONDON, July 29th. + +"You DEAR THOUGHTFUL MAN: I'll be delighted, and the aunt, a worthy +sister of the dear bishop, has consented. She is an acidulous maiden +person with ultra-ritualistic tendencies. At present she is strong on +the reunion of Christendom, and holds that the Anglican must be the +unifying medium of the two religious extremes. So don't say I didn't +warn you fairly. She will, however, impart an air of Episcopalian +propriety to that naughty yacht of yours--something sadly needed if I +am to believe the tales I hear about its little voyages to nowhere in +particular. + +"Babe sends her love, and says to tell 'Uncle Percibal' that the ocean +tastes 'all nassy.' She stood upon the beach yesterday after making +this discovery involuntarily, and proscribed it with one magnificent +wave of her hand and a brief exclamation of disgust--turned her back +disrespectfully upon a body of water that is said to cover +two-thirds--or is it three-fourths?--of the earth's surface. Think of +it! She seemed to suspect she had been imposed upon in the matter of +its taste, and is going to tell the janitor directly we get home, in +order that the guilty ones may be seen to. Her little gesture of +dismissal was superbly contemptuous. I wish you had been with me to +watch her. Yes, the bathing-suit does have little touches of red, and +red--but this will never do. Give us a day's notice, and believe me, + +"Sincerely, + +"FLORENCE VERDON AKEMIT. + +"P.S. Babe is on the back of my chair, cuddling down in my neck, and +says, 'Send him your love, too, Mommie. Now don't you forget.'" + +He telegraphed Mrs. Akemit: "Will reach New London to-morrow. Assure +your aunt of my delight at her acceptance. I have long held that the +reunion must come as she thinks it will." + +Then he ventured into the heat and glare of Broadway where humanity +stewed and wilted. At Thirty-second Street he ran into Burman, with +whom he had all but cornered wheat. + +"You're the man I wanted to see," said Percival. + +"Hurry and look! I'm melting fast." + +"Come off on the yacht." + +"My preserver! I was just going down to the Oriental, but your dug-out +wins me hands down. Come into this poor-man's club. I must have a cold +drink taller than a church steeple." + +"Anybody else in town we can take?" + +"There's Billy Yelverton--our chewing-gum friend; just off the +_Lucania_ last night; and Eddie Arledge and his wife. They're in town +because Eddie was up in supplementary or something--some low, coarse +brute of a tradesman wanted his old bill paid, and wouldn't believe +Eddie when he said he couldn't spare the money. Eddie is about as +lively as a dish of cold breakfast food, but his wife is all right, all +right. Retiring from the footlights' glare didn't spoil Mrs. E. +Wadsworth Arledge,--not so you could notice it." + +"Well, see Eddie if you can, and I'll find Yelverton; he's probably at +the hotel yet; and meet me there by five, so we can get out of this +little amateur hell." + +"And quit trying to save that collar," urged Burman, as they parted; +"you look foolisher than a horse in a straw hat with it on anyway. Let +it go and tuck in your handkerchief like the rest of us. See you at +five!" + +At the hour named the party had gathered. Percival, Arledge and his +lively wife, Yelverton, who enjoyed the rare distinction of having lost +money to Percival, and Burman. East they drove through the street where +less fortunate mortals panted in the dead afternoon shade, and out on +to the dock, whence the _Viluca's_ naphtha launch presently put them +aboard that sumptuous craft. A little breeze there made the heat less +oppressive. + +"We'll be under way as soon as they fetch that luggage out," Percival +assured his guests. + +"It's been frightfully oppressive all day, even out here," said Mrs. +Drelmer, "but the engaged ones haven't lost their tempers once, even if +the day was trying. And really they're the most unemotional and +matter-of-fact couple I ever saw. Oh! do give me that stack of papers +until I catch up with the news again." + +Percival relinquished to her the evening papers he had bought before +leaving the hotel, and Mrs. Drelmer in the awninged shade at the stern +of the boat was soon running through them. + +The others had gone below, where Percival was allotting staterooms, and +urging every one to "order whatever cold stuff you like and get into as +few things as the law allows. For my part, I'd like to wear nothing but +a cold bath." + +Mrs. Drelmer suddenly betrayed signs of excitement. She sat up straight +in the wicker deck-chair, glanced down a column of her newspaper, and +then looked up. + +Mauburn's head appeared out of the cabin's gloom. He was still speaking +to some one below. Mrs. Drelmer rattled the paper and waved it at him. +He came up the stairs. + +"What's the row?" + +"Read it!" + +He took the paper and glanced at the headlines. "I knew she'd do it. A +chap always comes up with something of that sort, and I was beginning +to feel so chippy!" He read: + +"London, July 30th.--Lord Casselthorpe to-day wed Miss 'Connie' Burke, +the music-hall singer who has been appearing at the Alhambra. The +marriage was performed, by special license, at St. Michael's Church, +Chester Square, London, the Rev. Canon Mecklin, sub-dean of the Chapel +Royal, officiating. The honeymoon will be spent at the town-house of +the groom, in York Terrace. Lord Casselthorpe has long been known as +the blackest sheep of the British Peerage, being called the 'Coster +Peer' on account of his unconventional language, his coarse manner, and +slovenly attire. Two years ago he was warned off Newmarket Heath and +the British turf by the Jockey Club. He is eighty-eight years old. The +bride, like some other lights of the music-hall who have become the +consorts of Britain's hereditary legislators, has enjoyed considerable +ante-nuptial celebrity among the gilded youth of the metropolis, and is +said to have been especially admired at one time by the next in line of +this illustrious family, the Hon. Cecil G.H. Mauburn. + +"The Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, mentioned in the above cable despatch, +has been rather well-known in New York society for two years past. His +engagement to the daughter of a Montana mining magnate, not long +deceased, has been persistently rumoured." + +Mauburn was pale under his freckles. + +"Have they seen it yet?" + +"I don't think so," she answered. "We might drop these papers over the +rail here." + +"That's rot, Mrs. Drelmer; it's sure to be talked of, and anyway I +don't want to be sneaky, you know." + +Percival came up from the cabin with a paper in his hand. + +"I see you have it, too," he said, smiling. "Burman just handed me +this." + +"Isn't it perfectly disreputable!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer. + +"Why? I only hope I'll have as much interest in life by the time I'm +that age." + +"But how will your sister take it?" asked Mauburn; "she may be afraid +this will knock my title on the head, you know." + +"Oh, I see," said Percival; "I hadn't thought of that." + +"Only it can't," continued Mauburn. "Hang it all, that blasted old +beggar will be eighty-nine, you know, in a fortnight. There simply +can't be any issue of the marriage, and that--that blasted--" + +"Better not try to describe her--while I'm by, you know," said Mrs. +Drelmer, sympathetically. + +"Well--his wife--you know, will simply worry him into the grave a bit +sooner, I fancy--that's all can possibly come of it." + +"Well, old man," said Percival, "I don't pretend to know the workings +of my sister's mind, but you ought to be able to win a girl on your own +merits, title or no title." + +"Awfully good of you, old chap. I'm sure she does care for me." + +"But of course it will be only fair to sis to lay the matter before her +just as it is." + +"To be sure!" Mauburn assented. + +"And now, thank the Lord, we're under way. Doesn't that breeze save +your life, though? We'll eat here on deck." + +The _Viluca_ swung into mid-stream, and was soon racing to the north +with a crowded Fall River boat. + +"But anyway," concluded Percival, after he had explained Mauburn's +position to his sister, "he's a good fellow, and if you suit each other +even the unexpected wouldn't make any difference." + +"Of course not," she assented, "'the rank is but the guinea's stamp,' I +know--but I wasn't meaning to be married for quite a time yet, +anyway,--it's such fun just being engaged." + +"A mint julep?" Mauburn was inquiring of one who had proposed it. "Does +it have whiskey in it?" + +"It does," replied Percival, overhearing the question; "whiskey may be +said to pervade, even to infest it. Try five or six, old man; that many +make a great one-night trouble cure. And I can't have any one with +troubles on this Cunarder--not for the next thirty days. I need +cheerfulness and rest for a long time after this day in town. Ah! +General Hemingway says that dinner is served; let's be at it before the +things get all hot!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes + + +It was a morning early in November. In the sedate Milbrey dining-room a +brisk wood-fire dulled the edge of the first autumn chill. At the +breakfast-table, comfortably near the hearth, sat Horace Milbrey. With +pointed spoon he had daintily scooped the golden pulp from a Florida +orange, touched the tips of his slender white fingers to the surface of +the water in the bowl, and was now glancing leisurely at the headlines +of his paper, while his breakfast appetite gained agreeable zest from +the acid fruit. + +On the second page of the paper the names in a brief item arrested his +errant glance. It disclosed that Mr. Percival Bines had left New York +the day before with a party of guests on his special car, to shoot +quail in North Carolina. Mr. Milbrey glanced at the two shells of the +orange which the butler was then removing. + +"What a hopeless brute that fellow was!" he reflected.. He was +recalling a dictum once pronounced by Mr. Bines. "Oranges should never +be eaten in public," he had said with that lordly air of dogmatism +characteristic of him. "The only right way to eat a juicy orange is to +disrobe, grasp the fruit firmly in both hands and climb into a bath-tub +half full of water." + +The finished epicure shuddered at the recollection, poignantly, quite +as if a saw were being filed in the next room. + +The disagreeable emotion was allayed, however, by the sight of his next +course--_oeufs aux saucissons_. Tender, poetic memories stirred within +him. The little truffled French sausages aroused his better nature. Two +of them reposed luxuriously upon an egg-divan in the dainty French +baking-dish of dull green. Over them--a fitting baptism, was the rich +wine sauce of golden brown--a sauce that might have been the tears of +envious angels, wept over a mortal creation so faultlessly precious. + +Mrs. Milbrey entered, news of importance visibly animating her. Her +husband arose mechanically, placed the chair for her, and resumed his +fork in an ecstasy of concentration. Yet, though Mrs. Milbrey was full +of talk, like a charged siphon, needing but a slight pressure to pour +forth matters of grave moment, she observed the engrossment of her +husband, and began on the half of an orange. She knew from experience +that he would be deaf, for the moment, to anything less than an alarm +of fire. + +When he had lovingly consumed the last morsel he awoke to her presence +and smiled benignantly. + +"My dear, don't fail to try them, they're exquisitely perfect!" + +"You really _must_ talk to Avice," his wife replied. + +Mr. Milbrey sighed, deprecatingly. He could remember no time within +five years when that necessity had not weighed upon his father's sense +of duty like a vast boulder of granite. He turned to welcome the +diversion provided by the _rognons sautees_ which Jarvis at that moment +uncovered before him with a discreet flourish. + +"Now you really must," continued his wife, "and you'll agree with me +when I tell you why." + +"But, my dear, I've already talked to the girl exhaustively. I've +pointed out that her treatment of Mrs. Wybert--her perverse refusal to +meet the lady at all, is quite as absurd as it is rude, and that if +Fred chooses to marry Mrs. Wybert it is her duty to act the part of a +sister even if she cannot bring herself to feel it. I've assured her +that Mrs. Wybert's antecedents are all they should be; not illustrious, +perhaps, but eminently respectable. Indeed, I quite approve of the +Southern aristocracy. But she constantly recalls what that snobbish +Bines was unfair enough to tell her. I've done my utmost to convince +her that Bines spoke in the way he did about Mrs. Wybert because he +knew she was aware of those ridiculous tales of his mother's +illiteracy. But Avice is--er--my dear, she is like her mother in more +ways than one. Assuredly she doesn't take it from me." + +He became interested in the kidneys. "If Marie had been a man," he +remarked, feelingly, "I often suspect that her fame as a _chef_ would +have been second to none. Really, the suavity of her sauces is a +never-ending delight to me." + +"I haven't told you yet the reason--a new reason--why you must talk to +Avice." + +"The money--yes, yes, my dear, I know, we all know. Indeed, I've put it +to her plainly. She knows how sorely Fred needs it. She knows how that +beast of a tailor is threatening to be nasty--and I've explained how +invaluable Mrs. Wybert would be, reminding her of that lady's generous +hint about the rise in Federal Steel, which enabled me to net the neat +little profit of ten thousand dollars a month ago, and how, but for +that, we might have been acutely distressed. Yet she stubbornly clings +to the notion that this marriage would be a _mesalliance_ for the +Milbreys." + +"I agree with her," replied his wife, tersely. + +Mr. Milbrey looked perplexed but polite. + +"I quite agree with Avice," continued the lady. "That woman hasn't been +right, Horace, and she isn't right. Young Bines knew what he was +talking about. I haven't lived my years without being able to tell that +after five minutes with her, clever as she is. I can read her. Like so +many of those women, she has an intense passion to be thought +respectable, and she's come into money enough--God only knows how--to +gratify it. I could tell it, if nothing else showed it, by the way in +which she overdoes respectability. She has the thousand and one +artificial little rules for propriety that one never does have when one +has been bred to it. That kind of woman is certain to lapse sooner or +later. She would marry Fred because of his standing, because he's a +favourite with the smart people she thinks she'd like to be pally with. +Then, after a little she'd run off with a German-dialect comedian or +something, like that appalling person Normie Whitmund married." + +"But the desire to be respectable, my dear--and you say this woman has +it--is a mighty lever. I'm no cynic about your sex, but I shudder to +think of their--ah--eccentricities if it should cease to be a factor in +the feminine equation." + +"It's nothing more than a passing fad with this person--besides, that's +not what I've to tell you." + +"But you, yourself, were not averse to Fred's marrying her, in spite of +these opinions you must secretly have held." + +"Not while it seemed absolutely necessary--not while the case was so +brutally desperate, when we were actually pressed--" + +"Remember, my dear, there's nothing magic in those ten thousand +dollars. They're winged dollars like all their mates, and most of them, +I'm sorry to say, have already flown to places where they'd long been +expected." + +Mrs. Milbrey's sensation was no longer to be repressed. She had toyed +with the situation sufficiently. Her husband was now skilfully +dissecting the devilled thighs of an immature chicken. + +"Horace," said his wife, impressively, "Avice has had an offer of +marriage--from--" + +He looked up with new interest. + +"From Rulon Shepler." + +He dropped knife and fork. Shepler, the man of mighty millions! The +undisputed monarch of finance! The cold-blooded, calculating sybarite +in his lighter moments, but a man whose values as a son-in-law were so +ideally superb that the Milbrey ambition had never vaulted high enough +even to overlook them for one daring moment! Shepler, whom he had known +so long and so intimately, with never the audacious thought of a union +so stupendously glorious! + +"Margaret, you're jesting!" + +Mrs. Milbrey scorned to be dazzled by her triumph. + +"Nonsense! Shepler asked her last night to marry him." + +"It's bewildering! I never dreamed--" + +"I've expected it for months. I could tell you the very moment when the +idea first seized the man--on the yacht last summer. I was sure she +interested him, even before his wife died two years ago." + +"Margaret, it's too good to be true!" + +"If you think it is I'll tell you something that isn't: Avice +practically refused him." + +Her husband pushed away his plate; the omission of even one regretful +glance at its treasures betrayed the strong emotion under which he +laboured. + +"This is serious," he said, quietly. "Let us get at it. Tell me if you +please!" + +"She came to me and cried half the night. She refused him definitely at +first, but he begged her to consider, to take a month to think it +over--" + +Milbrey gasped. Shepler, who commanded markets to rise and they rose, +or to fall and they fell--Shepler begging, entreating a child of his! +Despite the soul-sickening tragedy of it, the situation was not without +its element of sublimity. + +"She will consider; she _will_ reflect?" + +"You're guessing now, and you're as keen at that as I. Avice is not +only amazingly self-willed, as you intimated a moment since, but she is +intensely secretive. When she left me I could get nothing from her +whatever. She was wretchedly sullen and taciturn." + +"But why _should_ she hesitate? Shepler--Rulon Shepler! My God! is the +girl crazy? The very idea of hesitation is preposterous!" + +"I can't divine her. You know she has acted perversely in the past. I +used to think she might have some affair of which we knew +nothing--something silly and romantic. But if she had any such thing +I'm sure it was ended, and she'd have jumped at this chance a year ago. +You know yourself she was ready to marry young Bines, and was really +disappointed when he didn't propose." + +"But this is too serious." He tinkled the little silver bell. + +"Find out if Miss Avice will be down to breakfast." + +"Yes, sir." + +"If she's not coming down I shall go up," declared Mr. Milbrey when the +man had gone. + +"She's stubborn," cautioned his wife. + +"Gad! don't I know it?" + +Jarvis returned. + +"Miss Avice won't be down, sir, and I'm to fetch her up a pot of +coffee, sir." + +"Take it at once, and tell her I shall be up to see her presently." +Jarvis vanished. + +"I think I see a way to put pressure on her, that is if the morning +hasn't already brought her back to her senses." + +At four o'clock that afternoon, Avice Milbrey's ring brought Mrs. Van +Geist's butler to the door. + +"Sandon, is Aunt Cornelia at home?" + +"Yes, Miss Milbrey, she's confined to her room h'account h'of a cold, +miss." + +"Thank heaven!" + +"Yes, miss--certainly! will you go h'up to her?" + +"And Mutterchen, dear, it was a regular bombshell," she concluded after +she had fluttered some of the November freshness into Mrs. Van Geist's +room, and breathlessly related the facts. + +"You demented creature! I should say it must have been." + +"Now, don't lecture!" + +"But Shepler is one of the richest men in New York." + +"Dad already suspects as much." + +"And he's kind, he's a big-hearted chap, a man of the world, +generous--a--" + +"'A woman fancier,' Fidelia Oldaker calls him." + +"My dear, if he fancies you--" + +"There, you old conservative, I've heard all his good points, and my +duty has been written before me in letters of fire. Dad devoted three +hours to writing it this morning, so don't, please, say over any of the +moral maxims I'm likely to have heard." + +"But why are you unwilling?" + +"Because--because I'm wild, I fancy--just because I don't like the idea +of marrying that man. He's such a big, funny, round head, and +positively no neck--his head just rolls around on his big, pillowy +shoulders--and then he gets little right at once, tapers right off to a +point with those tiny feet." + +"It isn't easy to have everything." + +"It wouldn't be easy to have him, either." + +Mrs. Van Geist fixed her niece with a sudden look of suspicion. + +"Has--has that man anything to do with your refusal?" + +"No--not a thing--I give you my word, auntie. If he had been what I +once dreamed he was no one would be asking me to marry him now, but--do +you know what I've decided? Why, that he is a joke--that's all--just a +joke. You needn't think of him, Mutterchen--I don't, except to think it +was funny that he should have impressed me so--he's simply a joke." + +"I could have told you as much long ago." + +"Tell me something now. Suppose Fred marries that Wybert woman." + +"It will be a sorry day for Fred." + +"Of course! Now see how I'm pinned. Dad and the mater both say the same +now--they're more severe than I was. Only we were never in such straits +for money. It must be had. So this is the gist of it: I ought to marry +Rulon Shepler in order to save Fred from a marriage that might get us +into all sorts of scandal." + +"Well?" + +"Well, I would do a lot for Fred. He has faults, but he's always been +good to me." + +"And so?" + +"And so it's a question whether he marries a very certain kind of woman +or whether I marry a very different kind of man." + +"How do you feel?" + +"For one thing Fred sha'n't get into that kind of muss if I can save +him from it." + +"Then you'll marry Shepler?" + +"I'm still uncertain about Mr. Shepler." + +"But you say--" + +"Yes, I know, but I've reasons for being uncertain. If I told you you'd +say they're like the most of a woman's reasons, mere fond, foolish +hopes, so I won't tell you." + +"Well, dear, work it out by your lonely if you must. I believe you'll +do what's best for everybody in the end. And I am glad that your father +and Margaret take your view of that woman." + +"I was sure she wasn't right--and I knew Mr. Bines was too much of a +man to speak of her as he did without positive knowledge. Now please +give me some tea and funny little cakes; I'm famished." + +"Speaking of Mr. Bines," said Mrs. Van Geist, when the tea had been +brought by Sandon, "I read in the paper this morning that he'd taken a +party to North Carolina for the quail shooting, Eddie Arledge and his +wife and that Mr. and Mrs. Garmer, and of course Florence Akemit. +Should you have thought she'd marry so soon after her divorce? They say +Bishop Doolittle is frightfully vexed with her." + +"Really I hadn't heard. Whom is Florence to marry?" + +"Mr. Bines, to be sure! Where have you been? You know she was on his +yacht a whole month last summer--the bishop's sister was with her-- +highly scandalised all the time by the drinking and gaiety, and now +every one's looking for the engagement to be announced. Here, what did +I do with that _Town Topics_ Cousin Clint left? There it is on the +tabouret. Read the paragraph at the top of the page." Avice read: + +"An engagement that is rumoured with uncommon persistence will put +society on the _qui vive_ when it is definitely announced. The man in +the case is the young son of a mining Croesus from Montana, who has +inherited the major portion of his father's millions and who began to +dazzle upper Broadway about a year since by the reckless prodigality of +his ways. His blond _innamorata_ is a recent _divorcee_ of high social +standing, noted for her sparkling wit and an unflagging exuberance of +spirits. The interest of the gossips, however, centres chiefly in the +uncle of the lady, a Right Reverend presiding over a bishopric not a +thousand miles from New York, and in the attitude he will assume toward +her contemplated remarriage. At the last Episcopal convention this +godly and well-learned gentleman was a vehement supporter of the +proposed canon to prohibit absolutely the marriage of divorced persons; +and though he stoutly championed his bewitching niece through the +infelicities that eventuated in South Dakota, _on dit_ that he is +highly wrought up over her present intentions, and has signified +unmistakably his severest disapproval. However, _nous verrons ce que +nous verrons."_ + +"But, Mutterchen, that's only one of those absurd, vulgar things that +wretched paper is always printing. I could write dozens of them myself. +Tom Banning says they keep one man writing them all the time, out of +his own imagination, and then they put them in like raisins in a cake." + +"But, my dear, I'm quite sure this is authentic. I know from Fidelia +Oldaker that the bishop began to cut up about it to Florence, and +Florence defied him. That ancient theory that most gossip is without +truth was exploded long ago. As a matter of fact most gossip, at least +about the people we know, doesn't do half justice to the facts. But, +really, I can't see why he fancied Florence Akemit. I should have +thought he'd want some one a bit less fluttery." + +"I dare say you're right, about the gossip, I mean--" Miss Milbrey +remarked when she had finished her tea, and refused the cakes. "I +remember, now, one day when we met at her place, and he seemed so much +at home there. Of course, it must be so. How stupid of me to doubt it! +Now I must run. Good-bye, you old dear, and be good to the cold." + +"Let me know what you do." + +"Indeed I shall; you shall be the first one to know. My mind is really, +you know, _almost_ made up." + +A week later Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milbrey announced in the public prints +the engagement of their daughter Avice to Mr. Rulon Shepler. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man + + +One day in December Peter Bines of Montana City dropped in on the +family,--came with his gaunt length of limb, his kind, brown old face +with eyes sparkling shrewdly far back under his grizzled brows, with +his rough, resonant, musical voice, the spring of youth in his step, +and the fresh, confident strength of the big hills in his bearing. + +He brought Billy Brue with him, a person whose exact social status some +of Percival's friends were never able to fix with any desirable +certainty. Thus, Percival had presented the old man, the morning after +his arrival, to no less a person than Herbert Delancey Livingston, with +whom he had smoked a cigar of unusual excellence in the _cafe_ of the +Hightower Hotel. + +"If you fancy that weed, Mr. Bines," said Livingston, graciously, to +the old man, "I've a spare couple of hundred I'd like to let you have. +The things were sent me, but I find them rather stiffish. If your man's +about the hotel I'll give him a card to my man, and let him fetch +them." + +"My man?" queried Uncle Peter, and, sighting Billy Brue at that moment, +"why, yes, here's my man, now. Mr. Brue, shake hands with Mr. +Livingston. Billy, go up to the address he gives you, and get some of +these se-gars. You'll relish 'em as much as I do. Now don't talk to any +strangers, don't get run over, and don't lose yourself." + +Livingston had surrendered a wavering and uncertain hand to the warm, +reassuring clasp of Mr. Brue. + +"He ain't much fur style, Billy ain't," Uncle Peter explained when that +person had gone upon his errand, "he ain't a mite gaudy, but he's got +friendly feelings." + +The dazed scion of the Livingstons had thereupon made a conscientious +tour of his clubs in a public hansom, solely for the purpose of +relating this curious adventure to those best qualified to marvel at +it. + +The old man's arrival had been quite unexpected. Not only had he sent +no word of his coming, but he seemed, indeed, not to know what his +reasons had been for doing a thing so unusual. + +"Thought I'd just drop in on your all and say 'howdy,'" had been his +first avowal, which was lucid as far as it went. Later he involved +himself in explanations that were both obscure and conflicting. Once it +was that he had felt a sudden great longing for the life of a gay city. +Then it was that he would have been content in Montana City, but that +he had undertaken the winter in New York out of consideration for Billy +Brue. + +"Just think of it," he said to Percival, "that poor fellow ain't ever +been east of Denver before now. It wa'n't good for him to be holed up +out there in them hills all his life. He hadn't got any chance to +improve his mind." + +"He'd better improve his whiskers first thing he does," suggested +Percival. "He'll be gold-bricked if he wears 'em scrambled that way +around this place." + +But in neither of these explanations did the curious old man impress +Percival as being wholly ingenuous. + +Then he remarked casually one day that he had lately met Higbee, who +was on his way to San Francisco. + +"I only had a few minutes with him while they changed engines at Green +River, but he told me all about you folks--what a fine time you was +havin', yachts and card-parties, and all like that. Higbee said a man +had ought to come to New York every now and then, jest to keep from +gettin' rusty." + +Back of this Percival imagined for a time that he had discovered Uncle +Peter's true reason for descending upon them. Higbee would have regaled +him with wild tales of the New York dissipations, and Uncle Peter had +come promptly on to pull him up. Percival could hear the story as +Higbee would word it, with the improving moral incident of his own son +snatched as a brand from the "Tenderloin," to live a life of +impecunious usefulness in far Chicago. But, when he tried to hold this +belief, and to prove it from his observations, he was bound to admit +its falsity. For Uncle Peter had shown no inclination to act the part +of an evangel from the virtuous West. He had delivered no homilies, no +warnings as to the fate of people who incontinently "cut loose." He had +evinced not the least sign of any disposition even to criticise. + +On the contrary, indeed, he appeared to joy immensely in Percival's way +of life. He manifested a willingness and a capacity for unbending in +boon companionship that were, both of them, quite amazing to his +accomplished grandson. By degrees, and by virtue of being never at all +censorious, he familiarised himself with the young man's habits and +diversions. He listened delightedly to the tales of his large gambling +losses, of the bouts at poker, the fruitless venture in Texas Oil land, +the disastrous corner in wheat, engineered by Burman, and the uniformly +unsuccessful efforts to "break the bank" in Forty-fourth Street. He +never tired of hearing whatever adventures Percival chose to relate; +and, finding that he really enjoyed them, the young man came to confide +freely in him, and to associate with him without restraint. + +Uncle Peter begged to be introduced at the temple of chance, and spent +a number of late evenings there with his popular grandson. He also +frequently made himself one of the poker coterie, and relished keenly +the stock jokes as to his grandson's proneness to lose. + +"Your pa," he would say, "never _could_ learn to stay out of a Jack-pot +unless he had Jacks or better; he'd come in and draw four cards to an +ace any time, and then call it 'hard luck' when he didn't draw out. And +he just loved straights open in the middle; said anybody could fill +them that's open at both ends; but, after all, I guess that's the only +way to have fun at the game. If a man ain't got the sperrit to overplay +aces-up when he gets 'em, he might as well be clerkin' in a bank for +all the fun he'll have out of the game." + +The old man's endurance of late suppers and later hours, and his +unsuspected disposition to "cut loose," became twin marvels to +Percival. He could not avoid contrasting this behaviour with his past +preaching. After a few weeks he was forced to the charitable conclusion +that Uncle Peter's faculties were failing. The exposure and hardships +of the winter before had undoubtedly impaired his mental powers. + +"I can't make him out," he confided to his mother. "He never wants to +go home nights; he can drink more than I can without batting an eye, +and show up fresher in the morning, and he behaves like a young fellow +just out of college. I don't know where he would bring up if he didn't +have me to watch over him." + +"I think it's just awful--at his time of life, too," said Mrs. Bines. + +"I think that's it. He's getting old, and he's come along into his +second childhood. A couple of more months at this rate, and I'm afraid +I'll have to ring up one of those nice shiny black wagons to take him +off to the foolish-house." + +"Can't you talk to him, and tell him better?" + +"I could. I know it all by heart--all the things to say to a man on the +downward path. Heaven knows I've heard them often enough, but I'd feel +ashamed to talk that way to Uncle Peter. If he were my son, now, I'd +cut off his allowance and send him back to make something of himself, +like Sile Higbee with little Hennery; but I'm afraid all I can do is to +watch him and see that he doesn't marry one of those little pink-silk +chorus girls, or lick a policeman, or anything." + +"You're carryin' on the same way yourself," ventured his mother. + +"That's different," replied her perspicacious son. + +Uncle Peter had refused to live at the Hightower after three days in +that splendid and populous caravansary. + +"It suits me well enough," he explained to Percival, "but I have to +look after Billy Brue, and this ain't any place for Billy. You see +Billy ain't city broke yet. Look at him now over there, the way he goes +around butting into strangers. He does that way because he's all the +time looking down at his new patent-leather shoes--first pair he ever +had. He'll be plumb stoop-shouldered if he don't hurry up and get the +new kicked off of 'em. I'll have to get him a nice warm box-stall in +some place that ain't so much on the band-wagon as this one. The +ceilings here are too high fur Billy. And I found him shootin' craps +with the bell-boy this mornin'. The boy thinks Billy, bein' from the +West, is a stage robber, or somethin' like he reads about in the Cap' +Collier libr'ies, and follows him around every chance he gets. And +Billy laps up too many of them little striped drinks; and them +French-cooked dishes ain't so good fur him, either. He caught on to the +bill-of-fare right away. Now he won't order anything but them +allas--them dishes that has 'a la' something or other after 'em," he +explained, when Percival looked puzzled. "He knows they'll always be +something all fussed up with red, white, and blue gravy, and a little +paper bouquet stuck into 'em. I never knew Billy was such a fancy eater +before." + +So Uncle Peter and his charge had established themselves in an +old-fashioned but very comfortable hotel down on one of the squares, a +dingy monument to the time when life had been less hurried. Uncle Peter +had stayed there thirty years before, and he found the place unchanged. +The carpets and hangings were a bit faded, but the rooms were +generously broad, the chairs, as the old man remarked, were "made to +sit in," and the _cuisine_ was held, by a few knowing old epicures who +still frequented the place, to be superior even to that of the more +pretentious Hightower. The service, it is true, was apt to be slow. +Strangers who chanced in to order a meal not infrequently became +enraged, and left before their food came, trailing plain short words of +extreme dissatisfaction behind them as they went. But the elect knew +that these delays betokened the presence of an artistic conscience in +the kitchen, and that the food was worth tarrying for. "They know how +to make you come back hungry for some more the next day," said Uncle +Peter Bines. + +From this headquarters the old man went forth to join in the diversions +of his grandson. And here he kept a watchful eye upon the uncertain +Billy Brue; at least approximately. Between them, his days and nights +were occupied to crowding. But Uncle Peter had already put in some hard +winters, and was not wanting in fortitude. + +Billy Brue was a sore trouble to the old man. "I jest can't keep him +off the streets nights," was his chief complaint. By day Billy Brue +walked the streets in a decent, orderly trance of bewilderment. He was +properly puzzled and amazed by many strange matters. He never could +find out what was "going on" to bring so many folks into town. They all +hurried somewhere constantly, but he was never able to reach the centre +of excitement. Nor did he ever learn how any one could reach those high +clothes-lines, strung forty feet above ground between the backs of +houses; nor how there could be "so many shows in town, all on one +night;" nor why you should get so many good things to eat by merely +buying a "slug of whiskey;" nor why a thousand people weren't run over +in Broadway each twenty-four hours. + +At night, Billy Brue ceased to be the astounded alien, and, as Percival +said Dr. Von Herzlich would say, "began to mingle and cooperate with +his environment." In the course of this process he fell into +adventures, some of them, perhaps, unedifying. But it may be told that +his silver watch with the braided leather fob was stolen from him the +second night out; also that the following week, in a Twenty-ninth +Street saloon, he accepted the hospitality of an affable stranger, who +had often been in Montana City. His explanation of subsequent events +was entirely satisfactory, at least, from the time that he returned to +consciousness of them. + +"I only had about thirty dollars in my clothes," he told Percival, "but +what made me so darned hot, he took my breastpin, too, made out of the +first nugget ever found in the Early Bird mine over Silver Bow way. +Gee! when I woke up I couldn't tell where I was. This cop that found me +in a hallway, he says I must have been give a dose of Peter. I says, +'All right--I'm here to go against all the games,' I says, 'but pass me +when the Peter comes around again,' I says. And he says Peter was +knockout drops. Say, honestly, I didn't know my own name till I had a +chanst to look me over. The clothes and my hands looked like I'd seen +'em before, somehow--and then I come to myself." + +After this adventure, Uncle Peter would caution him of an evening: + +"Now, Billy, don't stay out late. If you ain't been gone through by +eleven, just hand what you got on you over to the first man you +meet--none of 'em'll ask any questions--and then pike fur home. The +later at night it gets in New York the harder it is fur strangers to +stay alive. You're all right in Wardner or Hellandgone, Billy, but in +this here camp you're jest a tender little bed of pansies by the +wayside, and these New Yorkers are terrible careless where they step +after dark." + +Notwithstanding which, Mr. Brue continued to behave uniformly in a +manner to make all judicious persons grieve. His place of supreme +delight was the Hightower. Its marble splendours, its myriad lights, +the throngs of men and women in evening dress, made for him a scene of +unfailing fascination. The evenings when he was invited to sit in the +_cafe_ with Uncle Peter and Percival made memories long to be +cherished. + +He spent such an evening there at the end of their first month in New +York. Half a dozen of Percival's friends sat at the table with them +from time to time. There had been young Beverly Van Arsdel, who, +Percival disclosed, was heir to all the Van Arsdel millions, and no end +of a swell. And there was big, handsome, Eddie Arledge, whose father +had treated him shabbily. These two young gentlemen spoke freely about +the inferiority of many things "on this side"--as they denominated this +glorious Land of Freedom--of many things from horses to wine. The +country was rapidly becoming, they agreed, no place for a gentleman to +live. Eddie Arledge confessed that, from motives of economy, he had +been beguiled into purchasing an American claret. + +"I fancied, you know," he explained to Uncle Peter, "that it might do +for an ordinary luncheon claret, but on my sacred honour, the stuff is +villainous. Now you'll agree with me, Mr. Bines, I dare say, that a +Bordeaux of even recent vintage is vastly superior to the very best +so-called American claret." + +Whereupon Beverly Van Arsdel having said, "To be sure--fancy an +American Burgundy, now! or a Chablis!" Uncle Peter betrayed the first +sign of irritation Percival had detected since his coming. + +"Well, you see, young men, we're not much on vintages in Montana. +Whiskey is mostly our drink--whiskey and spring water--and if our +whiskey is strong, it's good enough. When we want to test a new barrel, +we inject three drops of it into a jack-rabbit, and if he doesn't lick +a bull clog in six seconds, we turn down the goods. That's as far's our +education has ever gone in vintages." + +It sounded like the old Uncle Peter, but he was afterward so +good-natured that Percival concluded the irritation could have been but +momentary. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something + + +Uncle Peter and Billy Brue left the Hightower at midnight. Billy Brue +wanted to walk down to their hotel, on the plea that they might see a +fight or a fire "or something." He never ceased to feel cheated when he +was obliged to ride in New York. But Uncle Peter insisted on the cab. + +"Say, Uncle Peter," he said, as they rode down, "I got a good notion to +get me one of them first-part suits--like the minstrels wear in the +grand first part, you know--only I'd never be able to git on to the +track right without a hostler to harness me and see to all the buckles +and cinch the straps right. They're mighty fine, though." + +Finding Uncle Peter uncommunicative, he mused during the remainder of +the ride, envying the careless ease with which Percival and his +friends, and even Uncle Peter, wore the prescribed evening regalia of +gentlemen, and yearning for the distinguished effect of its black and +white elegance upon himself. + +They went to their connecting rooms, and Billy Brue regretfully sought +his bed, marvelling how free people in a town like New York could ever +bring themselves to waste time in sleep. As he dozed off, he could hear +the slow, measured tread of Uncle Peter pacing the floor in the next +room. + +He was awakened by hearing his name called. Uncle Peter stood in a +flood of light at the door of his room. He was fully dressed. + +"Awake, Billy?" + +"Is it gittin'-up time?" + +The old man came into the room and lighted a gas-jet. He looked at his +watch. + +"No; only a quarter to four. I ain't been to bed yet." + +Billy Brue sat up and rubbed his eyes. + +"Rheumatiz again, Uncle Peter?" + +"No; I been thinkin', Billy. How do you like the game?" + +He began to pace the floor again from one room to the other. + +"What game?'! Billy Brue had encountered a number in New York. + +"This whole game--livin' in New York." + +Mr. Brue became judicial. + +"It's a good game as long as you got money to buy chips. I'd hate like +darnation to go broke here. All the pay-claims have been located, I +guess." + +"I doubt it's bein' a good game any time, Billy. I been actin' as kind +of a lookout now fur about forty days and forty nights, and the chances +is all in favour of the house. You don't even get half your money on +the high card when the splits come." + +Billy Brue pondered this sentiment. It was not his own. + +"The United States of America is all right, Billy." + +This was safe ground. + +"Sure!" His mind reverted to the evening just past. "Of course there +was a couple of Clarences in high collars there to-night that made out +like they was throwin' it down; but they ain't the whole thing, not by +a long shot." + +"Yes, and that young shrimp that was talkin' about 'vintages' and +'trouserings.'" The old man paused in his walk. + +"What _are_ 'trouserings,' Billy?" + +Mr. Brue had not looked into shop windows day after day without +enlarging his knowledge. + +"Trouserings," he proclaimed, rather importantly, "is the cloth they +make pants out of." + +"Oh! is that all? I didn't know but it might be some new kind of duds. +And that fellow don't ever get up till eleven o'clock A.M. I don't +reckon I would myself if I didn't have anything but trouserings and +vintages to worry about. And that Van Arsdel boy!" + +"Say!" said Billy, with enthusiasm, "I never thought I'd be even in the +same room with one of that family, 'less I prized open the door with a +jimmy." + +"Well, who's _he?_ My father knew his grandfather when he kep' tavern +over on the Raritan River, and his grandmother!--this shrimp's +grandmother!--she tended bar." + +"Gee!" + +"Yes, they kep' tavern, and the old lady passed the rum bottle over the +bar, and took in the greasy money. This here fellow, now, couldn't make +an honest livin' like that, I bet you. He's like a dogbreeder would +say--got the pedigree, but not the points." + +Mr. Brue emitted a high, throaty giggle. + +"But they ain't all like that here, Uncle Peter. Say, you come out with +me some night jest in your workin' clothes. I can show you people all +right that won't ask to see your union card. Say, on the dead, Uncle +Peter, I wish you'd come. There's a lady perfessor in a dime museum +right down here on Fourteenth Street that eats fire and juggles the big +snakes;--say, she's got a complexion--" + +"There's enough like that kind, though," interrupted Uncle Peter. "I +could take a double-barrel shotgun up to that hotel and get nine with +each barrel around in them hallways; the shot wouldn't have to be +rammed, either; 'twouldn't have to scatter so blamed much." + +"Oh, well, them society sports--there's got to be some of _them_--" + +"Yes, and the way they make 'em reminds me of what Dal Mutzig tells +about the time they started Pasco. 'What you fellows makin' a town here +fur?' Dal says he asked 'em, and he says they says, 'Well, why not? The +land ain't good fur anything else, is it?' they says. That's the way +with these shrimps; they ain't good fur anything else. There's that +Arledge, the lad that keeps his mouth hangin' open all the time he's +lookin' at you--he'll catch cold in his works, first thing _he_ +knows--with his gold monogram on his cigarettes." + +"He said he was poor," urged Billy, who had been rather taken with the +ease of Arledge's manner. + +"Fine, big, handsome fellow, ain't he? Strong as an ox, active, and +perfectly healthy, ain't he? Well, he's a _pill_! But _his_ old man +must 'a' been on to him. Here, here's a piece in the paper about that +fine big strappin' giant--it's partly what got me to thinkin' to-night, +so I couldn't sleep. Just listen to this," and Uncle Peter read: + +"E. Wadsworth Arledge, son of the late James Townsend Arledge, of the +dry-goods firm of Arledge & Jackson, presented a long affidavit to +Justice Dutcher, of the Supreme Court, yesterday, to show why his +income of six thousand dollars a year from his father's estate should +not be abridged to pay a debt of $489.32. Henry T. Gotleib, a grocer, +who obtained a judgment for that amount against him in 1895, and has +been unable to collect, asked the Court to enjoin Judge Henley P. +Manderson, and the Union Fidelity Trust Company, as executors of the +Arledge estate, from paying Mr. Arledge his full income until the debt +has been discharged. Gotleib contended that Arledge could sustain the +reduction required. + +"James T. Arledge died about two years ago, leaving an estate of about +$3,000,000. He had disapproved of the marriage of his son and evinced +his displeasure in his will. The son had married Flora Florenza, an +actress. To the son was given an income of $6,000 a year for life. The +rest of the estate went to the testator's widow for life, and then to +charity. + +"Here is the affidavit of E. Wadsworth Arledge: + +"'I have been brought up in idleness, under the idea that I was to +inherit a large estate. I have never acquired any business habits so as +to fit me to acquire property, or to make me take care of it. + +"'I have never been in business, except many years ago, when I was a +boy, when I was for a short time employed in one of the stores owned by +my father. For many years prior to my father's death I was not +employed, but lived on a liberal allowance made to me by him. I am a +married man, and in addition to my wife have a family of two children +to support from my income. + +"'All our friends are persons of wealth and of high social standing, +and we are compelled to spend money in entertaining the many friends +who entertain us. I am a member of many expensive clubs. I have +absolutely no income except the allowance I receive from my father's +estate, and the same is barely sufficient to support my family. + +"'I have received no technical or scientific education, fitting me for +any business or profession, and should I be deprived of any portion of +my income, I will be plunged in debt anew.' + +"The Court reserved decision." + +"You hear that, Billy? The Court reserved decision. Mr. Arledge has to +buy so many gold cigarettes and vintages and trouserings, and belong to +so many clubs, that he wants the Court to help him chouse a poor grocer +out of his money. Say, Billy, that judge could fine me for contempt of +court, right now, fur reservin' his decision. You bet Mr. Arledge would +'a' got my decision right hot off the griddle. I'd 'a' told him, +'You're the meanest kind of a crook I ever heard of fur wantin' to lie +down on your fat back and whine out of payin' fur the grub you put in +your big gander paunch,' I'd tell him, 'and now you march to the +lock-up till you can look honest folks in the face,' I'd tell him. Say, +Billy, some crooks are worse than others. Take Nate Leverson out there. +Nate set up night and day for six years inventin' a process fur +sweatin' gold into ore; finally he gets it; how he does it, nobody +knows, but he sweat gold eighteen inches into the solid rock. The first +few holes he salted he gets rid of all right, then of course they catch +him, and Nate's doin' time now. But say, I got respect fur Nate since +readin' that piece. There's a good deal of a man about him, or about +any common burglar or sneak thief, compared to this duck. They take +chances, say nothin' of the hard work they do. This fellow won't take a +chance and won't work a day. Billy, that's the meanest specimen of +crook I ever run against, bar none, and that crook is produced and +tolerated in a place that's said to be the centre of 'culture and +refinement and practical achievement.' Billy, he's a pill!" + +"That's right," said Billy Brue, promptly throwing the recalcitrant +Arledge overboard. + +"But it ain't none of my business. What I do spleen again, is havin' a +grandson of mine livin' in a community where a man that'll act like +that is actually let in their houses by honest folks. Think of a son of +Daniel J. Bines treatin' folks like that as if they was his equals. +Say, Dan'l had a line of faults, all right--but, by God! he'd a trammed +ore fur two twenty-five a day any time in his life rather'n not pay a +dollar he owed. And think of this lad making his bed in this kind of a +place where men are brought up to them ways; and that name; think of a +husky, two-fisted boy like him lettin' himself be called by a measly +little gum-drop name like Percival, when he's got a right to be called +Pete. And he's right in with 'em. He'd be jest as bad--give him a +little time; and Pishy engaged to a damned fortune-hunting Englishman +into the bargain. It's all Higbee said it was, only it goes double. +Say, Billy, I been thinkin' this over all night." + +"'Tis mighty worryin', ain't it, Uncle Peter?" + +"And I got it thought out." + +"Sure, you must 'a' got it down to cases." + +"Billy,' listen now. There's a fellow down in Wall Street. His name is +Shepler, Rulon Shepler. He's most the biggest man down there." + +"Sure! I heard of him." + +"Listen! I'm goin' to bed now. I can sleep since I got my mind made up. +But I want to see Shepler in private to-morrow. Don't wake me up in the +morning. But get up yourself, and go find his office--look in a +directory, then ask a policeman. Shepler's a busy man. You tell the +clerk or whoever holds you up that Mr. Peter Bines wants an appointment +with Mr. Shepler as soon as he can make it--Mr. Peter Bines, of +Montana City. Be there by 9.30 so's to get him soon as he comes. He +knows me; tell him I want to see him on business soon as possible, and +find out when he can give me time. And don't you say to any one else +that I ever seen him or sent you there. Understand? Don't ever say a +word to any one. Remember, now, be there at 9.30, and don't let any +clerk put you off, and ask him what hour'll be convenient for him. Now +get what sleep's comin' to you. It's five o'clock." + +At noon Billy Brue returned to the hotel to find Uncle Peter finishing +a hearty breakfast. + +"I found him all right, Uncle Peter. The lookout acted suspicious, but +I saw the main guy himself come out of a door--like I'd seen his +picture in the papers, so I just called to him, and said, 'Mr. Peter +Bines wants to see you,' like that. He took me right into his office, +and I told him what you said, and he'll be ready for you at two +o'clock. He knows mines, all right, out our way, don't he?--and he +crowded a handful of these tin-foil cigars on to me, and acted real +sociable. Told me to drop in any time. Say, he'd run purty high in the +yellow stuff all right." + +"At two o'clock, you say?" + +"Yes." + +"And what's his number?" + +"Gee, I forgot; I can tell you, though. You go down Broadway to that +old church--say, Uncle Peter, there's folks in that buryin'-ground +been dead over two hundred years, if you can go by their gravestones. +Gee! I didn't s'pose _anybody'd_ been dead that long--then you turn +down the gulch right opposite, until you come to the Vandevere +Building, a few rods down on the left. Shepler's there. Git into the +bucket and go up to the second level, and you'll find him in the +left-hand back stope--his name's on the door in gold letters." + +"All right. And look here, Billy, keep your head shut about all I said +last night about anything. Don't you ever let on to a soul that I ain't +stuck on this place and its people--no matter what I do." + +"Sure not! What _are_ you going to do, Uncle Peter?" + +The old man's jaws were set for some seconds in a way to make Billy +Brue suspect he might be suffering from cramp. It seemed, however, that +he had merely been thinking intently. Presently he said: + +"I'm goin' to raise hell, Billy." + +"Sure!" said Mr. Brue--approvingly on general principles. "Sure! Why +not?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions + + +On three successive days the old man held lengthy interviews with +Shepler in the latter's private office. At the close of the third day's +interview, Shepler sent for Relpin, of the brokerage firm of Relpin and +Hendricks. A few days after this Uncle Peter said to Percival one +morning: + +"I want to have a talk with you, son." + +"All right, Uncle Peter," was the cheerful answer. He suspected the old +man might at last be going to preach a bit, since for a week past he +had been rather less expansive. He resolved to listen with good grace +to any homilies that might issue. He took his suspicion to be confirmed +when Uncle Peter began: + +"You folks been cuttin' a pretty wide swath here in New York." + +"That's so, Uncle Peter,--wider than we could have cut in Montana +City." + +"Been spendin' money purty free for a year." + +"Yes; you need money here." + +"I reckon you can't say about how much, now?" + +"Oh, I shouldn't wonder," Percival answered, going over to the +escritoire, and taking out some folded sheets and several check-books. +"Of course, I haven't it all here, but I have the bulk of it. Let me +figure a little." + +He began to work with a pencil on a sheet of paper. He was busy almost +half an hour, while Uncle Peter smoked in silence. + +"It struck me the other night we might have been getting a little near +to the limit, so I figured a bit then, too, and I guess this will give +you some idea of it. Of course this isn't all mine; it includes ma's +and Psyche's. Sis has been a mark for every bridge-player between the +Battery and the Bronx, and the way ma has been plunging on her indigent +poor is a caution,--she certainly does hold the large golden medal for +amateur cross-country philanthropy. Now here's a rough expense +account--of course only approximate, except some of the items I +happened to have." Uncle Peter took the statement, and studied it +carefully. + +Paid Hightower Hotel................ $ 42,983.75 + +Keep of horses, and extra horse and carriage +hire....................... 5,628.50 + +Chartering steam-yacht _Viluca_ three +months.............................. 24,000.00 + +Expenses running yacht.............. 46,850.28 + +W. U. Telegraph Company............. 32.65 + +Incidentals......................... 882,763.90 + +Total $1,002,259.08 + +His sharp old eyes ran up and down the column of figures. Something +among the items seemed to annoy him. + +"Looking at those 'incidentals'? I took those from the check-books. +They are pretty heavy." + +"It's an outrage!" exclaimed the old man, indignantly, "that there +$32.50 to the telegraph company. How's it come you didn't have a +Western Union frank this year? I s'posed you had one. They sent me +mine." + +"Oh, well, they didn't send me one, and I didn't bother to ask for it," +the young man answered in a tone of relief. "Of course the expenses +have been pretty heavy, coming here strangers as we did. Now, another +year--" + +"Oh, that ain't anything. Of course you got to spend money. I see one +of them high-toned gents that died the other day said a gentleman +couldn't possibly get along on less'n two thousand dollars a day and +expenses. I'm glad to see you ain't cut under the limit none--you got +right into his class jest like you'd always lived here, didn't you? +But, now, I been kind of lookin' over the ground since I come here, and +it's struck me you ain't been gettin' enough for your money. You've +spent free, but the goods ain't been delivered. I'm talkin' about +yourself. Both your ma and Pishy has got more out of it than you have. +Why, your ma gets her name in the papers as a philanthropist along with +that--how do the papers call her?--'the well-known club woman'--that +Mrs. Helen Wyot Lamson that always has her name spelled out in full? +Your ma is getting public recognition fur her money, and look at Pishy. +What's she gone and done while you been laxin' about? Why, she's got +engaged to a lord, or just as good. Look at the prospects she's got! +She'll enter the aristocracy of England and have a title. But look at +you! Really, son, I'm ashamed of you. People over there'll be sayin' +'Lady What's-her-name? Oh, yes! She _has_ got a brother, but he don't +amount to shucks--he ain't much more'n a three-spot. He can't do +anything but play bank and drink like a fish. He's throwed away his +opportunities'--that's what them dukes and counts will be sayin' about +you behind your back." + +"I understood you didn't think much of sis's choice." + +"Well, of course, he wouldn't be much in Montana City, but he's all +right in his place, and he seems to be healthy. What knocks _me_ is how +he ever got all them freckles. He never come by 'em honestly, I bet. He +must 'a' got caught in an explosion of freckles sometime. But that +ain't neither here nor there. He has the goods and Pish'll get 'em +delivered. She's got something to show fur her dust. But what _you_ got +to show? Not a blamed thing but a lot of stubs in a check-book, and a +little fat. Now I ain't makin' any kick. I got no right to; but I do +hate to see you leadin' this life of idleness and dissipation when you +might be makin' something of yourself. Your pa was quite a man. He left +his mark out there in that Western country. Now you're here settled in +the East among big people, with a barrel of money and fine chances to +do something, and you're jest layin' down on the family name. You +wouldn't think near so much of your pa if he'd laid down before his +time; and your own children will always have to say 'Poor pa--he had a +good heart, but he never could amount to anything more'n a threespot; +he didn't have any stuff in him,' they'll be sayin'. Now, on the level, +you don't want to go through life bein' just known as a good thing and +easy money, do you?" + +"Why, of course not, Uncle Peter; only I had to look around some at +first,--for a year or so." + +"Well, if you need to look any more, then your eyes ain't right. That's +my say. I ain't askin' you to go West. I don't expect that!" + +Percival brightened. + +"But I am tryin' to nag you into doin' something here. People can say +what they want to about you," he continued, stubbornly, as one who +confesses the most arrant bigotry, "but I know you _have_ got some +brains, some ability--I really believe you got a whole lot--and you got +the means to take your place right at the top. You can head 'em all in +this country or any other. Now what you ought to do, you ought to take +your place in the world of finance--put your mind on it night and +day--swing out--get action--and set the ball to rolling. Your pa was a +big man in the West, and there ain't any reason as I can see of why you +can't be just as big a man in proportion here. People can talk all they +want to about your bein' just a dub--I won't believe 'em. And there's +London. You ain't been ambitious enough. Get a down-hill pull on New +York, and then branch out. Be a man of affairs like your pa, and like +that fellow Shepler. Let's _be_ somebody. If Montana City was too small +fur us, that's no reason why New York should be too big." + +Percival had walked the floor in deep attention to the old man's words. + +"You've got me right, Uncle Peter," he said at last. "And you're right +about what I ought to do. I've often thought I'd go into some of these +big operations here. But for one thing I was afraid of what you'd say. +And then, I didn't know the game very well. But I see I ought to do +something. You're dead right." + +"And we need more money, too," urged the old man. "I was reading a +piece the other day about the big fortunes in New York. Why, we ain't +one, two, three, with the dinky little twelve or thirteen millions we +could swing. You don't want to be a piker, do you? If you go in the +game at all, play her open and high. Make 'em take the ceiling off. You +can just as well get into the hundred million class as not, and I know +it. They needn't talk to _me_--I know you _have_ got some brains. If +you was to go in now it would keep you straight and busy, and take you +out of this pin-head class that only spends their pa's money." + +"You're all right, Uncle Peter! I certainly did need you to come along +right now and set me straight. You founded the fortune, pa trebled it, +and now I'll get to work and roll it up like a big snowball." + +"That's the talk. Get into the hundred million class, and show these +wise folks you got something in you besides hot air, like the sayin' +is. _Then_ they won't always be askin' who your pa was--they'll be +wantin' to know who you are, by Gripes! Then you can have the biggest +steam yacht afloat, two or three of 'em, and the best house in New +York, and palaces over in England; and Pish'll be able to hold up her +head in company over there. You can finance _that_ proposition right up +to the nines." + +"By Jove! but you're right. You're a wonder, Uncle Peter. And that +reminds me--" + +He stopped in his walk. + +"I gave it hardly any thought at the time, but now it looks bigger than +a mountain. I know just the things to start in on systematically. Now +don't breathe a word of this, but there's a big deal on in Consolidated +Copper. I happened on to the fact in a queer way the other night. +There's a broker I've known down-town--fellow by the name of Relpin. +Met him last summer. He does most of Shepler's business; he's supposed +to be closer to Shepler and know more about the inside of his deals +than any man in the Street. Well, I ran across Relpin down in the cafe +the other night and he was wearing one of those gents' nobby +three-button souses. Nothing would do but I should dine with him, so I +did. It was the night you and the folks went to the opera with the +Oldakers. Relpin was full of lovely talk and dark hints about a rise in +copper stock, and another rise in Western Trolley, and a bigger rise +than either of them in Union Cordage. How that fellow can do Shepler's +business and drink the stuff that makes you talk I don't see. Anyway he +said--and you can bet what he says goes--that the Consolidated is going +to control the world's supply of copper inside of three months, and the +stock is bound to kite, and so are these other two stocks; Shepler's +back of all three. The insiders are buying up now, slowly and +cautiously, so as not to start any boom prematurely. Consolidated is no +now, and it'll be up to 150 by April at the latest. The others may go +beyond that. I wasn't looking for the game at the time, so I didn't +give it any thought, but now, you see, there's our chance. We'll plunge +in those three lines before they start to rise, and be in on the ground +floor." "Now don't you be rash! That Shepler's old enough to suck eggs +and hide the shells. I heard a man say the other day copper was none +too good at no." + +"Exactly. You can hear anything you're looking to hear, down there. But +I tell you this was straight. Don't you suppose Shepler knows what he's +about?--there's a boy that won't be peddling shoe-laces and gum-drops +off one of these neat little bosom-trays--not for eighty-five or +ninety-thousand years yet--and Relpin, even if he was drunk, knows +Shepler's deals like you know Skiplap. They'll bear the stocks all they +can while they're buying up. I wouldn't be surprised if the next +Consolidated dividend was reduced. That would send her down a few +points, and throw more stock on the market. Meantime, they're quietly +workin' to get control of the European mines--and as to Western Trolley +and Union Cordage--say, Relpin actually got to crying--they're so +good--he had one of those loving ones, the kind where you want to be +good to every one in the world. I'm surprised he didn't get into a +sandwich sign and patrol Broadway, giving those tips to everybody.". + +"Course, we're on a proposition now that you know more about it than I +do; you certainly do take right hold at once--that was your pa's way, +too. Daniel J. could look farther ahead in a minute than most men could +in a year. I got to trust you wholly in these matters, and I know I can +do it, too. I got confidence in you, no matter _what_ other people say. +They don't know you like I do. And if there's any other things you know +about fur sure--" + +"Well, there's Burman. He's plunging in corn now. His father has staked +him, and he swears he can't lose. He was after me to put aside a +million. Of course if he does win out it would be big money." + +"Well, son, I can't advise you none--except I know you have got a head +on you, no matter how people talk. You know about this end of the game, +and I'll have to be led entirely by you. If you think Burman's got a +good proposition, why, there ain't anything like gettin' action all +along the layout, from ace down to seven-spot and back to the king +card." + +"That's the talk. I'll see Relpin to-day or to-morrow. I'll bet he +tries to hedge on what he said. But I got him too straight--let a +drunken man alone for telling the truth when he's got it in him. We'll +start in buying at once." + +"It does sound good. I must say you take hold of it considerable like +Dan'l J. would 'a' done--and use my money jest like your own. I do want +to see you takin' your place where you belong. This life of idleness +you been leadin'--one continual potlatch the whole time--it wa'n't +doin' you a bit of good." + +"We'll get action, don't you worry. Now let's have lunch down-stairs, +and then go for a drive. It's too fine a day to stay in. I'll order the +cart around and show you that blue-ribbon cob I bought at the horse +show. I just want you to see his action. He's a beaut, all right. He's +been worked a half in 1.17, and he can go to his speed in ten lengths, +any time." + +In the afternoon they fell into the procession of carriages streaming +toward the park. The day was pleasantly sharp, the clear sunshine +enlivening, and the cob was one with the spirit of the occasion, +alertly active, from his rubber-shod, varnished hoofs to the tips of +his sensitive ears. + +"Central Park," said Uncle Peter, "always seems to me just like a tidy +little parlour, livin' around in them hills the way I have." + +He watched the glinting of varnished spokes, and listened absently to +the rhythmic "click-clump" of trotting horses, with its accompanying +jingle of silver harness trappings. + +"These people must have lots of money," he observed. "But you'll go in +and outdo 'em all." + +"That's what! Uncle Peter." + +Toward the upper end of the East Drive they passed a victoria in which +were Miss Milbrey and her mother with Rulon Shepler. The men raised +their hats. Miss Milbrey flashed the blue of her eyes to them and +pointed down her chin in the least bit of a bow. Mrs. Milbrey stared. + +"Wa'n't that Shepler?" + +"Yes, Shepler and the Milbreys. That woman certainly has the haughtiest +lorgnon ever built." + +"She didn't speak to us. Is her eyes bad?" + +"Yes, ever since that time at Newport. None of them has spoken to me +but the girl--she's engaged to Shepler." + +"She's a right nice lookin' little lady. I thought you was kind of +taken there." + +"She would have married me for my roll. I got far enough along to tell +that. But that was before Shepler proposed. I'd give long odds she +wouldn't consider me now. I haven't enough for her with him in the +game." + +"Well, you go in and make her wish she'd waited for you." + +"I'll do that; I'll make Shepler look like a well-to-do business man +from Pontiac, Michigan." + +"Is that brother of hers you told me about still makin' up to that +party?" + +"Can't say. I suppose he'll be a little more fastidious, as the +brother-in-law of Shepler. In fact I heard that the family had shut +down on any talk of his marrying her." + +"Still, she ought to be able to do well here. Any man that would marry +a woman fur money wouldn't object to her. One of these fortune-hunting +Englishmen, now, would snap her up." + +"She hasn't quite enough for that. Two millions isn't so much here, you +know, and she must have spent a lot of hers. I hear she has a very +expensive suite back there at the Arlingham, and lives high. I did +hear, too, that she takes a flyer in the Street now and then. She'll be +broke soon if she keeps that up." + +"Too bad she ain't got a few more millions," said Uncle Peter, +ruminantly. "Take one of these titled Englishmen looking for an heiress +to keep 'em--she'd make just the kind of a wife he'd ought to get. She +certainly ought to have a few more millions. If she had, now, she might +cure some decent girl of her infatuation. Where'd you say she was +stoppin'?" + +"Arlingham--that big private hotel I showed you back there." + +Percival confessed to his mother that night that he had wronged Uncle +Peter. + +"That old boy is all right yet," he said, with deep conviction. "Don't +make any mistake there. He has bigger ideas than I gave him credit for. +I suggested branching out here in a business way, to-day, and the old +fellow got right in line. If anybody tells you that old Petie Bines +hasn't got the leaves of his little calendar torn off right up to date +you just feel wise inside, and see what odds are posted on it!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers + + +Consolidated copper at 110. The day after his talk with Uncle Peter, +Percival through three different brokers gave orders to buy ten +thousand shares. + +"I tried to give Relpin an order for five thousand shares over the +telephone," he said to Uncle Peter; "but they're used to those fifty +and a hundred thousand dollar pikers down in that neighbourhood. He +seemed to think I was joshing him. When I told him I meant it and was +ready to take practically all he could buy for the next few weeks or +so, I think he fell over in the booth and had to be helped out." + +Orders for twenty thousand more shares in thousand share lots during +the next three weeks sent the stock to 115. Yet wise men in the Street +seemed to fear the stock. They were waiting cautiously for more +definite leadings. The plunging of Bines made rather a sensation, and +when it became known that his holdings were large and growing almost +daily larger, the waning confidence of a speculator here and there +would be revived. + +At 115 the stock rested again, with few sales recorded. A certain few +of the elect regarded this calm as ominous. It was half believed by +others that the manipulations of the inner ring would presently advance +the stock to a sensational figure, and that the reckless young man from +Montana might be acting upon information of a definite character. But +among the veteran speculators the feeling was conservative. Before +buying they preferred to await some sign that the advance had actually +begun. The conservatives were mostly the bald old fellows. Among the +illusions that rarely survive a man's hair in Wall Street is the one +that "sure things" are necessarily sure. + +Percival watched Consolidated Copper go back to 110, and bought +again--ten thousand shares. The price went up two points the day after +his orders were placed, and two days later dropped back to 110. The +conservatives began to agree with the younger set of speculators, in so +far as both now believed that the stock was behaving in an unnatural +manner, indicating that "something was doing"--that manipulation behind +the scenes was under way to a definite end. The conservatives and the +radicals differed as to what this end was. But then, Wall Street is +nourished almost exclusively upon differences of opinion. + +Percival now had accounts with five firms of brokers. + +"Relpin," he explained to Uncle Peter, "is a foxy boy. He's foxier than +a fox. He not only tried to hedge on what he told me,--said he'd been +drinking absinthe _frappe_ that day, and it always gets him +dreamy,--but he actually had the nerve to give me the opposite steer. +Of course he knows the deal clear to the centre, and Shepler knows that +he knows, and he must have been afraid Shepler would suspect he'd been +talking. So I only traded a few thousand shares with him. I didn't want +to embarrass him. Funny about him, too. I never heard before of his +drinking anything to speak of. And there isn't a man in the Street +comes so near to knowing what the big boys are up to. But we're on the +winning cards all right. I get exactly the same information from a +dozen confidential sources; some of it I can trace to Relpin, and some +of it right to Shepler himself." "Course I'm leavin' it all to you," +answered Uncle Peter; "and I must say I do admire the way you take hold +and get things on the move. You don't let any grass grow under _your_ +heels. You got a good head fur them things. I can tell by the way you +start out--just like your pa fur all the world. I'll feel safe enough +about my money as long as you keep your health. If only you got the +nerve. I've known men would play a big proposition half-through and +then get scared and pull out. Your pa wa'n't that way. He could get a +proposition right by its handle every time, and they never come any too +big fur him; the bigger they was, better he liked 'em. That's the kind +of genius I think you got. You ain't afraid to take a chance." + +Percival beamed modestly under praise of this sort which now came to +him daily. + +"It's good discipline for me, too, Uncle Peter. It's what I needed, +something to put my mind on. I needed a new interest in life. You had +me down right. I wasn't doing myself a bit of good with nothing to +occupy my mind." + +"Well, I'm mighty glad you thought up this stock deal. It'll give you +good business habits and experience, say nothing of doubling your +capital." + +"And I've gone in with Burman on his corn deal. He's begun to buy, and +he has it cinched this time. He'll be the corn king all right by June +1st; don't make any mistake on that. I thought as long as we were +plunging so heavy in Western Trolley and Union Cordage, along with the +copper, we might as well take the side line of corn. Then we won't have +our eggs all in one basket." + +"All right, son, all right! I'm trustin' you. A corner in corn is +better'n a corner in wild-oats any day; anything to keep you straight, +and doin' something. I don't care _how_ many millions you pile up! I +hear the Federal Oil people's back of the copper deal." + +"That's right; the oil crowd and Shepler. I had it straight from Relpin +that night. They're negotiating now with the Rothschilds to limit the +output of the Rio Tinto mines. They'll end by controlling them, and +then--well, we'll have a roll of the yellow boys--say, we'll have to +lay quiet for a year just to count it." + +"Do it good while you're doin' it," urged Uncle Peter, cheerfully. "I +rely so much on your judgment, I want you to get action on my stuff, +too. I got a couple millions that ought to be workin' harder than they +are." + +"Good; I didn't think you had so much gambler in you." + +"It's fur a worthy purpose, son. And it seems too bad that Pishy can't +pull out something with her bit, when it's to be had so easy. From what +that spangle-faced beau of hers tells me there's got to be some +expensive plumbing done in that castle he gets sawed off on to him." + +"We'll let sis in, too," exclaimed her brother, generously, "and ma +could use a little more in her business. She's sitting up nights to +corner all the Amalgamated Hard-luck on the island. We'll pool issue, +and say, we'll make those Federal Oil pikers think we've gnawed a +corner off the subtreasury. I'll put an order in for twenty thousand +more shares to-morrow--among the three stocks. And then we'll have to +see about getting all our capital here. We'll need every cent of it +that's loose; and maybe we better sell off some of those dead-wood +stocks." + +The twenty thousand shares were bought by the following week, five +thousand of them being Consolidated Copper, ten thousand Western +Trolley, and five thousand Union Cordage. Consolidated Copper fell off +two points, upon rumours, traceable to no source, that the company had +on hand a large secret supply of copper, and was producing largely in +excess of the demand every month. + +Percival told Uncle Peter of these rumours, and chuckled with the easy +confidence of a man who knows secrets. + +"You see, it's coming the way Relpin said. The insiders are hammering +down the stock with those reports, hammering with one hand, and buying +up small lots quietly with the other. But you'll notice the price of +copper doesn't go down any. They keep it at seventeen cents all right. +Now, the moment they get control of the European supply they'll hold +the stuff, force up the selling price to awful figures, and squeeze out +dividends that will make you wear blue glasses to look at them." + +"You certainly do know your business, son," said Uncle Peter, +fervently. "You certainly got your pa's head on you. You remind me more +and more of Dan'l J. Bines every day. I'd rather trust your judgment +now than lots of older men down there. You know their tricks all right. +Get in good and hard so long as you got a sure thing. I'd hate to have +you come meachin' around after that stock has kited, and be kickin' +because you hadn't bet what your hand was worth." + +"Trust me for that, Uncle Peter. Garmer tried to steer me off this line +of stocks the other night. He'd heard these rumours about a slump, and +he's fifty years old at that. I thanked him for his tip and coppered it +with another thousand shares all around next day. The way Garmer can +tell when you're playing a busted flush makes you nervous, but I +haven't looked over his license to know everything down in the Street +yet." + +The moral gain to Percival from his new devotion to the stock market +was commented upon approvingly both by Uncle Peter and by his mother. +It was quite as tangible as his money profits promised to be. He ceased +to frequent the temple of chance in Forty-fourth Street, to the +proprietor's genuine regret. The poker-games at the hotel he abandoned +as being trivial. And the cabmen along upper Broadway had seldom now +the opportunity to compete for his early morning patronage. He began to +keep early hours and to do less casual drinking during the day. After +three weeks of this comparatively regular living his mother rejoiced to +note signs that his breakfast-appetite was returning. + +"You see," he explained earnestly to Uncle Peter, "a man to make +anything at this game must keep his head clear, and he must have good +health to do that. I meet a lot of those fellows down there that queer +themselves by drink. It doesn't do so much hurt when a man isn't +needing his brains,--but no more of it for me just now!" + +"That's right, son. I knew I could make something more than a polite +sosh out of you. I knew you'd pull up if you got into business like you +been doin'." + +"Come down-town with me this afternoon, and see me make a play, Uncle +Peter. I think I'll begin now to buy on a margin. The rise can't hold +off much longer." + +"I'd like to, son, but I'd laid out to take a walk up to the park this +afternoon, and look in at the monkeys awhile. I need the out-doors, and +anyway you don't need me down there. You know _your_ part all right. +My! but I'd begin to feel nervous with all that money up, if it was +anybody but you, now." + +In pursuance of his pronounced plan, Uncle Peter walked up Fifth Avenue +that afternoon. But he stopped short of the park. At the imposing +entrance of the Arlingham he turned in. At the desk he asked for Mrs. +Wybert. + +"I'll see if Mrs. Wybert is in," said the clerk, handing him a blank +card; "your name, please!" + +The old man wrote, "Mr. Peter Bines of Montana City would like a few +minutes' talk with Mrs. Wybert." + +The boy was gone so long that Uncle Peter, waiting, began to suspect he +would not be received. He returned at length with the message, "The +lady says will you please step up-stairs." + +Going up in the elevator, the old man was ushered by a maid into a +violet-scented little nest whose pale green walls were touched +discreetly with hangings of heliotrope. An artist, in Uncle Peter's +place, might have fancied that the colour scheme of the apartment cried +out for a bit of warmth. A glowing, warm-haired woman was needed to +set the walls afire; and the need was met when Mrs. Wybert entered. + +She wore a long coat of seal trimmed with chinchilla, and had been, +apparently, about to go out. + +Uncle Peter rose and bowed. Mrs. Wybert nodded rather uncertainly. + +"You wished to see me, Mr. Bines?" + +"I did want to have a little talk with you, Mrs. Wybert, but you're +goin' out, and I won't keep you. I know how pressed you New York +society ladies are with your engagements." + +Mrs. Wybert had seemed to be puzzled. She was still puzzled but +unmistakably pleased. The old man was looking at her with frank and +friendly apology for his intrusion. Plainly she had nothing to fear +from him. She became gracious. + +"It was only a little shopping tour, Mr. Bines, that and a call at the +hospital, where they have one of my maids who slipped on the avenue +yesterday and fractured one of her--er--limbs. Do sit down." + +Mrs. Wybert said "limb" for leg with the rather conscious air of +escaping from an awkward situation only by the subtlest finesse. + +She seated herself before a green and heliotrope background that +instantly took warmth from her colour. Uncle Peter still hesitated. + +"You see, I wanted kind of a long chat with you, Mrs. Wybert--a +friendly chat if you didn't mind, and I'd feel a mite nervous if you're +bundled up that way." + +"I shall be delighted, Mr. Bines, to have a long, friendly chat. I'll +send my cloak back, and you take your own time. There now, do be right +comfortable!" + +The old man settled himself and bestowed upon his hostess a long look +of approval. + +"The reports never done you justice, Mrs. Wybert, and they was very +glowin' reports, too." + +"You're very kind, Mr. Bines, awfully good of you!" + +"I'm goin' to be more, Mrs. Wybert. I'm goin' to be a little bit +confidential--right out in the straight open with you." + +"I am sure of that." + +"And if you want to, you can be the same with me. I ain't ever held +anything against you, and maybe now I can do you a favour." + +"It's right good of you to say so." + +"Now, look here, ma'am, lets you and me get right down to cases about +this society game here in New York." + +Mrs. Wybert laughed charmingly and relaxed in manner. + +"I'm with you, Mr. Bines. What about it, now?" + +"Now don't get suspicious, and tell me to mind my own business when I +ask you questions." + +"I couldn't be suspicious of you--really I feel as if I'd have to tell +you everything you asked me, some way." + +"Well, there's been some talk of your marrying that young Milbrey. Now +tell me the inside of it." + +She looked at the old man closely. Her intuition confirmed his own +protestations of friendliness. + +"I don't mind telling you in strict confidence, there _was_ talk of +marriage, and his people, all but the sister, encouraged it. Then after +she was engaged to Shepler they talked him out of it. Now that's the +whole God's truth, if it does you any good." + +"If you had married him you'd 'a' had a position, like they say here, +right away." + +"Oh, dear, yes! awfully swagger people--dead swell, every one of them. +There's no doubt about that." + +"Exactly; and there ain't really any reason why you can't be somebody +here." + +"Well, between you and I, Mr. Bines, I can play the part as well as a +whole lot of these women here. I don't want to talk, of course, +but--well!" + +"Exactly, you can give half of 'em cards and spades and both casinos, +Mrs. Wybert." + +"And I'll do it yet. I'm not through by any means. They're not the only +perfectly elegant people in this town!" + +"Of course you'll do it, and you could do it better if you had three or +four times the stake you got." + +"Dollars are worth more apiece in New York than any town I've ever been +in." + +"Mrs. Wybert, I can put you right square into a good thing, and I'm +going to do it. Heard anything about Consolidated Copper?" + +"I've heard something big was doing in it; but nobody seems to know for +certain. My broker is afraid of it." + +"Very well. Now you do as I tell you, and you can clean up a big lot +inside of the next two months. If you do as I tell you, mind, no matter +_what_ you hear, and if you don't talk." + +Mrs. Wybert meditated. + +"Mr. Bines, I'm--it's natural that I'm a little uneasy. Why should you +want to see me do well, after our little affair? Now, out with it! What +are you trying to do with me? What do you expect me to do for you? Get +down to cases yourself, Mr. Bines!" + +"I will, ma'am, in a few words. My granddaughter, you may have heard, +is engaged to an Englishman. He's next thing to broke, but he's got a +title coming. Naturally he's looking fur money. Naturally he don't care +fur the girl. But I'm afraid she's infatuated with him. Now then, if he +had a chance at some one with more money than she's got, why, naturally +he'd jump at it." + +"Aren't you a little bit wild?" + +"Not a little bit. He saw you at Newport last summer, and he's seen you +here. He was tearing the adjectives up telling me about you the other +night, not knowing, you understand, that I'd ever heard tell of you +before. You could marry him in a jiffy if you follow my directions." + +"But your granddaughter has a fortune." + +"You'll have as much if you play this the way I tell you. And--you +never can tell in these times--she might lose a good bit of hers." + +"It's very peculiar, Mr. Bines--your proposition." + +[Illustration: "'_WHY, YOU'D BE LADY CASSELTHORPE, WITH DUKES AND +COUNTS TAKIN' OFF THEIR CROWNS TO YOU_.'"] + +"Look at what a brilliant match it would be fur you. Why, you'd be +Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off their crowns to +you. And that other one--that Milbrey--from all I hear he's lighter'n +cork--cut his galluses and he'd float right up into the sky. He ain't +got anything but his good family and a thirst." + +"I see. This Mauburn isn't good enough for your family, but you reckon +he's good enough for me? Is that it, now?" + +"Come, Mrs. Wybert, let's be broad. That's the game you like, and I +don't criticise you fur it. It's a good game if that's the kind of a +game you're huntin' fur. And you can play it better'n my granddaughter. +She wa'n't meant fur it--and I'd rather have her marry an American, +anyhow. Now you like it, and you got beauty--only you need more money. +I'll put you in the way of it, and you can cut out my granddaughter." + +"I must think about it. Suppose I plunge in copper, and your tip isn't +straight. I've seen hard times, Mr. Bines, in my life. I haven't always +wore sealskin and diamonds." + +"Mrs. Wybert, you was in Montana long enough to know how I stand +there?" + +"I know you're A1, and your word's as good as another man's money. I +don't question your good intentions." + +"It's my judgment, hey? Now, look here, I won't tell you what I know +and how I know it, but you can take my word that I know I do know. You +plunge in copper right off, without saying a word to anybody or makin' +any splurge, and here--" + +From the little table at his elbow he picked up the card that had +announced him and drew out his pencil. + +"You said my word was as good as another man's money. Now I'm going to +write on this card just what you have to do, and you're to follow +directions, no matter what you hear about other people doing. There'll +be all sorts of reports about that stock, but you follow my +directions." + +He wrote on the back of the card with his pencil. + +"Consolidated Copper, remember--and now I'm a-goin' to write something +else under them directions. + +"'Do this up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything +you lose.' There, Mrs. Wybert, I've signed that 'Peter Bines.' That +card wouldn't be worth a red apple in a court of law, but you know me, +and you know it's good fur every penny you lose." + +"Really, Mr. Bines, you half-way persuade me. I'll certainly try the +copper play--and about the other--well,--we'll see; I don't promise, +mind you!" + +"You think over it. I'm sure you'll like the idea--think of bein' in +that great nobility, and bein' around them palaces with their dukes and +counts. Think how these same New York women will meach to you then!" + +The old man rose. + +"And mind, follow them directions and no other--makes no difference +what you hear, or I won't be responsible. And I'll rely on you, ma'am, +never to let anyone know about my visit, and to send me back that +little document after you've cashed in." + +He left her studying the card with a curious little flash of surprise. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting + + +In the weeks that now followed, Percival became a model of sobriety and +patient, unremitting industry, according to his own ideas of industry. +He visited the offices of his various brokers daily, reading the tape +with the single-hearted devotion of a veteran speculator. He acquired a +general knowledge of the ebb and flow of popular stocks. He frequently +saw opportunities for quick profit in other stocks than the three he +was dealing in, but he would not let himself be diverted. + +"I'm centering on those three," he told Uncle Peter. "When they win out +we'll take up some other lines. I could have cleared a quarter of a +million in that Northern Pacific deal last week, as easy as not. I saw +just what was being done by that Ledrick combine. But we've got +something better, and I don't want to take chances on tying up some +ready money we might need in a hurry. If a man gets started on those +little side issues he's too apt to lose his head. He jumps in one day, +and out the next, and gets to be what they call a 'kangaroo,' down in +the Street. It's all right for amusement, but the big money is in +cinching one deal and pushing hard. It's a bull market now, too; buy +A.O.T. is the good word--Any Old Thing--but I'm going to stay right by +my little line." + +"You certainly have a genius fur finance," declared Uncle Peter, with +fervent admiration. "This going into business will be the makin' of +you. You'll be good fur something else besides holdin' one of them +dinky little teacups, and talking about 'trouserings'--no matter _what_ +people say. Let 'em _talk_ about you--sayin' you'll never be anything +like the man your pa was--_you'll_ show 'em." + +And Percival, important with his secret knowledge of the great _coup_, +went back to the ticker, and laughed inwardly at the seasoned experts +who frankly admitted their bewilderment as to what was "doing" in +copper and Western Trolley. + +"When it's all over," he confided gaily to the old man, "we ought to +pinch off about ten per cent of the winnings, and put up a monument to +absinthe _frappe_--the stuff Relpin had been drinking that day. +They'll give us a fine public square for it in Paris if they won't here +in New York. And it wouldn't do any good to give it to Relpin, who's +really earned it--he'd only lush himself into one of those drunkard's +graves--I understand there's a few left yet." + +Early in March, Coplen, the lawyer, was sent for, and with him Percival +spent two laborious weeks, going over inventories of the properties, +securities, and moneys of the estate. The major portion of the latter +was now invested in the three stocks, and the remainder was at hand +where it could be conveniently reached. + +Percival informed himself minutely as to the values of the different +mining properties, railroad and other securities. A group of the +lesser-paying mines was disposed of to an English syndicate, the +proceeds being retained for the stock deal. All but the best paying of +the railroad, smelting, and land-improvement securities were also +thrown on the market. + +The experience was a valuable one to the young man, enlarging greatly +his knowledge of affairs, and giving him a needed insight into the +methods by which the fortune had been accumulated. + +"That was a slow, clumsy, old-fashioned way to make money," he declared +to Coplen. "Nowadays it's done quicker." + +His grasp of details delighted Uncle Peter and surprised Coplen. + +"I didn't know but he might be getting plucked," said Coplen to the old +man, "with all that money being drawn out so fast. If I hadn't known +you were with him, I'd have taken it on myself to find out something +about his operations. But he's all right, apparently. He had a scent +like a hound for those dead-wood properties--got rid of them while we +would have been making up our minds to. That boy will make his way +unless I'm mistaken. He has a head for detail." + + +"I'll make him a bigger man than his pa was yet," declared Uncle Peter. +"But I wouldn't want to let on that I'd had anything to do with it. +He'll think he's done it all himself, and it's right he should. It +stimulates 'em. Boys of his age need just about so much conceit, and it +don't do to take it out of 'em." + +Reports of the most encouraging character came from Burman. The deal in +corn was being engineered with a riper caution than had been displayed +in the ill-fated wheat deal of the spring before. + +"Burman's drawn close up to a million already," said Percival to Uncle +Peter, "and now he wants me to stand ready for another million." + +"Is Burman," asked Uncle Peter, "that young fellow that had a habit of +standin' pat on a pair of Jacks, and then bettin' everybody off the +board?" + +"Yes, that was Burman." + +"Well, I liked his ways. I should say he could do you a whole lot of +good in a corn deal." + +"It certainly does look good--and Burman has learned the ropes and +spars. They're already calling him the 'corn-king' out on the Chicago +Board of Trade." + +"Use your own judgment," Uncle Peter urged him. "You're the one that +knows all about these things. My Lord! how you ever _do_ manage to keep +things runnin' in your head gets me. If you got confidence in Burman, +all I can say is--well, your pa was a fine judge of men, and I don't +see why you shouldn't have the gift." + + +"Between you and me, Uncle Peter, I _am_ a good judge of human nature, +and I know this much about Burman: when he does win out he'll win big. +And I think he's going to whipsaw the market to a standstill this time, +for sure. Here's a little item from this morning's paper that sounds +right, all along the line." + +"COPPER, CORN, AND CORDAGE. + +"There are just now three great movements in the market, Copper Trust +stock, corn, and cordage stock. The upward movement in corn seems to be +in the main not speculative but natural--the result of a short supply +and a long demand. The movements in Copper and Cordage Trust stocks are +purely speculative. The copper movement is based on this proposition: +Can the Copper Trust maintain the price for standard copper at +seventeen cents a pound, in face of enormously increased supply and the +rapidly decreasing demand, notably in Germany? The bears think not. The +bulls, contrarily, persist in behaving as if they had inside +information of a superior value. Just possibly a simultaneous rise in +corn, copper, and cordage will be the next sensation in the trading +world." + +"You see?" said Percival. "They're beginning to wake up, down +there--beginning to turn over in their sleep and mutter. Pretty soon +they'll begin to stretch lazily; when they finally hear something drop +and jump out of bed it will be too late. The bulls will be counting +their chips to cash in, and the man waiting around to put out the +lights. And I don't see why Burman isn't as safe as I am." "I don't, +either," said Uncle Peter. + +"'A short supply and a long demand,'--it would be a sin to let any one +else in. I'll just wire him we're on, and that we need all of that good +thing ourselves." + +In the flush of his great plans and great expectations came a chance +meeting with Miss Milbrey. He had seen her only at a distance since +their talk at Newport. Yet the thought of her had persisted as a +plaintive undertone through all the days after. Only the sharp hurt to +his sensitive pride--from the conviction that she had found him +tolerable solely because of the money--had saved him from the willing +admission to himself that he had carried off too much of her ever to +forget. In his quiet moments, the tones of her clear, low voice came +movingly to his ears, and his eyes conjured involuntarily her girlish +animation, her rounded young form, her colour and fire--the choked, +smouldering fire of opals. He saw the curve of her wrist, the confident +swing of her walk, the easy poise of her head, her bearing, at once +girlish and womanly, the little air, half of wistful appeal, and half +of self-reliant assertion. Yet he failed not to regard these +indulgences as utter folly. It had been folly enough while he believed +that she stood ready to accept him and his wealth. It was more +flagrant, now that her quest for a husband with millions had been so +handsomely rewarded. + +But again, the fact that she was now clearly impossible for him, so +that even a degrading submission on his part could no longer secure +her, served only to bring her attractiveness into greater relief. With +the fear gone that a sudden impulse to possess her might lead him to +stultify himself, he could see more clearly than ever why she was and +promised always to be to him the very dearest woman in the +world--dearest in spite of all he could reason about so lucidly. He +felt, then, a little shock of unreasoning joy to find one night that +they were dining together at the Oldakers'. + +At four o'clock he had received a hasty note signed "Fidelia Oldaker," +penned in the fine, precise script of some young ladies' finishing +school--perhaps extinct now for fifty years--imploring him, if aught of +chivalry survived within his breast, to fetch his young grandfather and +dine with her that evening. Two men had inconsiderately succumbed, at +this eleventh hour, to the prevailing grip-epidemic, and the lady +threw herself confidently on the well-known generosity of the Bines +male--"like one of the big, stout nets those acrobatic people fall into +from their high bars," she concluded. + +Uncle Peter was more than willing. He liked the Oldakers. + +"They're the only sane folks I've met among your friends," he had told +his grandson. He had dined there frequently during the winter, and +professed to be enamoured of the hostess. That fragile but sprightly +bit of antiquity professed in turn to find Uncle Peter a very dangerous +man among the ladies. They flirted outrageously at every opportunity, +and Uncle Peter sent her more violets than many a popular _debutante_ +received that winter. + +Percival, with his new air of Wall Street operator, was inclined to +hesitate. + +"You know I'm up early now, Uncle Peter, to get the day's run of the +markets before I go downtown, and a man can't do much in the way of +dinners when his mind is working all day. Perhaps Mauburn will go." + +But Mauburn was taking Psyche and Mrs. Drelmer to the first night of a +play, and Percival was finally persuaded by the old man to relax, for +one evening, the austerity of his _regime_. + +"But how your pa would love to see you so conscientious," he said, "and +you with Wall Street, or a good part of it, right under your heel, just +like _that_," and the old man ground his heel viciously into the +carpet. + +When Percival found Shepler with Mrs. Van Geist and Miss Milbrey among +the Oldakers' guests, he rejoiced. Now he would talk to her without any +of that old awkward self-consciousness. He was even audacious enough to +insist that Mrs. Oldaker direct him to take Miss Milbrey out to dinner. + +"I claim it as the price of coming, you know, when I was only an +afterthought." + +"You shall be paid, sir," his hostess declared, "if you consider it pay +to sit beside an engaged girl whose mind is full of her _trousseau_. +And here's this captivating young scapegrace relative of yours. What +price does he demand for coming?" and she glanced up at Uncle Peter +with arch liberality in her bright eyes. + +That gentleman bowed low--a bow that had been the admiration of the +smartest society in Marietta County, Ohio, fifty years and more ago. + +"I'm paid fur coming by coming," he replied, urbanely. + +"There, now!" cried his hostess, "that's pretty, and means something. +You shall take me in for that." + +"I'll have to give you a credit-slip, ma'am. You've overpaid me." And +Mrs. Oldaker, with a coy fillip of her fan, called him a naughty boy. + +"Here, Rulon," she called to Shepler, "are two young daredevils who've +been good enough to save me as many empty chairs. Now you shall take +out Cornelia, and this juvenile sprig shall relieve you of Avice +Milbrey. It's a providence. You engaged couples are always so dull when +you're banished from your own _ciel a deux_." + +Shepler bowed and greeted the two men. Percival sought Miss Milbrey, +who was with her aunt at the other side of the old-fashioned room, a +room whose brocade hangings had been imported from England in the days +of the Georges, and whose furniture was fabricated in the time when +France was suffering its last kings. + +He no longer felt the presence of anything overt between them. The girl +herself seemed to have regained the charming frankness of her first +manner with him. Their relationship was defined irrevocably. No +uncertainty of doubt or false seeming lurked now under the surface to +perplex and embarrass. The relief was felt at once by each. + +"I'm to have the pleasure of taking you in, Miss Milbrey--hostess +issues special commands to that effect." + +"Isn't that jolly! We've not met for an age." + +"And I've such an appetite for talk with you, I fear I won't eat a +thing. If I'd known you were to be here I'd have taken the forethought +to eat a gored ox, or something--what is the proverb, 'better a dinner +of stalled ox where--'" + +"'Where talk is,'" suggested Miss Milbrey, quickly. + +"Oh, yes--.' than to have your own ox gored without a word of talk.' I +remember it perfectly now. And--there--we're moving on to this feast of +reason--" + +"And the flow of something superior to reason," finished Shepler, who +had come over for Mrs. Van Geist. "Oldaker has some port that lay in +the wood in his cellar for forty years--and went around the world +between keel and canvas." + +"That sounds good," said Percival, and then to Miss Milbrey, "But come, +let us reason together." His next sentiment, unuttered, was that the +soft touch of her hand under his arm was headier than any drink, how +ancient soever. + +Throughout the dinner their entire absorption in each other was all but +unbroken. Percival never could remember who had sat at his left; and +Miss Milbrey's right-hand neighbour saw more than the winning line of +her profile but twice. Percival began-- + +"Do you know, I've never been able to classify you at all. I never +could tell how to take you." + +"I'll tell you a secret, Mr. Bines; I think I'm not to be taken at all. +I've begun to suspect that I'm like one of those words that haven't any +rhyme--like 'orange' and 'month,' you know." + +"But you find poetry in life? I do." + +"Plenty of verse--not much poetry." + +"How would you order life now, if the little old wishing-lady came to +your door and knocked?" + +And they plunged forthwith, buoyed by youth's divine effrontery, into +mysteries that have vexed diners, not less than hermit sages, since +"the fog of old time" first obscured truth. Of life and death--the +ugliness of life, and the beauty of death-- + +"... even as death might smile, Petting the plumes of some surprised +soul," + +quoted the girl. Of loving and hating, they talked; of trying and +failing--of the implacable urge under which men must strive in the face +of certain defeat--of the probability that men are purposely born +fools, since, if they were born wise they would refuse to strive; +whereupon life and death would merge, and naught would prevail but a +vast indifference. In fact, they were very deep, and affected to +consider these grave matters seriously. They affected that they never +habitually thought of lesser concerns. And they had the air of +listening to each other as if they were weighing the words judicially, +and were quite above any mere sensuous considerations of personality. + +Once they emerged long enough to hear the hostess speaking, as it were +of yesterday, of a day when the new "German cotillion" was introduced, +to make a sensation in New York; of a time when the best ballrooms were +heated with wood stoves and lighted with lamps; and of a later but +apparently still remote time when the Assemblies were "really, quite +the smartest function of the season." + +In another pause, they caught the kernel of a story being told by Uncle +Peter: + +"The girl was a half-breed, but had a fair skin and the biggest shock +of hair you ever saw--bright yellow hair. She was awful proud of her +hair. So when her husband, Clem Dewler, went to this priest, Father +McNally, and complained that she _would_ run away from the shack and +hang around the dance-halls down at this mining-camp, Father McNally +made up his mind to learn her a lesson. Well, he goes down and finds +her jest comin' out of Tim Healy's place with two other women. He +rushes up to her, catches hold of this big shock of hair that was +trailin' behind her, and before she knew what was comin' he whipped out +a big pair of sharp, shiny shears, and made as if he was going to give +her a hair-cut. At that she begins to scream, but the priest he +wouldn't let go. 'I'll cut it off,' he says, 'close,' he says, 'if you +don't swear on this crucifix to be a good squaw to Clem Dewler, and +never set so much as one of your little feet in these places again.' +She could feel the shears against her hair, and she was so scared she +swore like he told her. And so she was that afraid of losin' her fine +yellow hair afterward, knowin' Father McNally was a man that didn't +make no idle threats, that she kept prim and proper--fur a half-breed." + +"That poor creature had countless sisters," was Miss Milbrey's comment +to Percival. And they fell together once more in deciding whether, +after all, the brightest women ever cease to believe that men are +influenced most by surface beauties. They fired each other's enthusiasm +for expressing opinions, and they took the opinions very seriously. Yet +of their meeting, to an observer, their talk would have seemed the part +least worth recording. + +Twice Percival caught Shepler's regard bent upon them. It amused him to +think he detected signs of uneasiness back of the survey, cool, +friendly, and guarded as it was on the surface. + +At parting, later, Percival spoke for the first time to Miss Milbrey of +her engagement. + +"You must know that I wish you all the happiness you hope for yourself; +and if I were as lucky in love as Mr. Shepler has been, I surely would +never dare to gamble in anything else--you know the saying." + +"And you, Mr. Bines. I've been hearing so much of your marriage. I hope +the rumour I heard to-day is true, that your engagement has been +announced." + +He laughed. + +"Come, now! That's all gossip, you know; not a word of truth in it, and +it's been very annoying to us both. Please demolish that rumour on my +authority next time you hear it, thoroughly, so they can make nothing +out of the pieces." + +Miss Milbrey showed genuine disappointment. + +"I had thought, naturally--" + +"The only member of that household I could marry is not suited to my +age." + +Miss Milbrey was puzzled. + +"But, really, she's not so old." + +"No, not so very old. Still, she's going on five, and you know how time +flies--and so much disparity in our ages--twenty-one years or so; no, +she was no wife for me, although I don't mind confessing that there has +been an affair between us, but--really you can't imagine what a +frivolous and trifling creature she is." + +Miss Milbrey laughed now, rather painfully he fancied. + +"You mean the baby? Isn't she a little dear?" + +"I'll tell you something, just between us--the baby's mother is--well, +I like her--but she's a joke. That's all, a joke." + +"I beg your pardon for talking of it. It had seemed so definite. +They're waiting for me--good night--_so_ glad to have seen you--and, +nevertheless, she's a very _practical_ joke!" + +He watched her with frank, utter longing, as she moved over to Mrs. +Oldaker, tender, girlish, appealing, with the old air of timid +wistfulness, kept guard over by her woman's knowledge. His fingers +still curved, as if they were loth to forget the clasp of her warm, +firm little hand. She was gowned in white fleece, and she wore one pink +rose where she could bend her blue eyes down upon it. + +And she was going to marry Shepler for his millions. She might even yet +regret that she had not waited for him, when his own name had been +written up as the wizard of markets, and the master of millions. Since +money was all she loved, he would show her that even in that he was +pre-eminent; though he would still have none of her. And as for +Shepler--he wondered if Shepler knew just what risks he might be taking +on. + +"Oh, Muetterchen! Wasn't it the jolliest evening?" + +They were in the carriage. + +"Did you and Mr. Bines enjoy yourselves as much as you seemed to?" + +"And isn't his grandfather an old dear? What an interesting little +story about that woman. I know just how she felt. You see, sir," she +turned to Shepler, "there is always a way to manage a woman--you must +find her weakness." + +"He's a very unusual old chap," said Shepler. "I had occasion not long +since to tell him that a certain business plan he proposed was entirely +without precedent. His answer was characteristic. He said, 'We _make_ +precedents in the West when we can't find one to suit us.' It seemed so +typical of the people to me. You never can tell what they may do. You +see they were started out of old ruts by some form of necessity, almost +every one of them, when they went West, and as necessity stimulates +only the brightest people to action, those Westerners are apt to be of +a pretty keen, active, and sturdy mental type. As this old chap says, +they never hang back for lack of precedents; they go ahead and make +them. They're not afraid to take sudden queer steps. But, really, I +like them both." + +"So do I," said his betrothed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street + + +At the beginning of April, the situation in the three stocks Percival +had bought so heavily grew undeniably tense. Consolidated Copper went +from 109 to 103 in a week. But Percival's enthusiasm suffered little +abatement from the drop. "You see," he reminded Uncle Peter, "it isn't +exactly what I expected, but it's right in line with it, so it doesn't +alarm me. I knew those fellows inside were bound to hammer it down if +they could. It wouldn't phase me a bit if it sagged to 95." + +"My! My!" Uncle Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you +master this business certainly does win _me_. I tell you, it's a mighty +good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other +side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where +everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there, +everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the +best of it. I told that to one of them smarties last night. But you'll +put them in their place all right. You know both ends of the game and +the middle. We certainly got a right to be proud of you, son. Dan'l J. +liked big propositions himself--but, well, I'd just like to have him +see the nerve you've showed, that's all." + +Uncle Peter's professions of confidence were unfailing, and Percival +took new hope and faith in his judgment from them daily. + +Nevertheless, as the weeks passed, and the mysterious insiders +succeeded in their design of keeping the stock from rising, he came to +feel a touch of anxiety. More, indeed, than he was able to communicate +to Uncle Peter, without confessing outright that he had lost faith in +himself. That he was unable to do, even if it were true, which he +doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the +Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old +man's confidence in the young man's acumen was invulnerable. No shaft +that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he +was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's faith in his +luck. + +"You got your father's head in business matters," was Uncle Peter's +invariable response to any suggestion of failure. "I know that +much--spite of what all these gossips say--and that's all I _want_ to +know. And of course you can't ever be no Shepler 'less you take your +share of chances. Only don't ask _my_ advice. You're master of the +game, and we're all layin' right smack down on your genius fur it." + +Whereupon the young man, with confidence in himself newly inflated, +would hurry off to the stock tickers. He had ceased to buy the stocks +outright, and for several weeks had bought only on margins. + +"There was one rule in poker your pa had," said Uncle Peter. "If a hand +is worth calling on, it's worth raising on. He jest never _would_ call. +If he didn't think a hand was worth raising, he'd bunch it in with the +discards, and wait fur another deal. I don't know much about the game, +but _he_ said it was a sound rule, and if it was sound in poker, why +it's got to be sound in this game. That's all I can tell you. You know +what you hold, and if 'tain't a hand to lay down, it must be a hand to +raise on. Of course, if you'd been brash and ignorant in your first +calculations--if you'd made a fool of yourself at the start--but +shucks! you're the son of Daniel J. Bines, ain't you?" + +The rule and the clever provocation had their effect. + +"I'll raise as long as I have a chip left, Uncle Peter. Why, only +to-day I had a tip that came straight from Shepler, though he never +dreamed it would reach me. That Pacific Cable bill is going to be +rushed through at this session of Congress, sure, and that means enough +increased demand to send Consolidated back where it was. And then, when +it comes out that they've got those Rio Tinto mines by the throat, +well, this anvil chorus will have to stop, and those Federal Oil sharks +and Shepler will be wondering how I had the face to stay in." + +The published rumours regarding Consolidated began to conflict very +sharply. Percival read them all hungrily, disregarding those that did +not confirm his own opinions. He called them irresponsible newspaper +gossip, or believed them to be inspired by the clique for its own ends. + +He studied the history of copper until he knew all its ups and downs +since the great electrical development began in 1887. When Fouts, the +broker he traded most heavily with, suggested that the Consolidated +Company was skating on thin ice, that it might, indeed, be going +through the same experience that shattered the famous Secretan corner a +dozen years before, Percival pointed out unerringly the vital +difference in the circumstances. The Consolidated had reduced the +production of its controlled mines, and the price was bound to be +maintained. When his adviser suggested that the companies not in the +combine might cut the price, he brought up the very lively rumours of a +"gentlemen's agreement" with the "non-combine" producers. + +"Of course, there's Calumet and Hecla. I know that couldn't be gunned +into the combination. They could pay dividends with copper at ten cents +a pound. But the other independents know which side of their stock is +spread with dividends, all right." + +When it was further suggested that the Rio Tinto mines had sold ahead +for a year, with the result that European imports from the United +States had fallen off, and that the Consolidated could not go on for +ever holding up the price, Percival said nothing. + +The answer to that was the secret negotiations for control of the +European output, which would make the Consolidated master of the copper +world. Instead of disclosing this, he pretended craftily to be +encouraged by the mere generally hopeful outlook in all lines. Western +Trolley, too, might be overcapitalised, and Union Cordage might also be +in the hands of a piratical clique; but the demand for trolley lines +was growing every day, and cordage products were not going out of +fashion by any means. + +"You see," he said to his adviser, "here's what the most conservative +man in the Street says in this afternoon's paper. 'That copper must +necessarily break badly, and the whole boom collapse I do not believe. +There is enough prosperity to maintain a strong demand for the metal +through another year at least. As to Western Trolley and Union Cordage, +the two other stocks about which doubt is now being so widely expressed +in the Street, I am persuaded that they are both due to rise, not +sensationally, but at a healthy upward rate that makes them sound +investments!' + +"There," said Percival, "there's the judgment of a man that knows the +game, but doesn't happen to have a dollar in either stock, and he +doesn't know one or two things that I know, either. Just hypothecate +ten thousand of those Union Cordage shares and five thousand Western +Trolley, and buy Consolidated on a twenty per cent margin. I want to +get bigger action. There's a good rule in poker: if your hand is worth +calling, it's worth raising." + +"I like your nerve," said the broker. + +"Well, I know some one who has a sleeve with something up it, that's +all." + +By the third week in April, it was believed that his holdings of +Consolidated were the largest in the Street, excepting those of the +Federal Oil people. Uncle Peter was delighted by the magnitude of his +operations, and by his newly formed habits of industry. + +"It'll be the makings of the boy," he said to Mrs. Bines in her son's +presence. "Not that I care so much myself about all the millions he'll +pile up, but it gives him a business training, and takes him out of the +pin-head class. I bet Shepler himself will be takin' off his silk hat +to your son, jest as soon as he's made this turn in copper--if he has +enough of Dan'l J.'s grit to hang on--and I think he has." + +"They needn't wait another day for me," Percival told him later. "The +family treasure is about all in now, except ma's amethyst earrings, and +the hair watch-chain Grandpa Cummings had. Of course I'm holding what +I promised for Burman. But that rise can't hold off much longer, and +the only thing I'll do, from now on, is to hock a few blocks of the +stock I bought outright, and buy on margins, so's to get bigger +action." + +"My! My! you jest do fairly dazzle me," exclaimed the old man, +delightedly. "Oh, I guess your pa wouldn't be at all proud of you if he +could see it. I tell you, this family's all right while you keep +hearty." + +"Well, I'm not pushing my chest out any," said the young man, with +becoming modesty, "but I don't mind telling you it will be the biggest +thing ever pulled off down there by any one man." + +"That's the true Western spirit," declared Uncle Peter, beside himself +with enthusiasm. "We do things big when we bother with 'em at all. We +ain't afraid of any pikers like Shepler, with his little two and five +thousand lots. Oh! I can jest hear 'em callin' you hard names down in +that Wall Street--Napoleon of Finance and Copper King and all like +that--in about thirty days!" + +He accepted Percival's invitation that afternoon to go down into the +Street with him. They stopped for a moment in the visitors' gallery of +the Stock Exchange and looked down into the mob of writhing, +dishevelled, shouting brokers. In and out, the throng swirled upon +itself, while above its muddy depths surged a froth of hands in +frenzied gesticulation. The frantic movement and din of shrieks +disturbed Uncle Peter. + +"Faro is such a lot quieter game," was his comment; "so much more ca'm +and restful. What a pity, now, 'tain't as Christian!" + +Then they made the rounds of the brokers' offices in New, Broad, and +Wall Streets. + +They reached the office of Fouts, in the, latter street, just as the +Exchange had closed. In the outer trading-room groups of men were still +about the tickers, rather excitedly discussing the last quotations. +Percival made his way toward one of them with a dim notion that he +might be concerned. He was relieved when he saw Gordon Blythe, suave +and smiling, in the midst of the group, still regarding the tape he +held in his hands. Blythe, too, had plunged in copper. He had been one +of the few as sanguine as Percival--and Blythe's manner now reassured +him. Copper had obviously not gone wrong. + +"Ah, Blythe, how did we close? Mr. Blythe, my grandfather, Mr. Bines." + +Blythe was the model of easy, indolent, happy middle-age. His tall hat, +frock coat with a carnation in the lapel, the precise crease of his +trousers, the spickness of his patent-leathers and his graceful +confidence of manner, proclaimed his mind to be free from all but the +pleasant things of life. He greeted Uncle Peter airily. + +"Come down to see how we do it, eh, Mr. Bines? It's vastly engrossing, +on my word. Here's copper just closed at 93, after opening strong this +morning at 105. I hardly fancied, you know, it could fall off so many +of those wretched little points. Rumours that the Consolidated has made +large sales of the stuff in London at sixteen, I believe. One never can +be quite aware of what really governs these absurd fluctuations." + +Percival was staring at Blythe in unconcealed amazement. He turned, +leaving Uncle Peter still chatting with him, and sought Fouts in the +inner office. When he came out ten minutes later Uncle Peter was +waiting for him alone. + +"Your friend Mr. Blythe is a clever sort of man, jolly and +light-hearted as a boy." + +"Let's go out and have a drink, before we go up-town." + +In the _cafe_ of the Savarin, to which he led Uncle Peter, they saw +Blythe again. He was seated at one of the tables with a younger man. +Uncle Peter and Percival sat down at a table near by. + +Blythe was having trouble about his wine. + +"Now, George," he was saying, "give us a real _lively_ pint of wine. +You see, yourself, that cork isn't fresh; show it to Frank there, and +look at the wine itself--come now, George! Hardly a bubble in it! Tell +Frank I'll leave it to him, by Gad! if this bottle is right." + +The waiter left with the rejected wine, and they heard Blythe resume to +his companion, with the relish of a connoisseur: + +"It's simply a matter of genius, old chap--you understand?--to tell +good wine--that is really to discriminate finely. If a chap's not born +with the gift he's an ass to think he can acquire it. Sometime you've a +setter pup that looks fit--head good, nose all right--all the +markings--but you try him out and you know in half an hour he'll never +do in the world. Then it's better to take him out back of the barn and +shoot him, by Gad! Rather than have his strain corrupt the rest of the +kennel. He can't acquire the gift, and no more can a chap acquire this +gift. Ah! I was right, was I, George? Look how different that cork is." + +He sipped the bubbling amber wine with cautious and exacting +appreciation. As the waiter would have refilled the glasses, Blythe +stopped him. + +"Now, George, let me tell you something. You're serving at this moment +the only gentleman's drink. Do it right, George. Listen! Never refill a +gentleman's glass until it's quite empty. Do you know why? Think, +George! You pour fresh wine into stale wine and what have +you?--neither. I've taught you something, George. Never fill a glass +till it's empty." + +"It beats me," said Uncle Peter, when Blythe and his companion had +gone, "how easy them rich codgers get along. That fellow must 'a' made +a study of wines, and nothing worse ever bothers him than a waiter +fillin' his glass wrong." + +"You'll be beat more," answered Percival, "when I tell you this slump +in copper has just ruined him--wiped out every cent he had. He'd just +taken it off the ticker when we found him in Fouts's place there. He's +lost a million and a half, every cent he had in the world, and he has a +wife and two grown daughters." + +"Shoo! you don't say! And I'd have sworn he didn't care a row of pins +whether copper went up or down. He was a lot more worried about that +champagne. Well, well! he certainly is a game loser. I got more respect +fur him now. This town does produce thoroughbreds, you can't deny +that." + +"Uncle Peter, she's down to 93, and I've had to margin up a good bit. I +didn't think it could get below 95 at the worst." + +"Oh, I can't bother about them things. Just think of when she booms." + +"I do--but say--do you think we better pinch our bets?" + +Uncle Peter finished his glass of beer. + +"Lord! don't ask _me_," he replied, with the unconcern of perfect +trust. "Of course if you've lost your nerve, or if you think all these +things you been tellin' me was jest some one foolin' you--" + +"No, I know better than that, and I haven't lost my nerve. After all, +it only means that the crowd is looking for a bigger rake-off." + +"Your pa always kept _his_ nerve," said Uncle Peter. "I've known him to +make big money by keepin' it when other men lost theirs. Of course he +had genius fur it, and you're purty young yet--" + +"I only thought of it for a minute. I didn't really mean it." + +They read the next afternoon that Gordon Blythe had been found dead of +asphyxiation in a little down-town hotel under circumstances that left +no doubt of his suicide. + +"That man wa'n't so game as we thought," said Uncle Peter. "He's left +his family to starve. Now your pa was a game loser fur fair. Dan'l J. +would'a' called fur another deck." + +"And copper's up two points to-day," said Percival, cheerfully. He had +begun to be depressed with forebodings of disaster, and this slight +recovery was cheering. + +"By the way," he continued, "there may be another gas-jet blown out in +a few days. That party, you know, our friend from Montana, has been +selling Consolidated right and left. Where do you suppose she got any +such tip as that? Well, I'm buying and she's selling, and we'll have +that money back. She'll be wiped off the board when Consolidated +soars." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +How the Chinook Came to Wall Street + + +The loss of much money is commonly a subject to be managed with brevity +and aversion by one who sits down with the right reverence for sheets +of clean paper. To bewail is painful. To affect lightness, on the other +hand, would, in this age, savour of insincerity, if not of downright +blasphemy. More than a bare recital of the wretched facts, therefore, +is not seemly. + +The Bines fortune disappeared much as a heavy fall of snow melts under +the Chinook wind. + +That phenomenon is not uninteresting. We may picture a far-reaching +waste of snow, wind-furrowed until it resembles a billowy white sea +frozen motionless. The wind blows half a gale and the air is full of +fine ice-crystals that sting the face viciously. The sun, lying low on +the southern horizon, seems a mere frozen globe, with lustrous pink +crescents encircling it. + +One day the wind backs and shifts. A change portends. Even the herds of +half-frozen range cattle sense it by some subtle beast-knowledge. They +are no longer afraid to lie down as they may have been for a week. The +danger of freezing has passed. The temperature has been at fifty +degrees below zero. Now, suddenly it begins to rise. The air is +scarcely in motion, but occasionally it descends as out of a +blast-furnace from overhead. To the southeast is a mass of dull black +clouds. Their face is unbroken. But the upper edges are ragged, torn by +a wind not yet felt below. Two hours later its warmth comes. In ten +minutes the mercury goes up thirty-five degrees. The wind comes at a +thirty-mile velocity. It increases in strength and warmth, blowing with +a mighty roar. + +Twelve hours afterward the snow, three feet deep on a level, has +melted. There are bald, brown hills everywhere to the horizon, and the +plains are flooded with water. The Chinook has come and gone. In this +manner suddenly went the Bines fortune. + +April 30th, Consolidated Copper closed at 91. Two days later, May 2d, +the same ill-fated stock closed at 5l--a drop of forty points. Roughly +the decline meant the loss of a hundred million dollars to the fifteen +thousand share-holders. From every city of importance in the country +came tales more or less tragic of holdings wiped out, of ruined +families, of defalcations and suicides. The losses in New York City +alone were said to be fifty millions. A few large holders, reputed to +enjoy inside information, were said to have put their stock aside and +"sold short" in the knowledge of what was coming. Such tales are always +popular in the Street. + +Others not less popular had to do with the reasons for the slump. Many +were plausible. A deal with the Rothschilds for control of the Spanish +mines had fallen through. Or, again, the slaughter was due to the +Shepler group of Federal Oil operators, who were bent on forcing some +one to unload a great quantity of the stock so that they might absorb +it. The immediate causes were less recondite. The Consolidated Company, +so far from controlling the output, was suddenly shown to control +actually less than fifty per cent of it. Its efforts to amend or repeal +the hardy old law of Supply and Demand had simply met with the +indifferent success that has marked all such efforts since the first +attempted corner in stone hatchets, or mastodon tusks, or whatever it +may have been. In the language of one of its newspaper critics, the +"Trust" had been "founded on misconception and prompted along lines of +self-destruction. Its fundamental principles were the restriction of +product, the increase of price, and the throttling of competition, a +trinity that would wreck any combination, business, political, or +social." + +With this generalisation we have no concern. As to the copper +situation, the comment was pat. It had been suddenly disclosed, not +only that no combination could be made to include the European mines, +but that the Consolidated Company had an unsold surplus of 150,000,000 +pounds of copper; that it was producing 20,000,000 pounds a month more +than could be sold, and that it had made large secret sales abroad at +from two to three cents below the market price. + +As if fearing that these adverse conditions did not sufficiently ensure +the stock's downfall, the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators beat +it down further with what was veritably a golden sledge. That is, they +exported gold at a loss. At a time when obligations could have been met +more cheaply with bought bills they sent out many golden cargoes at an +actual loss of three hundred dollars on the half million. As money was +already dear, and thus became dearer, the temptation and the means to +hold copper stock, in spite of all discouragements, were removed from +the paths of hundreds of the harried holders. + +Incidentally, Western Trolley had gone into the hands of a receiver, a +failure involving another hundred million dollars, and Union Cordage +had fallen thirty-five points through sensational disclosures as to +its overcapitalisation. + +Into this maelstrom of a panic market the Bines fortune had been sucked +with a swiftness so terrible that the family's chief advising member +was left dazed and incredulous. + +For two days he clung to the ticker tape as to a life line. He had +committed the millions of the family as lightly as ever he had staked a +hundred dollars on the turn of a card or left ten on the change-tray +for his waiter. + +Then he had seen his cunningly built foundations, rested upon with +hopes so high for three months, melt away like snow when the blistering +Chinook comes. + +It has been thought wise to adopt two somewhat differing similes in the +foregoing, in order that the direness of the tragedy may be +sufficiently apprehended. + +The morning of the first of the two last awful days, he was called to +the office of Fouts and Hendricks by telephone. + +"Something going to happen in Consolidated to-day." + +He had hurried down-town, flushed with confidence. He knew there was +but one thing _could_ happen. He had reached the office at ten and +heard the first vicious little click of the ticker--that beating heart +of the Stock Exchange--as it began the unemotional story of what men +bought and sold over on the floor. Its inventor died in the poorhouse, +but Capital would fare badly without his machine. Consolidated was down +three points. The crowd about the ticker grew absorbed at once. Reports +came in over the telephone. The bears had made a set for the stock. It +began to slump rapidly. As the stock was goaded down, point by point, +the crowd of traders waxed more excited. + +As the stock fell, the banks requested the brokers to margin up their +loans, and the brokers, in turn, requested Percival to margin up his +trades. The shares he had bought outright went to cover the shortage in +those he had bought on a twenty per cent margin. Loans were called +later, and marginal accounts wiped out with appalling informality. + +Yet when Consolidated suddenly rallied three points just at the close +of the day's trading, he took much comfort in it as an omen of the +morrow. That night, however, he took but little satisfaction in Uncle +Peter's renewed assurances of trust in his acumen. Uncle Peter, he +decided all at once, was a fatuous, doddering old man, unable to +realise that the whole fortune was gravely endangered. And with the +gambler's inveterate hope that luck must change he forbore to undeceive +the old man. + +Uncle Peter went with him to the office next morning, serenely +interested in the prospects. + +"You got your pa's way of taking hold of big propositions. That's all I +need to know," he reassured the young man, cheerfully. + +Consolidated Copper opened that day at 78, and went by two o'clock to +51. + +Percival watched the decline with a conviction that he was dreaming. He +laughed to think of his relief when he should awaken. The crowd surged +about the ticker, and their voices came as from afar. Their acts all +had the weird inconsequence of the people we see in dreams. Yet +presently it had gone too far to be amusing. He must arouse himself and +turn over on his side. In five minutes, according to the dream, he had +lost five million dollars as nearly as he could calculate. Losing a +million a minute, even in sleep, he thought, was disquieting. + +Then upon the tape he read another chapter of disaster. Western Trolley +had gone into the hands of a receiver,--a fine, fat, promising stock +ruined without a word of warning; and while he tried to master this +news the horrible clicking thing declared that Union Cordage was +selling down to 58,--a drop of exactly 35 points since morning. + +Fouts, with a slip of paper in his hand, beckoned him from the door of +his private office. He went dazedly in to him,--and was awakened from +the dream that he had been losing a fortune in his sleep. + +Coming out after a few moments, he went up to Uncle Peter, who had been +sitting, watchful but unconcerned, in one of the armchairs along the +wall. The old man looked up inquiringly. + +"Come inside, Uncle Peter!" + +They went into the private office of Fouts. Percival shut the door, and +they were alone. + +"Uncle Peter, Burman's been suspended on the Board of Trade; Fouts just +had this over his private wire. Corn broke to-day." + +"That so? Oh, well, maybe it was worth a couple of million to find out +Burman plays corn like he plays poker; 'twas if you couldn't get it fur +any less." + +"Uncle Peter, we're wiped out." + +"How, wiped out? What do you mean, son?" + +"We're done, I tell you. We needn't care a damn now where copper goes +to. We're out of it--and--Uncle Peter, we're broke." + +"Out of copper? Broke? But you said--" He seemed to be making an effort +to comprehend. His lack of grasp was pitiful. + +"Out of copper, but there's Western Trolley and that Cordage stock--" + +"Everything wiped out, I tell you--Union Cordage gone down thirty-five +points, somebody let out the inside secrets--and God only knows how far +Western Trolley's gone down." + +"Are you all in?" + +"Every dollar--you knew that. But say," he brightened out of his +despair, "there's the One Girl--a good producer--Shepler knows the +property--Shepler's in this block--" and he was gone. + +The old man strolled out into the trading-room again. A curious grim +smile softened his square jaw for a moment. He resumed his comfortable +chair and took up a newspaper, glancing incidentally at the crowd of +excited men about the tickers. He had about him that air of repose +which comes to big men who have stayed much in big out-of-door +solitudes. + +"Ain't he a nervy old guy?" said a crisp little money-broker to Fouts. +"They're wiped out, but you wouldn't think he cared any more about it +than Mike the porter with his brass polish out there." + +The old man held his paper up, but did not read. + +Percival rushed in by him, beckoning him to the inner room. + +"Shepler's all right about the One Girl. He'll take a mortgage on it +for two hundred thousand if you'll recommend it--only he can't get the +money before to-morrow. There's bound to be a rally in this stock, and +we'll go right back for some of the hair of the--why,--what's the +matter--Uncle Peter!" + +The old man had reeled, and then weakly caught at the top of the desk +with both hands for support. + +"Ruined!" he cried, hoarsely, as if the extent of the calamity had just +borne in upon him. "My God! Ruined, and at my time of life!" He seemed +about to collapse. Percival quickly helped him into a chair, where he +became limp. + +"There, I'm all right. Oh, it's terrible! and we all trusted you so. I +thought you had your pa's brains. I'd 'a' trusted you soon's I would +Shepler, and now look what you led us into--fortune gone--broke--and +all your fault!" + +"Don't, Uncle Peter--don't, for God's sake--not when I'm down! I can't +stand it!" + +"Gamble away your own money--no, that wa'n't enough--take your poor +ma's share and your sister's, and take what little I had to keep me in +my old age--robbed us all--that's what comes of thinkin' a damned +tea-drinkin' fop could have a thimble-full of brains!" + +"Don't, please,--not just now--give it to me good later--to-morrow--all +you want to!" + +"And here I'm come to want in my last days when I'm too feeble to work. +I'll die in bitter privation because I was an old fool, and trusted a +young one." + +"Please don't, Uncle Peter!" + +"You led us in--robbed your poor ma and your sister. I told you I +didn't know anything about it and you talked me into trusting you--I +might 'a' known better." + +"Can't you stop awhile--just a moment?" + +"Of course I don't matter. Maybe I can hold a drill, or tram ore, or +something, but I can't support your ma and Pishy like they ought to be, +with my rheumatiz comin' on again, too. And your ma'll have to take in +boarders, and do washin' like as not, and think of poor Pishy--prob'ly +she'll have to teach school or clerk in a store--poor Pish--she'll be +lucky now if she can marry some common scrub American out in them +hills--like as not one of them shoe-clerks in the Boston Cash Store at +Montana City! And jest when I was lookin' forward to luxury and palaces +in England, and everything so grand! How much you lost?" "That's right, +no use whining! Nearly as I can get the round figures of it, about +twelve million." + +"Awful--awful! By Cripes! that man Blythe that done himself up the +other night had the right of it. What's the use of living if you got to +go to the poorhouse?" + +"Come, come!" said Percival, alarm over Uncle Peter crowding out his +other emotions. "Be a game loser, just as you said pa would be. Sit up +straight and make 'em bring on another deck." + +He slapped the old man on the back with simulated cheerfulness; but the +despairing one only cowered weakly under the blow. + +"We can't--we ain't got the stake for a new deck. Oh, dear! think of +your ma and me not knowin' where to turn fur a meal of victuals at our +time of life." + +Percival was being forced to cheerfulness in spite of himself. + +"Come, it isn't as bad as that, Uncle Peter. We've got properties left, +and good ones, too." + +Uncle Peter weakly waved the hand of finished discouragement. "Hush, +don't speak of that. Them properties need a manager to make 'em pay--a +plain business man--a man to stay on the ground and watch 'em and develop +'em with his brains--a young man with his health! What good am I--a poor, +broken-down old cuss, bent double with rheumatiz--almost--I'm ashamed of +you fur suggesting such a thing!" + +"I'll do it myself--I never thought of asking you." + +Uncle Peter emitted a nasal gasp of disgust. + +"You--you--you'd make a purty manager of anything, wouldn't you! As if +you could be trusted with anything again that needs a schoolboy's +intelligence. Even if you had the brains, you ain't got the taste nor +the sperrit in you. You're too lazy--too triflin'. _You_, a-goin' back +there, developin' mines, and gettin' out ties, and lumber, and breeding +shorthorns, and improvin' some of the finest land God ever made--_you_ +bein' sober and industrious, and smart, like a business man has got to +be out there nowadays. That ain't any bonanza country any more; 1901 +ain't like 1870; don't figure on that. You got to work the low-grade +ore now for a few dollars a ton, and you got to work it with brains. +No, sir, that country ain't what it used to be. There might 'a' been a +time when you'd made your board and clothes out there when things come +easier. Now it's full of men that hustle and keep their mind on their +work, and ain't runnin' off to pink teas in New York. It takes a man +with some of the brains your pa had to make the game pay now. But +_you_--don't let me hear any more of _that_ nonsense!" + +Percival had entered the room pale. He was now red. The old man's +bitter contempt had flushed him into momentary forgetfulness of the +disaster. + +"Look here, Uncle Peter, you've been telling me right along I _did_ +have my father's head and my father's ways and his nerve, and God knows +what I _didn't_ have that he had!" + +"I was fooled,--I can't deny it. What's the use of tryin' to crawl out +of it? You did fool me, and I own up to it; I thought you had some +sense, some capacity; but you was only like him on the surface; you +jest got one or two little ways like his, that's all--Dan'l J. now was +good stuff all the way through. He might 'a' guessed wrong on copper, +but he'd 'a' saved a get-away stake or borrowed one, and he'd 'a' piked +back fur Montana to make his pile right over--and he'd 'a' _made_ it, +too--that was the kind of man your pa was--he'd 'a' made it!" + +"I _have_ saved a get-away stake." + +"Your pa had the head, I tell you--and the spirit--" + +"And, by God, I'll show you I've got the head. You think because I wanted +to live here, and because I made this wrong play that I'm like all these +pinheads you've seen around here. I'll show you different!--I'll fool +you." + +"Now don't explode!" said the old man, wearily. "You meant well, poor +fellow--I'll say that fur you; you got a good heart. But there's lots +of good men that ain't good fur anything in particular. You've got a +good heart--yes--you're all right from the neck down." + +"See here," said Percival, more calmly, "listen: I've got you all into +this thing, and played you broke against copper; and I'm going to get +you out--understand that?" + +The old man looked at him pityingly. + +"I tell you I'm going to get you out. I'm going back there, and get +things in action, and I'm going to stay by them. I've got a good idea +of these properties--and you hear me, now--I'll finish with a +bank-roll that'll choke Red Bank Canon." + +Fouts knocked and came in. + +"Now you go along up-town, Uncle Peter. I want a few minutes with Mr. +Fouts, and I'll come to your place at seven." + +The old man arose dejectedly. + +"Don't let me interfere a minute with your financial operations. I'm +too old a man to be around in folks' way." + +He slouched out with his head bent. + +A moment later Percival remembered his last words, also his reference +to Blythe. He was seized with fear for what he might do in his despair. +Uncle Peter would act quickly if his mind had been made up. + +He ran out into Wall Street, and hurried up to Broadway. A block off on +that crowded thoroughfare he saw the tall figure of Uncle Peter turning +into the door of a saloon. He might have bought poison. He ran the +length of the block and turned in. + +Uncle Peter stood at one end of the bar with a glass of creamy beer in +front of him. At the moment Percival entered he was enclosing a large +slab of Swiss cheese between two slices of rye bread. + +He turned and faced Percival, looking from him to his sandwich with +vacant eyes. + +"I'm that wrought up and distressed, son, I hardly know what I'm doin'! +Look at me now with this stuff in my hands." + +"I just wanted to be sure you were all right," said Percival, greatly +relieved. + +"All right," the old man repeated. "All right? My God,--ruined! There's +nothin' left to do now." + +He looked absently at the sandwich, and bit a generous semicircle into +it. + +"I don't see how you can eat, Uncle Peter. It's so horrible!" + +"I don't myself; it ain't a healthy appetite--can't be--must be some kind +of a fever inside of me--I s'pose--from all this trouble. And now I've +come to poverty and want in my old age. Say, son, I believe there's jest +one thing you can do to keep me from goin' crazy." + +"Name it, Uncle Peter. You bet I'll do it!" + +"Well, it ain't much--of course I wouldn't expect you to do all them +things you was jest braggin' about back there--about goin' to work the +properties and all that--you would do it if you could, I know--but it +ain't that. All I ask is, don't play this Wall Street game any more. If +we can save out enough by good luck to keep us decently, so your ma +won't have to take boarders, why, don't you go and lose that, too. +Don't mortgage the One Girl. I may be sort of superstitious, but +somehow, I don't believe Wall Street is your game. Course, I don't say +you ain't got a game--of some kind--but I got one of them presentiments +that it ain't Wall Street." "I don't believe it is, Uncle Peter--I +won't touch another share, and I won't go near Shepler again. We'll +keep the One Girl." + +He called a cab for the old man, and saw him started safely off +up-town. + +At the hotel Uncle Peter met Billy Brue flourishing an evening paper +that flared with exclamatory headlines. + +"It's all in the papers, Uncle Peter!" + +"Dead broke! Ain't it awful, Billy!" + +"Say, Uncle Peter, you said you'd raise hell, and you done it. You done +it good, didn't you?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken + + +At seven Percival found Uncle Peter at his hotel, still in abysmal +depths of woe. Together they went to break the awful news to the +unsuspecting Mrs. Bines and Psyche. + +"If you'd only learned something useful while you had the chance," +began Uncle Peter, dismally, as they were driven to the Hightower, "how +to do tricks with cards, or how to sing funny songs, like that little +friend of yours from Baltimore you was tellin' me about. Look at him, +now. He didn't have anything but his own ability. He could tell you +every time what card you was thinkin' about, and do a skirt dance and +give comic recitations and imitate a dog fight out in the back yard, +and now he's married to one of the richest ladies in New York. Why +couldn't you 'a' been learnin' some of them clever things, so you could +'a' married some good-hearted woman with lots of money--but no--" Uncle +Peter's tones were bitter to excess--"you was a rich man's son and +raised in idleness--and now, when the rainy day's come, you can't even +take a white rabbit out of a stove-pipe hat!" + + +To these senile maunderings Percival paid no attention. When they came +into the crowd and lights of the Hightower, he sent the old man up +alone. + +"You go, please, and break it to them, Uncle Peter. I'd rather not be +there just at first. I'll come along in a little bit." + +So Uncle Peter went, protesting that he was a broken old man and a +cumberer of God's green earth. + +Mrs. Bines and Psyche had that moment sat down to dinner. Uncle Peter's +manner at once alarmed them. + +"It's all over," he said, sinking into a chair. + +"Why, what's the matter, Uncle Peter?" + +"Percival has--" + +Mrs. Bines arose quickly, trembling. + +"There--I just knew it--it's all over?--he's been struck by one of +those terrible automobiles--Oh, take me to where he is!" + +"He ain't been run over--he's gone broke-lost all our money; every last +cent." + +"He hasn't been run over and killed?" + +"He's ruined us, I tell you, Marthy,--lost every cent of our money in +Wall Street." + +"Hasn't he been hurt at all?--not even his leg broke or a big gash in +his head and knocked senseless?" + +"That boy never had any sense. I tell you he's lost all our money." + +"And he ain't a bit hurt--nothing the matter with him?" + +"Ain't any more hurt than you or me this minute." + +"You're not fooling his mother, Uncle Peter?" + +"I tell you he's alive and well, only he's lost your money and Pish's +and mine and his own." + +Mrs. Bines breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief, and sat down to +the table again. + +"Well, no need to scare a body out of their wits--scaring his mother to +death won't bring his money back, will it? If it's gone it's gone." + +"But ma, it _is_ awful!" cried Psyche. "Listen to what Uncle Peter +says. We're poor! Don't you understand? Perce has lost all our money." + +Mrs. Bines was eating her soup defiantly. + +"Long's he's got his health," she began. + +"And me windin' up in the poorhouse," whined Uncle Peter. + +"Think of it, ma! Oh, what shall we do?" + +Percival entered. Uncle Peter did not raise his head. Psyche stared at +him. His mother ran to him, satisfied herself that he was sound in wind +and limb, that he had not treacherously donned his summer underwear, +and that his feet were not wet. Then she led him to the table. + +"Now you sit right down here and take some food. If you're all right, +everything is all right." + +With a weak attempt at his old gaiety he began: "Really, Mrs. +Crackenthorpe--" but he caught Psyche's look and had to stop. + +"I'm sorry, sis, clear into my bones. I made an ass of myself--a +regular fool right from the factory." + + +"Never mind, my son; eat your soup," said his mother. And then, with +honest intent to comfort him, "Remember that saying of your pa's, 'it +takes all kinds of fools to make a world.'" + +"But there ain't any fool like a damn fool!" said Uncle Peter, shortly. +"I been a-tellin' him." + +"Well, you just let him alone; you'll spoil his appetite, first thing +you know. My son, eat your soup, now before it gets cold." + +"If I only hadn't gone in so heavy," groaned Percival. "Or, if I'd only +got tied up in some way for a few weeks--something I could tide over." + +"Yes," said Uncle Peter, with a cheerful effort at sarcasm, "it's +always easy to think up a lot of holes you _could_ get out of--some +different kind of a hole besides the one you're in. That's all some +folks can do when they get in one hole, they say, 'Oh, if I was only in +that other one, now, how slick I could climb out!' I ain't ever met a +person yet was satisfied with the hole they was in. Always some +complaint to make about 'em." + +"And I had a chance to get out a week ago." + +"Yes, and you wouldn't take it, of course--you knew too much--swellin' +around here about bein' a Napoleon of finance--and a Shepler and a +Wizard of Wall Street, and all that kind of guff--and you wouldn't take +your chance, and old Mr. Chance went right off and left you, that's +what. I tell you, what some folks need is a breed of chances that'll +stand without hitchin'." + +Percival braced himself and began on his soup. + +[Illustration: _"'REMEMBER THAT SAYING OF YOUR PA'S--IT TAKES ALL KINDS +OF FOOLS TO MAKE A WORLD.'"_] + +"Never you mind, Uncle Peter. You remember what I told you." + +"That takes a different man from what you are. If your pa was alive +now--" + +"But what are we going to do?" cried Psyche. + +"First thing you'll do," said Uncle Peter, promptly, "you go write a +letter to that beau of your'n, tellin' him it's all off. You don't want +to let him be the one to break it because you lost your money, do you? +You go sign his release right this minute." + +"Yes--you're right, Uncle Peter--I suppose it must be done--but the +poor fellow really cares for me." + +"Oh, of course," answered the old man, "it'll fairly break his heart. +You do it just the same!" + +She withdrew, and presently came back with a note which she despatched +to Mauburn. + +Percival and his mother had continued their dinner, the former shaking +his head between the intervals of the old man's lashings, and appearing +to hold silent converse with himself. + +This was an encouraging sign. It is a curious fact that people never +talk to themselves except triumphantly. In moments of real despair we +are inwardly dumb. But observe the holders of imaginary conversations. +They are conquerors to the last one. They administer stinging rebukes +that leave the adversary writhing. They rise to Alpine heights of pure +wisdom and power, leaving him to flounder ignobly in the mire of his +own fatuity. + +They achieve repartee the brilliance of which dazzles him to +contemptible silence. If statistics were at hand we should doubtless +learn that no man has ever talked to himself save by way of +demonstrating his own godlike superiority, and the tawdry impotence of +all obstacles and opponents. Percival talked to himself and mentally +lived the next five years in a style that reduced Uncle Peter to +grudging but imperative awe for his superb gifts of administration. He +bathed in this imaginary future as in the waters of omnipotence. As +time went on he foresaw the shafts of Uncle Peter being turned back +upon him with such deadliness that, by the time the roast came, his +breast was swelling with pity for that senile scoffer. + +Uncle Peter had first declared that the thought of food sickened him. +Prevailed upon at last by Mrs. Bines to taste the soup, he was soon +eating as those present had of late rarely seen him eat. + +"'Tain't a natural appetite, though," he warned them. "It's a kind of a +mania before I go all to pieces, I s'pose." + +"Nonsense! We'll have you all right in a week," said Percival. "Just +remember that I'm going to take care of you." + +"My son can do anything he makes up his mind to," declared Mrs. +Bines--"just anything he lays out to do." + +They talked until late into the night of what he should "lay out" to +do. + +Meantime the stronghold of Mauburn's optimism was being desperately +stormed. + +In an evening paper he had read of Percival's losses. The afternoon +press of New York is not apt to understate the facts of a given case. +The account Mauburn read stated that the young Western millionaire had +beggared his family. + +Mauburn had gone to his room to be alone with this bitter news. He had +begun to face it when Psyche's note of release came. While he was +adjusting this development, another knock came on his door. It was the +same maid who had brought Psyche's note. This time she brought what he +saw to be a cablegram. + +"Excuse me, Mr. Mauburn,--now this came early to-day and you wasn't in +your room, and when you came in Mrs. Ferguson forgot it till just now." + +He tore open the envelope and read: + +"Male twins born to Lady Casselthorpe. Mother and sons doing finely. + +"HINKIE." + +Mauburn felt the rock foundations of Manhattan Island to be crumbling +to dust. For an hour he sat staring at the message. He did not talk to +himself once. + +Then he hurriedly dressed, took the note and the cablegram, and sought +Mrs. Drelmer. + +He found that capable lady gowned for the opera. She received his bits +of news with the aplomb of a resourceful commander. + +"Now, don't go seedy all at once--you've a chance." + +"Hang it all, Mrs. Drelmer, I've not. Life isn't worth living--" + +"Tut, tut! Death isn't, either!" + +"But we'd have been so nicely set up, even without the title, and now +Bines, the clumsy ass, has come this infernal cropper, and knocked +everything on the head. I say, you know, it's beastly!" + +"Hush, and let me think!" + +He paced the floor while his matrimonial adviser tapped a white kidded +foot on the floor, and appeared to read plans of new battle in a +mother-of-pearl paper-knife which she held between the tips of her +fingers. + +"I have it--and we'll do it quickly!--Mrs. Wybert!" + +Mauburn's eyes opened widely. + +"That absurd old Peter Bines has spoken to me of her three times +lately. She's made a lot more money than she had in this same copper +deal, and she'd a lot to begin with. I wondered why he spoke so +enthusiastically of her, and I don't see now, but--" + +"Well?" + +"She'll take you, and you'll be as well set up as you were before. +Listen. I met her last week at the Critchleys. She spoke of having seen +you. I could see she was dead set to make a good marriage. You know she +wanted to marry Fred Milbrey, but Horace and his mother wouldn't hear +of it after Avice became engaged to Rulon Shepler. I'm in the +Critchleys' box to-night and I understand she's to be there. Leave it +to me. Now it's after nine, so run along." + +"But, Mrs. Drelmer, there's that poor girl--she cares for me, and I +like her immensely, you know--truly I do--and she's a trump--see where +she says here she couldn't possibly leave her people now they've come +down--even if matters were not otherwise impossible." + +"Well, you see they're not only otherwise impossible, but every wise +impossible. What could you do? Go to Montana with them and learn to be +an Indian? Don't for heaven's sake sentimentalise! Go home and sleep +like a rational creature. Come in by eleven to-morrow. Even without the +title you'll be a splendid match for Mrs. Wybert, and she must have a +tidy lot of millions after this deal." + +Sorely distressed, he walked back to his lodgings in Thirty-second +Street. Wild, Quixotic notions of sacrifice flooded his mood of +dejection. If the worst came, he could go West with the family and +learn how to do something. And yet--Mrs. Wybert. Of course it must be +that. The other idea was absurd--too wild for serious consideration. He +was thirty years old, and there was only one way for an English +gentleman to live--even if it must break the heart of a poor girl who +had loved him devotedly, and for whom he had felt a steady and genuine +affection. He passed a troubled night. + +Down at the hotel of Peter Bines was an intimation from Mrs. Wybert +herself, bearing upon this same fortuity. When Uncle Peter reached +there at 2 A.M., he found in his box a small scented envelope which he +opened with wonder. + +Two enclosures fell out. One was a clipping from an evening paper, +announcing the birth of twin sons to Lord Casselthorpe. The other was +the card he had left with Mrs. Wybert on the day of his call; his name +on one side, announcing him; on the other the words he had written: + +"Sell Consolidated Copper all you can until it goes down to 65. Do this +up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything you lose. + +"PETER BINES." + +He read the note: + +"ARLINGHAM HOTEL--7.30. + +"MR. PETER BINES: + +"_Dear Sir_:--You funny old man, you. I don't pretend to understand +your game, but you may rely on my secrecy. I am more grateful to you +than words can utter--and I will always be glad to do anything for +you. + +"_Yours very truly_, + +"BLANCHE CATHERTON WYBERT. + +"P. S. About that other matter--him you know--you will see from this +notice I cut from the paper that the party won't get any title at all +now, so a dead swell New York man is in every way more eligible. In +fact the other party is not to be thought of for one moment, as I am +positive you would agree with me." + + * * * * * + +He tore the note and the card to fine bits. + +"It does beat all," he complained later to Billy Brue. "Put a beggar on +horseback and they begin right away to fuss around because the bridle +ain't set with diamonds--give 'em a little, and they want the whole +ball of wax!" + +"That's right," said Billy Brue, with the quick sympathy of the +experienced. "That guy that doped me, he wa'n't satisfied with my good +thirty-dollar wad. Not by no means! He had to go take my breast-pin +nugget from the Early Bird." + +At eleven o'clock the next morning Mauburn waited in Mrs. Drelmer's +drawing-room for the news she might have. + +When that competent person sailed in, he saw temporary defeat written +on her brow. His heart sank to its low level of the night before. + +"Well, I saw the creature," she began, "and it required no time at all +to reach a very definite understanding with her. I had feared it might +be rather a delicate matter, talking to her at once, you know--and we +needed to hurry--but she's a woman one can talk to. She's made heaps of +money, and the poor thing is society-mad--_so_ afraid the modish world +won't take her at her true value--but she talked very frankly about +marriage--really she's cool-headed for all the fire she seems to +have--and the short of it is that she's determined to marry some one of +the smart men here in New York. The creature's fascinated by the very +idea." + +"Did you mention me?" + +"You may be sure I did, but she'd read the papers, and, like so many of +these people, she has no use at all for an Englishman without a title. +Of course I couldn't be too definite with her, but she understood +perfectly, and she let me see she wouldn't hear of it at all. So she's +off the list. But don't give up. Now, there's--" + +But Mauburn was determinedly downcast. + +"It's uncommon handsome of you, Mrs. Drelmer, really, but we'll have to +leave off that, you know. If a chap isn't heir to a peerage or a city +fortune there's no getting on that way." + +"Why, the man is actually discouraged. Now you need some American +pluck, old chap. An American of your age wouldn't give up." + +"But, hang it all! an American knows how to do things, you know, and +like as not he'd nothing to begin with, by Jove! Now I'd a lot to begin +with, and here it's all taken away." + +"Look at young Bines. He's had a lot taken away, but I'll wager he +makes it all back again and more too before he's forty." + +"He might in this country; he'd never do it at home, you know." + +"This country is for you as much as for him. Now, there's Augusta +Hartong--those mixed-pickle millionaires, you know. I was chatting with +Augusta's mother only the other day, and if I'd only suspected this--" + +"Awfully kind of you, Mrs. Drelmer, but it's no use. I'm fairly played +out. I shall go to see Miss Bines, and have a chat with her people, you +know." + +"Now, for heaven's sake, don't make a silly of yourself, whatever you +do! Mind, the girl released you of her own accord!" + +"Awfully obliged. I'll think about it jolly well, first. See you soon. +Good-bye!" And Mauburn was off. + +He was reproaching himself. "That poor girl has been eating her heart +out for a word of love from me. I'm a brute!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +The God in the Machine + + +Uncle Peter next morning was up to a late breakfast with the stricken +family. Percival found him a trifle less bitter, but not less convinced +in his despair. The young man himself had recovered his spirits +wonderfully. The utter collapse of the old man, always so reliant +before, had served to fire all his latent energy. He was now voluble +with plans for the future; not only determined to reassure Uncle Peter +that the family would be provided for, but not a little anxious to +justify the old man's earlier praise, and refute his calumnies of the +night before. + +Mrs. Bines, so complacent overnight, was the most disconsolate one of +the group. With her low tastes she was now regarding the loss of the +fortune as a calamity to the worthy infants of her own chosen field. + +"And there, I'd promised to give five thousand dollars to the new home +for crippled children, and five thousand to St. John's Guild for the +floating hospitals this summer--just yesterday--and I do declare, I +just couldn't stay in New York without money, and see those poor babies +suffer." + +"You couldn't stay in New York without money. Mrs. Good-thing," said +her son,--"not even if you couldn't see a thing; but don't you welsh +on any of your plays--we'll make that ten thousand good if I have to +get a sand-bag, and lay out a few of these lads around here some dark +night." + +"But anyway you can't do much to relieve them. I don't know but what +it's honester to be poor while the authorities allow such goings on." + +"You have the makings of a very dangerous anarchist in you, ma. I've +seen that for some time. But we're an honest family all right now, with +the exception of a few properties that I'll have to sit up with +nights--sit right by their sick-beds and wake them up to take their +meddy every half hour--" + +"Now, my son, don't you get to going without your sleep," began his +mother. + +"And wasn't it lucky about my sending that note to George!" said +Psyche. "Here in this morning's paper we find he isn't going to be Lord +Casselthorpe, after all. What _could_ I have done if we hadn't lost the +money?" From which it might be inferred that certain people who had +declared Miss Bines to be very hard-headed were not so far wrong as +the notorious "casual observer" is very apt to be. + +"Never you mind, sis," said her brother, cheerfully, "we'll be all +right yet. You wait a little, and hear Uncle Peter take back what he's +said about me. Uncle Peter, I'll have you taking off that hat of yours +every time you get sight of me, in about a year." + +He went again over the plans. The income from the One Girl was to be +used in developing the other properties: the stock ranch up on the +Bitter Root, the other mines that had been worked but little and with +crude appliances; the irrigation and land-improvement enterprises, and +the big timber tracts. + +"I got something of an idea of it when Uncle Peter took me around +summer before last, and I learned a lot more getting the stuff together +with Coplen. Now, I'm ready to buckle down to it." He looked at Uncle +Peter, hungry for a word of encouragement to soothe the hurts the old +man had put upon him. + +But all Uncle Peter would say was, "That _sounds_ very well," +compelling the inference that he regarded sound and substance as +phenomena not necessarily related. + +"But give me a chance, Uncle Peter. Just don't jump on me too hard for +a year!" + +"Well, I know that country. There's big chances for a young man with +brains--understand?--that has got all the high-living nonsense blasted +out of his upper levels--but it takes work. You _may_ do +something--there _are_ white blackbirds--but you're on a nasty piece +of road-bed--curves all down on the outside--wheels flatted under every +truck, and you've had her down in the corner so long I doubt if you can +even slow up, say nothin' of reversin'. And think of me gettin' fooled +that way at _my_ time of life," he continued, as if in confidence to +himself. "But then, I always was a terrible poor judge of human +nature." + +"Well, have your own way; but I'll fool you again, while you're +coppering me. You watch, that's all I ask. Just sit around and talk +wise about me all you want to, but watch. Now, I must go down and get +to work with Fouts. Thank the Lord, we didn't have to welsh either, any +more than Mrs. Give-up there did." + +"You won't touch any more stock; you won't get that money from +Shepler?" + +"I won't; I won't go near Shepler, I promise you. Now you'll believe me +in one thing, I know you will, Uncle Peter." He went over to the old +man. + +"I want to thank you for pulling me up on that play as you did last +night. You saved me, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say. But +for you I'd have gone in and dug the hole deeper." He made the old man +shake hands with him--though Uncle Peter's hand remained limp and +cheerless. "You can shake on that, at least. You saved me, and I thank +you for it." + +"Well, I'm glad you got _some_ sense," answered the old man, +grudgingly. "It's always the way in that stock game. There's always +goin' to be a big killing made in Wall Street to-morrow, only to-morrow +never comes. Reminds me of Hollings's old turtle out at +Spokane--Hollings that keeps the Little Gem restaurant. He's got an +enormous big turtle in his cellar that he's kept to my knowledge fur +fifteen years. Every time he gets a little turtle from the coast he +takes a can of red paint down cellar, and touches up the sign on old +Ben's back--they call the turtle Ben, after Hollings's father-in-law +that won't do a thing but lay around the house all the time, and kick +about the meals. Well, the sign on Ben's back is, 'Green Turtle Soup +To-morrow,' and Ben is drug up to the sidewalk in front of the Little +Gem. And Hollings does have turtle-soup next day, but it's always the +little turtles that's killed, and old Ben is hiked back to his boudoir +until another killing comes off. It's a good deal like that in Wall +Street; there's killings made, but the big fellers with the signs on +their back don't worry none." + +"You're right, Uncle Peter. It certainly wasn't my game. Will you come +down with me?" + +"Me? Shucks, no! I'm jest a poor, broken old man, now. I'm goin' down +to the square if I can walk that fur, and set on a bench in the sun." + +Uncle Peter did succeed in walking as far as Madison Square. He walked, +indeed, with a step of amazing springiness for a man of his years. But +there, instead of reposing in the sun, he entered a cab and was driven +to the Vandevere Building, where he sent in his name to Rulon Shepler. + +He was ushered into Shepler's office after a little delay. The two men +shook hands warmly. Uncle Peter was grinning now with rare +enjoyment--he who had in the presence of the family shown naught but +broken age and utter despondency. + +"You rough-housed the boy considerable yesterday." + +"I never believed the fellow would hold on," said Shepler. "I'm sure +you're right in a way about the West. There isn't another man in this +section who'd have plunged as he did. Really, Mr. Bines, the Street's +never known anything like it. Here are those matters." + +He handed the old man a dozen or so certified checks on as many +different banks. Each check had many figures on it. Uncle Peter placed +them in his old leather wallet. + +"I knew he'd plunge," he said, taking the chair proffered him, near +Shepler's desk. "I knew he was a natural born plunger, and I knew that +once he gets an idea in his head you can't blast it out; makes no +difference what he starts on he'll play the string out. His pa was jest +that way. Then of course he wa'n't used to money, and he was ignorant +of this game, and he didn't realise what he was doin'. He sort of +distrusted himself along toward the last--but I kept him swelled up +good and plenty." + +"Well, I'm glad it's over, Mr. Bines. Of course I concede the relative +insignificance of money to a young man of his qualities--" + +"Not its relative insignificance, Mr. Shepler--it's plain damned +insignificance, if you'll excuse the word. If that boy'd gone on he'd +'a' been one of what Billy Brue calls them high-collared Clarences--no +good fur anything but to spend money, and get apoplexy or worse by +forty. As it is now, he'll be a man. He's got his health turned on like +a steam radiator, he's full of responsibility, and he's really +long-headed." + +"How did he take the loss?" + +"He acted jest like a healthy baby does when you take one toy away from +him. He cries a minute, then forgets all about it, and grabs up +something else to play with. His other toy was bad. What he's playin' +with now will do him a lot of good." + +"He's not discouraged, then--he's really hopeful?" + +"That ain't any name fur it. Why, he's actin' this mornin' jest like +the world's his oyster--and every month had an 'r' in it at that." + +"I'm delighted to hear it. I've always been taken with the chap; and +I'm very glad you read him correctly. It seemed to me you were taking a +risk. It would have broken the spirit of most men." + +"Well, you see I knew the stock. It's pushin', fightin' stock. My +grandfather fought his way west to Pennsylvania when that country was +wilder'n Africa, and my father fought his way to Ohio when that was the +frontier. I seen some hard times myself, and this boy's father was a +fighter, too. So I knew the boy had it in him, all right. He's got his +faults, but they don't hurt him none." + +"Will he return West?" + +"He will that--and the West is the only place fur him. He was gettin' +bad notions about his own country here from them folks that's always +crackin' up the 'other side' 'sif there wa'n't any 'this side,' worth +speakin' of in company. This was no place fur him. Mr. Shepler, this +whole country is God's country. I don't talk much about them things, +but I believe in God--a man has to if he lives so much alone in them +wild places as I have--and I believe this country is His favourite. I +believe He set it apart fur great works. The history of the United +States bears me out so fur. And I didn't want any of my stock growin' +up without feelin' that he had the best native land on earth, and +without bein' ready to fight fur it at the drop of the hat. And jest +between you and me, I believe we can raise that kind in the West +better'n you can here in New York. You got a fine handsome town here, +it's a corkin' good place to see--and get out of--but it ain't any +breedin' place--there ain't the room to grow. Now we produce everything +in the West, includin' men. Here you don't do anything but +consume--includin' men. If the West stopped producin' men fur you, +you'd be as bad off as if it stopped producin' food. You can't grow a +big man on this island any more than you can grow wheat out there on +Broadway. You're all right. You folks have your uses. I ain't like one +of these crazy Populists that thinks you're rascals and all like that; +but my point is that you don't get the fun out of life. You don't get +the big feelin's. Out in the West they're the flesh and blood and bone; +and you people here, meanin' no disrespect--you're the dimples and +wrinkles and--the warts. You spend and gamble back and forth with that +money we raise and dig out of the ground, and you think you're gettin' +the best end of it, but you ain't. I found that out thirty-two years +ago this spring. I had a crazy fool notion then to go back there even +when I hadn't gone broke--and I done well to go. And that's why I +wanted that boy back there. And that's why I'm mighty proud of him, to +see he's so hot to go and take hold, like I knew he would be." + +"That's excellent. Now, Mr. Bines, I like him and I dare say you've +done the best thing for him, unusual as it was. But don't grind him. +Might it not be well to ease up a little after he's out there? You +might let it be understood that I am willing to finance any of those +propositions there liberally--" + +"No, no--that ain't the way to handle him. Say, I don't expect to quit +cussin' him fur another thirty days yet. I want him to think he ain't +got a friend on earth but himself. Why, I'd have made this play just as +I have done, Mr. Shepler, if there hadn't been a chance to get back a +cent of it--if we'd had to go plumb broke--back to the West in an +emigrant car, with bologna and crackers to eat, that's what I'd have +done. No, sir, no help fur him!" + +"Aren't you a little hard on him?" + +"Not a bit; don't I know the stock, and know just what he needs? Most +men you couldn't treat as I'm treatin' him; but with him, the harder +you bear down on him the more you'll get out of him. That was the way +with his pa--he was a different man after things got to comin' too easy +fur him. This fellow, the way I'm treatin' him, will keep his head even +after he gets things comin' easy again, or I miss my guess. He thinks I +despise him now. If you told him I was proud of him, I almost believe +you could get a bet out of him, sick as he is of gamblin'." + +"Has he suspected anything?" + +"Sure, not! Why, he just thanked me about an hour ago fur savin' +him--made me shake hands with him--and I could see the tears back in +his eyes." + +The old man chuckled. + +"It was like Len Carey's Nigger Jim. Len had Jim set apart on the +plantation fur his own nigger. They fished and went huntin' and +swimmin' together. One day they'd been swimmin', and was lyin' up on +the bank. Len got thinkin' he'd never seen any one drown. He knew Jim +couldn't swim a lick, so he thought he'd have Jim go drown. He says to +him, 'Jim, go jump off that rock there!' That was where the deep hole +was. Jim was scar't, but he had to go. After he'd gone down once, Len +says to him, 'Drown, now, you damn nigger!' and Jim come up and went +down twice more. Then Len begun to think Jim was worth a good bit of +money, and mebbe he'd be almighty walloped if the truth come out, so he +dives in after Jim and gets him shore, and after while he brought him +to. Anyway, he said, Jim had already sure-enough drowned as fur as +there was any fun in it. Well, Len Carey is an old man now, and Jim is +an old white-headed nigger still hangin' around the old place, and when +Len goes back there to visit his relatives, old Nigger Jim hunts him up +with tears in his eyes, and thanks Mister Leonard fur savin' his life +that time. Say, I felt this mornin' like Len Carey must feel them times +when Jim's thankin' him." + +Shepler laughed. + +"You're a rare man, Mr. Bines. I'll hope to have your cheerful, easy +views of life if I ever lose my hold here in the Street. I hope I'll +have the old Bines philosophy and the young Bines spirit. That reminds +me," he continued as Uncle Peter rose to go, "we've been pretty +confidential, Mr. Bines, and I don't mind telling you I was a bit +afraid of that young man until yesterday. Oh, not on the stock +proposition. On another matter. You may have noticed that night at the +Oldakers'--well, women, Mr. Bines, are uncertain. I know something +about markets and the ways of a dollar, but all I know about women is +that they're good to have. You can't know any more about them, because +they don't know any more themselves. Just between us, now, I never felt +any too sure of a certain young woman's state of mind until copper +reached 51 and Union Cordage had been blown up from inside." + +They parted with warm expressions of good-will, and Uncle Peter, in +high spirits at the success of his machinations, had himself driven +up-town. + +The only point where his plans had failed was in Mrs. Wybert's refusal +to consider Mauburn after the birth of the Casselthorpe twins. Yet he +felt that matters, in spite of this happening, must go as he wished +them to. The Englishman-Uncle Peter cherished the strong anti-British +sentiment peculiar to his generation--would surely never marry a girl +who was all but penniless, and the consideration of an alliance with +Mrs. Wybert, when the fortune should be lost, had, after all, been an +incident--a means of showing the girl, if she should prove to be too +deeply infatuated with Mauburn for her own peace of mind--how unworthy +and mercenary he was; for he had meant, in that event, to disillusion +her by disclosing something of Mrs. Wybert's history--the woman Mauburn +should prefer to her. He still counted confidently on the loss of the +fortune sufficing to break the match. + +When he reached the Hightower that night for dinner, he found Percival +down-stairs in great glee over what he conceived to be a funny +situation. + +"Don't ask me, Uncle Peter. I couldn't get it straight; but as near as +I could make out, Mauburn came up here afraid the blow of losing him +was going to kill sis with a broken heart, and sis was afraid the blow +was going to kill Mauburn, because she wouldn't have married him +anyway, rich or poor, after he'd lost the title. They found each other +out some way, and then Mauburn accused her of being heartless, of +caring only for his title, and she accused him of caring only for her +money, and he insisted she ought to marry him anyway, but she wouldn't +have it because of the twins--" + +Uncle Peter rubbed his big brown hands with the first signs of +cheerfulness he had permitted Percival to detect in him. + +"Good fur Pish--that's the way to take down them conceited +Britishers--" + +"But then they went at matters again from a new standpoint, and the +result is they've made it up." + +"What? Has them precious twin Casselthorpes perished?" + +"Not at all, both doing finely--haven't even had colic--growing +fast--probably learned to say 'fancy, now,' by this time. But Mauburn's +going West with us if we'll take him." + +"Get out!" + +"Fact! Say, it must have been an awful blow to him when he found sis +wouldn't think of him at all without his title, even if she was broke. +They had a stormy time of it from all I can hear. He said he was strong +enough to work and all that, and since he'd cared for her, and not for +her money, it was low down of her to throw him over; then she said she +wouldn't leave her mother and us, now that we might need her, not for +him or any other man--and he said that only made him love her all the +more, and then he got chesty, and said he was just as good as any +American, even if he never would have a title; so pretty soon they got +kind of interested in each other again, and by the time I came home it +was all over. They ratified the preliminary agreement for a merger." + +"Well, I snum!" + +"That's right, go ahead and snum. I'd snum myself if I knew how--it +knocked me. Better come up-stairs and congratulate the happy couple." + +"Shoo, now! I certainly am mighty disappointed in that fellow. Still he +_is_ well spotted, and them freckles mean iron in the blood. Maybe we +can develop him along with the other properties." + +They found Psyche already radiant, though showing about her eyes traces +of the storm's devastations. Mauburn was looking happy; also defiant +and stubborn. + +"Mr. Bines," he said to Uncle Peter, "I hope you'll side with me. I +know something about horses, and I've nearly a thousand pounds that +I'll be glad to put in with you out there if you can make a place for +me." + +The old man looked him over quizzically. Psyche put her arm through +Mauburn's. + +"I'd _have_ to marry some one, you know, Uncle Peter!" + +"Don't apologise, Pish. There's room for men that can work out there, +Mr. Mauburn, but there ain't any vintages or trouserings to speak of, +and the hours is long." + +"Try me, Mr. Bines!" + +"Well, come on! If you can't skin yourself you can hold a leg while +somebody else skins. But you ain't met my expectations, I'll say that." +And he shook hands cordially with the Englishman. + +"I say, you know," said Mauburn later to Psyche, "why _should_ I skin +myself? Why should I be skinned at all, you know?" + +"You shouldn't," she reassured him. "That's only Uncle Peter's way of +saying you can help the others, even if you can't do much yourself at +first. And won't Mrs. Drelmer be delighted to know it's all settled?" + +"Well," said Uncle Peter to Percival, later in the evening, "Pish has +done better than you have here. It's a pity you didn't pick out some +good sensible girl, and marry her in the midst of your other doings." + +"I couldn't find one that liked cats. I saw a lot that suited every +other way but I always said to myself, 'Remember Uncle Peter's +warning!' so I'd go to an animal store and get a basket of kittens and +take them around, and not one of the dozen stood your test. Of course +I'd never disregard your advice." + +"Hum," remarked Uncle Peter, in a tone to be noticed for its extreme +dryness. "Too bad, though--you certainly need a wife to take the +conceit out of you." + +"I lost that in the Street, along with the rest." + +"Well, son, I ain't no ways alarmed but what you'll soon be on your +feet again in that respect--say by next Tuesday or Wednesday. I wish +the money was comin' back as easy." + +"Well, there are girls in Montana City." + +"You could do worse. That reminds me--I happened to meet Shepler to-day +and he got kind of confidential,--talkin' over matters. He said he'd +never really felt sure about the affections of a certain young woman, +especially after that night at the Oldakers'--he'd never felt dead sure +of her until you went broke. He said you never could know anything +about a woman--not really." + +"He knows something about that one, all right, if he knows she wouldn't +have any use for me now. Shepler's coming on with the ladies. I feel +quite hopeful about him." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +The Departure of Uncle Peter--And Some German Philosophy + + +The Bineses, with the exception of Psyche, were at breakfast a week +later. Miss Bines had been missing since the day that Mr. and Mrs. +Cecil G. H. Mauburn had left for Montana City to put the Bines home in +order. + +Uncle Peter and Mrs. Bines had now determined to go, leaving Percival +to follow when he had closed his business affairs. + +"It's like starting West again to make our fortune," said Uncle Peter. +He had suffered himself to regain something of his old cheerfulness of +manner. + +"I wish you two would wait until they can get the car here, and go back +with me," said Percival. "We can go back in style even if we didn't +save much more than a get-away stake." + +But his persuasions were unavailing. + +"I can't stand it another day," said Mrs. Bines, "and those letters +keep coming in from poor suffering people that haven't heard the news." + +"I'm too restless to stay," declared Uncle Peter. "I declare, with +spring all greenin' up this way I'd be found campin' up in Central Park +some night and took off to the calaboose. I just got to get out again +where you can feel the wind blow and see a hundred miles and don't have +to dodge horseless horse-cars every minute. It's a wonder one of 'em +ain't got me in this town. You come on in the car, and do the style fur +the family. One of them common Pullmans is good enough fur Marthy and +me. And besides, I got to get Billy Brue back. He's goin' plumb daft +lookin' night and day fur that man that got his thirty dollars and his +breastpin. He says there'll be an ambulance backed up at the spot where +he meets him--makes no difference if it's right on Fifth Avenue. +Billy's kind of nearsighted at that, so I'm mortal afraid he'll make a +mistake one of these nights and take some honest man's money and +trinkets away from him." + +"Well, here's a _Sun_ editorial to take back with us," said Percival; +"you remember we came East on one." He read aloud: + +"The great fall in the price of copper, Western Trolley, and cordage +stocks has ruined thousands of people all over this country. These +losses are doubtless irreparable so far as the stocks in question are +concerned. The losers will have to look elsewhere for recovery. That +they will do so with good courage is not to be doubted. It might be +argued with reasonable plausibility that Americans are the greatest +fatalists in the world; the readiest to take chances and the least +given to whining when the cards go against them. + +"A case in point is that of a certain Western family whose fortune has +been swept away by the recent financial hurricane. If ever a man liked +to match with Destiny, not 'for the beers,' but for big stakes, the +young head of the family in question appears to have been that man. He +persisted in believing that the power and desire of the rich men +controlling these three stocks were great enough to hold their +securities at a point far above their actual value. In this persistence +he displayed courage worthy of a better reward. A courage, moreover +--the gambler's courage--that is typically American. Now he has had a +plenty of that pleasure of losing which, in Mr. Fox's estimation, comes +next to the pleasure of winning. + +"From the point of view of the political economist or the moralist, +thrift, saving, and contentment with a modest competence are to be +encouraged, and the propensity to gamble is to be condemned. We stand +by the copy-book precepts. Yet it is only honest to confess that there +is something of this young American's love for chances in most of us. +American life is still so fluid, the range of opportunity so great, the +national temperament so buoyant, daring, and hopeful, that it is easier +for an American to try his luck again than to sit down snugly and enjoy +what he has. The fun and the excitement of the game are more than the +game. There are Americans and plenty of them who will lose all they +have in some magnificent scheme, and make much less fuss about it than +a Paris shopkeeper would over a bad twenty-franc piece. + +"Our disabled young Croesus from the West is a luminous specimen of the +type. The country would be less interesting without his kind, and, on +the whole, less healthy--for they provide one of the needed ferments. +May the young man make another fortune in his own far West--and come +once more to rattle the dry bones of our Bourse!" + +"He'll be too much stuck on Montana by the time he gets that fortune," +observed Uncle Peter. + +"I will _that,_ Uncle Peter. Still it's pleasant to know we've won +their good opinion." + +"Excuse me fur swearin', Marthy," said Uncle Peter, turning to Mrs. +Bines, "but he can win a better opinion than that in Montana fur a damn +sight less money." + +"That editor is right," said Mrs. Bines, "what he says about American +life being 'fluid.' There's altogether too much drinking goes on here, +and I'm glad my son quit it." + +Percival saw them to the train. + +"Take care of yourself," said Uncle Peter at parting. "You know I ain't +any good any more, and you got a whole family, includin' an Englishman, +dependin' on you--we'll throw him on the town, though, if he don't +take out his first papers the minute I get there." + +His last shot from the rear platform was: + +"Change your name back to 'Pete,' son, when you get west of Chicago. +'Tain't anything fancy, but it's a crackin' good business name fur a +hustler!" + +"All right, Uncle Peter,--and I hope I'll have a grandson that thinks +as much of it as I do of yours." + +When they had gone, he went back to the work of final adjustment. He +had the help of Coplen, whom they had sent for. With him he was busy +for a week. By lucky sales of some of the securities that had been +hypothecated they managed to save a little; but, on the whole, it was +what Percival described it, "a lovely autopsy." + +At last the vexatious work was finished, and he was free again. At the +end of the final day's work he left the office of Fouts in Wall Street, +and walked up Broadway. He went slowly, enjoying the freedom from care. +It was the afternoon of a day when the first summer heat had been felt, +and as he loitered before shop windows or walked slowly through that +street where all move quickly and most very hurriedly, a welcome little +breeze came up from the bay to fan him and encourage his spirit of +leisure. + +At Union Square, when he would have taken a car to go the remainder of +the distance, he saw Shepler, accompanied by Mrs. Van Geist and Miss +Milbrey, alight from a victoria and enter a jeweller's. + +He would have passed on, but Miss Milbrey had seen him, and stood +waiting in the doorway while Shepler and Mrs. Van Geist went on into +the store. + +"Mr. Bines--I'm _so_ glad!" + +She stood, flushed with pleasure, radiant in stuff of filmy pink, with +little flecks at her throat and waist of the first tender green of new +leaves. She was unaffectedly delighted to see him. + +"You are Miss Spring?" he said when she had given him her hand--"and +you've come into all your mother had that was worth inheriting, haven't +you?" + +"Mr. Bines, shall we not see you now? I wanted so much to talk with you +when I heard everything. Would it be impertinent to say I sympathised +with you?" + +He looked over her shoulder, in where Shepler and Mrs. Van Geist were +inspecting a tray of jewels. + +"Of course not impertinent--very kind--only I'm really not in need of +any sympathy at all. You won't understand it; but we don't care so much +for money in the West--for the loss of it--not so much as you New +Yorkers would. Besides we can always make a plenty more." + +The situation was, emphatically, not as he had so often dreamed it when +she should marvel, perhaps regretfully, over his superiority to her +husband as a money-maker. His only relief was to belittle the +importance of his loss. + +"Of course we've lost everything, almost--but I've not been a bit +downcast about it. There's more where it came from, and no end of fun +going after it. I'm looking forward to the adventures, I can tell you. +And every one will be glad to see me there; they won't think the less +of me, I assure you, because I've made a fluke here!" + +"Surely, Mr. Bines, no one here could think less of you. Indeed, I +think more of you. I think it's fine and big to go back with such +courage. Do you know, I wish I were a man--I'd show them!" + +"Really, Miss Milbrey--" + +He looked over her shoulder again, and saw that Shepler was waiting for +her. + +"I think your friends are impatient." + +"They can wait. Mr. Bines, I wonder if you have quite a correct idea of +all New York people." + +"Probably not; I've met so few, you know." + +"Well, of course,--but of those you've met?" + +"You can't know what my ideas are." + +"I wish we might have talked more--I'm sure--when are you leaving?" + +"I shall leave to-morrow." + +"And we're leaving for the country ourselves. Papa and mamma go +to-morrow--and, Mr. Bines, I _should_ have liked another talk with +you--I wish we were dining at the Oldakers' again." + +He observed Shepler strolling toward them. + +"I shall be staying with Aunt Cornelia a few days after to-morrow." + +Shepler came up. + +"And I shall be leaving to-morrow, Miss Milbrey." + +"Ah, Bines, glad to see you!" + +The accepted lover looked Miss Milbrey over with rather a complacent +air--with the unruffled confidence of assured possession. Percival +fancied there was a look almost of regret in the girl's eyes. + +"I'm afraid," said Shepler, "your aunt doesn't want to be kept waiting. +And she's already in a fever for fear you won't prefer the necklace she +insists you ought to prefer." + +"Tell Aunt Cornelia, please, that I shall be along in just a moment." +"She's quite impatient, you know," urged Shepler. + +Percival extended his hand. + +"Good-bye, Miss Milbrey. Don't let me detain you. Sorry I shall not see +you again." + +She gave him her hand uncertainly, as if she had still something to +say, but could find no words for it. + +"Good-bye, Mr. Bines." + +"Good-bye, young man," Shepler shook hands with him cordially, "and the +best of luck to you out there. I shall hope to hear good reports from +you. And mind, you're to look us up when you're in town again. We shall +always be glad to see you. Good-bye!" + +He led the girl back to the case where the largest diamonds reposed +chastely on their couches of royal velvet. + +Percival smiled as he resumed his walk--smiled with all that bitter +cynicism which only youth may feel to its full poignance. Yet, +heartless as she was, he recalled that while she talked to him he had +imprinted an imaginary kiss deliberately upon her full scarlet lips. +And now, too, he was forced to confess that, in spite of his very +certain knowledge about her, he would actually prefer to have +communicated it through the recognised physical media. He laughed +again, more cheerfully. + +"The spring has gotten a strangle-hold on my judgment," he said to +himself. + +At dinner that night he had the company of that estimable German +savant, the Herr Doctor von Herzlich. He did not seek to incur the +experience, but the amiable doctor was so effusive and interested that +he saw no way of avoiding it gracefully. Returned from his +archaeological expedition to Central America, the doctor was now on his +way back to Marburg. + +"I pleasure much in your news," said the cheerful man over his first +glass of Rhine wine with the olive in it. "You shall now, if I have +misapprehended you not, develop a new strongness of the character." + +Percival resigned himself to listen. He was not unfamiliar with the lot +of one who dines with the learned Von Herzlich. + +"Now he's off," he said to himself. + +"Ach! It is but now that you shall begin to live. Is it not that while +you planned the money-amassing you were deferring to live--ah, +yes--until some day when you had so much more? Yes? A common +thought-failure it is--a common failure of the to-take-thoughtedness of +life--its capacities and the intentions of the scheme under which we +survive. Ach! So few humans learn that this invitation to live +specifies not the hours, like a five-o'clock. It says--so well as +Father-Mother Nature has learned to write the words to our unseeing +eyes--'at once,' but we ever put off the living we are invited to at +once--until to-morrow-next day, next year--until this or that be done +or won. So now you will find this out. Before, you would have waited +for a time that never came--no matter the all-money you gathered. + +"Nor yet, my young friend, shall you take this matter to be of a +seriousness, to be sorrow-worthy. If you take of the courage, you shall +find the world to smile to your face, and father-mother you. You recall +what the English Huxley says--Ah! what fine, dear man, the good Huxley--he +says, yes, in the 'Genealogy of the Beasts,' 'It is a probable hypothesis +that what the world is to organisms in general, each organism is to the +molecules of which it is composed.' So you laugh at the world, the world +it laugh back 'ha! ha! ha!'--then--soly--all your little molecules +obediently respond--you thrill with the happiness--with the power--the +desire--the capacity--you out-go and achieve. Yes? So fret not. Ach! we +fret so much of what it shall be unwise to fret of. It is funny to fret. +Why? Why fret? Yet but the month last, they have excavated at Nippur, from +the pre-Sargonic strata, a lady and a gentleman of the House of Ptah. What +you say in New York--'a damned fine old family,' yes, is it not? I am read +their description, and seen of the photographs. + +"They have now the expressions of indifference--of disinterest--without +the prejudice--as if they say, 'Ach! those troubles of ours, three +thousand eight hundred years in the B.C.--nearly come to six thousand +years before now--Ach! those troubles,' say this philosophic-now lady +and gentleman, of the House of Ptah of Babylonia--'such a +silliness--those troubles and frets; it was not the while-worth that we +should ever have sorrowed, because the scheme of time and creation is +suchly big; had we grasped but its bigness, and the littleness of our +span, should we have felt griefs? Nay, nay--_nit_,' like the +street-youths say--would say the lady and gentleman now so passionless +as to have philosophers become. And you, it should mean to you much. +Humans are funniest when they weep and tremble before, like you say, +'the facts in the case.' Ha! I laugh to myself at them often when I +observe. Their funniness of the beards and eyebrows, the bald head, of +the dress, the solemnities of manner, as it were they were persons of +weight. Ah, they are of their insignificance so loftily unconscious. +Was it not great skill--to compel the admiration of the love-worthiest +scientist--to create a unit of a numberless mass of units and then to +enable it to feel each one the importance of the whole, as if each part +were big as the whole? So you shall not fret I say. + +"If the fret invade you, you shall do well to lie out in the friendly +space, and look at this small topspinning of a world through the glass +that reduces. + +"Yes? You had thought it of such bigness--its concerns of a sublime +tragicness? Yet see now, these funny little animals on the surface of +the spinning-ball. How frantic, as if all things were about to +eventuate, remembering not that nothing ends. So? Observe the marks of +their silliness, their unworthiness. You have reduced the ball to so +big as a melon, yes? Watch the insects run about in the craziness, +laughing, crying, loving their loves, hating their hates, fearing, +fretting--killing one the other in such funny little clothes, made for +such funny little purpose precisely--falling sick over the +money-losings--and the ball so small, but one of such many--as many +stars under the earth, remember, as above it. + +"So! you are back to earth; you are a human like the rest, so foolish, +so funny as any--so you say, 'Well, I shall not be more troubled again +yet. I play the same game, but it is only a game, a little game to last +an afternoon--I play my part--yes--the laughing part, crying +part--loving, hating, killing part--what matter if I say it is good?' +If the Maker there be to look down, what joys him most--the coward who +fears and frets, and the whine makes for his soul or body? Ach! no, it +is the one who say, it is _good_--I could not better have done +myself--a great game, yes--'let her rip,' like you West-people +remark--'let her rip--you cannot lose _me_,' like you say also. Ach, +so! And then he say, the great Planner of it,' Ach! I am understood at +last--good!--bright man that,' like you say, also--'bright man that--it +is of a pleasure to see him do well!' + +"So, my young friend, you shall pleasure yourself still much yet. It is +of an excellence to pleasure one's self judiciously. The lotus is a +leguminous plant--so excellent for the salad--not for the roast. You +have of the salad overeaten--you shall learn of your successful +capacity for it--you shall do well, then. You have been of the reckless +deportment--you may still be of it. That is not the matter. You shall +be reckless as you like--but without your stored energy surplus to harm +you. Your environment from the now demands of you the faculties you +will most pleasure yourself in developing. You shall produce what you +consume. The gods love such. Ach, yes!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring + + +He awoke early, refreshed and intensely alive. With the work done he +became conscious of a feeling of disassociation from the surroundings +in which he had so long been at home. Many words of the talkative +German were running in his mind from the night before. He was glad the +business was off his mind. He would now go the pleasant journey, and +think on the way. + +His trunks were ready for the car; and before he went down-stairs his +hand-bag was packed, and the preparations for the start completed. +When, after his breakfast, he read the telegram announcing that the car +had been delayed twenty-four hours in Chicago, he was bored by the +thought that he must pass another day in New York. He was eager now to +be off, and the time would hang heavily. + +He tried to recall some forgotten detail of the business that might +serve to occupy him. But the finishing had been thorough. + +He ran over in his mind the friends with whom he could spend the time +agreeably. He could recall no one he cared to see. He had no longer an +interest in the town or its people. + +He went aimlessly out on to Broadway in the full flood of a spring +morning, breathing the fresh air hungrily. It turned his thought to +places out of the grime and clamour of the city; to woods and fields +where he might rest and feel the stimulus of his new plans. He felt +aloof and sufficient unto himself. + +He swung on to an open car bound north, and watched without interest +the early quick-moving workers thronging south on the street, and +crowding the cars that passed him. At Forty-second Street, he changed +to a Boulevard car that took him to the Fort Lee Ferry at One Hundred +and Twenty-fifth Street. + +Out on the shining blue river he expanded his lungs to the clean, sweet +air. Excursion boats, fluttering gay streamers, worked sturdily up the +stream. Little yachts, in fresh-laundered suits of canvas, darted +across their bows or slanted in their wakes, looking like white +butterflies. The vivid blue of the sky was flecked with bits of broken +fleece, scurrying like the yachts below. Across the river was a +high-towering bank of green inviting him over its summit to the +languorous freshness beyond. + +He walked off the boat on the farther side and climbed a series of +steep wooden stairways, past a tiny cataract that foamed its way down +to the river. When he reached the top he walked through a stretch of +woods and turned off to the right, down a cool shaded road that wound +away to the north through the fresh greens of oak and chestnut. + +He was entranced at once by the royal abandon of spring, this wondrous +time of secret beginnings made visible. The old earth was become as a +young wife from the arms of an ardent spouse, blushing into new life +and beauty for the very joy of love. He breathed the dewy freshness, +and presently he whistled the "Spring Song" of Mendelssohn, that +bubbling, half-joyous, half-plaintive little prayer in melody. + +He was well into the spirit of the time and place. His soul sang. The +rested muscles of his body and mind craved the resistance of obstacles. +He rejoiced. He had been wise to leave the city for the fresh, +unspoiled country--the city with all its mean little fears, its petty +immoralities, and its very trifling great concerns. He did not analyse, +more than to remember, once, that the not reticent German would approve +his mood. He had sought the soothing quiet with the unfailing instinct +of the wounded animal. + +The mysterious green life in the woods at either side allured him with +its furtive pulsing. But he kept to the road and passed on. He was not +yet far enough from the town. + +Some words from a little song ran in his mind as he walked: + + "The naked boughs into green leaves slipped, + The longing buds into flowers tripped, + The little hills smiled as if they were glad, + The little rills ran as if they were mad. + + "There was green on the earth and blue in the sky, + The chrysalis changed to a butterfly, + And our lovers, the honey-bees, all a-hum, + To hunt for our hearts began to come." + +When he came to a village with an electric car clanging through it, he +skirted its borders, and struck off through a woodland toward the +river. Even the village was too human, too modern, for his early-pagan +mood. + +In the woods he felt that curious thrill of stealth, that impulse to +cautious concealment, which survives in man from the remote days when +enemies beset his forest ways. On a southern hillside he found a +dogwood-tree with its blossomed firmament of white stars. In low, moist +places the violets had sprung through the thatch of leaves and were +singing their purple beauties all unheard. Birds were nesting, and +squirrels chattered and scolded. + +Under these more obvious signs and sounds went the steady undertone of +life in root and branch and unfurling leaf--provoking, inciting, making +lawless whomsoever it thrilled. + +He came out of the wood on to another road that ran not far from the +river, and set off again to the north along the beaten track. + +In an old-fashioned garden in front of a small house a girl bent over a +flower bed, working with a trowel. + +He stopped and looked at her over the palings. She was freshly pretty, +with yellow hair blown about her face under the pushed back sunbonnet +of blue. The look in her blue eyes was the look of one who had heard +echoes; who had awakened with the spring to new life and longings, +mysterious and unwelcome, but compelling. + +She stood up when he spoke; her sleeves were turned prettily back upon +her fair round arms. + +"Yes, the road turns to the left, a bit ahead." + +She was blushing. + +"You are planting flower seeds." + +"Yes; so many flowers were killed by the cold last winter." + +"I see; there must a lot of them have died here, but their souls didn't +go far, did they now?" + +She went to digging again in the black moist earth. He lingered. The +girl worked on, and her blush deepened. He felt a lawless impulse to +vault the palings, and carry her off to be a flower for ever in some +wooded glade near by. He dismissed it as impracticable. His intentions +would probably be misconstrued. + +"I hope your garden will thrive. It has a pretty pattern to follow." + +"Thank you!" + +He raised his hat and passed on, thinking; thinking of all the old dead +flowers, and their pretty souls that had gone to bloom in the heaven of +the maid's face. + +Before the road turned to the left he found a path leading over to the +top of the palisade. There on a little rocky shelf, hundreds of feet +above the river, he lay a long time in the spring sun, looking over to +the farther shore, where the city crept to the south, and lost its +sharp lines in the smoky distance. There he smoked and gave himself up +to the moment. He was glad to be out of that rush. He could see matters +more clearly now--appraise values more justly. He was glad of +everything that had come. Above all, glad to go back and carry on that +big work of his father's--his father who had done so much to redeem the +wilderness--and incidentally he would redeem his own manhood. + +It will be recalled that the young man frequently expressed himself +with regrettable inelegance; that he habitually availed himself, +indeed, of a most infelicitous species of metaphor. It must not be +supposed that this spring day in the spring places had reformed his +manner of delivery. When he chose to word his emotions it was still +done in a manner to make the right-spoken grieve. Thus, going back +toward the road, after reviewing his great plans for the future, he +spoke aloud: "I believe it's going to be a good game." + +When he became hungry he thought with relief that he would not be +compelled to seek one of those "hurry-up" lunch places with its clamour +and crowd. What was the use of all that noise and crowding and piggish +hurry? A remark of the German's recurred to him: + +"It is a happy man who has divined the leisure of eternity, so he feels +it, like what you say, 'in his bones.'" + +When he came out on the road again he thought regretfully of the pretty +girl and her flower bed. He would have liked to go back and suggest +that she sing to the seeds as she put them to sleep in their earth +cradle, to make their awakening more beautiful. + +But he turned down the road that led away from the girl, and when he +came to a "wheelman's rest," he ate many sandwiches and drank much +milk. + +The face of the maid that served him had been no heaven for the souls +of dead flowers. Still she was a girl; and no girl could be wholly +without importance on such a day. So he thought the things he would +have said to her if matters had been different. + +When he had eaten, he loafed off again down the road. Through the long +afternoon he walked and lazed, turning into strange lanes and by-roads, +resting on grassy banks, and looking far up. He followed Doctor von +Herzlich's directions, and, going off into space, reduced the earth, +watching its little continents and oceans roll toward him, and viewing +the antics of its queer inhabitants in fancy as he had often in fact +viewed a populous little ant-hill, with its busy, serious citizens. +Then he would venture still farther--away out into timeless space, +beyond even the starry refuse of creation, and insolently regard the +universe as a tiny cloud of dust. + +When the shadows stretched in the dusky languor of the spring evening, +he began to take his bearings for the return. He heard the hum and +clang of an electric car off through a chestnut grove. + +The sound disturbed him, bringing premonitions of the city's unrest. He +determined to stay out for the night. It was restful--his car would not +arrive until late the next afternoon--there was no reason why he should +not. He found a little wayside hotel whose weather-beaten sign was +ancient enough to promise "entertainment for man and beast." + +"Just what I want," he declared. "I'm both of them--man and beast." + +Together they ate tirelessly of young chickens broiled, and a green +salad, and a wonderful pie, with a bottle of claret that had stood back +of the dingy little bar so long that it had attained, at least as to +its label, a very fair antiquity. + +This time the girl was pretty again, and, he at once discovered, not +indisposed to light conversation. Yet she was a shallow creature, with +little mind for the subtler things of life and the springtime. He +decided she was much better to look at than to talk to. With a just +appreciation of her own charms she appeared to pose perpetually before +an imaginary mirror, regaling him and herself with new postures, +tossing her brown head, curving her supple waist, exploiting her +thousand coquetries. He was pained to note, moreover, that she was more +than conscious of the red-cheeked youth who came in from the carriage +shed, whistling. + +When the man and the beast had been appeased they sat out under a +blossomed apple-tree and smoked together in a fine spirit of amity. + +He was not amazed when, in the gloom, he saw the red-cheeked youth with +both arms about the girl--nor was he shocked at detecting instantly +that her struggles were meant to be futile against her assailant's +might. The birds were mating, life was forward, and Nature loves to be +democratically lavish with her choicest secrets. Why not, then, the +blooming, full curved kitchen-maid and the red-cheeked boy-of-all-work? + +He smoked and saw the night fall. The dulled bronze jangle of cow-bells +came soothingly to him. An owl called a little way off. Swallows +flashed by in long graceful flights. A bat circled near, indecisively, +as if with a message it hesitated to give. Once he heard the flute-like +warble of a skylark. + +He was under the clean, sharp stars of a moonless night. His keen +senses tasted the pungent smoke and the softer feminine fragrance of +the apple-blossoms. His nerves were stilled to pleasant ease, except +when the laugh of the girl floated to him from the grape-arbour back of +the house. That disturbed him to fierce longings--the clear, high +measure of a woman's laugh floating to him in the night. And once she +sang--some song common to her class. It moved him as her laugh did, +making him vibrate to her, as when a practised hand flutters the +strings of a harp. He was glad without knowing why when she stopped. + +At ten o'clock he went in from under the peering little stars and fell +asleep in an ancient four-poster. He dreamed that he had the world, a +foot-ball, clasped to his breast, and was running down the field for a +gain of a hundred yards. Then, suddenly, in place of the world, it was +Avice Milbrey in his grasp, struggling frantically to be free; and +instead of behaving like a gentleman he flung both arms around her and +kissed her despite her struggles; kissed her time after time, until she +ceased to strive against him, and lay panting and helpless in his arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured + + +He was awakened by the unaccustomed silence. As he lay with his eyes +open, his first thought was that all things had stopped--the world had +come to its end. Then remembrance came, and he stretched in lazy +enjoyment of the stillness and the soft feather bed upon which he had +slept. Finding himself too wide awake for more sleep, he went over to +the little gable window and looked out. The unfermented wine of another +spring day came to his eager nostrils. The little ball had made another +turn. Its cheek was coming once more into the light. Already the east +was flushing with a wondrous vague pink. The little animals in the city +over there, he thought, would soon be tumbling out of their beds to +begin another of their funny, serious days of trial and failure; to +make ready for another night of forgetfulness, when their absurd little +ant-hill should turn again away from the big blazing star. He sat a +long time at the window, looking out to the east, where the light was +showing; meditating on many idle, little matters, but conscious all the +time of great power within himself. + +He felt ready now for any conflict. The need for some great immediate +action pressed upon him. He did not identify it. Something he must +do--he must have action--and that at once. He was glad to think how +Uncle Peter would begin to rejoice in him--secretly at first, and then +to praise him. He was equal to any work. He could not begin it quickly +enough. That queer need to do something at once was still pressing, +still unidentified. + +By five he was down-stairs. The girl, fresh as a dew-sprayed rose in +the garden outside, brought him breakfast of fruit, bacon and eggs, +coffee and waffles. He ate with relish, delighting meantime in the +girl's florid freshness, and even in the assertive, triumphant whistle +of the youth busy at his tasks outside. + +When he set out he meant to reach the car and go back to town at once. +Yet when he came to the road over which he had loitered the day before, +he turned off upon it with slower steps. There was a confusing whirl of +ideas in his brain, a chaos that required all his energy to feed it, so +that the spring went from his step. + +Then all at once, a new-born world cohered out of the nebula, and the +sight of its measured, orderly whirling dazed him. He had been seized +with a wish--almost an intention, so stunning in its audacity that he +all but reeled under the shock. It seemed to him that the thing must +have been germinated in his mind without his knowledge; it had lain +there, gathering force while he rested, now to burst forth and dazzle +him with its shine. All that undimmed freshness of longing he had felt +the day before-all the unnamed, unidentified, nameless desires--had +flooded back upon him, but now no longer aimless. They were acutely +definite. He wanted Avice Milbrey,--wanted her with an intensity as +unreasoning as it was resistless. This was the new world he had watched +swimming out of the chaos in his mind, taking its allotted orbit in a +planetary system of possible, rational, matter-of-course proceedings. + +And Avice Milbrey was to marry Shepler, the triumphant money-king. + +He sat down by the roadside, well-nigh helpless, surrendering all his +forces to the want. + +Then there came upon him to reinforce this want a burning sense of +defeat. He remembered Uncle Peter's first warnings in the mine about +"cupboard love;" the gossip of Higbee: "If you were broke, she'd have +about as much use for you--" all the talk he had listened to so long +about marriage for money; and, at the last, Shepler's words to Uncle +Peter: "I was uncertain until copper went to 51." Those were three wise +old men who had talked, men who knew something of women and much of the +world. And they were so irritating in their certainty. What a fine play +to fool them all! + +The sense of defeat burned into him more deeply. He had been vanquished, +cheated, scorned, shamefully flouted. The money was gone--all of Uncle +Peter's complaints and biting sarcasms came back to him with renewed +bitterness; but his revenge on Uncle Peter would be in showing him a big +man at work, with no nonsense about him. But Shepler, who was now certain, +and Higbee, who had always been certain,--especially Shepler, with his +easy sense of superiority with a woman over any poor man. That was a +different matter. There was a thing to think about. And he wanted Avice +Milbrey. He could not, he decided, go back without her. + +Something of the old lawless spirit of adventure that had spurred on +his reckless forbears urged him to carry the girl back with him. She +didn't love him. He would take her in spite of that; overpower her; +force her to go. It was a revenge of superb audacity. Shepler had not +been sure of her until now. Well, Shepler might be hurled from that +certainty by one hour of determined action. + +The great wild wish narrowed itself into a definite plan. He recalled +the story Uncle Peter had told at the Oldakers' about the woman and her +hair. A woman could be coerced if a man knew her weakness. He could +coerce her. He knew it instinctively; and the instinctive belief +rallied to its support a thousand little looks from her, little +intonations of her voice, little turnings of her head when they had +been together. In spite of her calculations, in spite of her love of +money, he could make her feel her weakness. He was a man with the +power. + +It was heady wine for the morning. He described himself briefly as a +lunatic, and walked on again. But the crazy notion would not be gone. +The day before he had been passive. Now he was active, acutely aware of +himself and all his wants. He walked a mile trying to dismiss the idea. +He sat down again, and it flooded back upon him with new force. + +Her people were gone. She had even intimated a wish to talk with him +again. It could be done quickly. He knew. He felt the primitive +superiority of man's mere brute force over woman. He gloried in his +knotted muscles and the crushing power of his desires. + +Afterward, she would reproach him bitterly. They would both be unhappy. +It was no matter. It was the present, the time when he should be +living. He would have her, and Shepler--Shepler might have had the One +Girl mine--but this girl, never! + +Again he tried faithfully to walk off the obsession. Again were his +essays at sober reason unavailing. + +His mind was set as it had been when he bought the stocks day after day +against the advice of the best judges in the Street. He could not turn +himself back. There must be success. There could not be a giving +up--and there must not be failure. + +Hour after hour he alternately walked and rested, combating and +favouring the mad project. It was a foolish little world, and people +were always waiting for another time to begin the living of life. The +German had quoted Martial: "To-morrow I will live, the fool says; +to-day itself's too late. The wise lived yesterday." + +If he did go away alone he knew he would always regret it. If he +carried her triumphantly off, doubtless his regret for that would +eventually be as great. The first regret was certain. The latter was +equally plausible; but, if it came, would it not be preferable to the +other? To have held her once--to have taken her away, to have triumphed +over her own calculations, and, best of all, to have triumphed over the +money-king resting fatuously confident behind his wealth, dignifying no +man as rival who was not rich. The present, so, was more than any +possible future, how dire soever it might be. + +He was mad to prove to her--and to Shepler--that she was more a woman +than either had supposed,--a woman in spite of herself, weak, +unreasoning; to prove to them both that a determined man has a vital +power to coerce which no money may ever equal. + +Not until five o'clock had he by turns urged and fought himself to the +ferry. By that time he had given up arguing. He was dwelling entirely +upon his plan of action. Strive and grope as he would, the thing had +driven him on relentlessly. His reason could not take him beyond the +reach of its goad. Far as he went he loved her even farther. She +belonged to him. He would have her. He seemed to have been storing, the +day before, a vast quantity of energy that he was now drawing lavishly +upon. For the time, he was pure, raw force, needing, to be resistless, +only the guidance of a definite purpose. + +He crossed the ferry and went to the hotel, where he shaved and +freshened himself. He found Grant, the porter, waiting for him when he +went downstairs, and gave him written directions to the railroad people +to have the car attached to the Chicago Express leaving at eight the +next morning; also instructions about his baggage. + +"I expect there will be two of us, Grant; see that the car is well +stocked; and here, take this; go to a florist's and get about four +dozen pink roses--_la France_--can you remember?--pink--don't take any +other colour, and be sure they're fresh. Have breakfast ready by the +time the train starts." + +"Yes, Mistah Puhs'val!" said Grant, and added to himself, "Yo' suttiny +do ca'y yo'se'f mighty han'some, Mistah Man!" + +Going out of the hotel, he met Launton Oldaker, with whom he chatted a +few moments, and then bade good-bye. + +Oldaker, with a sensitive regard for the decencies, refrained from +expressing the hearty sympathy he felt for a man who would henceforth +be compelled to live out of the world. + +Percival walked out to Broadway, revolving his plan. He saw it was but +six o'clock. He could do nothing for at least an hour. When he noted +this he became conscious of his hunger. He had eaten nothing since +morning. He turned into a restaurant on Madison Square and ordered +dinner. When he had eaten, he sat with his coffee for a final smoke of +deliberation. He went over once more the day's arguments for and +against the novel emprise. He had become insensible, however, to all +the dissenting ones. As a last rally, he tried to picture the +difficulties he might encounter. He faced all he could imagine. + +"By God, I'll do it!" + +"_Oui, monsieur!_" said the waiter, who had been standing dreamily +near, startled into attention by the spoken words. + +"That's all--give me the check." + +As he went out the door, a young woman passed him, looking him straight +in the eyes. From her light swishing skirts came the faint perfume of +the violet. It chilled the steel of his resolution. + +He entered a carriage. It was a hot, humid night. Already the mist was +making grey softness of the air, dulling the street lights to ruddy +orange. Northward, over the breast of Murray Hill a few late carriages +trickled down toward him. Their wheels, when they passed, made swift +reflections in the damp glare of the asphalt. + +He was pent force waiting to be translated into action. + +He drove first to the Milbrey house, on the chance that she might be at +home. Jarvis answered his ring. + +"Miss Milbrey is with Mrs. Van Geist, sir." + +Jarvis spoke regretfully. Pie had reasons of his own for believing that +the severance of the Milbrey relationship with Mr. Bines had been +nothing short of calamitous. + +He rang Mrs. Van Geist's bell, five minutes later. + +"The ladies haven't come back, sir. I don't know where they might be. +Perhaps at the Valners', in Fifty-second Street, sir." + +He rang the Valners' bell. + +"Mrs. Van Geist and Miss Milbrey? They left at least half an hour ago, +sir." + +"Go down the avenue slowly, driver!" + +At Fortieth Street he looked down to the middle of the block. + +Mrs. Van Geist, alone, was just alighting from her coupe. + +He signalled the driver. + +"Go to the other address again, in Thirty-seventh Street." + +Jarvis opened the door. + +"Yes, sir--thank you, sir--Miss Milbrey is in, sir. I'll see, sir." + +He crossed the Rubicon of a door-mat and stood in the unlighted hall. +At the far end he saw light coming from a door that he knew opened into +the library. + +Jarvis came into the light. Behind him appeared Miss Milbrey in the +doorway. + +"Miss Milbrey says will you enter the library, Mr. Bines?" + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty + + +He walked quickly back. At the doorway she gave him her hand, which he +took in silence. "Why--Mr. Bines!--you wouldn't have surprised me last +night. To-night I pictured you on your way West." + +Her gown was of dull blue dimity. She still wore her hat, an arch of +straw over her face, with ripe red cherries nodding upon it as she +moved. He closed the door behind him. + +"Do come in. I've been having a solitary rummage among old things. It +is my last night here. We're leaving for the country to-morrow, you +know." + +She stood by the table, the light from a shaded lamp making her colour +glow. + +Now she noted that he had not spoken. She turned quickly to him as if +to question. + +He took a swift little step toward her, still without speaking. She +stepped back with a sudden instinct of fright. + +He took two quick steps forward and grasped one of her wrists. He spoke +in cool, even tones, but the words came fast: + +"I've come to marry you to-night; to take you away with me to that +Western country. You may not like the life. You may grieve to death for +all I know--but you're going. I won't plead, I won't beg, but I am +going to take you." + +She had begun to pull away in alarm when he seized her wrist. His grasp +did not bruise, it did not seem to be tight; but the hand that held it +was immovable. + +"Mr. Bines, you forget yourself. Really, this is--" + +"Don't waste time. You can say all that needs to be said--I'll give you +time for that before we start--but don't waste the time saying all +those useless things. Don't waste time telling me I'm crazy. Perhaps I +am. We can settle that later." + +"Mr. Bines--how absurd! Oh! let me go! You're hurting my wrist! +Oh!--don't--don't--don't! Oh!" + +When he felt the slender wrist trying to writhe from his grasp he had +closed upon it more tightly, and thrusting his other arm quickly behind +her, had drawn her closely to him. Her cries and pleadings were being +smothered down on his breast. Her struggles met only the unbending, +pitiless resistance of steel. + +"Don't waste time, I tell you--can't you understand? Be sensible,--talk +if you must--only talk sense." + +"Let me go at once--I demand it--quick--oh!" + +"Take this hat off!" + +He forced the wrist he had been holding down between them, so that she +could not free the hand, and, with his own hand thus freed, he drew out +the two long hat-pins and flung the hat with its storm-tossed cherries +across the room. Still holding her tightly, he put the free hand on her +brow and thrust her head back, so that she was forced to look up at +him. + +"Let me see you--I want to see your eyes--they're my eyes now." + +Her head strained against his hand to be down again, and all her +strength was exerted to be away. She found she could not move in any +direction. + +"Oh, you're hurting my neck. What _shall_ I do? I can't scream--think +what it would mean!--you're hurting my neck!" + +"You are hurting your _own_ neck--stop it!" + +He kissed her face, softly, her cheeks, her eyes, her chin. + +"I've loved you so--don't--what's the use? Be sensible. My arms have +starved for you so--do you think they're going to loosen now? Avice +Milbrey--Avice Milbrey--Avice Milbrey!" + +His arms tightened about her as he said the name over and over. + +"That's poetry--it's all the poetry there is in the world. It's a verse +I say over in the night. You can't understand it yet--it's too deep for +you. It means I must have you--and the next verse means that you must +have me--a poor man--be a poor man's wife--and all the other +verses--millions of them--mean that I'll never give you up--and there's +a lot more verses for you to write, when you understand--meaning that +you'll never give _me_ up--and there's one in the beginning means I'm +going to carry you out and marry you to-night--_now_, do you +understand?--right off--this very night!" + +"Oh! Oh! this is so terrible! Oh, it's _so_ awful!" + +Her voice broke, and he felt her body quiver with sobs. Her face was +pitifully convulsed, and tears welled in her eyes. + +"Let me _go_--let--me--_go_!" + +He released her head, but still held her closely to him. Her sobs had +become uncontrollable. + +"Here--" he reached for the little lace-edged handkerchief that lay +beside her long gloves and her purse, on the table. + +She took it mechanically. + +"Please--oh, _please_ let me go--I beg you." She managed it with +difficulty between the convulsions that were rending her. + +He put his lips down upon the soft hair. + +"I _won't_--do you understand that? Stop talking nonsense." + +He thought there would be no end to the sobs. + +"Have it out, dear--there's plenty of time." + +Once she seemed to have stopped the tears. He turned her face up to his +own again, and softly kissed her wet eyes. Her full lips were parted +before him, but he did not kiss them. The sobs came again. + +"There--there!--it will soon be over." + +At last she ceased to cry from sheer exhaustion, and when, with his +hand under her chin, he forced up her head again, she looked at him a +full minute and then closed her eyes. + +He kissed their lids. + +There came from time to time the involuntary quick little indrawings of +breath,--the aftermath of her weeping. + +He held her so for a time, while neither spoke. She had become too weak +to struggle. + +"My arms have starved for you so," he murmured. She gave no sign. + +"Come over here." He led her, unresisting, around to the couch at the +other side of the table. + +"Sit here, and we'll talk it over sensibly, before you get ready." + +When he released her, she started quickly up toward the door that led +into the hall. + +"_Don't_ do that--please don't be foolish." + +He locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. Then he went over to +the big folding-doors, and satisfied himself they were locked from the +other side. He went back and stood in front of her. She had watched him +with dumb terror in her face. + +"Now we can talk--but there isn't much to be said. How soon can you be +ready?" + +"You _are_ crazy!" + +"Possibly--believe what you like." + +"How did you ever _dare?_ Oh, how _awful!_" + +"If you haven't passed that stage, I'll hold you again." + +"No, no--_please_ don't--please stand up again. Sit over there,--I can +think better." + +"Think quickly. This is Saturday, and to-morrow is their busy day. They +may not sit up late to-night." + +She arose with a little shrug of desperation that proclaimed her to be +in the power of a mad man. She looked at her face in the oval mirror, +wiping her eyes and making little passes and pats at her disordered +hair. He went over to her. + +"No, no--please go over there again. Sit down a moment--let me think. +I'll talk to you presently." + +There was silence for five minutes. He watched her, while she narrowed +her eyes in deep thought. + +Then he looked at his watch. + +"I can give you an hour, if you've anything to say before it's +done--not longer." + +She drew a long breath. + +"Mr. Bines, are you mad? Can't you be rational?" + +"I haven't been irrational, I give you my word, not once since I came +here." + +He looked at her steadily. All at once he saw her face go crimson. She +turned her eyes from his with an effort. + +"I'm going back to Montana in the morning. I want you to marry me +to-night--I won't even wait one more day--one more hour. I know it's a +thing you never dreamt of--marrying a poor man. You'll look at it as +the most disgraceful act of folly you could possibly commit, and so +will every one else here--but you'll _do_ it. To-morrow at this time +you'll be half-way to Chicago with me." + +"Mr. Bines,--I'm perfectly reasonable and serious--I mean it--are you +quite sure you didn't lose your wits when you lost your money?" + +"It _may_ be considered a witless thing to marry a girl who would marry +for money--but never mind _that_--I'm used to taking chances." + +She glanced up at him, curiously. + +"You know I'm to marry Mr. Shepler the tenth of next month." + +"Your grammar is faulty--tense is wrong--You should say 'I _was_ to +have married Mr. Shepler.' I'm fastidious about those little things, I +confess." + +"How can you jest?" + +"I can't. Don't think this is any joke. _He'll_ find out." + +"Who will find out,--what, pray?" + +"He will. He's already said he was afraid there might have been some +nonsense between you and me, because we talked that evening at the +Oldakers'. He told my grandfather he wasn't at all sure of you until +that day I lost my money." + +"Oh, I see--and of course you'd like your revenge--carrying me off from +him just to hurt him." + +"If you say that I'll hold you in my arms again." He started toward +her. "I've loved you _so_, I tell you--all the time--all the time." + +"Or perhaps it's a brutal revenge on me,--after thinking I'd only marry +for money." + +"I've loved you always, I tell you." + +He came up to her, more gently now, and took up her hand to kiss it. He +saw the ring. + +"Take his ring off!" + +She looked up at him with an amused little smile, but did not move. He +reached for the hand, and she put it behind her. + +"Take it off," he said, harshly. + +He forced her hand out, took off the ring with its gleaming stone, none +too gently, and laid it on the table behind him. Then he covered the +hand with kisses. + +"Now it's my hand. Perhaps there was a little of both those feelings +you accuse me of--perhaps I _did_ want to triumph over both you and +Shepler--and the other people who said you'd never marry for anything +but money--but do you think I'd have had either one of those desires if +I hadn't loved you? Do you think I'd have cared how many Sheplers you +married if I hadn't loved you so, night and day?--always turning to you +in spite of everything,--loving you always, under everything--always, I +tell you." + +"Under what--what 'everything'?" + +"When I was sure you had no heart--that you couldn't care for any man +except a rich man--that you would marry only for money." + +"You thought that?" + +"Of course I thought it." + +"What has changed you?" + +"Nothing. I'm going to change it now by proving differently. I shall +take you against your will--but I shall make you love me--in the end. I +know you--you're a woman, in spite of yourself!" + +"You were entirely right about me. I would even have married you +because of the money--" + +"Tell me what it is you're holding back--don't wait." + +"Let me think--don't talk, please!" + +She sat a long time silent, motionless, her eyes fixed ahead. At length +she stirred herself to speak. + +"You were right about me, partly--and partly wrong. I don't think I can +make you understand. I've always wanted so much from life--so much more +than it seemed possible to have. The only thing for a girl in my +position and circumstances was to make what is called a good marriage. +I wanted what that would bring, too. I was torn between the desires--or +rather the natural instincts and the trained desires. I had ideals +about loving and being loved, and I had the material ideals of my +experience in this world out here. + +"I was untrue to each by turns. Here--I want to show you something." + +She took up a book with closely written pages. + +"I came here to-night--I won't conceal from you that I thought of you +when I came. It was my last time here, and you had gone, I supposed. +Among other things I had out this old diary to burn, and I had found +this, written on my eighteenth birthday, when I came out--the fond, +romantic, secret ideal of a foolish girl--listen: + +"The Soul of Love wed the Soul of Truth and their daughter, Joy, was +born: who was immortal and in whom they lived for ever!' + +"You see--that was the sort of moonshine I started in to live. Two or +three times I was a grievous disappointment to my people, and once or +twice, perhaps, I was disappointed myself. I was never quite sure what +I wanted. But if you think I was consistently mercenary you are +mistaken. I shall tell you something more--something no one knows. +There was a man I met while that ideal was still strong and beautiful +to me--but after I'd come to see that here, in this life, it was not +easily to be kept. He was older than I, experienced with women--a lover +of women, I came to understand in time. I was a novelty to him, a fresh +recreation--he enjoyed all those romantic ideals of mine. I thought +then he loved me, and I worshipped him. He was married, but constantly +said he was about to leave his wife, so she would divorce him. I +promised to come to him when it was done. He had married for money and +he would have been poor again. I didn't mind in the least. I tell you +this to show you that I could have loved a poor man, not only well +enough to marry him, but to break with the traditions, and brave the +scandal of going to him in that common way. With all I felt for him I +should have been more than satisfied. But I came in time to see that he +was not as earnest as I had been. He wasn't capable of feeling what I +felt. He was more cowardly than I--or rather, I was more reckless than +he. I suspected it a long time; I became convinced of it a year ago and +a little over. He became hateful to me. I had wasted my love. Then he +became funny. But--you see--I am not altogether what you believed me. +Wait a bit longer, please. + +"Then I gave up, almost--and later, I gave up entirely. And when my +brother was about to marry that woman, and Mr. Shepler asked me to +marry him, I consented. It seemed an easy way to end it all. I'd quit +fondling ideals. And you had told me I must do anything I could to keep +Fred from marrying that woman--my people came to say the same +thing--and so--" + +"If he had married her--if they were married now--then you would feel +free to marry me?" + +"You would still be the absurdest man in New York--but we can't discuss +that. He isn't going to marry her." + +"But he _has_ married her--" + +"What do you mean?" + +"I supposed you knew--Oldaker told me as I left the hotel. He and your +father were witnesses. The marriage took place this afternoon at the +Arlingham." + +"You're not deceiving me?" + +"Come, come!--_girl!_" + +"Oh, _pardon_ me! please! Of course I didn't mean it--but you stunned +me. And papa said nothing to me about it before he left. The money must +have been too great a temptation to him and to Fred. She has just made +some enormous amount in copper stock or something." + +"I know, she had better advice than I had. I'd like to reward the man +who gave it to her." + +"And I was sure you were going to marry that other woman." + +"How could you think so?" + +"Of course I'm not the least bit jealous--it isn't my disposition; but +I _did_ think Florence Akemit wasn't the woman to make you happy--of +course I liked her immensely--and there were reports going +about--everybody seemed so sure--and you were with her so much. Oh, how +I did _hate_ her!" + +"I tell you she is a joke and always was." + +"It's funny--that's exactly what I told Aunt Cornelia about that--that +man." + +"Let's stop joking, then." + +"How absurd you are--with my plans all made and the day set--" + +There was a knock at the door. He went over and unlocked it. Jarvis was +there. + +"Mr. Shepler, Miss Avice." + +They looked at each other. + +"Jarvis, shut that door and wait outside." + +"Yes, Mr. Bines." + +"You can't see him." + +"But I must,--we're engaged, don't you understand?--of course I must!" + +"I tell you I won't let you. Can't you understand that I'm not talking +idly?" + +She tried to evade him and reach the door, but she was caught again in +his arms--held close to him. + +"If you like he shall come in now. But he's not going to take you away +from me, as he did in that jeweller's the other night--and you can't +see him at all except as you are now." + +She struggled to be free. + +"Oh, you're so _brutal_!" + +"I haven't begun yet--" + +He drew her toward the door. + +"Oh, not that--don't open it--I'll tell him--yes, I will!" + +"I'm taking no more chances, and the time is short." + +Still holding her closely with one arm, he opened the door. The man +stared impassively above their heads--a graven image of +unconsciousness. + +"Jarvis." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Miss Milbrey wishes you to say to Mr. Shepler that she is engaged--" + +"That I'm ill," she interrupted, still making little struggles to twist +from his grasp, her head still bent down. + +"That she is engaged with Mr. Bines, Jarvis, and can't see him. Say it +that way--'Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't see +you.'". + + +[Illustration: "'SAY IT THAT WAY--MISS MILBREY IS ENGAGED WITH MR. BINES +AND CAN'T SEE YOU.'"] + + +"Yes, sir!" + +He remained standing motionless, as he had been, his eyes still fixed +above them. But the eyes of Jarvis, from long training, did hot require +to be bent upon those things they needed to observe. They saw something +now that was at least two feet below their range. + +The girl made a little move with her right arm, which was imprisoned +fast between them, and which some intuition led her captor not to +restrain. The firm little hand worked its way slowly up, went +creepingly over his shoulder and bent tightly about his neck. + +"Yes, sir," repeated Jarvis, without the quiver of an eyelid, and went. + +He closed the door with his free hand, and they stood as they were +until they heard the noise of the front door closing and the soft +retreating footsteps of the butler. + +"Oh, you were mean--_mean_--to shame me so," and floods of tears came +again. + +"I hated to do it, but I _had_ to; it was a critical moment. And you +couldn't have made up your mind without it." + +She sobbed weakly in his arms, but her own arm was still tight about +his neck. He felt it for the first time. + +"But I _had_ made up my mind--I did make it up while we talked." + +They were back on the couch. He held her close and she no longer +resisted, but nestled in his arms with quick little sighs, as if +relieved from a great strain. He kissed her forehead and hair as she +dried her eyes. + +"Now, rest a little. Then we shall go." + +"I've so much to tell you. That day at the jeweller's--well, what could +I do but take one poor last little look of you--to keep?" + +"Tell me if you care for me." + +"Oh, I do, I do, I do care for you. I _have_--ever since that day we +walked in the woods. I do, I _do_!" + +She threw her head back and gave him her lips. + +She was crying again and trying to talk. + +"I did care for you, and that day I thought you were going to say +something, but you didn't--you were so distant and troubled, and seemed +not even to like me--though I felt sure you loved me. I had thought +you were going to tell me, and I'd have accepted--yes, for the +money--though I liked you so much. Why, when I first met you in that +mine and thought you were a workman, I'm not sure I wouldn't have +married you if you had asked me. But it was different again when I +found out about you. And that day in the woods I thought something had +come between us. Only after dinner you seemed kinder, and I knew at +once you thought better of me, and might even seek me--I knew it in the +way a woman knows things she doesn't know at all. I went into the +library with a candle to look into the mirror, almost sure you were +going to come. Then I heard your steps and I was so glad--but it wasn't +you-I'd been mistaken again-you still disliked me. I was so +disappointed and hurt and heartsick, and he kissed me and soothed me. +And after that directly I saw through him, and I knew I truly did love +you just as I'd wanted to love the man who would be my husband--only +all that nonsense about money that had been dinned into me so long kept +me from seeing it at first. But I was sure you didn't care for me when +they talked so about you, and that--you never _did_ care for her, did +you--you _couldn't_ have cared for her, could you?--and yet, after that +night, I'd such a queer little feeling as if you _had_ come for me, and +had seen--" + +"Surely a gentleman never sees anything he wasn't meant to see." + +"I'm so glad--I should have been _so_ ashamed--" + +They were still a moment, while he stroked her hair. + +"They'll be turning in early to-night, having to get up to-morrow and +preach sermons--what a dreary place heaven must be compared with this!" + +She sat up quickly. + +"Oh, I'd forgotten. How awful it is. _Isn't_ it awful?" + +"It will soon be over." + +"But think of my people, and what's expected of me--think of Mr. +Shepler." + +"Shepler's doing some hard thinking for himself by this time." + +"Really, you're a dreadful person--" + +There was a knock. + +"The cabman outside, sir, says how long is he to wait, sir?" + +"Tell him to wait all night if I don't come; tell him if he moves off +that spot I'll have his license taken away. Tell him I'm the mayor's +brother." + +"Yes, sir." + +"And, Jarvis, who's in the house besides you?" + +"Miss Briggs, the maid, sir--but she's just ready to go out, sir." + +"Stop her--say Miss Milbrey wishes to ask a favour of her; and Jarvis." + +"Yes, sir!" + +"Go put on that neat black street coat of yours that fits you so +beautifully in the back, and a purple cravat, and your shiny hat, and +wait for us with Briggs. We shall want you in a moment." + +"Yes, Mr. Bines." + +She looked at him wonderingly. + +"We need two witnesses, you know. I learned that from Oldaker just +now." + +"But do give me a _moment_, everything is all so whirling and hazy." + +"Yes, I know--like the solar system in its nebulous state. Well, hurry +and make those worlds take shape. I can give you sixty seconds to find +that I'm the North Star. Ach! I have the Doctor von Herzlich been +ge-speaking with--come, come! What's the use of any more delay? I've +wasted nearly three hours here now, dilly-dallying along. But then, a +woman never does know her own mind. + +"Put a thing before her--all as plain as the multiplication table--and +she must use up just so much good time telling a man that he's +crazy--and shedding tears because he won't admit that two times two are +thirty-seven." She was silent and motionless for another five minutes, +thinking intently. "Come, time's up." + +She arose. + +"I'm ready. I shall marry you, if you think I'm the woman to help you +in that big, new life of yours. They meant me not to know about Fred's +marriage until afterward." + +He kissed her. + +"I feel so rested and quiet now, as if I'd taken down a big old gate +and let the peace rush in on me. I'm sure it's right. I'm sure I can +help you." + +She picked up her hat and gloves. + +"Now I'll go bathe my eyes and fix my hair." + +"I can't let you out of my sight, yet. I'm incredulous. Perhaps in +seventy-five or eighty years--" + +"I thought you were so sure." + +"While I can reach you, yes." + +She gave a low, delicious little laugh. She reached both arms up around +him, pulled down his head and kissed him. + +"There--_boy!_" + +She took up the hat again. + +"I'll be down in a moment." + +"I'll be up in three, if you're not." + +When she had gone he picked up an envelope and put a bill inside. + +"Jarvis," he called. + +The butler came up from below, dressed for the street. + +"Jarvis, put this envelope in the inside of that excellent black coat +of yours and hand it--afterward--to the gentleman we're going to do +business with." + +"Yes, Mr. Bines." + +"And put your cravat down in the back, Jarvis--it makes you look +excited the way it is now." + +"Yes, sir; thank you, sir!" + +"Is Briggs ready?" "She's waiting, sir." + +"Go out and get in the carriage, both of you." + +"Yes, sir!" + +He stood in the hallway waiting for her. It was a quarter-past ten. In +another moment she rustled softly down to him. + +"I'm trusting so much to you, and you're trusting so much to me. It's +_such_ a rash step!" + +"Must I--" + +"No, I'm going. Couldn't we stop and take Aunt Cornelia?" + +"Aunt Cornelia won't have a chance to worry about this until it's all +over. We'll stop there then, if you like." + +"We'll try Doctor Prendle, then. He's almost sure to be in." + +"It won't make any difference if he isn't. We'll find one. Those horses +are rested. They can go all night if they must." + +"I have Grandmother Loekermann's wedding-ring--of course you didn't +fetch one. Trust a man to forget anything of importance." + +His grasp of her hand during the ride did not relax. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +The New Argonauts + + +Mrs. van Geist came flustering out to the carriage. + +"You and Briggs may get out here, Jarvis. There, that's for you, and +that's for Briggs--and thank you both very much!" + +"Child, child! what does it mean?" + +"Mr. Bines is my husband, Muetterchen, and we're leaving for the West in +the morning." + +The excitement did not abate for ten minutes or so. "And do say +something cheerful, dear," pleaded Avice, at parting. + +"You mad child--I was always afraid you might do something like this; +but I _will_ say I'm not altogether _sure_ you've acted foolishly." + +"Thank you, you dear old Muetterchen! and you'll come to see us--you +shall see how happy I can be with this--this boy--this Lochinvar, +Junior--I'm sure Mrs. Lochinvar always lived happily ever after." + +Mrs. Van Geist kissed them both. + +"Back to Thirty-seventh Street, driver." + +"I shall want you at seven-thirty sharp, to-morrow morning," he said, +as they alighted. "Will you be here, sure?" + +"Sure, boss!" + +"You'll make another one of those if you're on time." + +The driver faced the bill toward the nearest street-light and scanned +it. Then he placed it tenderly in the lining of his hat, and said, +fervently: + +"I'll _be_ here, gent!" + +"My trunks," Avice reminded him. + +"And, driver, send an express wagon at seven sharp. Do you understand, +now?" + +"Sure, gent, I'll have it here at seven, and be here at seven-thirty." + +They went in. + +"You've sent Briggs off, and I've all that packing and unpacking to +do." + +"You have a husband who is handy at those things." + +They went up to her room where two trunks yawned open. + +Under her directions and with her help he took out the light summer +things and replaced them with heavier gowns, stout shoes, golf-capes, +and caps. + +"We'll be up on the Bitter Root ranch this summer, and you'll need +heavy things," he had told her. + +Sometimes he packed clumsily, and she was obliged to do his work over. +In these intervals he studied with interest the big old room and her +quaint old sampler worked in coloured worsteds that had faded to greys +and dull browns: _"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ + +"Grandma Loekermann did it at the convent, ages ago," she told him. + +"What a cautious young thing she must have been!" + +She leaned against his shoulder. + +"But she eloped with her true love, young Annekje Van Schoule; left the +home in Hickory Street one night, and went far away, away up beyond One +Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, somewhere, and then wrote them about +it." + +"And left the sampler?" + +"She had her husband--she didn't need any old sampler after that--_Le +mariage porte conseil, aussi, monsieur._ And now, you've married your +wife with her wedding-ring, that came from Holland years and years +ago." + +It was after midnight when they began to pack. When they finished it +was nearly four. + +She had laid out a dark dress for the journey, but he insisted that she +put it in a suit-case, and wear the one she had on. + +"I shouldn't know you in any other--and it's the colour of your eyes. I +want that colour all over the place." + +"But we shall be travelling." + +"In our own car. That car has been described in the public prints as a +'suite of palatial apartments with all modern conveniences.'" + +"I forgot." + +"We shall be going West like the old '49-ers, seeking adventure and +gold." + +"Did they go in their private cars?" + +"Some of them went in rolling six-horse Concords, and some walked, and +some of them pushed their baggage across in little hand-carts, but they +had fun at it--and we shall have to work as hard when we get there." + +"Dear me! And I'm so tired already. I feel quite done up." + +She threw herself on the wide divan, and he fixed pillows under her +head. + +"You boy! I'm glad it's all over. Let's rest a moment." + +He leaned back by her, and drew her head on to his arm. + +"I'm glad, too. It's the hardest day's work I ever did. Are you +comfortable? Rest." + +"It's so good," she murmured, nestling on his shoulder. + +"Uncle Peter took his honeymoon in a big wagon drawn by a mule team, +two hundred miles over the 'Placerville and Red Dog Trail--over the +mountains from California to Nevada. But he says he never had so happy +a time." + +"He's an old dear! I'll kiss him--how is it you say--'good and plenty.' +Did our Uncle Peter elope, too?" + +He chuckled. + +"Not exactly. It was more like abduction complicated with assault and +battery. Uncle Peter is pretty direct in his methods. The young lady's +family thought she could do better with a bloated capitalist who owned +three-eighths of a saw-mill. But Uncle Peter and she thought she +couldn't. So Uncle Peter had to lick her father and two brothers before +he could get her away. He would have licked the purse-proud rival, too, +but the rival ran into the saw-mill he owned the three-eighths of, and +barricaded the whole eight-eighths--the-five-eighths that didn't belong +to him at all, you understand--and then he threatened through a chink +to shoot somebody if Uncle Peter didn't go off about his business. So +Uncle Peter went, not wanting any unnecessary trouble. I've always +suspected he was a pretty ready scrapper in those days, but the poor +old fellow's getting a bit childish now, with all this trouble about +losing the money, and the hard time he had in the snow last winter. By +the way, I forgot to ask, and it's almost too late now, but do you like +cats?" + +"I adore them--aren't kittens the _dearest?"_ + +"Well--you're healthy--and your nose doesn't really fall below the +specifications, though it doesn't promise that you're any _too_ +sensible,--but if you can make up for it by your infatuation for cats, +perhaps it will be all right. Of course I couldn't keep you, you know, +if you weren't very fond of cats, because Uncle Peter'd raise a row--" + +She was quite still, and he noted from the change in her soft breathing +that she slept. With his free hand he carefully shook out a folded +steamer rug and drew it over her. + +For an hour he watched her, feeling the arm on which she lay growing +numb. He reviewed the day and the crowded night. He _could_ do +something after all. Among other things, now, he would drop a little +note to Higbee and add the news of his marriage as a postscript. She +was actually his wife. How quickly it had come. His heart was full of a +great love for her, but he could not quite repress the pride in his +achievement--and Shepler had not been sure until he was poor! + +He lost consciousness himself for a little while. + +When he awoke the cold light of the morning was stealing in. He was +painfully cramped, and chilled from the open window. From outside came +the loud chattering of sparrows, and far away he could hear wagons as +they rattled across a street of Belgian blocks from asphalt to asphalt. +The light had been late in coming, and he could see a sullen grey sky, +full of darker clouds. + +Above the chiffonier he could see the ancient sampler. + +_"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ It was true. + +In the cold, pitiless light of the morning a sudden sickness of +doubting seized him. She would awake and reproach him bitterly for +coercing her. She had been right, the night before,--it was madness. +They had talked afterward so feverishly, as if to forget their +situation. Now she would face it coldly after the sleep. + +_"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ Had he not been a fool? And he loved her so. +He would have her anyway--no matter what she said, now. + +She stirred, and her wide-open eyes were staring up at him--staring +with hurt, troubled wonder. The amazement in them grew--she could not +understand. + +He stopped breathing. His embrace of her relaxed. + +And then he saw remembrance--recognition--welcome--and there blazed +into her eyes such a look of whole love as makes men thrill to all +good; such a look as makes them know they are men, and dare all great +deeds to show it. Like a sunrise, it flooded her face with dear, +wondrous beauties,--and still she looked, silent, motionless,--in an +ecstasy of pure realisation. Then her arms closed about his neck with a +swift little rushing, and he--still half-doubting, still curious--felt +himself strained to her. Still more closely she clung, putting out with +her intensity all his misgiving. + +She sought his lips with her own--eager, pressing. + +"Kiss me--kiss me--kiss me! Oh, it's all true--all true! My best-loved +dream has come all true! I have rested so in your arms. I never knew +rest before. I can't remember when I haven't awakened to doubt, and +worry, and heart-sickness. And now it's peace--dear, dear, dearest +dear, for ever and ever and ever." + +They sat up. + +"Now we shall go--get me away quickly." + +It was nearly seven. Outside the sky was still all gloom. + +In the rush of her reassurance he had forgotten his arm. It hung limp +from his shoulder. + +"It was cramped." + +"And you didn't move it?" + +They beat it and kneaded it gaily together, until the fingers were full +of the rushing blood and able again to close warmly over her own little +hand. + +"Now go, and let me get ready. I won't be long." + +He went below to the library, and in the dim grey light picked up a +book, "The Delights of Delicate Eating." He tried another, "101 +Sandwiches." The next was "Famous Epicures of the 17th Century." On the +floor was her diary. He placed it on the table. He heard her call him +from the stairs: + +"Bring me up that ring from the table, please!" + +He went up and handed it to her through the narrowly opened door. + +As he went down the stairs he heard the bell ring somewhere below, and +went to the door. + +"Baggage!" + +The two trunks were down and out. "They're to go on this car, attached +to the Chicago Express." He wrote the directions on one of his cards +and paid the man. + +At seven-thirty the bell rang again. The cabman was there. + +"Seven-thirty, gent!" + +"Avice!" + +"I'm coming. And there are two bags I wish you'd get from my room." He +let her pass him and went up for them. + +She went into the library and, taking up the diary, tore out a sheet, +marked heavily upon it with a pencil around the passage she had read +the evening before, and sealed it in an envelope. She addressed it to +her father, and laid it, with a paper-weight on it, upon "The Delights +of Delicate Eating," where he would be sure to find it. + +The book itself she placed on the wood laid ready in the grate to +light, touched a match to the crumpled paper underneath and put up the +blower. She stood waiting to see that the fire would burn. + +Over the mantel from its yellow canvas looked above her head the +humourously benignant eyes of old Annekje Van Schoule, who had once +removed from Maspeth Kill on Long Island to New Haarlem on the Island +of Manhattan, and carried there, against her father's will, the +yellow-haired girl he had loved. His face now seemed to be pretending +unconsciousness of the rashly acted scenes he had witnessed--lest, if +he betrayed his consciousness, he should be forced, in spite of +himself, to disclose his approval--a thing not fitting for an elderly, +dignified Dutch burgher to do. + +"Avice!" + +"Coming!" + +She took up a little package she had brought with her and went out to +meet him. + +"There's one errand to do," she said, as they entered the carriage, +"but it's on our way. Have him go up Madison Avenue and deliver this." + +She showed him the package addressed: "Mr. Rulon Shepler, Personal." + +"And this," she said, giving him an unsealed note. "Read it, please!" + +He read: + +"DEAR RULON SHEPLER:--I am sure you know women too well to have thought +I loved you as a wife should love her husband. And I know your bigness +too well to believe you will feel harshly toward me for deciding that I +could not marry you. I could of course consistently attribute my change +to consideration for you. I should have been very little comfort to +you. If I should tell you just the course I had mapped out for +myself--just what latitude I proposed to claim--I am certain you would +agree with me that I have done you an inestimable favour. + +"Yet I have not changed because I do not love you, but because I do +love some one else with all my heart; so that I claim no credit except +for an entirely consistent selfishness. But do try to believe, at the +same time, that my own selfishness has been a kindness to you. I send +you a package with this hasty letter, and beg you to believe that I +shall remain--and am now for the first time-- + +"Sincerely yours, + +"AVICE MILBREY BINES. + +"P.S. I should have preferred to wait and acquaint you with my change +of intention before marrying, but my husband's plans were made and he +would not let me delay." + +He sealed the envelope, placed it securely under the cord that bound +the package, and their driver delivered it to the man who opened +Shepler's door. As their train emerged from the cut at Spuyten Duyvil +and sped to the north along the Hudson, the sun blazed forth. + +"There, boy,--I knew the sun must shine to-day." + +They had finished their breakfast. One-half of the pink roses were on +the table, and one from the other half was in her hair. + +"I ordered the sun turned on at just this point," replied her husband, +with a large air. "I wanted you to see the last of that town under a +cloud, so you might not be homesick so soon." + +"You don't know me. You don't know what a good wife I shall be." + +"It takes nerve to reach up for a strange support and then kick your +environment out from under you--as Doctor von Herzlich would have said +if he'd happened to think of it." + +"But you shall see how I'll help you with your work; I was capable of +it all the time." + +"But I had to make you. I had to pick you up just as I did that first +time, and again down in the mine--and you were frightened because you +knew this time I wouldn't let you go." + +"Only half-afraid you wouldn't--the other half I was afraid you would. +They got all mixed up--I don't know which was worse." + +"Well, I admit I foozled my approach on that copper stock--but I won +you--really my winnings in Wall Street are pretty dazzling after all, +for a man who didn't know the ropes;--there's a mirror directly back of +you, Mrs. Bines, if you wish to look at them--with a pink rose over +that kissy place just at their temple." + +She turned and looked, pretending to be quite unimpressed. + +"I always was capable of it, I tell you,--boy!" + +"What hurt me worst that night, it showed you could love _some_ +one--you did have a heart--but you couldn't love me." + +She did not seem to hear at first, nor to comprehend when she went back +over his words. Then she stared at him in sudden amazement. + +He saw his blunder and looked foolish. + +"I see--thank you for saying what you did last night--and you didn't +mind--you came to me anyway, in spite of _that_." + +She arose, and would have gone around the table to him, but he met her +with open arms. + +"Oh, you boy! you do love me,--you do!" + +"I must buy you one of those nice, shiny black ear-trumpets at the +first stop. You can't have been hearing at all well.... See, +sweetheart,--out across the river. That's where our big West is, over +that way--isn't it fresh and green and beautiful?--and how fast you're +going to it--you and your husband. I believe it's going to be a good +game... for us both... my love..." + +THE END. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spenders, by Harry Leon Wilson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPENDERS *** + +This file should be named 7spnd10.txt or 7spnd10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7spnd11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7spnd10a.txt + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Steve Flynn, Virginia Paque, Peter Klumper, +Tonya Allen, Thierry Alberto and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Spenders + A Tale of the Third Generation + +Author: Harry Leon Wilson + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9981] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on November 5, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPENDERS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Steve Flynn, Virginia Paque, Peter Klumper, +Tonya Allen, Thierry Alberto and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +[Illustration: "_THE FAIR AND SOMETIMES UNCERTAIN DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE +OF MILBREY_." (See page 182.)] + + + + +THE SPENDERS + +A TALE OF THE THIRD GENERATION + +BY + +HARRY LEON WILSON + + + +_Illustrated by_ O'NEILL LATHAM + +1902 + + + + +To L. L. J. + + + + +FOREWORD + +The wanderers of earth turned to her--outcast of the older lands-- +With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying + hands; +And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main: +"Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again! +Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow, +Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow. +Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun, +Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won," +For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddled + crowd, +And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud; +For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track, +And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the trafficking + pack. +Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound; +The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground +Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth +That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth! + +SHARLOT MABRIDTH HALL. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + +I. The Second Generation Is Removed + +II. How the First Generation Once Righted Itself + +III. Billy Brue Finds His Man + +IV. The West Against the East + +V. Over the Hills + +VI. A Meeting and a Clashing + +VII. The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked + +VIII. Up Skiplap Canon + +IX. Three Letters, Private and Confidential + +X. The Price of Averting a Scandal + +XI. How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose + +XII. Plans for the Journey East + +XIII. The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun + +XIV. Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information + +XV. Some Light With a Few Side-lights + +XVI. With the Barbaric Hosts + +XVII. The Patricians Entertain + +XVIII. The Course of True Love at a House Party + +XIX. An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe + +XX. Doctor Von Herslich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied +Phenomena + +XXI. The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire + +XXII. The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines + +XXIII. The Summer Campaign Is Planned + +XXIV. The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee + +XXV. Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House + +XXVI. A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage + +XXVII. A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes + +XXVIII. Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man + +XXIX. Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something + +XXX. Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions + +XXXI. Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers + +XXXII. Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting + +XXXIII. The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street + +XXXIV. How the Chinook Came to Wall Street + +XXXV. The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken + +XXXVI. The God in the Machine + +XXXVII. The Departure of Uncle Peter--And Some German Philosophy + +XXXVIII. Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring + +XXXIX. An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured + +XL. Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty + +XLI. The New Argonauts + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +"The fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey" + +"'Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?'" + +"The spell was broken" + +"'Why, you'd be Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off +their crowns to you'" + +"'Remember that saying of your pa's, "it takes all kinds of fools to +make a world"'" + +"'Say it that way--" Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't +see you"'" + + + + +THE SPENDERS + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +The Second Generation is Removed + + +When Daniel J. Bines died of apoplexy in his private car at Kaslo +Junction no one knew just where to reach either his old father or his +young son with the news of his death. Somewhere up the eastern slope of +the Sierras the old man would be leading, as he had long chosen to lead +each summer, the lonely life of a prospector. The young man, two years +out of Harvard, and but recently back from an extended European tour, +was at some point on the North Atlantic coast, beginning the season's +pursuit of happiness as he listed. + +Only in a land so young that almost the present dwellers therein have +made it might we find individualities which so decisively failed to +blend. So little congruous was the family of Bines in root, branch, and +blossom, that it might, indeed, be taken to picture an epic of Western +life as the romancer would tell it. First of the line stands the figure +of Peter Bines, the pioneer, contemporary with the stirring days of +Frémont, of Kit Carson, of Harney, and Bridger; the fearless strivers +toward an ever-receding West, fascinating for its untried dangers as +for its fabled wealth,--the sturdy, grave men who fought and toiled and +hoped, and realised in varying measure, but who led in sober truth a +life such as the colours of no taleteller shall ever be high enough to +reproduce. + +Next came Daniel J. Bines, a type of the builder and organiser who +followed the trail blazed by the earlier pioneer; the genius who, +finding the magic realm opened, forthwith became its exploiter to its +vast renown and his own large profit, coining its wealth of minerals, +lumber, cattle, and grain, and adventurously building the railroads +that must always be had to drain a new land of savagery. + +Nor would there be wanting a third--a figure of this present day, +containing, in potency at least, the stanch qualities of his two rugged +forbears,--the venturesome spirit that set his restless grandsire to +roving westward, the power to group and coordinate, to "think three +moves ahead" which had made his father a man of affairs; and, further, +he had something modern of his own that neither of the others +possessed, and yet which came as the just fruit of the parent vine: a +disposition perhaps a bit less strenuous, turning back to the risen +rather than forward to the setting sun; a tendency to rest a little +from the toil and tumult; to cultivate some graces subtler than those +of adventure and commercialism; to make the most of what had been done +rather than strain to the doing of needless more; to live, in short, +like a philosopher and a gentleman who has more golden dollars a year +than either philosophers or gentlemen are wont to enjoy. + +And now the central figure had gone suddenly at the age of fifty-two, +after the way of certain men who are quick, ardent, and generous in +their living. From his luxurious private car, lying on the side-track +at the dreary little station, Toler, private secretary to the +millionaire, had telegraphed to the headquarters of one important +railway company the death of its president, and to various mining, +milling, and lumbering companies the death of their president, +vice-president, or managing director as the case might be. For the +widow and only daughter word of the calamity had gone to a mountain +resort not far from the family home at Montana City. + +There promised to be delay in reaching the other two. The son would +early read the news, Toler decided, unless perchance he were off at +sea, since the death of a figure like Bines would be told by every +daily newspaper in the country. He telegraphed, however, to the young +man's New York apartments and to a Newport address, on the chance of +finding him. + +Locating old Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never +lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being now the +10th of June, it could be known with certainty only that in one of four +States he was prowling through some wooded canon, toiling over a windy +pass, or scaling a mountain sheerly, in his ancient and best loved +sport of prospecting. Knowing his habits, the rashest guesser would not +have attempted to say more definitely where the old man might be. + +The most promising plan Toler could devise was to wire the +superintendent of the "One Girl" Mine at Skiplap. The elder Bines, he +knew, had passed through Skiplap about June 1st, and had left, perhaps, +some inkling of his proposed route; if it chanced, indeed, that he had +taken the trouble to propose one. + +Pangburn, the mine superintendent, on receipt of the news, despatched +five men on the search in as many different directions. The old man was +now seventy-four, and Pangburn had noted when last they met that he +appeared to be somewhat less agile and vigorous than he had been twenty +years before; from which it was fair to reason that he might be playing +his solitary game at a leisurely pace, and would have tramped no great +distance in the ten days he had been gone. The searchers, therefore, +were directed to beat up the near-by country. To Billy Brue was +allotted the easiest as being the most probable route. He was to follow +up Paddle Creek to Four Forks, thence over the Bitter Root trail to +Eden, on to Oro Fino, and up over Little Pass to Hellandgone. He was to +proceed slowly, to be alert for signs along the way, and to make +inquiries of all he met. + +"You're likely to get track of Uncle Peter," said Pangburn, "over along +the west side of Horseback Ridge, just beyond Eden. When he pulled out +he was talking about some likely float-rock he'd picked up over that +way last summer. You'd ought to make that by to-morrow, seeing you've +got a good horse and the trail's been mended this spring. Now you +spread yourself out, Billy, and when you get on to the Ridge make a +special look all around there." + +Besides these directions and the telegram from Toler, Billy Brue took +with him a copy of the Skiplap _Weekly Ledge_, damp from the press and +containing the death notice of Daniel J. Bines, a notice sent out by +the News Association, which Billy Brue read with interest as he started +up the trail. The item concluded thus: + +"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her +husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is +prostrated with grief at the shock of his sudden death." + +Billy Brue mastered this piece of intelligence after six readings, but +he refrained from comment, beyond thanking God, in thought, that he +could mind his own business under excessive provocation to do +otherwise. He considered it no meddling, however, to remember that Mrs. +Daniel J. Bines, widow of his late employer, could appear neither young +nor beautiful to the most sanguine of newsgatherers; nor to remember +that he happened to know she had not accompanied her husband on his +last trip of inspection over the Kaslo Division of the Sierra Northern +Railway. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +How the First Generation Once Righted Itself + + +By some philosophers unhappiness is believed--rather than coming from +deprivation or infliction--to result from the individual's failure to +select from a number of possible occupations one that would afford him +entire satisfaction with life and himself. To this perverse blindness +they attribute the dissatisfaction with great wealth traditional of men +who have it. The fault, they contend, is not with wealth inherently. +The most they will admit against money is that the possession of much +of it tends to destroy that judicial calm necessary to a wise choice of +recreations; to incline the possessor, perhaps, toward those that are +unsalutary. + +Concerning the old man that Billy Brue now sought with his news of +death, a philosopher of this school would unhesitatingly declare that +he had sounded the last note of human wisdom. Far up in some mountain +solitude old Peter Bines, multimillionaire, with a lone pack-mule to +bear his meagre outfit, picked up float-rock, tapped and scanned +ledges, and chipped at boulders with the same ardour that had fired him +in his penniless youth. + +Back in 1850, a young man of twenty-four, he had joined the rush to +California, working his passage as deck-hand on a vessel that doubled +the Horn. Landing without capital at San Francisco, the little seaport +settlement among the shifting yellow sand-dunes, he had worked six +weeks along the docks as roustabout for money to take him back into the +hills whence came the big fortunes and the bigger tales of fortunes. +For six years he worked over the gravelly benches of the California +creeks for vagrant particles of gold. Then, in the late fifties, he +joined a mad stampede to the Frazer River gold-fields in British +Columbia, still wild over its first knowledge of silver sulphurets, he +was drawn back by the wonder-tales of the Comstock lode. + +Joining the bedraggled caravan over the Carson trail, he continued his +course of bitter hardship in the Washoe Valley. From a patch of barren +sun-baked rock and earth, three miles long and a third of a mile wide, +high up on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, he beheld more millions +taken out than the wildest enthusiast had ever before ventured to dream +of. But Peter Bines was a luckless unit of the majority that had +perforce to live on the hope produced by others' findings. The time for +his strike had not come. + +For ten years more, half-clad in flannel shirt and overalls, he lived +in flimsy tents, tattered canvas houses, and sometimes holes in the +ground. One abode of luxury, long cherished in memory, was a +ten-by-twelve redwood shanty on Feather River. It not only boasted a +window, but there was a round hole in the "shake" roof, fastidiously +cut to fit a stove-pipe. That he never possessed a stove-pipe had made +this feature of the architecture not less sumptuous and engaging. He +lived chiefly on salt pork and beans, cooked over smoky camp-fires. + +Through it all he was the determined, eager, confident prospector, +never for an instant prey to even the suggestion of a doubt that he +would not shortly be rich. Whether he washed the golden specks from the +sand of a sage-brush plain, or sought the mother-ledge of some +wandering golden child, or dug with his pick to follow a promising +surface lead, he knew it to be only the matter of time when his day +should dawn. He was of the make that wears unbending hope as its +birthright. + +Some day the inexhaustible placer would be found; or, on a mountainside +where the porphyry was stained, he would carelessly chip off a fragment +of rock, turn it up to the sun, and behold it rich in ruby silver; or, +some day, the vein instead of pinching out would widen; there would be +pay ore almost from the grass-roots--rich, yellow, free-milling gold, +so that he could put up a little arastra, beat out enough in a week to +buy a small stamp-mill, and then, in six months--ten years more of this +fruitless but nourishing certainty were his,--ten years of the awful +solitudes, shared sometimes by his hardy and equally confident wife, +and, at the last, by his boy, who had become old enough to endure with +his father the snow and ice of the mountain tops and the withering heat +of the alkali wastes. + +Footsore, hungry most of the time, alternately burned and frozen, he +lived the life cheerfully and tirelessly, with an enthusiasm that never +faltered. + +When his day came it brought no surprise, so freshly certain had he +kept of its coming through the twenty years of search. + +At his feet, one July morning in 1870, he noticed a piece of +dark-stained rock in a mass of driftstones. So small was it that to +have gone a few feet to either side would have been to miss it. He +picked it up and examined it leisurely. It was rich in silver. + +Somewhere, then, between him and the mountain top was the parent stock +from which this precious fragment had been broken. The sun beat hotly +upon him as it had on other days through all the hard years when +certainty, after all, was nothing more than a temperamental faith. All +day he climbed and searched methodically, stopping at noon to eat with +an appetite unaffected by his prospect. + +At sunset he would have stopped for the day, camping on the spot. He +looked above to estimate the ground he could cover on the morrow. +Almost in front of him, a few yards up the mountainside, he looked +squarely at the mother of his float: a huge boulder of projecting +silicate. It was there. + +During the following week he ascertained the dimensions of his vein of +silver ore, and located two claims. He named them "The Stars and +Stripes" and "The American Boy," paying thereby what he considered +tributes, equally deserved, to his native land and to his only son, +Daniel, in whom were centred his fondest hopes. + +A year of European travel had followed for the family, a year of +spending the new money lavishly for strange, long-dreamed-of +luxuries--a year in which the money was joyously proved to be real. +Then came a year of tentative residence in the East. That year was less +satisfactory. The novelty of being sufficiently fed, clad, and +sheltered was losing its fine edge. + +Penniless and constrained to a life of privation, Peter Bines had been +strangely happy. Rich and of consequence in a community where the ways +were all of pleasantness and peace, Peter Bines became restless, +discontented, and, at last, unmistakably miserable. + +"It can't be because I'm rich," he argued; "it's a sure thing my money +can't keep me from doin' jest what I want to do." + +Then a suspicion pricked him; for he had, in his years of solitude, +formed the habit of considering, in a leisurely and hospitable manner, +even the reverse sides of propositions that are commonly accepted by +men without question. + +"The money _can't_ prevent me from doin' what I jest want +to--certain--but, maybe, _don't_ it? If I didn't have it I'd fur sure +be back in the hills and happy, and so would Evalina, that ain't had +hardly what you could call a good day since we made the strike." + +On this line of reasoning it took Peter Bines no long time to conclude +that he ought now to enjoy as a luxury what he had once been +constrained to as a necessity. + +"Even when I was poor and had to hit the trail I jest loved them hills, +so why ain't it crafty to pike back to 'em now when I don't have to?" + +His triumphant finale was: + +"When you come to think about it, a rich man ain't really got any more +excuse fur bein' mis'able than a poor man has!" + +Back to the big hills that called him had he gone; away from the cities +where people lived "too close together and too far apart;" back to the +green, rough earth where the air was free and quick and a man could see +a hundred miles, and the people lived far enough apart to be +neighbourly. + +There content had blessed him again; content not slothful but inciting; +a content that embraced his own beloved West, fashioning first in fancy +and then by deed, its own proud future. He had never ceased to plan and +stimulate its growth. He not only became one with its manifold +interests, but proudly dedicated the young Daniel to its further +making. He became an ardent and bigoted Westerner, with a scorn for the +East so profound that no Easterner's scorn for the West hath ever by +any chance equalled it. + +Prospecting with the simple outfit of old became his relaxation, his +sport, and, as he aged, his hobby. It was said that he had exalted +prospecting to the dignity of an art, and no longer hunted gold as a +pot-hunter. He was even reputed to have valuable deposits "covered," +and certain it is that after Creede made his rich find on Mammoth +Mountain in 1890, Peter Bines met him in Denver and gave him +particulars about the vein which as yet Creede had divulged to no one. +Questioned later concerning this, Peter Bines evaded answering +directly, but suggested that a man who already had plenty of money +might have done wisely to cover up the find and be still about it; that +Nat Creede himself proved as much by going crazy over his wealth and +blowing out his brains. + +To a tamely prosperous Easterner who, some years after his return to +the West, made the conventional remark, "And isn't it amazing that you +were happy through those hard years of toil when you were so poor?" +Peter Bines had replied, to his questioner's hopeless bewilderment: +"No. But it _is_ surprisin' that I kept happy after I got rich--after I +got what I wanted. + +"I reckon you'll find," he added, by way of explaining, "that the +proportion of happy rich to unhappy rich is a mighty sight smaller than +the proportion of happy poor to the unhappy poor. I'm one of the former +minority, all right,--but, by cripes! it's because I know how to be +rich and still enjoy all the little comforts of poverty!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +Billy Brue Finds His Man + + +Each spring the old man grew restive and raw like an unbroken colt. And +when the distant mountain peaks began to swim in their summer haze, and +the little rushing rivers sang to him, pleading that he come once more +to follow them up, he became uncontrollable. Every year at this time he +alleged, with a show of irritation, that his health was being sapped by +the pernicious indulgence of sleeping on a bed inside a house. He +alleged, further, that stocks and bonds were but shadows of wealth, +that the old mines might any day become exhausted, and that security +for the future lay only in having one member of the family, at least, +looking up new pay-rock against the ever possible time of adversity. + +"They ain't got to makin' calendars yet with the rainy day marked on +'em," he would say. "A'most any one of them innocent lookin' Mondays or +Tuesdays or Wednesdays is liable to be _it_ when you get right up on to +it. I'll have to start my old bones out again, I see that. Things are +beginnin' to green up a'ready." When he did go it was always understood +to be positively for not more than two weeks. A list of his reasons for +extending the time each year to three or four months would constitute +the ideal monograph on human duplicity. When hard-pushed on his return, +he had once or twice been even brazen enough to assert that he had lost +his way in the mountain fastnesses. But, for all his protestations, no +one when he left in June expected to see him again before September at +the earliest. In these solitary tours he was busy and happy, working +and playing. "Work," he would say, "is something you want to get done; +play is something you jest like to be doin'. Snoopin' up these gulches +is both of 'em to me." + +And so he loitered through the mountains, resting here, climbing there, +making always a shrewd, close reading of the rocks. + +It was thus Billy Brue found him at the end of his second day's search. +A little off the trail, at the entrance to a pocket of the cañon, he +towered erect to peer down when he heard the noise of the messenger's +ascent. Standing beside a boulder of grey granite, before a background +of the gnarled dwarf-cedars, his hat off, his blue shirt open at the +neck, his bare forearms brown, hairy, and muscular, a hammer in his +right hand, his left resting lightly on his hip, he might have been the +Titan that had forged the boulder at his side, pausing now for breath +before another mighty task. Well over six feet tall, still straight as +any of the pines before him, his head and broad shoulders in the easy +poise of power, there was about him from a little distance no sign of +age. His lines were gracefully full, his bearing had still the +alertness of youth. One must have come as near as Billy Brue now came +to detect the marks of time in his face. Not of age--merely of time; +for here was no senility, no quavering or fretful lines. The grey eyes +shone bright and clear from far under the heavy, unbroken line of brow, +and the mouth was still straight and firmly held, a mouth under sure +control from corner to corner. A little had the years brought out the +rugged squareness of the chin and the deadly set of the jaws; a little +had they pressed in the cheeks to throw the high bones into broad +relief. But these were the utmost of their devastations. Otherwise +Peter Bines showed his seventy-four years only by the marks of a +well-ordered maturity. His eyes, it is true, had that look of _knowing_ +which to the young seems always to betoken the futility of, and to warn +against the folly of, struggle against what must be; yet they were kind +eyes, and humourous, with many of the small lines of laughter at their +corners. Reading the eyes and mouth together one perceived gentleness +and sternness to be well matched, working to any given end in amiable +and effective compromise. "Uncle Peter" he had long been called by the +public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by +the same term, finding him too young to meet their ideal of a +grandfather. Billy Brue, riding up the trail, halted, nodded, and was +silent. The old man returned his salutation as briefly. These things by +men who stay much alone come to be managed with verbal economy. They +would talk presently, but greetings were awkward. + +Billy Brue took one foot from its stirrup and turned in his saddle, +pulling the leg up to a restful position. Then he spat, musingly, and +looked back down the cañon aimlessly, throwing his eyes from side to +side where the grey granite ledges showed through the tall spruce and +pine trees. + +But the old man knew he had been sent for. + +"Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?" + +Billy Brue squirmed in the saddle, spat again, as with sudden resolve, +and said: + +"Why,--uh--Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead." + +The old man repeated the words, dazedly. + +"Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead;--why, who else is dead, too?" + +Billy Brue's emphasis, cunningly contrived by him to avoid giving +prominence to the word "dead," had suggested this inquiry in the first +moment of stupefaction. + +"Nobody else dead--jest Dan'l J.--_he's_ dead." + +"Jest Dan'l J.--my boy--my boy Dan'l dead!" + +His mighty shape was stricken with a curious rigidity, erected there as +if it were a part of the mountain, flung up of old from the earth's +inner tragedy, confounded, desolate, ancient. + +[Illustration: "'_WELL, BILLY BRUE, WHAT'S DOIN_'?'"] + +Billy Brue turned from the stony interrogation of his eyes and took a +few steps away, waiting. A little wind sprang up among the higher +trees, the moments passed, and still the great figure stood transfixed +in its curious silence. The leathers creaked as the horse turned. The +messenger, with an air of surveying the canon, stole an anxious glance +at the old face. The sorrowful old eyes were fixed on things that were +not; they looked vaguely as if in search. + +"Dan'l!" he said. + +It was not a cry; there was nothing plaintive in it. It was only the +old man calling his son: David calling upon Absalom. Then there was a +change. He came sternly forward. + +"Who killed my boy?" + +"Nobody, Uncle Peter; 'twas a stroke. He was goin' over the line and +they'd laid out at Kaslo fer a day so's Dan'l J. could see about a spur +the 'Lucky Cuss' people wanted--and maybe it was the climbin' brought +it on." + +The old man looked his years. As he came nearer Billy Brue saw tears +tremble in his eyes and roll unnoted down his cheeks. Yet his voice was +unbroken and he was, indeed, unconscious of the tears. + +"I was afraid of that. He lived too high. He et too much and he drank +too much and was too soft--was Dan'l.--too soft--" + +The old voice trembled a bit and he stopped to look aside into the +little pocket he had been exploring. Billy Brue looked back down the +canon, where the swift stream brawled itself into white foam far below. + +"He wouldn't use his legs; I prodded him about it constant--" + +He stopped again to brace himself against the shock. Billy Brue still +looked away. + +"I told him high altitudes and high livin' would do any man--" Again he +was silent. + +"But all he'd ever say was that times had changed since my day, and I +wasn't to mind him." He had himself better in hand now. + +"Why, I nursed that boy when he was a dear, funny little red baby with +big round eyes rollin' around to take notice; he took notice awful +quick--fur a baby. Oh, my! Oh, dear! Dan'l!" + +Again he stopped. + +"And it don't seem more'n yesterday that I was a-teachin' him to throw +the diamond hitch; he could throw the diamond hitch with his eyes shut +--I reckon by the time he was nine or ten. He had his faults, but they +didn't hurt him none; Dan'l J. was a man, now--" He halted once more. + +"The dead millionaire," began Billy Brue, reading from the obituary in +the Skiplap _Weekly Ledge_, "was in his fifty-second year. Genial, +generous to a fault, quick to resent a wrong, but unfailing in his +loyalty to a friend, a man of large ideas, with a genius for large +operations, he was the type of indefatigable enterprise that has +builded this Western empire in a wilderness and given rich sustenance +and luxurious homes to millions of prosperous, happy American citizens. +Peace to his ashes! And a safe trip to his immortal soul over the +one-way trail!" + +"Yes, yes--it's Dan'l J. fur sure--they got my boy Dan'l that time. Is +that all it says, Billy? Any one with him?" + +"Why, this here despatch is signed by young Toler--that's his +confidential man." + +"Nobody else?" + +The old man was peering at him sharply from under the grey protruding +brows. + +"Well, if you must know, Uncle Peter, this is what the notice says that +come by wire to the _Ledge_ office," and he read doggedly: + +"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her +husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is +prostrated by the shock of his sudden death." + +The old man became for the first time conscious of the tears in his +eyes, and, pulling down one of the blue woollen shirt sleeves, wiped +his wet cheeks. The slow, painful blush of age crept up across the iron +strength of his face, and passed. He looked away as he spoke. + +"I knew it; I knew that. My Dan'l was like all that Frisco bunch. They +get tangled with women sooner or later. I taxed Dan'l with it. I +spleened against it and let him know it. But he was a man and his own +master--if you can rightly call a man his own master that does them +things. Do you know what-fur woman this one was, Billy?" + +"Well, last time Dan'l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on +the car--kind of a coppery-lookin' blonde. Allie Ash, the brakeman on +No. 4, he tells me she used to be in Spokane, and now she'd got her +hooks on to some minin' property up in the Coeur d'Alene. Course, this +mightn't be the one." + +The old man had ceased to listen. He was aroused to the need for +action. + +"Get movin', Billy! We can get down to Eden to-night; we'll have the +moon fur two hours on the trail soon's the sun's gone. I can get 'em to +drive me over to Skiplap first thing to-morrow, and I can have 'em make +me up a train there fur Montana City. Was he--" + +"Dan'l J. has been took home--the noozepaper says." + +They turned back down the trail, the old man astride Billy Brue's +horse, followed by his pack-mule and preceded by Billy. + +Already, such was his buoyance and habit of quick recovery and +readjustment under reverses, his thoughts were turning to his grandson. +Daniel's boy--there was the grandson of his grandfather--the son of his +father--fresh from college, and the instructions of European travel, +knowing many things his father had not known, ready to take up the work +of his father, and capable, perhaps, of giving it a better finish. His +beloved West had lost one of its valued builders, but another should +take his place. His boy should come to him and finish the tasks of his +father; and, in the years to come, make other mighty tasks of +empire-building for himself and the children of his children. + +It did not occur to him that he and the boy might be as far apart in +sympathies and aims as at that moment they were in circumstance. For, +while the old man in the garb of a penniless prospector, toiled down +the steep mountain trail on a cheap horse, his grandson was reading the +first news of his father's death in one of the luxurious staterooms of +a large steam yacht that had just let down her anchor in Newport +Harbour. And each--but for the death--had been where most he wished to +be--one with his coarse fare and out-of-doors life, roughened and +seamed by the winds and browned by the sun to mahogany tints; aged but +playing with boyish zest at his primitive sport; the other, a +strong-limbed, well-marrowed, full-breathing youth of twenty-five, with +appetites all alert and sharpened, pink and pampered, loving luxury, +and prizing above all things else the atmosphere of wealth and its +refinements. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +The West Against the East + + +Two months later a sectional war was raging in the Bines home at +Montana City. The West and the East were met in conflict,--the old and +the new, the stale and the fresh. And, if the bitterness was dissembled +by the combatants, not less keenly was it felt, nor less determined was +either faction to be relentless. + +A glance about the "sitting-room" in which the opposing forces were +lined up, and into the parlour through the opened folding-doors, may +help us to a better understanding of the issue involved. Both rooms +were large and furnished in a style that had been supremely luxurious +in 1878. The house, built in that year, of Oregon pine, had been quite +the most pretentious piece of architecture in that section of the West. +It had been erected in the first days of Montana City as a convincing +testimonial from the owner to his faith in the town's future. The +plush-upholstered sofas and chairs, with their backs and legs of carved +black walnut, had come direct from New York. For pictures there were +early art-chromos, among them the once-prized companion pieces, "Wide +Awake" and "Fast Asleep." Lithography was represented by "The +Fisherman's Pride" and "The Soldier's Dream of Home." In the +handicrafts there were a photographic reproduction of the Lord's +Prayer, illustrated originally by a penman with uncommon genius for +scroll-work; a group of water-lilies in wax, floating on a mirror-lake +and protected by a glass globe; a full-rigged schooner, built cunningly +inside a bottle by a matricide serving a life-sentence in the +penitentiary at San Quinten; and a mechanical canarybird in a gilded +cage, acquired at the Philadelphia Centennial,--a bird that had +carolled its death--lay in the early winter of 1877 when it was wound +up too hard and its little insides snapped. In the parlour a few +ornamental books were grouped with rare precision on the centre-table +with its oval top of white marble. On the walls of the "sitting-room" +were a steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln striking the shackles from a +kneeling slave, and a framed cardboard rebus worked in red zephyr, the +reading of which was "No Cross, No Crown." + +Thus far nothing helpful has been found. + +Let us examine, then, the what-not in the "sitting-room" and the choice +Empire cabinet that faces it from the opposite wall of the parlour. + +The what-not as an American institution is obsolete. Indeed, it has +been rather long since writers referred to it even in terms of +opprobrious sarcasm. The what-not, once the cherished shrine of the +American home, sheltered the smaller household gods for which no other +resting-place could be found. The Empire cabinet, with its rounding +front of glass, its painted Watteau scenes, and its mirrored back, has +come to supplant the humbler creation in the fulfilment of all its +tender or mysterious offices. + +Here, perchance, may be found a clue in symbol to the family strife. + +The Bines what-not in the sitting-room was grimly orthodox in its +equipment. Here was an ancient box covered with shell-work, with a wavy +little mirror in its back; a tender motto worked with the hair of the +dead; a "Rock of Ages" in a glass case, with a garland of pink chenille +around the base; two dried pine cones brightly varnished; an old +daguerreotype in an ornamental case of hard rubber; a small old album; +two small China vases of the kind that came always in pairs, standing +on mats of crocheted worsted; three sea-shells; and the cup and saucer +that belonged to grandma, which no one must touch because they'd been +broken and were held together but weakly, owing to the imperfections of +home-made cement. + +The new cabinet, haughty in its varnished elegance, with its Watteau +dames and courtiers, and perhaps the knowledge that it enjoys +widespread approval among the elect,--this is a different matter. In +every American home that is a home, to-day, it demands attention. The +visitor, after eyeing it with cautious side-glances, goes jauntily up +to it, affecting to have been stirred by the mere impulse of elegant +idleness. Under the affectedly careless scrutiny of the hostess he +falls dramatically into an attitude of awed entrancement. Reverently he +gazes upon the priceless bibelots within: the mother-of-pearl fan, half +open; the tiny cup and saucer of Sèvres on their brass easel; the +miniature Cupid and Psyche in marble; the Japanese wrestlers carved in +ivory; the ballet-dancer in bisque; the coral necklace; the souvenir +spoon from the Paris Exposition; the jade bracelet; and the silver +snuff-box that grandfather carried to the day of his death. If the +gazing visitor be a person of abandoned character he makes humourous +pretence that the householder has done wisely to turn a key upon these +treasures, against the ravishings of the overwhelmed and frenzied +connoisseur. He wears the look of one who is gnawed with envy, and he +heaves the sigh of despair. + +But when he notes presently that he has ceased to be observed he sneaks +cheerfully to another part of the room. + +The what-not is obsolete. The Empire cabinet is regnant. Yet, though +one is the lineal descendant of the other--its sophisticated +grandchild--they are hostile and irreconcilable. + +Twenty years hence the cabinet will be proscribed and its contents +catalogued in those same terms of disparagement that the what-not +became long since too dead to incur. Both will then have attained the +state of honourable extinction now enjoyed by the dodo. + +The what-not had curiously survived in the Bines home--survived unto +the coming of the princely cabinet--survived to give battle if it +might. + +Here, perhaps, may be found the symbolic clue to the strife's cause. + +The sole non-combatant was Mrs. Bines, the widow. A neutral was this +good woman, and a well-wisher to each faction. + +"I tell you it's all the same to me," she declared, "Montana City or +Fifth Avenue in New York. I guess I can do well enough in either place +so long as the rest of you are satisfied." + +It had been all the same to Mrs. Bines for as many years as a woman of +fifty can remember. It was the lot of wives in her day and environment +early to learn the supreme wisdom of abolishing preferences. Riches and +poverty, ease and hardship, mountain and plain, town and wilderness, +they followed in no ascertainable sequence, and a superiority of +indifference to each was the only protection against hurts from the +unexpected. + +This trained neutrality of Mrs. Bines served her finely now. She had no +leading to ally herself against her children in their wish to go East, +nor against Uncle Peter Bines in his stubborn effort to keep them West. +She folded her hands to wait on the others. + +And the battle raged. + +The old man, sole defender of the virtuous and stalwart West against an +East that he alleged to be effete and depraved, had now resorted to +sarcasm,--a thing that Mr. Carlyle thought was as good as the language +of the devil. + +"And here, now, how about this dog-luncheon?" he continued, glancing at +a New York newspaper clutched accusingly in his hand. "It was give, I +see, by one of your Newport cronies. Now, that's healthy doin's fur a +two-fisted Christian, ain't it? I want to know. Shappyronging a select +company of lady and gentlemen dogs from soup to coffee; pressing a +little more of the dog-biscuit on this one, and seein' that the other +don't misplay its finger-bowl no way. How I would love to read of a +Bines standin' up, all in purty velvet pants, most likely, to receive +at one of them bow-wow functions;--functions, I believe, is the name of +it?" he ended in polite inquiry. + +"There, there, Uncle Peter!" the young man broke in, soothingly; "you +mustn't take those Sunday newspapers as gospel truth; those stories are +printed for just such rampant old tenderfoots as you are; and even if +there is one foolish freak, he doesn't represent all society in the +better sense of the term." + +"Yes, and _you_!" Uncle Peter broke out again, reminded of another +grievance. "You know well enough your true name is Peter--Pete and +Petie when you was a baby and Peter when you left for college. And +you're ashamed of what you've done, too, for you tried to hide them +callin'-cards from me the other day, only you wa'n't quick enough. +Bring 'em out! I'm bound your mother and Pish shall see 'em. Out with +'em!" + +The young man, not without embarrassment, drew forth a Russia leather +card-case which the old man took from him as one having authority. + +"Here you are, Marthy Bines!" he exclaimed, handing her a card; "here +you are! read it! Mr. P. Percival Bines.' _Now_ don't you feel proud of +havin' stuck out for Percival when you see it in cold print? You know +mighty well his pa and me agreed to Percival only fur a middle name, +jest to please you--and he wa'n't to be called by it;--only jest Peter +or 'Peter P.' at most; and now look at the way he's gone and garbled +his good name." + +Mr. P. Percival Bines blushed furiously here, but rejoined, +nevertheless, with quiet dignity, that a man's name was something about +which he should have the ruling voice, especially where it was possible +for him to rectify or conceal the unhappy choice of his parents. + +"And while we're on names," he continued, "do try to remember in case +you ever get among people, that Sis's name is Psyche and not Pish." + +The blond and complacent Miss Bines here moved uneasily in her patent +blue plush rocker and spoke for the first time, with a grateful glance +at her brother. + +"Yes, Uncle Peter, for mercy's sake, _do_ try! Don't make us a +laughing-stock!" "But your name is Pish. A person's name is what their +folks name 'em, ain't it? Your ma comes acrost a name in a book that +she likes the looks of, and she takes it to spell Pish, and she ups and +names you Pish, and we all calls you Pish and Pishy, and then when you +toddle off to public school and let 'em know how you spell it they tell +you it's something else--an outlandish name if spellin' means anything. +If it comes to that you ought to change the spellin' instead of the +name that your poor pa loved." + +Yet the old man had come to know that he was fighting a lost +fight,--lost before it had ever begun. + +"It will be a good chance," ventured Mrs. Bines, timidly, "for Pishy--I +mean Sike--Sicky--to meet the right sort of people." + +"Yes, I should _say_--and the wrong sort. The ingagin' host of them +lady and gentlemen dogs, fur instance." + +"But Uncle Peter," broke in the young man, "you shouldn't expect a girl +of Psyche's beauty and fortune to vegetate in Montana City all her +life. Why, any sort of brilliant marriage is possible to her if she +goes among the right people. Don't you want the family to amount to +something socially? Is our money to do us no good? And do you think I'm +going to stay here and be a moss-back and raise chin whiskers and work +myself to death the way my father did?" + +"No, no," replied the old man, with a glance at the mother; "not _jest_ +the way your pa did; you might do some different and some better; but +all the same, you won't do any better'n he did any way you'll learn to +live in New York. Unless you was to go broke there," he added, +thoughtfully; "in that case you got the stuff in you and it'd come out; +but you got too much money to go broke." + +"And you'll see that I lead a decent enough life. Times have changed +since my father was a young man." + +"Yes; that's what your pa told me,--times had changed since I was a +young man; but I could 'a' done him good if he'd 'a' listened." + +"Well, we'll try it. The tide is setting that way from all over the +country. Here, listen to this editorial in the _Sun_." And he read from +his own paper: + +"A GOOD PLACE TO MOVE TO. + +"One of the most interesting evidences of the growth of New York is the +news that Mr. Anson Ledrick of the Consolidated Copper Company has +purchased an extensive building site on Riverside Drive and will +presently improve it with a costly residence. Mr. Ledrick's decision to +move his household effects to Manhattan Island is in accordance with a +very marked tendency of successful Americans. + +"There are those who are fond of depreciating New York; of assailing it +with all sorts of cheap and sensational vituperation; of picturing it +as the one great canker spot of the Western hemisphere, as +irretrievably sunk in wickedness and shame. The fact remains, however, +that the city, as never before, is the great national centre of wealth, +culture, and distinction of every kind, and that here the citizen, +successful in art, literature, or practical achievement, instinctively +seeks his abiding-place. + +"The restlessness of the average American millionaire while he remains +outside the city limits is frequently remarked upon. And even the +mighty overlords of Chicago, falling in with the prevailing fashion, +have forsaken the shores of the great inland sea and pitched their +tents with us; not to speak of the copper kings of Montana. Why is it +that these interesting men, after acquiring fortune and fame elsewhere, +are not content to remain upon the scene of their early triumphs? Why +is it that they immediately pack their carpet-bags, take the first +through train to our gates, and startle the investing public by the +manner in which they bull the price of New York building lots?" + +The old man listened absently. + +"And probably some day I'll read of you in that same centre of culture +and distinction as P. Percival Bines, a young man of obscure fam'ly, +that rose by his own efforts to be the dashin' young cotillion leader +and the well-known club-man, and that his pink teas fur dogs is barked +about by every fashionable canine on the island." + +The young man continued to read: "These men are not vain fools; they +are shrewd, successful men of the world. They have surveyed New York +City from a distance and have discovered that, in spite of Tammany and +in spite of yellow journals, New York is a town of unequalled +attractiveness. And so they come; and their coming shows us what we +are. Not only millionaires; but also painters and novelists and men and +women of varied distinction. The city palpitates with life and ambition +and hope and promise; it attracts the great and the successful, and +those who admire greatness and success. The force of natural selection +is at work here as everywhere; and it is rapidly concentrating in our +small island whatever is finest, most progressive, and best in the +American character." + +"Well, now do me a last favour before you pike off East," pleaded the +old man. "Make a trip with me over the properties. See 'em once anyway, +and see a little more of this country and these people. Mebbe they're +better'n you think. Give me about three weeks or a month, and then, by +Crimini, you can go off if you're set on it and be 'whatever is finest +and best in the American character' as that feller puts it. But some +day, son, you'll find out there's a whole lot of difference between a +great man of wealth and a man of great wealth. Them last is gettin' +terrible common." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +Over the Hills + + +So the old man and the young man made the round of the Bines +properties. The former nursed a forlorn little hope of exciting an +interest in the concerns most vital to him; to the latter the leisurely +tour in the private car was a sportive prelude to the serious business +of life, as it should be lived, in the East. Considering it as such he +endured it amiably, and indeed the long August days and the sharply +cool nights were not without real enjoyment for him. + +To feel impartially a multitude of strong, fresh wants--the imperative +need to live life in all its fulness, this of itself makes the heart to +sing. And, above the full complement of wants, to have been dowered by +Heaven with a stanch disbelief in the unattainable,--this is a fortune +rather to be chosen than a good name or great riches; since the name +and riches and all things desired must come to the call of it. + +Our Western-born youth of twenty-five had the wants and the sense of +power inherited from a line of men eager of initiative, the product of +an environment where only such could survive. Doubtless in him was the +soul and body hunger of his grandfather, cramping and denying through +hardship year after year, yet sustained by dreaming in the hardest +times of the soft material luxuries that should some day be his. +Doubtless marked in his character, too, was the slightly relaxed +tension of his father; the disposition to feast as well as the capacity +to fast; to take all, feel all, do all, with an avidity greater by +reason of the grinding abstinence and the later indulgence of his +forbears. A sage versed in the lore of heredity as modified by +environment may some day trace for us the progress across this +continent of an austere Puritan, showing how the strain emerges from +the wilderness at the Western ocean with a character so widely +differing from the one with which he began the adventurous +journey,--regarding, especially, a tolerance of the so-called good and +many of the bad things of life. Until this is done we may, perhaps, +consider the change to be without valid cause. + +Young Bines, at all events, was the flower of a pioneer stock, and him +the gods of life cherished, so that all the forces of the young land +about him were as his own. Yet, though his pulses rhymed to theirs he +did not perceive his relation to them: neither he nor the land was yet +become introspective. So informed was he with the impetuous spirit of +youth that the least manifestation of life found its answering thrill +in him. And it was sufficient to feel this. There was no time barren +enough of sensation to reason about it. Uncle Peter's plan for an +inspection of the Bines properties had at first won him by touching his +sense of duty. He anticipated no interest or pleasure in the trip. Yet +from the beginning he enjoyed it to the full. Being what he was, the +constant movement pleased him, the out-of-doors life, the occasional +sorties from the railroad by horse to some remote mining camp, or to a +stock ranch or lumber-camp. He had been away for six years, and it +pleased him to note that he was treated by the people he met with a +genuine respect and liking as the son of his father. In the East he had +been accustomed to a certain deference from very uncertain people +because he was the son of a rich man. Here he had prestige because he +was the son of Daniel Bines, organiser and man of affairs. He felt +sometimes that the men at mine, mill, or ranch looked him over with +misgiving, and had their cautious liking compelled only by the +assurance that he was indeed the son of Daniel. They left him at these +times with the suspicion that this bare fact meant enough with them to +carry a man of infelicitous exterior. + +He was pleased, moreover, to feel a new respect for Uncle Peter. He +observed that men of all degrees looked up to him, sought and relied +upon his judgment; the investing capitalist whom they met not less than +the mine foreman; the made man and the labourer. In the drawing-room at +home he had felt so agreeably superior to the old man; now he felt his +own inferiority in a new element, and began to view him with more +respect. He saw him to be the shrewd man of affairs, with a thorough +grasp of detail in every branch of their interests; and a deep man, as +well; a little narrow, perhaps, from his manner of life, but of +unfailing kindness, and with rather a young man's radicalism than an +old man's conservatism; one who, in an emergency, might be relied upon +to take the unexpected but effective course. + +For his own part, old Peter Bines learned in the course of the trip to +understand and like his grandson better. At bottom he decided the young +man to be sound after all, and he began to make allowance for his +geographical heresies. The boy had been sent to an Eastern college; +that was clearly a mistake, putting him out of sympathy with the West; +and he had never been made to work, which was another and a graver +mistake, "but he'd do more'n his father ever did if 'twa'n't fur his +father's money," the old man concluded. For he saw in their talks that +the very Eastern experience which he derided had given the young fellow +a poise and a certain readiness to grasp details in the large that his +father had been a lifetime in acquiring. + +For a month they loitered over the surrounding territory in the private +car, gliding through fertile valleys, over bleak passes, steaming up +narrow little canons along the down-rushing streams with their cool +shallow murmurs. + +They would learn one day that a cross-cut was to be started on the Last +Chance, or that the concentrates of the True Grit would thereafter be +shipped to the Careless Creek smelter. Next they would learn that a new +herd of Galloways had done finely last season on the Bitter Root ranch; +that a big lot of ore was sacked at the Irish Boy, that an +eighteen-inch vein had been struck in the Old Crow; that a concentrator +was needed at Hellandgone, and that rich gold-bearing copper and sand +bearing free gold had been found over on Horseback Ridge. + +Another day they would drive far into a forest of spruce and hemlock to +a camp where thousands of ties were being cut and floated down to the +line of the new railway. + +Sometimes they spent a night in one of the smaller mining camps off the +railroad, whereof facetious notes would appear in the nearest weekly +paper, such as: + +"The Hon. Peter Bines and his grandson, who is a chip of the old block, +spent Tuesday night at Rock Rip. Young Bines played the deal from soda +card to hock at Lem Tully's Turf Exchange, and showed Lem's dealer good +and plenty that there's no piker strain in him." + +Or, it might be: + +"Poker stacks continue to have a downward tendency. They were sold last +week as low as eighty chips for a dollar; It is sad to see this noble +game dragging along in the lower levels of prosperity, and we take as a +favourable omen the appearance of Uncle Peter Bines and his grandson +the other night. The prices went to par in a minute. Young Bines gave +signs of becoming as delicately intuitional in the matter of concealed +values as his father, the lamented Daniel J." + +Again it was: + +"Uncle Peter Bines reports from over Kettle Creek way that the +sagebrush whiskey they take a man's two bits for there would gnaw holes +in limestone. Peter is likelier to find a ledge of dollar bills than he +is good whiskey this far off the main trail. The late Daniel J. could +have told him as much, and Daniel J.'s boy, who accompanies Uncle +Peter, will know it hereafter." + +The young man felt wholesomely insignificant at these and other signs +that he was taken on sufferance as a son and a grandson. + +He was content that it should be so. Indeed there was little wherewith +he was not content. That he was habitually preoccupied, even when there +was most movement about them, early became apparent to Uncle Peter. +That he was constantly cheerful proved the matter of his musings to be +pleasant. That he was proner than most youths to serious meditation +Uncle Peter did not believe. Therefore he attributed the moods of +abstraction to some matter probably connected with his project of +removing the family East. It was not permitted Uncle Peter to know, nor +was his own youth recent enough for him to suspect, the truth. And the +mystery stayed inviolate until a day came and went that laid it bare +even to the old man's eyes. + +They awoke one morning to find the car on a siding at the One Girl +mine. Coupled to it was another car from an Eastern road that their +train had taken on sometime in the night. Percival noted the car with +interest as he paced beside the track in the cool clear air before +breakfast. The curtains were drawn, and the only signs of life to be +observed were at the kitchen end, where the white-clad cook could be +seen astir. Grant, porter on the Bines car, told him the other car had +been taken on at Kaslo Junction, and that it belonged to Rulon Shepler, +the New York financier, who was aboard with a party of friends. + +As Percival and Uncle Peter left their car for the shaft-house after +breakfast, the occupants of the other car were bestirring themselves. + +From one of the open windows a low but impassioned voice was exhausting +the current idioms of damnation in sweeping dispraise of all land-areas +north and west of Fifty-ninth Street, New York. + +Uncle Peter smiled grimly. Percival flushed, for the hidden protestant +had uttered what were his own sentiments a month before. + +Reaching the shaft-house they chatted with Pangburn, the +superintendent, and then went to the store-room to don blouses and +overalls for a descent into the mine. + +For an hour they stayed underground, traversing the various levels and +drifts, while Pangburn explained the later developments of the vein and +showed them where the new stoping had been begun. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +A Meeting and a Clashing + + +As they stepped from the cage at the surface Percival became aware of a +group of strangers between him and the open door of the +shaft-house,--people displaying in dress and manner the unmistakable +stamp of New York. For part of a minute, while the pupils of his eyes +were contracting to the light, he saw them but vaguely. Then, as his +sight cleared, he beheld foremost in the group, beaming upon him with +an expression of pleased and surprised recognition, the girl whose face +and voice had for nearly half a year peopled his lover's solitude with +fair visions and made its silence to be all melody. + +Had the encounter been anticipated his composure would perhaps have +failed him. Not a few of his waking dreams had sketched this, their +second meeting, and any one of the ways it had pleased him to plan it +would assuredly have found him nervously embarrassed. But so wildly +improbable was this reality that not the daringest of his imagined +happenings had approached it. His thoughts for the moment had been not +of her; then, all at once, she stood before him in the flesh, and he +was cool, almost unmoved. He suspected at once that her father was the +trim, fastidiously dressed man who looked as if he had been abducted +from a morning stroll down the avenue to his club; that the plump, +ruddy, high-bred woman, surveying the West disapprovingly through a +lorgnon, would be her mother. Shepler he knew by sight, with his big +head, massive shoulders, and curiously short, tapering body. Some other +men and a woman were scanning the hoisting machinery with superior +looks. + +The girl, before starting toward him, had waited hardly longer than it +took him to eye the group. And then came an awkward two seconds upon +her whose tact in avoiding the awkward was reputed to be more than +common. + +With her hand extended she had uttered, "Why, Mr.--" before it flashed +upon her that she did not know the name of the young man she was +greeting. + +The "Mister" was threatening to prolong itself into an "r" of +excruciating length and disgraceful finality, an "r" that is terminated +neatly by no one but hardened hotel-clerks. Then a miner saved the day. +"Mr. Bines," he said, coming up hurriedly behind Percival with several +specimens of ore, "you forgot these." + +"-r-r-r. Bines, how _do_ you do!" concluded the girl with an eye-flash +of gratitude at the humble instrument that had prevented an undue +hiatus in her salutation. They were apart from the others and for the +moment unnoticed. + +The young man took the hand so cordially offered, and because of all +the things he wished and had so long waited to say, he said nothing. + +"Isn't it jolly! I am Miss Milbrey," she added in a lower tone, and +then, raising her voice, "Mamma, Mr. Bines--and papa," and there +followed a hurried and but half-acknowledged introduction to the other +members of the party. And, behold! in that moment the young man had +schemed the edifice of all his formless dreams. For six months he had +known the unsurpassable luxury of wanting and of knowing what he +wanted. Now, all at once, he saw this to be a world in which dreams +come more than true. + +Shepler and the party were to go through the mine as a matter of +sight-seeing. They were putting on outer clothes from the store-room to +protect them from the dirt and damp. + +Presently Percival found himself again at the bottom of the shaft. +During the descent of twelve hundred feet he had reflected upon the +curious and interesting fact that her name should be Milbrey. He felt +dimly that this circumstance should be ranked among the most +interesting of natural phenomena,--that she should have a name, as the +run of mortals, and that it should be one name more than another. When +he discovered further that her Christian name was Avice the phenomenon +became stupendously bewildering. They two were in the last of the party +to descend. On reaching bottom he separated her with promptness and +guile from two solemn young men, copies of each other, and they were +presently alone. In the distance they could see the others following +ghostly lamps. From far off mysterious recesses came the muffled +musical clink of the sledges on the drills. An employee who had come +down with them started to be their guide. Percival sent him back. + +"I've just been through; I can find my way again." + +"Ver' well," said the man, "with the exception that it don't happen +something,--yes?" And he stayed where he was. + +Down one of the cross-cuts they started, stepping aside to let a car of +ore be pushed along to the shaft. + +"Do you know," began the girl, "I am so glad to be able to thank you +for what you did that night." + +"I'm glad you _are_ able. I was beginning to think I should always have +those thanks owing to me." + +"I might have paid them at the time, but it was all so unexpected and +so sudden,--it rattled me, quite." + +"I thought you were horribly cool-headed." + +"I wasn't." + +"Your manner reduced me to a groom who opened your carriage door." + +"But grooms don't often pick strange ladies up bodily and bear them out +of a pandemonium of waltzing cab-horses. I'd never noticed before that +cab-horses are so frivolous and hysterical." + +"And grooms know where to look for their pay." + +They were interrupting nervously, and bestowing furtive side-looks upon +each other. + +"If I'd not seen you," said the girl, "glanced at you--before--that +evening, I shouldn't have remembered so well; doubtless I'd not have +recognised you to-day." + +"I didn't know you did glance at me, and yet I watched you every moment +of the evening. You didn't know that, did you?" + +She laughed. + +"Of course I knew it. A woman has to note such things without letting +it be seen that she sees." + +"And I'd have sworn you never once so much as looked my way." + +"Don't we do it well, though?" + +"And in spite of all the time I gave to a study of your face I lost the +detail of it. I could keep only the effect of its expression and the +few tones of your voice I heard. You know I took those on a record so I +could make 'em play over any time I wanted to listen. Do you know, that +has all been very sweet to me, my helping you and the memory of it,--so +vague and sweet." + +"Aren't you afraid we're losing the others?" + +She halted and looked back. + +"No; I'm afraid we won't lose them; come on; you can't turn back now. +And you don't want to hear anything about mines; it wouldn't be at all +good for you, I'm sure. Quick, down this way, or you'll hear Pangburn +telling some one what a stope is, and think what a thing that would be +to carry in your head." + +"Really, a stope sounds like something that would 'get you' in the +night! I'm afraid!" + +Half in his spirit she fled with him down a dimly lighted incline where +men were working at the rocky wall with sledge and drill. There was +that in his manner which compelled her quite as literally as when at +their first meeting he had picked her up in his arms. + +As they walked single-file through the narrowing of a drift, she +wondered about him. He was Western, plainly. An employee in the mine, +probably a manager or director or whatever it was they called those in +authority in mines. Plainly, too, he was a man of action and a man who +engaged all her instinctive liking. Something in him at once coerced +her friendliest confidence. These were the admissions she made to +herself. She divined him, moreover, to be a blend of boldness and +timidity. He was bold to the point of telling her things +unconventionally, of beguiling her into remote underground passages +away from the party; yet she understood; she knew at once that he was a +determined but unspoiled gentleman; that under no provocation could he +make a mistake. In any situation of loneliness she would have felt safe +with him--"as with a brother"--she thought. Then, feeling her cheeks +burn, she turned back and said: + +"I must tell you he was my brother--that man--that night." + +He was sorry and glad all at once. The sorrow being the lesser and more +conventional emotion, he started upon an awkward expression of it, +which she interrupted. + +"Never mind saying that, thank you. Tell me something about yourself, +now. I really would like to know you. What do you see and hear and do +in this strange life?" + +"There's not much variety," he answered, with a convincing droop of +depression. "For six months I've been seeing you and hearing +you--seeing you and hearing you; not much variety in that--nothing +worth telling you about." + +Despite her natural caution, intensified by training, she felt herself +thrill to the very evident sincerity of his tones, so that she had to +affect mirth to seem at ease. + +"Dear, dear, what painful monotony; and how many men have said it since +these rocks were made; and now you say it,--well, I admit--" + +"But there's nothing new under the sun, you know." + +"No; not even a new excuse for plagiarism, is there?" + +"Well, you see as long as the same old thing keeps true the same old +way of telling it will be more or less depended upon. After a few +hundred years of experiment, you know, they hit on the fewest words +that tell the most, and everybody uses them because no one can improve +them. Maybe the prehistoric cave-gentleman, who proposed to his loved +one with a war club just back of her left ear, had some variation of +the formula suiting his simple needs, after he'd gotten her home and +brought her to and she said it was 'all so sudden;' and a man can work +in little variations of his own to-day. For example--" + +"I'm sure we'd best be returning." + +"For example, I could say, you know, that for keeping the mind active +and the heart working overtime the memory of you surpasses any tonic +advertised in the backs of the magazines. Or, that--" + +"I think that's enough; I see you _could_ vary the formula, in case--" + +"--_have_ varied it--but don't forget I prefer the original unvaried. +After all, there are certain things that you can't tell in too few +words. Now, you--" + +"You stubborn person. Really, I know all about myself. I asked you to +tell me about yourself." + +"And I began at once to tell you everything about myself--everything of +interest--which is yourself." + +"I see your sense of values is gone, poor man. I shall question you. +Now you are a miner, and I like men of action, men who do things; I've +often wondered about you, and seriously, I'm glad to find you here +doing something. I remembered you kindly, with real gratitude, indeed. +You didn't seem like a New York man either, and I decided you weren't. +Honestly, I am glad to find you here at your work in your miner's +clothes. You mustn't think we forget how to value men that work." + +On the point of saying thoughtlessly, "But I'm not working here--I own +the mine," he checked himself. Instead he began a defence of the man +who doesn't work, but who could if he had to. "For example," he +continued, "here we are at a place that you must be carried over; +otherwise you'd have to wade through a foot of water or go around that +long way we've come. I've rubber boots on, and so I pick you up this +way--" He held her lightly on his arm and she steadied herself with a +hand between his shoulders. + +"And staggering painfully under my burden, I wade out to the middle of +this subterranean lake." He stopped. + +"You see, I've learned to do things. I could pick you from that +slippery street and put you in your carriage, and I can pick you up now +without wasting words about it--" + +"But you're wasting time--hurry, please--and, anyway, you're a miner +and used to such things." + +He remained standing. + +"But I'm _not_ wasting time, and I'm not a miner in the sense you mean. +I own this mine, and I suppose for the most part I'm the sort of man +you seem to have gotten tired of; the man who doesn't have to do +anything. Even now I'm this close to work only because my grandfather +wanted me to look over the properties my father left." + +"But, hurry, please, and set me down." + +"Not until I warn you that I'm just as apt to do things as the kind of +man you thought I was. This is twice I've picked you up now. Look out +for me;--next time I may not put you down at all." + +She gave a low little laugh, denoting unruffled serenity. She was +glorying secretly in his strength, and she knew his boldness and +timidity were still justly balanced. And there was the rather +astonishing bit of news he had just given her. That needed a lot of +consideration. + +With slow, sure-footed steps he reached the farther side of the water +and put her on her feet. + +"There, I thought I'd reveal the distressing truth about myself while I +had you at my mercy." + +"I might have suspected, but I gave the name no thought. Bines, to be +sure. You are the son of the Bines who died some months ago. I heard +Mr. Shepler and my father talking about some of your mining properties. +Mr. Shepler thought the 'One Girl' was such a funny name for your +father to give a mine." + +Now they neared the foot of the shaft where the rest of the party +seemed to await them. As they came up Percival felt himself raked by a +broadside from the maternal lorgnon that left him all but disabled. The +father glowered at him and asked questions in the high key we are apt +to adopt in addressing foreigners, in the instinctive fallacy that any +language can be understood by any one if it be spoken loudly enough. +The mother's manner was a crushing rebuke to the young man for his +audacity. The father's manner was meant to intimate that natives of the +region in which they were then adventuring were not worthy of rebuke, +save such general rebukes as may be conveyed by displaying one's +natural superiority of manner. The other members of the party, +excepting Shepler, who talked with Pangburn at a little distance, took +cue from the Milbreys and aggressively ignored the abductor of an only +daughter. They talked over, around, and through him, as only may those +mortals whom it hath pleased heaven to have born within certain areas +on Manhattan Island. + +The young man felt like a social outcast until he caught a glance from +Miss Milbrey. That young woman was still friendly, which he could +understand, and highly amused, which he could not understand. While the +temperature was at its lowest the first load ascended, including Miss +Milbrey and her parents, a chatty blonde, and an uncomfortable little +man who, despite his being twelve hundred feet toward the centre +thereof, had three times referred bitterly to the fact that he was "out +of the world." "I shall see you soon above ground, shall I not?" Miss +Milbrey had asked, at which her mother shot Percival a parting volley +from her rapid-fire lorgnon, while her father turned upon him a back +whose sidelines were really admirable, considering his age and feeding +habits. The behaviour of these people appeared to intensify the +amusement of their child. The two solemn young men who remained +continued to chat before Percival as they would have chatted before the +valet of either. He began to sound the spiritual anguish of a pariah. +Also to feel truculent and, in his own phrase, "Westy." With him +"Westy" meant that you were as good as any one else "and a shade better +than a whole lot if it came to a show-down." He was not a little +mortified to find how easy it was for him to fall back upon that old +cushion of provincial arrogance. It was all right for Uncle Peter, but +for himself,--well, it proved that he was less finely Eastern than he +had imagined. + +As the cage came down for another ascent, he let the two solemn young +men go up with Shepler and Pangburn, and went to search for Uncle +Peter. + +"There, thank God, is a man!" he reflected. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked + + +He found Uncle Peter in the cross-cut, studying a bit of ore through a +glass, and they went back to ascend. + +"Them folks," said the old man, "must be the kind that newspaper meant, +that had done something in practical achievement. I bet that girl's +mother will achieve something practical with you fur cuttin' the girl +out of the bunch; she was awful tormented; talked two or three times +about the people in the humbler walks of life bein' strangely something +or other. You ain't such a humble walker now, are you, son? But say, +that yellow-haired woman, she ain't a bit diffident, is she? She's a +very hearty lady, I _must_ say!" + +"But did you see Miss Milbrey?" + +"Oh, that's her name is it, the one that her mother was so worried +about and you? Yes, I saw her. Peart and cunnin', but a heap too wise +fur you, son; take my steer on that. Say, she'd have your pelt nailed +to the barn while you was wonderin' which way you'd jump." + +"Oh, I know I'm only a tender, teething infant," the young man +answered, with masterly satire. "Well, now, as long's you got that bank +roll you jest look out fur cupboard love--the kind the old cat has when +she comes rubbin' up against your leg and purrin' like you was the +whole thing." + +The young man smiled, as they went up, with youth's godlike faith in +its own sufficiency, albeit he smarted from the slights put upon him. + +At the surface a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the +formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey, +the pleasing model of all a city's refinements, awaiting the boon of a +hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty +blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more +manner than manners. Percival felt they were all regarding him now with +affectionate concern. They pressed forward effusively. + +"So good of you, Mr. Bines, to take an interest in us--my daughter has +been so anxious to see one of these fascinating mines." "Awfully +obliged, Mr. Bines." "Charmed, old man; deuced pally of you to stay by +us down in that hole, you know." "So clever of you to know where to +find the gold--" + +He lost track of the speakers. Their speeches became one concerted +effusion of affability that was music to his ears. + +Miss Milbrey was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, +she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously +potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their +normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look +Percival had noted below. + +"And, Mr. Bines, do come in with that quaint old grandfather of yours +and lunch with us," urged Mrs. Milbrey, who had, as it were, spiked her +lorgnon. "Here's Mr. Shepler to second the invitation--and then we +shall chat about this very interesting West." + +Miss Milbrey nodded encouragement, seeming to chuckle inwardly. + +In the spacious dining compartment of the Shepler car the party was +presently at lunch. + +"You seem so little like a Western man," Mrs. Milbrey confided +graciously to Percival on her right. + +"We cal'late he'll fetch out all straight, though, in a year or so," +put in Uncle Peter, from over his chop, with guileless intent to defend +his grandson from what he believed to be an attack. "Of course a young +man's bound to get some foolishness into him in an Eastern college like +this boy went to." + +Percival had flushed at the compliment to himself; also at the old +man's failure to identify it as such. + +Mr. Milbrey caressed his glass of claret with ardent eyes and took the +situation in hand with the easy confidence of a master. + +"The West," said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In +truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all +the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for +deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but +so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not +suspect their--er--humble origin." + +"Meaning their Western origin?" inquired Shepler, blandly, with secret +intent to brew strife. + +"Well--er--to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble,--of +course--perhaps I should have said--" + +"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey," +interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap +in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was +twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"--he lowered his voice to +the pitch of impressiveness--"has over eighty pairs of trousers and +complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston." + +"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked +slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that +Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his +lines under the surface. + +"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men, +"he must still talk like a banjo." + +"And gargle all his 'r's,'" added the other, very earnestly. "They +never get over that, you know." + +"Instead of losin' 'em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself +feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it 'Ne' +Yawk,' and prob'ly he don't like it in Boston because they always call +'em 'rawroystahs.'" + +"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It _is_ +hard for the West and the East to forgive each other's dialects. The +inflated 'r' and the smothered 'r' never quite harmonise." + +"Western money talks good straight New York talk," ventured Miss +Milbrey, with the air of one who had observed in her time. + +Shepler grinned, and the parents of the young woman resisted with +indifferent success their twin impulses to frown. + +"But the service is so wretched in the West," suggested Oldaker, the +carefully dressed little man with the tired, troubled eyes, whom the +world had been deprived of. "I fancy, now, there's not a good waiter +this side of New York." + +"An American," said Percival, "never _can_ make a good waiter or a good +valet. It takes a Latin, or, still better, a Briton, to feel the +servility required for good service of that sort. An American, now, +always fails at it because he knows he is as good as you are, and he +knows that you know it, and you know that he knows you know it, and +there you are, two mirrors of American equality face to face and +reflecting each other endlessly, and neither is comfortable. The +American is as uncomfortable at having certain services performed for +him by another American as the other is in performing them. Give him a +Frenchman or an Italian or a fellow born within the sound of Bow Bells +to clean his boots and lay out his things and serve his dinner and he's +all right enough." + +"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter. + +"Fancy, now," said Mrs. Drelmer, "a creature in a waiter's jacket +having emotions of that sort!" + +"Our excellent country," said Mr. Milbrey, "is perhaps not yet what it +will be; there is undeniably a most distressing rawness where we might +expect finish. Now in Chicago," he continued in a tone suitably hushed +for the relation of occult phenomena, "we dined with a person who +served champagne with the oysters, soup, fish, and _entrée_, and for +the remainder of the dinner--you may credit me or not--he proffered a +claret of 1875--. I need hardly remind you, the most delicate vintage +of the latter half of the century--and it was served _frappé_." There +was genuine emotion in the speaker's voice. + +"And papa nearly swooned when our host put cracked ice and two lumps of +sugar into his own glass--" + +"_Avice, dear!_" remonstrated the father in a tone implying that some +things positively must not be mentioned at table. + +"Well, you shouldn't expect too much of those self-made men in +Chicago," said Shepler. + +"If they'd only make themselves as well as they make their sausages and +things," sighed Mr. Milbrey. + +"And the self-made man _will_ talk shop," suggested Oldaker. "He thinks +you're dying to hear how he made the first thousand of himself." + +"Still, those Chicago chaps learn quickly enough when they settle in +New York," ventured one of the young men. + +"I knew a Chicago chap who lived East two years and went back not a +half bad sort," said the other. "God help him now, though; his father +made him go back to work in a butcher shop or something of the sort." + +"Best thing I ever heard about Chicago," said Uncle Peter, "a man from +your town told me once he had to stay in Chicago a year, and, says he, +'I went out there a New Yorker, and I went home an American,' he says." +The old man completed this anecdote in tones that were slightly +inflamed. + +"How extremely typical!" said Mrs. Milbrey. "Truly the West is the +place of unspoiled Americanism and the great unspent forces; you are +quite right, Mr. Bines." + +"Think of all the unspent forces back in that silver mine," remarked +Miss Milbrey, with a patent effort to be significant. + +"My perverse child delights to pose as a sordid young woman," the fond +mother explained to Percival, "yet no one can be less so, and you, Mr. +Bines, I am sure, would be the last to suspect her of it. I saw in you +at once those sterling qualities--" + +"Isn't it dreadfully dark down in that sterling silver mine?" observed +Miss Milbrey, apropos of nothing, apparently, while her mother attacked +a second chop that she had meant not to touch. + +"Here's hoping we'll soon be back in God's own country," said Oldaker, +raising his glass. + +"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter, and drained his glass eagerly as they +drank the toast. Whereat they all laughed and Mrs. Drelmer said, "What +a dear, lively wit, for an old gentleman." + +"Oldaker," said Shepler, "has really been the worst sufferer. This is +his first trip West." + +"Beg pardon, Shepler! I was West as far as Buffalo--let me see--in 1878 +or '79." + +"Dear me! is that so?" queried Uncle Peter. "I got East as fur as +Cheyenne that same year. We nearly run into each other, didn't we?" + +Shepler grinned again. + +"Oldaker found a man from New York on the train the other day, up in +one of the emigrant cars. He was a truck driver, and he looked it and +talked it, but Oldaker stuck by him all the afternoon." + +"Well, he'd left the old town three weeks after I had, and he'd been +born there the same year I was--in the Ninth ward--and he remembered as +well as I did the day Barnum's museum burned at Broadway and Ann. I +liked to hear him talk. Why, it was a treat just to hear him say +Broadway and Twenty-third Street, or Madison Square or City Hall Park. +The poor devil had consumption, too, and probably he'll never see them +again. I don't know if I shall ever have it, but I'd never leave the +old town as he was doing." + +"That's like Billy Brue," said Uncle Peter. "Billy loves faro bank jest +as this gentleman loves New York. When he gets a roll he _has_ to play. +One time he landed in Pocatello when there wa'n't but one game in town. +Billy found it and started in. A friend saw him there and called him +out. 'Billy,' says he, 'cash in and come out; that's a brace game.' +'Sure?' says Billy. 'Sure,' says the feller. 'All right,' says Billy, +'much obliged fur puttin' me on.' And he started out lookin' fur +another game. About two hours later the feller saw Billy comin' out of +the same place and Billy owned up he'd gone back there and blowed in +every cent. 'Why, you geezer,' says his friend, 'didn't I put you on +that they was dealin' brace there?' 'Sure,' says Billy, 'sure you did. +But what could I do? It was the only game in town!'" + +"That New York mania is the same sort," said Shepler, laughing, while +Mrs. Drelmer requested everybody to fancy immediately. + +"Your grandfather is so dear and quaint," said Mrs. Milbrey; "you must +certainly bring him to New York with you, for of course a young man of +your capacity and graces will never be satisfied out of New York." + +"Young men like yourself are assuredly needed there," remarked Mr. +Milbrey, warmly. + +"Surely they are," agreed Miss Milbrey, and yet with a manner that +seemed almost to annoy both parents. They were sparing no opportunity +to make the young man conscious of his real oneness with those about +him, and yet subtly to intimate that people of just the Milbreys' +perception were required to divine it at present. "These Westerners +fancy you one of themselves, I dare say," Mrs. Milbrey had said, and +the young man purred under the strokings. His fever for the East was +back upon him. His weeks with Uncle Peter going over the fields where +his father had prevailed had made him convalescent, but these New +Yorkers--the very manner and atmosphere of them--undid the work. He +envied them their easier speech, their matter-of-fact air of +omniscience, the elaborate and cultivated simplicity of their dress, +their sureness and sufficiency in all that they thought and said and +did. He was homesick again for the life he had glimpsed. The West was +rude, desolate, and depressing. Even Uncle Peter, whom he had come +warmly to admire, jarred upon him with his crudity and his Western +assertiveness. + +And there was the woman of the East, whose presence had made the day to +seem dream-like; and she was kind, which was more than he would have +dared to hope, and her people, after their first curious chill of +indifference, seemed actually to be courting him. She, the fleeting and +impalpable dream-love, whom the thought of seeing ever again had been +wildly absurd, was now a human creature with a local habitation, the +most beautiful name in the world, and two parents whose complaisance +was obvious even through the lover's timidity. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +Up Skiplap Canon + + +The meal was ending in smoke, the women, excepting Miss Milbrey, having +lighted cigarettes with the men. The talk had grown less truculently +sectional. The Angstead twins told of their late fishing trip to Lake +St. John for salmon, of projected tours to British Columbia for +mountain sheep, and to Manitoba for elk and moose. + +Mr. Milbrey described with minute and loving particularity the +preparation of _oeufs de Faisan, avec beurre au champagne._ + +Mrs. Milbrey related an anecdote of New York society, not much in +itself, but which permitted the disclosure that she habitually +addressed by their first names three of the foremost society leaders, +and that each of these personages adopted a like familiarity toward +her. + +Mrs. Drelmer declared that she meant to have Uncle Peter Bines at one +of her evenings the very first time he should come to New York, and +that, if he didn't let her know of his coming, she would be offended. +Oldaker related an incident of the ball given to the Prince of Wales, +travelling as Baron Renfrew, on the evening of October 12, 1860, in +which his father had figured briefly before the royal guest to the +abiding credit of American tact and gentility. + +Shepler was amused until he became sleepy, whereupon he extended the +freedom of his castle to his guests, and retired to his stateroom. + +Uncle Peter took a final shot at Oldaker. He was observed to be +laughing, and inquiry brought this: + +"I jest couldn't help snickerin' over his idee of God's own country. He +thinks God's own country is a little strip of an island with a row of +well-fed folks up and down the middle, and a lot of hungry folks on +each side. Mebbe he's right. I'll be bound, it needs the love of God. +But if it is His own country, it don't make Him any connysoor of +countries with me. I'll tell you that." + +Oldaker smiled at this assault, the well-bred, tolerant smile that +loyal New Yorkers reserve for all such barbaric belittling of their +empire. Then he politely asked Uncle Peter to show Mrs. Drelmer and +himself through the stamp mill. + +At Percival's suggestion of a walk, Miss Milbrey was delighted. + +After an inspection of the Bines car, in which Oldaker declared he +would be willing to live for ever, if it could be anchored firmly in +Madison Square, the party separated. Out into the clear air, already +cooling under the slanting rays of the sun, the young man and the girl +went together. Behind them lay the one street of the little mining +camp, with its wooden shanties on either side of the railroad track. +Down this street Uncle Peter had gone, leading his charges toward the +busy ant-hill on the mountainside. Ahead the track wound up the canon, +cunningly following the tortuous course of the little river to be sure +of practicable grades. On the farther side of the river a mountain road +paralleled the railway. Up this road the two went, followed by a +playful admonition from Mrs. Milbrey: "Remember, Mr. Bines, I place my +child in your keeping." + +Percival waxed conscientious about his charge and insisted at once upon +being assured that Miss Milbrey would be warm enough with the scarlet +golf-cape about her shoulders; that she was used to walking long +distances; that her boots were stoutly soled; and that she didn't mind +the sun in their faces. The girl laughed at him. + +Looking up the canon with its wooded sides, cool and green, they could +see a grey, dim mountain, with patches of snow near its top, in the far +distance, and ranges of lesser eminences stepping up to it. "It's a +hundred miles away," he told her. + +Down the canon the little river flickered toward them, like a billowy +silver ribbon "trimmed with white chiffon around the rocks," declared +the girl. In the blue depths of the sky, an immense height above, +lolled an eagle, lazy of wing, in lordly indolence. The suggestions to +the eye were all of spacious distances and large masses--of the room +and stuff for unbounded action. + +"Your West is the breathingest place," she said, as they crossed a +foot-bridge over the noisy little stream and turned up the road. "I +don't believe I ever drew a full breath until I came to these +altitudes." + +"One _has_ to breathe more air here--there's less oxygen in it, and you +must breathe more to get your share, and so after awhile one becomes +robust. Your cheeks are already glowing, and we've hardly started. +There, now, there are your colours, see--" + +Along the edge of the green pines and spruce were lavender asters. A +little way in the woods they could see the blue columbines and the +mountain phlox, pink and red. + +"There are your eyes and your cheeks." + +"What a dangerous character you'd be if you were sent to match silks!" + +On the dry barren slopes of gravel across the river, full in the sun's +glare, grew the Spanish bayonet, with its spikes of creamy white +flowers. + +"There I am, more nearly," she pointed to them; "they're ever so much +nearer my disposition. But about this thin air; it must make men work +harder for what comes easier back in our country, so that they may +become able to do more--more capable. I am thinking of your +grandfather. You don't know how much I admire him. He is so stanch and +strong and fresh. There's more fire in him now than in my father or +Launton Oldaker, and I dare say he's a score of years older than either +of them. I don't think you quite appreciate what a great old fellow he +is." + +"I admire Uncle Peter much more, I'm sure, than he admires me. He's +afraid I'm not strong enough to admire that Eastern climate of +yours--social and moral." + +"I suppose it's natural for you to wish to go. You'd be bored here, +would you not? You couldn't stay in these mountains and be such a man +as your grandfather. And yet there ought to be so much to do here; it's +all so fresh and roomy and jolly. Really I've grown enthusiastic about +it." + +"Ah, but think of what there is in the East--and you are there. To +think that for six months I've treasured every little memory of +you--such a funny little lot as they were--to think that this morning I +awoke thinking of you, yet hardly hoping ever to see you, and to think +that for half the night we had ridden so near each other in sleep, and +there was no sign or signal or good omen. And then to think you should +burst upon me like some new sunrise that the stupid astronomers hadn't +predicted. + +"You see," he went on, after a moment, "I don't ask what you think of +me. You couldn't think anything much as yet, but there's something +about this whole affair, our meeting and all, that makes me think it's +going to be symmetrical in the end. I know it won't end here. I'll tell +you one way Western men learn. They learn not to be afraid to want +things out of their reach, and they believe devoutly--because they've +proved it so often--that if you want a thing hard enough and keep +wanting it, nothing can keep it away from you." + +A bell had been tinkling nearer and nearer on the road ahead. Now a +heavy wagon, filled with sacks of ore, came into view, drawn by four +mules. As they stood aside to let it pass he scanned her face for any +sign it might show, but he could see no more than a look of interest +for the brawny driver of the wagon, shouting musically to his straining +team. + +"You are rather inscrutable," he said, as they resumed the road. + +She turned and smiled into his eyes with utter frankness. + +"At least you must be sure that I like you; that I am very friendly; +that I want to know you better, and want you to know me better. You +don't know me at all, you know. You Westerners have another way, of +accepting people too readily. It may work no harm among yourselves, but +perhaps Easterners are a bit more perilous. Sometimes, now, a _very_ +Eastern person doesn't even accept herself--himself--very trustingly; +she--he--finds it so hard to get acquainted with himself." + +The young man provided one of those silences of which a few discerning +men are instinctively capable and for which women thank them. + +"This road," she said, after a little time of rapid walking, "leads +right up to the end of the world, doesn't it? See, it ends squarely in +the sun." They stopped where the turn had opened to the west a long +vista of grey and purple hills far and high. They stood on a ridge of +broken quartz and gneiss, thrown up in a bygone age. To their left a +few dwarf Scotch firs threw shadows back toward the town. The ball of +red fire in the west was half below the rim of the distant peak. + +"Stand so,"--she spoke in a slightly hushed tone that moved him a step +nearer almost to touch her arm,--"and feel the round little earth +turning with us. We always think the sun drops down away from us, but +it stays still. Now remember your astronomy and feel the earth turn. +See--you can actually _see_ it move--whirling along like a child's ball +because it can't help itself, and then there's the other motion around +the sun, and the other, the rushing of everything through space, and +who knows how many others, and yet we plan our futures and think we +shall do finely this way or that, and always forget that we're taken +along in spite of ourselves. Sometimes I think I shall give up trying; +and then I see later that even that feeling was one of the unknown +motions that I couldn't control. The only thing we know is that we are +moved in spite of ourselves, so what is the use of bothering about how +many ways, or where they shall fetch us?" + +"Ah, Miss Khayyam, I've often read your father's verses." + +"No relation whatever; we're the same person--he was I." + +"But don't forget you can see the earth moving by a rising as well as +by a setting star, by watching a sun rise--" + +"A rising star if you wish," she said, smiling once more with perfect +candour and friendliness. + +They turned to go back in the quick-coming mountain dusk. + +As they started downward she sang from the "Persian Garden," and he +blended his voice with hers: + + "Myself when young did eagerly frequent + Doctor and Saint and heard great argument + About it and about: but evermore + Came out by the same door where in I went." + + "With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow, + And with my own hand wrought to make it grow; + And this was all the Harvest that I reaped--' + I came like Water and like Wind I go.'" + +"I shall look forward to seeing you--and your mother and sister?--in +New York," she said, when they parted, "and I am sure I shall have more +to say when we're better known to each other." + +"If you were the one woman before, if the thought of you was more than +the substance of any other to me,--you must know how it will be now, +when the dream has come true. It's no small thing for your best dream +to come true." + +"Dear me! haven't we been sentimental and philosophic? I'm never like +this at home, I assure you. I've really been thoughtful." + +From up the cañon came the sound of a puffing locomotive that presently +steamed by them with its three dingy little coaches, and, after a stop +for water and the throwing of a switch, pushed back to connect with the +Shepler car. + +The others of the party crowded out on to the rear platform as Percival +helped Miss Milbrey up the steps. Uncle Peter had evidently been +chatting with Shepler, for as they came out the old man was saying, +"'Get action' is my motto. Do things. Don't fritter. Be something and +be it good and hard. Get action early and often." + +Shepler nodded. "But men like us are apt to be unreasonable with the +young. We expect them to have their own vigour and our wisdom, and the +infirmities of neither." + +The good-byes were hastily said, and the little train rattled down the +cañon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched +her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away +narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the +last, but still looking steadily toward him--almost wistfully, it +seemed to him once. + +"Well," he said cheerfully to Uncle Peter. + +"You know, son, I don't like to cuss, but except one or two of them +folks I'd sooner live in the middle kittle of hell than in the place +that turns 'em out. They rile me--that talk about 'people in the +humbler walks of life.' Of course I _am_ humble, but then, son, if you +come right down to it, as the feller said, I ain't so _damned_ humble!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +Three Letters, Private and Confidential + + +From Mr. Percival Bines to Miss Psyche Bines, Montana City. + +On car at Skiplap, Tuesday Night. + +Dear Sis:--When you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said +you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly, +until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put you +next, here goes. + +One night last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I +happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was +running. It's a rowdy little place--a music hall--but nice people go +there because, though it's stuffy, it's kept decent. + +_She_ was in a box with two men--one old and one young--and an older +woman. As soon as I saw her she had me lashed to the mast in a high +sea, with the great salt waves dashing over me. I never took much stock +in the tales about its happening at first sight, but they're as +matter-of-fact as market reports. Soon as I looked at her it seemed to +me I'd known her always. I was sure we knew each other better than any +two people between the Battery and Yonkers, and that I wasn't acting +sociable to sit down there away from her and pretend we were Strangers +Yet. Actually, it rattled me so I had to take the full count. If I +hadn't been wedged in between a couple of people that filled all the +space, and then some, it isn't any twenty to one that I wouldn't have +gone right up to her and asked her what she meant by cutting me. I was +udgy enough for it. But I kept looking and after awhile I was able to +sit up and ask what hit me. + +She was dressed in something black and kind of shiny and wore a big +black hat fussed up with little red roses, and her face did more things +to me in a minute than all the rest I've ever seen. It was _full_ of +little kissy places. Her lips were very red and her teeth were very +white, and I couldn't tell about her eyes. But she was bred up to the +last notch, I could see that. + +Well, I watched her through the tobacco smoke until the last curtain +fell. They were putting on wraps for a minute or so, and I noticed that +the young fellow in the party, who'd been drinking all through the +show, wasn't a bit too steady to do an act on the high-wire. They left +the box and came down the stairs and I bunched into the crowd and let +myself ooze out with them, wondering if I'd ever see her again. + +I fetched up at an exit on the side street, and there they were +directly in front of me. I just naturally drifted to one side and +continued my little private corner in crude rubber. It was drizzling in +a beastly way, the street was full of carriages, numbers were being +called, cab-drivers were insulting each other hoarsely, people dashing +out to see if their carriages weren't coming--everything in a whirl of +drizzle and dark and yells, with the horses' hoofs on the pavement +sounding like castanets. The two older people got into a carriage and +were driven off, while she and the young fellow waited for theirs. I +could see then that he was good and soused. He was the same lad they +throw on the screen when the "Old Homestead" Quartet sings "Where Is My +Wandering Boy To-night?" I could see she was annoyed and a little +worried, because he was past taking notice. + +The man kept yelling the number of their carriage from time to time, +while the others he'd called were driving up--it was 249 if any one +ever tries to worm it out of you--and then I saw from her face that 249 +had wriggled pretty near to the curb, but was still kept away by +another carriage. She said something to the drunken cub and started to +reach the carriage by going out into the street behind the one in its +way. At the same time their carriage started forward, and the +inebriate, instead of going with her, started the other way to meet it, +and so, there she was alone on the slippery pavement in this muddle of +prancing horses and yelling terriers. If you can get any bets that I +was more than two seconds getting out there to her, take them all, and +give better than track odds if necessary. Then I guess she got rattled, +for when I would have led her back to the curb she made a dash the +other way and all but slipped under a team of bays that were just +aching to claw the roses off her hat. I saw she was helpless and +"turned around," so I just naturally grabbed her and she was so +frightened by this time that she grabbed me, and the result was that I +carried her to the sidewalk and set her down. Their carriage still +stood there with little Georgie Rumlets screaming to the driver to go +on. I had her inside in a jiffy, and they were off. Not a word about +"My Preserver!" though, of course, with the fright and noise and her +mortification, that was natural. + +After that, you can believe it or not, she was the girl. And I never +dreamed of seeing her any place but New York again. + +Well, this morning when I came up from below at the mine _she_ was +standing there as if she had been waiting for me. She is Miss Avice +Milbrey, of New York. Her father and mother--fine people, the real +thing, I judge--were with her, members of a party Rulon Shepler has +with him on his car. They've been here all day; went through the mine; +had lunch with them, and later a walk with _her_, they leaving at 5.30 +for the East. We got on fairly well, considering. She is a wonder, if +anybody cross-examines you. She is about your height, I should judge, +about five feet four, though not so plump as you; still her look of +slenderness is deceptive. She's one of the build that aren't so big as +they look, nor yet so small as they look. Thoroughbred is the word for +her, style and action, as the horse people say, perfect. The poise of +her head, her mettlesome manner, her walk, show that she's been bred up +like a Derby winner. Her face is the one all the aristocrats are copied +from, finely cut nose, chin firm but dainty, lips just delicately full +and the reddest ever, and her colour when she has any a rose-pink. I +don't know that I can give you her eyes. You only see first that +they're deep and clear, but as near as anything they are the warm +slatish lavender blue you see in the little fall asters. She has so +much hair it makes her head look small, a sort of light chestnut, with +warmish streaks in it. Transparent is another word for her. You can +look right through her--eyes and skin are so clear. Her nature too is +the frank, open kind, "step in and examine our stock; no trouble to +show goods" and all that, and she is so beautifully unconscious of her +beauty that it goes double. At times she gave me a queer little +impression of being older at the game than I am, though she can't be a +day over twenty, but I guess that's because she's been around in +society so much. Probably she'd be called the typical New York girl, if +you wanted to talk talky talk. + +Now I've told you everything, except that the people all asked kindly +after you, especially her mother and a Mrs. Drelmer, who's a four-horse +team all by herself. Oh, yes! No, I can't remember very well; some kind +of a brown walking skirt, short, and high boots and one of those blue +striped shirt-waists, the squeezy looking kind, and when we went to +walk, a red plaid golf cape; and for general all-around dearness--say, +the other entries would all turn green and have to be withdrawn. If any +one thinks this thing is going to end here you make a book on it right +away; take all you can get. Little Willie Lushlets was her brother--a +lovely boy if you get to talking reckless. With love to Lady +Abercrombie, and trusting, my dear Countess, to have the pleasure of +meeting you at Henley a fortnight hence, I remain, + +Most cordially yours, + +E. MALVERN DEVYR ST. TREVORS, + +_Bart. & Notary Public._ + +_From Mrs. Joseph Drelmer to the Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, New York._ + +EN ROUTE, August 28th. + +MY DEAR MAUBURN:--Ever hear of the tribe of Bines? If not, you need to. +The father, immensely wealthy, died a bit ago, leaving a widow and two +children, one of the latter being a marriageable daughter in more than +the merely technical sense. There is also a grandfather, now a little +descended into the vale of years, who, they tell me, has almost as many +dollars as you or I would know what to do with, a queer old chap who +lounges about the mountains and looks as if he might have anything but +money. We met the son and the old man at one of their mines yesterday. +They have a private car as large as Shepler's and even more sybaritic, +and they'd been making a tour of inspection over their properties. They +lunched with us. Knowing the Milbreys, you will divine the warmth of +their behaviour toward the son. It was too funny at first. Avice was +the only one to suspect at once that he was the very considerable +personage he is, and so she promptly sequestered him, with a skill born +of her long practice, in the depths of the earth, somewhere near China, +I fancy. Her dear parents were furious. Dressed as one of the miners +they took him to be an employee. The whole party, taking the cue from +outraged parenthood, treated him icily when he emerged from one of +those subterranean galleries with that tender sprig of girlishness. +That is, we were icy until, on the way up, he remaining in the depths, +Avice's dear mother began to rebuke the thoughtless minx for her +indiscretion of strolling through the earth with a working person. Then +Avice, sweet chatterbox, with joyful malice revealed that the young +man, whose name none of us had caught, was Bines, and that he owned the +mine we were in, and she didn't know how many others, nor did she +believe he knew himself. You should have felt the temperature rise. It +went up faster than we were going. + +By the time we reached the surface the two Milbreys wore looks that +would have made the angel of peace and good-will look full of hatred +and distrust. Nothing would satisfy them but that we wait to thank the +young Croesus for his courtesy. I waited because I remembered the +daughter, and Oldaker and the Angstead twins waited out of decency. And +when the genius of the mine appeared from out his golden catacombs we +fell upon him in desperate kindness. + +Later in the day I learned from him that he expects to bring his mother +and sister to New York this fall, and that they mean to make their home +there hereafter. Of course that means that the girl has notions of +marriage. What made me think so quickly of her is that in San +Francisco, at a theatre last winter, she was pointed out to me, and +while I do you not the injustice of supposing it would make the least +difference to you, she is rather a beauty, you'll find; figure fullish, +yellow hair, and a good-natured, well-featured, pleasing sort of face; +a bit rococo in manner, I suspect; a little too San Francisco, as so +many of these Western beauties are, but you'd not mind that, and a year +in New York will tone her down anyway. + +Now if your dear uncle will only confer a lasting benefit upon the +world and his title upon you, by paying the only debt he is ever liable +to pay, I am persuaded you could be the man here. I know nothing of how +the fortune was left, nor of its extent, except that it's said to be +stiffish, and out here that means a big, round sum. The reason I write +promptly is that you may not go out of the country just now. That sweet +little Milbrey chit--really, Avice is far too old now for ingenue +parts--has not only grappled the son with hooks of steel, but from +remarks the good mother dropped concerning the fine qualities of her +son, she means to convert the daughter's _dot_ into Milbrey prestige, +also. What a glorious double stroke it would be, after all their years +of trying. However, with your title, even in prospective, Fred Milbrey +is no rival for you to fear, providing you are on the ground as soon as +he, which is why I wish you to stay in New York. + +I am indeed gratified that you have broken off whatever affair there +may have been between you and that music-hall person. Really, you know, +though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that +sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone +back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no +attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect? +Why _should_ she have wanted to marry you? + +I shall see you probably in another fortnight. + +You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where +they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what +we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them +winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such +beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is _so_ impulsively democratic." +Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge +our train has just rattled over. Sincerely, + +JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER. + +_From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York._ + +Mütterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last +spring--the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display +of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping. +Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of +marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains +lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in +learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all +animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm +the fittest--twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just +how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate +the exact disturbing effect of the _ensemble_ upon any poor male, and +feeling confident of my excessively eligible _parti_ when I decide for +him--in this situation, striven for so earnestly, I feel like bolting +the bars. How my trainer and jockey would weep tears of rage and +despair if they guessed it! + +There, there--I know your shrewd grey eyes are crackling with curiosity +and, you want to know what it's all about, whether to scold me or +mother me, and will I please omit the _entrées_ and get to the roast +mutton. But you dear, dear old aunt, you, there is more vagueness than +detail, and I know I'll strain your patience before I've done. But, to +relieve your mind, nothing at all has really happened. After all, it's +mostly a _troublesome state of mind_, that I shall doubtless find gone +when we reach Jersey City,--and in two ways this Western trip is +responsible for it. Do you know the journey itself has been +fascinating. Too bad so many of us cross the ocean twenty times before +we know anything of this country. We loiter in Paris, do the stupid +German watering-places, the Norway fjords, down to Italy for the +museums, see the _chateaux_ of the Loire, or do the English +race-tracks, thinking we're 'mused; and all the time out here where the +sun goes down is an intensely interesting and beautiful country of our +own that we overlook. You know I'd never before been even as far as +Chicago. Now for the first time I can appreciate lots of those things +in Whitman, that-- + +"I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and free +poems, also. Now I see the secret of making the best persons: It is +to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth." + +I mayn't have quoted correctly, but you know the sort of thing I mean, +that sounds so _breezy_ and _stimulating_. And they've helped me +understand the immensity of the landscapes and the ideas out here, the +big, throbbing, rough young life, and under it all, as Whitman says, "a +meaning--Democracy, _American_ Democracy." Really it's been +interesting, _the jolliest time of my life,_ and it's got me all +unsettled. More than once in watching some scene typical of the region, +the plain, busy, earnest people, I've actually thrilled to think that +this was _my country_--felt that queer little tickling tingle that +locates your spine for you. I'm sure there's no _ennui_ here. Some one +said the other day, "_Ennui_ is a disease that comes from living on +other people's money." I said no, that I'd often had as fine an attack +as if I'd been left a billion, that _ennui_ is when you don't know what +to do next and wouldn't do it if you did. Well, here they always _do_ +know what to do next, and as one of them told me, "_We always get up +early the day before to do it_." + +Auntie, dear, the trip has made me _more restless and dissatisfied_ +than ever. It makes me want to _do_ something--to _risk_ something, to +want to _want_ something more than I've ever learned to want. + +That's one reason I'm acting badly. The other will interest you more. + +It's no less a reason than _the athletic young Bayard_ who cheated +those cab-horses of their prey that night Fred didn't drink all the +Scotch whiskey in New York. Our meeting, and the mater's treatment of +him before she discovered who he was, are too delicious to write. I +must wait to tell you. + +It is enough to say that now I heard his name it recalled nothing to +me, and I took him from his dress to be a _workingman_ in the mine we +visiting, though from his speech and manner of a gentleman, someone in +authority. Dear, he was _so_ dear and so Westernly breezy and +progressive and enterprising and so _appallingly candid_. I've been the +"one woman", the "unknown but remembered ideal" since that encounter. +Of course, that was to be said, but strangely enough he meant it. He +was actually and unaffectedly making love to me. He's not so large or +tall, but quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not +beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad +high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest +quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever +saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would _eat it off +even_ clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, +or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not +used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating +eyes, to show if I'm worth the _asking price_. But here was real love +being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others because +I _liked him at once_). I don't mind telling you he moved me, partly +because I had wondered about him from that night, and partly because of +all I had come to feel about this new place and the new people, and +because he seemed such a fine, active specimen of Western manhood. I +won't tell you all the wild, lawless thoughts that scurried and +_sneaked_ through my mind--they don't matter now--for all at once it +came out that he was the only son of that wealthy Bines who died awhile +ago--you remember the name was mentioned that night at your house when +they were discussing the exodus of Western millionaires to New York; +some one named the father as one who liked coming to New York to +dissipate occasionally, but who was still rooted in the soil where his +millions grew. + +There was the son before me, just _an ordinary man of millions_, after +all--and my little toy balloon of romance that I'd been floating so +gaily on a string of sentiment was pricked to nothing in an instant. I +felt my nostrils expand with the excitement of the chase, and +thereafter I was my _coldly professional self_. If that young man has +not now a high estimate of my charms of person and mind, then have my +ways forgot their cunning and I be no longer the daughter of Margaret +Milbrey, _née_ van Schoule. + +But, Mütterchen, now comes the disgraceful part. I'm afraid of myself, +even in spite of our affairs being so bad. Dad has doubtless told you +something must be done very soon, and I seem to be the only one to do +it. And yet I am shying at the gate. This trip has unsettled me, I tell +you, letting me, among other things, see my old self. Before I always +rather liked the idea of marriage, that is, after I'd been out a couple +of years--not too well, but well enough--and now some way I rebel, not +from scruples, but from pure selfishness. I'm beginning to find that I +want to _enjoy myself_ and to find, further, that I'm not indisposed to +_take chances_--as they say out here. Will you understand, I wonder? +And do women who sell themselves ever find any real pleasure in the +bargain? The most eloquent examples, the ones that sell themselves to +_many men,_ lead wretched lives. But does the woman who sells herself +to _but one_ enjoy life any more? She's surely as bad, from any +standpoint of morals, and I imagine sometimes she is less happy. At any +rate, she has less _freedom_ and more _obligations_ under her contract. +You see I am philosophising pretty coldly. Now be _horrified_ if you +will. + +I am selfish by good right, though. "Haven't we spent all our surplus +in keeping you up for a good marriage?" says the mater, meaning by a +good marriage that I shall bring enough money into the family to _"keep +up its traditions."_ I am, in other words, an investment from which +they expect large returns. I told her I hoped she could trace her +selfishness to its source as clearly as I could mine, and as for the +family traditions, Fred was preserving those in an excellent medium. +Which was very ugly in me, and I cried afterwards and told her how +sorry I was. + +Are you shocked by my cold calculations? Well, I am trying to let you +understand me, and I-- + +"...have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth." + +I am cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires, +but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a +disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only +more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any thought to the +husband, certainly never concerned myself with any notions of duty or +obligation toward him. The girls I know are taught painstakingly how to +get a husband, but nothing of how to be a wife. The husband in my case +was to be an inconvenience, but doubtless an amusing one. For all his +oppression, if there were that, and even for _the mere offence of his +existence,_ I should wreak my spite merrily on his vulgar dollars. + +But you are saying that I like the present eligible. That's the +trouble. I like him so well I haven't the heart to marry him. When I +was twenty I could have loved him devotedly, I believe. Now something +seems to be gone, some freshness or fondness. I can still love--I know +it only too well night and day--but it must be a different kind of man. +He is so very young and reverent and tender, and in a way so +unsophisticated. He is so afraid of me, for all his pretence of +boldness. + +Is it because I must be taken by sheer force? I'll not be surprised if +it is. Do we not in our secret soul of souls nourish this beatitude: +"Blessed is the man who _destroys all barriers"?_ Florence Akemit said +as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the +matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently +challenging--threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing +not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man +who brutally and honestly beats them down, and _destroys them utterly?_ +So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if an _untidy +litter_ is left we make a row. We reconstruct the barrier and that +particular assailant is thenceforth deprived of a combatant's rights. +What a dear you are that I can say these things to you! Were girls so +frank in your time? + +Well, my knight of the "golden cross" (_joke; laughter and loud +applause, and cries of "Go on!"_) has a little, much indeed, of the +impetuous in him, but, alas! not enough. He has a pretty talent for it, +but no genius. If I were married to him to-morrow, as surely as I am a +woman I should be made to inflict pain upon him the next day, with an +insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had +thought me--perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had +inspired--rational creatures, aren't we?--beg pardon--not we, then, but +I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that--for money? +Do I want the money _badly enough?_ Would I not even rather be +penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest +impulse, body and soul--_perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power +over me?_ Do you know, I suspect sometimes that I've been trained down +too fine, as to my nerves, I mean. I doubt if it's safe to pamper and +trim and stimulate and refine a woman in that hothouse atmosphere--at +least _if she's a healthy woman_. She's too apt sometime to break her +gait, get the bit of tradition between her teeth, and then let her +impulses run away with her. + +Oh, Mütterchen, I am so sick and sore, and yet filled with a strange +new zest for this old puzzle of life. Will I ever be the same again? +This man is going to ask me to marry him the moment I am ready for him +to. Shall I be kind enough to tell him no, or shall I steel myself to +go in and hurt him--_make him writhe?_ + +And yet do you know what he gave me while I was with him? I wonder if +women feel it commonly? It was a desire for _motherhood_--a curiously +vivid and very definite longing--entirely irrespective of him, you +understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all +moved toward him, he made me sheerly _want_ to be a mother! Or is it +only that men we don't love make us feel motherly? + +Am I wholly irrational and selfish and bad, or what am I? I know you'll +love me, whatever it is, and I wish now I could snuggle on that soft, +cushiony shoulder of yours and go to sleep. + +Can anything be more pitiful than "a fine old family" afflicted with +_dry-rot_ like ours? I'm always amused when I read about the suffering +in the tenements. The real anguish is up in the homes like ours. We +have _to do without so very many more things,_ and mere hunger and cold +are easy compared to the suffering we feel. + +Perhaps when I'm back to that struggle for appearances, I'll relent and +"barter my charms" as the old novels used to say, sanely and decently +like a well brought-up New York girl--_with certain reservations,_ to a +man who can support the family in the style to which it wants to become +accustomed. Yet there may be a way out. There is a Bines daughter, for +example, and mamma, who never does one half where she can as well do +two, will marry her to Fred if she can. On the other hand, Joe Drelmer +was putting in words for young Mauburn, who will be Lord Casselthorpe +when his disreputable old uncle dies. + +She hasn't yet spent what she got for introducing the Canovass prince +to that oldest Elarton girl, so if she secures this prize for Mauburn, +she'll be comfortable for a couple of more years. Perhaps I could turn +my hand to something like that. I know the ropes as well as she does. + +There, it _is_ a punishment of a letter, isn't it, dear? But I've known +_every bad place in it,_ and I've religiously put in your "Come, come, +child!" every time it belonged, so you've not still to scold me, for +which be comforted a little; and give me only a few words of cheerful +approval if your conscience will let you. I need that, after all, more +than advice. Look for us in a week. With a bear-hug for you, + +AVICE. + +P.S. Is it true that Ned Ristine and his wife have fixed it up and are +together again since his return? Not that I'm interested especially, +but I chanced to hear it gossiped the other day here on the car. +Indeed, I hope you know _how thoroughly I detest that man_! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +The Price of Averting a Scandal + + +As the train resumed speed after stopping at a station, Grant, the +porter, came back to the observation room of the Bines car with a +telegram for Uncle Peter. The old man read it and for a time mused +himself into seeming oblivion. Across the car, near by, Percival +lounged in a wicker arm-chair and stared cheerfully out into the +gathering night. He, too, was musing, his thoughts keeping pleasantly +in time with the rhythmic click of the wheels over the rail-joints. +After a day in the open air he was growing sleepy. + +Uncle Peter aroused him by making his way back to the desk, the +roll-top of which he lifted with a sudden rattle. He called to +Percival. Sitting down at the desk he read the telegram again and +handed it to the young man, who read: + +"Party will try to make good; no bluff. Won't compromise inside limit +set. Have seen paper and wish another interview before following +original instructions. Party will wait forty-eight hours before acting. +Where can you be seen? Wire office to-night. + +"TAFE & COPLEN." + +The young man looked up with mild interest. Uncle Peter was writing on +a telegraph blank. + +"TAFE & COPLEN, Butte, Montana. + +"Due Butte 7.30 A.M. to-morrow. Join me on car nought sixteen, go to +Montana City. + +"PETER BINES. + +"D.H.F. 742." + +To the porter who answered his ring he handed the message to be put off +at the first stop. + +"But what's it all about?" asked Percival, seeing by Uncle Peter's +manner that he was expected to show concern. + +Uncle Peter closed the desk, lighted one of his best cigars, and +dropped into a capacious chair. The young man seated himself opposite. + +"Well, son, it's a matter I cal'lated first off to handle myself, but +it looks now as if you better be in on it. I don't know just how much +you knew about your pa's ways, but, anyhow, you wouldn't play him to +grade much higher above standard than the run of 'em out here that has +had things comin' too easy for 'em. He was all right, Dan'l J. was. God +knows I ain't discountin' the comfort I've always took in him. He'd +stand acid all right, at any stage of the game. Don't forget that about +your pa." + +The young man reflected. + +"The worst story I ever heard of pa was about the time he wanted to +draw twenty thousand dollars from the bank in Tacoma. They telegraphed +the Butte National to wire his description, and the answer was 'tall +and drunk.'" + +"Well, son, his periodicals wa'n't all. Seems as if this crowd has a +way fur women, and they generally get the gaff because they're so +blamed easy. You don't hear of them Eastern big men gettin' it so +often, but I've seen enough of 'em to know it ain't because they're any +straighter. They're jest a little keener on business propositions. They +draw a fine sight when it comes to splittin' pennies, while men out +here like your pa is lavish and careless. You know about lots of the +others. + +"There's Sooley Pentz, good-hearted a man as ever sacked ore, and +plenty long-headed enough for the place he's bought in the Senate, but +Sooley is restless until he's bought up one end of every town he goes +into, from Eden plumb over to Washington, D. C.,--and 'tain't ever the +Sunday-school end Sooley buys either. If he was makin' two million a +month instead of one Sooley'd grieve himself to death because they +don't make that five-dollar kind of wine fast enough. + +"Then there was Seth Larby. We're jest gettin' to the details of Seth's +expense account after he found the Lucky Cuss. I see the courts have +decided against the widow and children, and so they'll have to worry +off about five or six millions for the poor lady he duped so +outrageously--with a checker on the chips. + +"As fur old Nate Kranil, a lawyer from Cheyenne was tellin' me his +numerous widows by courtesy was goin' to form an association and share +his leavin's pro raty. Said they'd all got kind of acquainted and made +up their minds they was such a reg'lar band of wolves that none of 'em +was able to do any of the others in the long run, so they'd divide +even. + +"Then there was Dave Kisber, and--" + +"Never mind any more--" Percival broke in. "Do you mean that my father +was mixed up like those old Indians?" + +"Looks now as if he was. That telegram from Coplen is concernin' of a +lady--a party that was with him when he died. The press report sent out +that the young and beautiful Mrs. Bines was with her husband, and was +prostrated with grief. Your ma and Pishy was up to Steamin' Springs at +the time, and I kep' it from them all right." + +"But _how_ was he entangled?--to what extent?" + +"That's what we'll get more light on in the morning. She made a play +right after the will was filed fur probate, and I told Coplen to see +jest what grounds she had, and I'd settle myself if she really had any +and wa'n't unreasonable." + +"It's just a question of blackmail, isn't it? What did you offer?" + +"Well, she has a slew of letters--gettin' them is a matter of sentiment +and keepin' the thing quiet. Then she claims to have a will made last +December and duly witnessed, givin' her the One Girl outright, and a +million cash. So you can see she ain't anything ordinary. I told Coplen +to offer her a million cash for everything rather'n have any fuss. I +was goin' to fix it up myself and keep quiet about it." + +"And this telegram looks as if she wanted to fight." + +"Well, mebbe that and mebbe it means that she knows we _don't_ want to +fight considerable more than a million dollars' worth." + +"How much do you think she'll hold out for?" + +"Can't tell; you don't know how big pills she's been smokin'." + +"But, damn it all, that's robbery!" + +"Yes--but it's her deal. You remember when Billy Brue was playin' +seven-up with a stranger in the Two-Hump saloon over to Eden, and +Chiddie Fogle the bartender called him up front and whispered that he'd +jest seen the feller turn a jack from the bottom. 'Well,' says Billie, +looking kind of reprovin' at Chiddie, 'it was _his deal,_ wa'n't it?' +Now it's sure this blond party's deal, and we better reckon ahead a +mite before we start any roughhouse with her. You're due to find out if +you hadn't better let her turn her jack and trust to gettin' even on +your deal. You got a claim staked out in New York, and a scandal like +this might handicap you in workin' it. And 'tain't as if hushin' her up +was something we couldn't well afford. And think of how it would +torment your ma to know of them doin's, and how 'twould shame Pish in +company. Of course, rob'ry is rob'ry, but mebbe it's our play to be +sporty like Billy Brue was." + +"Pretty bad, isn't it? I never suspected pa was in anything of this +sort." + +"Well, I knew Dan'l J. purty well, and I spleened against some of his +ways, but that's done fur. Now the folks out in this part of the +country have come to expect it from a man like him. They don't mind so +much. But them New York folks--well, I thought mebbe you'd like to take +a clean bill of health when you settle in that centre of culture and +enlightenment,--and remember your ma and Pish." + +"Of course the exposure would mean a lot of cheap notoriety--" + +"Well, and not so all-fired cheap at that, even if we beat. I've heard +that lawyers are threatenin' to stop this thing of workin' entirely fur +their health. There's that to weigh up." + +"But I hate to be done." + +"Well, wouldn't you be worse done if you let a matter of money, when +you're reekin' with it, keep you from protectin' your pa's name? Do you +want folks to snicker when they read that 'lovin' husband and father' +business on his gravestone? My! I guess that young woman and her folks +we met the other day'd be tickled to death to think they knew you after +they'd read one of them Sunday newspaper stories with pictures of us +all, and an extry fine one of the millionaire's dupe, basely enticed +from her poor but honest millinery business in Spokane." + +Percival shuddered. + +"Well, let's see what Coplen has to say in the morning. If it can be +settled within reason I suppose we better give up." + +"That's my view now, and the estate bein' left as simply as it was, we +can make in the payments unbeknownst to the folks." + +They said good-night, and Percival went off to dream that a cab-horse +of mammoth size was threatening to eat Miss Milbrey unless he drove it +to Spokane Falls and bought two million millinery shops. + +When he was jolted to consciousness they were in the switching yard at +Butte, and the car was being coupled to the rear of the train made up +for Montana City. He took advantage of the stop to shave. By the time +he was dressed they were under way again, steaming out past the big +smelters that palled the sky with heavy black smoke. + +At the breakfast-table he found Uncle Peter and Coplen. + +"I'm inclined," said the lawyer, as Percival peeled a peach, "to agree +with your grandfather. This woman--if I may use the term--is one of the +nerviest leg-pullers you're ever likely to strike." + +"Lord! I should hope so," said Percival, with hearty emphasis. + +"She studied your father and she knew him better than any of us, I +judge. She certainly knew he was liable to go at any time, in exactly +the way he did go. Why, she even had a doctor down from 'Frisco to +Monterey when they were there about a year ago--introduced him as an +old friend and had him stay around three days--just to give her a +private professional opinion on his chances. As to this will, the +signature is undoubtedly genuine, but my judgment is she procured it in +some way on a blank sheet of paper and had the will written above on +sheets like it. As it conforms to the real will word for word, +excepting the bequests to her, she must have had access to that before +having this one written. Of course that helps to make it look as if the +testator had changed his mind only as to the one legatee--makes it look +plausible and genuine. The witnesses were of course parties to the +fraud, but I seriously question our ability to prove there was fraud. +We think they procured a copy of the will we kept in our safe at Butte +through the clerk that Tafe fired awhile back because of his drinking +habits and because he was generally suspicious of him. Of course that's +only surmise." + +"But can't we fight it?" demanded Percival, hungrily attacking the +crisp, brown little trout. + +"Well, if we allowed it to come to a contest, we might expose the whole +thing, and then again we might not. I tell you she's clever. She's +shown it at every step. Now then, if you do fight," and the lawyer +bristled, as if his fighting spirit were not too far under the control +of his experience-born caution, "why, you have litigation that's bound +to last for years, and it would be pretty expensive. I admit the case +is tempting to a lawyer, but in the end you don't know what you'll get, +especially with this woman. Why, do you know she's already, we've +found, made up to two different judges that might be interested in any +litigation she'd have, and she's cultivating others. The role of +Joseph," he continued, "has never, to the best of my belief, been +gracefully played in the world's history, and you may have noticed that +the members of the Montana judiciary seem to be particularly awkward in +their essays at it. In the end, then, you'll be out a lot of money even +if you win. On the other hand, you have a chance to settle it for good +and all, getting back everything--excepting the will, which, of course, +we couldn't touch or even concede the existence of, but which would, if +such an instrument _were_ extant, be destroyed in the presence of a +witness whose integrity I could rely upon--well--as upon my own. The +letters which she has, and which I have seen, are also such as would +tend to substantiate her claims and make the large bequests to her seem +plausible--and they're also such letters as--I should infer--the family +would rather wish not to be made public, as they would be if it came to +trial." + +"Jest what I told him," remarked Uncle Peter. + +"What she'll hold out for I don't know, but I'd suggest this, that I +meet her attorney and put the case exactly as I've found it out as to +the will, letting them suspect, perhaps, that we have admissions of +some sort from Hornby, the clerk, that might damage them. Then I can +put it that, while we have no doubt of our ability to dispose of the +will, we do wish to avoid the scandal that would ensue upon a +publication of the letters they hold and the exposure of her relations +with the testator, and that upon this purely sentimental ground we are +willing to be bled to a reasonable extent. The One Girl is a valuable +mine, but my opinion is she'll be glad to get two million if we seem +reluctant to pay that much." + +With that gusto of breakfast-appetite which arouses the envy of persons +whose alimentation is not what it used to be, Percival had devoured +ruddy peaches and purple grapes, trout that had breasted their swift +native currents that very morning, crisp little curls of bacon, muffins +that were mere flecks of golden foam, honey with the sweetness of a +thousand fragrant blossoms, and coffee that was oily with richness. For +a time he had seemed to make no headway against his hill-born appetite. +The lawyer, who had broken his fast with a strip of dry toast and a cup +of weak tea, had watched him with unfeigned and reminiscent interest. +Grant, who stood watchful to replenish his plate, and whose pleasure it +was to see him eat, regarded him with eyes fairly dewy from sympathy. +To A. L. Jackson, the cook, on a trip for hot muffins, he observed, "He +eats jes' like th' ole man. I suttin'y do love t' see that boy behave +when he got his fresh moral appetite on him. He suttin'y do ca'y +hisse'f mighty handsome." + +With Coplen's final recommendation to settle Percival concluded his +meal, and after surveying with fondly pleasant regret the devastation +he had wrought, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigar. He was +no longer in a mood to counsel fight, even though he disliked to +submit. + +"You know," he reminded Uncle Peter, "what that editorial in the Rock +Rip _Champion_ said about me when we were over there: 'We opine that +the Junior Bines will become a warm piece of human force if he isn't +ground-sluiced too early in the game.' Well--and here I'm +ground-sluiced the first rattle out of the box." + +But the lawyer went over the case again point by point, and Percival +finally authorised him to make the best settlement possible. He cared +as little for the money as Uncle Peter did, large sum though it was. +And then his mother and sister would be spared a great humiliation, and +his own standing where most he prized it would not be jeopardised. + +"Settle the best you can," was his final direction to Coplen. The +lawyer left them at the next station to wait for a train back to Butte. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose + + +As the train moved on after leaving Coplen, Percival fell to thinking +of the type of man his father had been. + +"Uncle Peter," he said, suddenly, "they don't _all_ cut loose, do they? +Now _you_ never did?" + +"Yes, I did, son. I yanked away from all the hitchin' straps of decency +when I first struck it, jest like all the rest of 'em. Oh, I was an +Indian in my time--a reg'ler measly hop-pickin' Siwash at that. + +"You don't know, of course, what livin' out in the open on bacon and +beans does fur a healthy man's cravin's. He gets so he has visions day +and night of high-livin'--nice broiled steaks with plenty of fat on +'em, and 'specially cake and preserves and pies like mother used to +make--fat, juicy mince pies that would assay at least eight hundred +dollars a ton in raisins alone, say nothing of the baser metals. He +sees the crimp around the edges made with a fork, and the picture of a +leaf pricked in the middle to vent the steam, and he gets to smellin' +'em when they're pulled smokin' hot out of the oven. And frosted cake, +the layer kind--about five layers, with stratas of jelly and custard +and figs and raisins and whatever it might be. I saw 'em fur years, +with a big cuttin' out to show the cross-section. + +"But a man that has to work by the day fur enough to take him through +the prospectin' season can't blow any of his dust on frivolous things +like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I +never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either. + +"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to +them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a +stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into +the bake-shop windows and just gloat.--'rubber' they call it now'days. +My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed +that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest +kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin' +was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights. + +"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The +bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did +torment a body so! It was kep' by a Chink, and the star play in the +window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the +place--on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it +looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that +concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with--and +a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much--showin' a +cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that +jest made a man want to give up. + +"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window +and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The Chink was +standin' in the door the first day. + +"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me. + +"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head. + +"Next day I was there again, yearnin'. The Chink see me and come out. + +"'One doll' li'l piece", he says. + +"I says, 'No, you slant-eyed heathen,' or some such name as that. But +when you're looking fur tests of character, son, don't let that one +hide away from you. I'd play that fur the heftiest moral courage _I've_ +ever showed, anyway. + +"The third day it was gone and a lemon pie was there, all with nice +kind of brownish snow on top. I was on my way out then, pushin' the +mule. I took one lingerin' last look and felt proud of myself when I +saw the hump in the pack made by my bag of beans. + +"'That-like flummery food's no kind of diet to be trackin' up pay-rock +on,' I says to kind of cheer myself. + +"Four weeks later I struck it. And six weeks after that I had things in +shape so't I was able to leave. I was nearer to other places 'twas +bigger, but I made fur Grand Bar, lettin' on't I wanted to see about a +claim there. I'd 'a' felt foolish to have anyone know jest why I was +makin' the trip. + +"On the way I got to havin' night-mares, 'fear that Chink would be +gone. I knew if he was I'd go down to my grave with something comin' to +me because I'd never found jest that identical cake I'd been famishin' +fur. + +"When I got up front of the window, you can believe it or not, but that +Chink was jest settin' down another like it. Now you know how that +Monte Cristo carried on after he'd proved up. Well, I got into his +class, all right. I walked in past a counter where the Chink had +crullers and gingerbread and a lot of low-grade stuff like that, and I +set down to a little table with this here marble oil-cloth on it. + +"'Bring her back,' I says, kind of tremblin', and pointin' to the +window. + +"The Chink pattered up and come back with a little slab of it on a tin +plate. I jest let it set there. + +"'Bring it all,' I says; 'I want the hull ball of wax.' + +"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of cautious. + +"I pulled out my buckskin pouch. 'Bring her back and take it out of +that,' I says--'when I get through,' I says. + +"He grinned and hurried back with it. Well, son, nothing had ever +tasted so good to me, and I ain't say'n' that wa'n't the biggest worth +of all my money't I ever got. I'd been trainin' fur that cake fur +twenty odd year, and proddin' my imagination up fur the last ten weeks. + +"I et that all, and I et another one with jelly, and a bunch of little +round ones with frostin' and raisins, and a bottle of brandied peaches, +and about a dozen cream puffs, and half a lemon pie with frostin' on +top, and four or five Charlotte rushes. The Chink had learned to make +'em all in 'Frisco. + +"That meal set me back $34.75. When I went out I noticed the plain +sponge cakes and fruit cakes and dried-apple pies--things that had been +out of my reach fur twenty years, and--My! but they did look common and +unappetisin'. I kind of shivered at the sight of 'em. + +"I ordered another one of the big cakes and two more lemon pies fur the +next day. + +"Fur four days I led a life of what they call 'unbridled +licentiousness' while that Chink pandered to me. I never was any hand +fur drink, but I cut loose in that fancy-food joint, now I tell you. + +"The fifth day I begun to taper off. I begun to have a suspicion the +stuff was made of sawdust with plasty of Paris fur frostin'. The sixth +day I was sure it was sawdust, and my shameful debauch comes to an end +right there. I remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his +chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of +corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out--twelve of the +chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I +felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me +plumb nervous to ketch sight of a saw-buck. + +"It took jest three weeks fur me to get right inside again. My, but +meat victuals and all like that did taste mighty scrumptious when I +could handle 'em again. + +"After that when I'd been out in the hills fur a season I'd get that +hankerin' back, and when I come in I'd have a little frosted-cake orgy +now and then. But I kep' myself purty well in hand. I never overdone it +like that again, fur you see I'd learned something. First off, there +was the appetite. I soon see the gist of my fun had been the _wantin'_ +the stuff, the appetite fur it, and if you nursed an appetite along and +deluded it with promises it would stay by you like one of them meachin' +yellow dogs. But as soon as you tried to do the good-fairy act by it, +and give it all it hankered fur, you killed it off, and then you +wouldn't be entertained by it no more, and kep' stirred up and busy. + +"And so I layed out to nurse my appetite, and aggravate it by never +givin' it quite all it wanted. When I was in the hills after a day's +tramp I'd let it have its fling on such delicacies as I could turn out +of the fryin'-pan myself, but when I got in again I'd begin to act +bossy with it. It's _wantin'_ reasonably that keeps folks alive, I +reckon. The mis-a-blest folks I've ever saw was them that had killed +all their wants by overfeedin' 'em. + +"Then again, son, in this world of human failin's there ain't anything +ever _can_ be as pure and blameless and satisfyin' as the stuff in a +bake-shop window looks like it is. Don't ever furget that. It's jest +too good to be true. And in the next place--pastry's good in its way, +but the best you can ever get is what's made fur you at home--I'm +talkin' about a lot of things now that you don't probably know any too +much about. Sometimes the boys out in the hills spends their time +dreamin' fur other things besides pies and cakes, but that system of +mine holds good all through the deal--you can play it from soda to hock +and not lose out. And that's why I'm outlastin' a lot of the boys and +still gettin' my fun out of the game. + +"It's a good system fur you, son, while you're learnin' to use your +head. Your pa played it at first, then he cut loose. And you need it +worse'n ever he did, if I got you sized up right. He touched me on one +side, and touched you on the other. But you can last longer if you jest +keep the system in mind a little. Remember what I say about the window +stuff." + +Percival had listened to the old man's story with proper amusement, and +to the didactics with that feeling inevitable to youth which says +secretly, as it affects to listen to one whom it does not wish to +wound, "Yes, yes, I know, but you were living in another day, long ago, +and you are not _me!_" + +He went over to the desk and began to scribble a name on the pad of +paper. + +"If a man really loves one woman he'll behave all right," he observed +to Uncle Peter. + +"Oh, I ain't preachin' like some do. Havin' a good time is all right; +it's the only thing, I reckon, sometimes, that justifies the misery of +livin'. But cuttin' loose is bad jedgment. A man wakes up to find that +his natural promptin's has cold-decked him. If I smoked the best +see-gars now all the time, purty soon I'd get so't I wouldn't +appreciate 'em. That's why I always keep some of these out-door +free-burners on hand. One of them now and then makes the others taste +better." + +The young man had become deaf to the musical old voice. + +He was writing: + +"MY DEAR MISS MILBREY:--I send you the first and only poem I ever +wrote. I may of course be a prejudiced critic, but it seems to me to +possess in abundance those graces of metre, rhyme, high thought in +poetic form, and perfection of finish which the critics unite in +demanding. To be honest with you--and why should I conceal that conceit +which every artist is said secretly to feel in his own production?--I +have encountered no other poem in our noble tongue which has so moved +and captivated me. + +"It is but fair to warn you that this is only the first of a volume of +similar poems which I contemplate writing. And as the theme appears now +to be inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the +number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this +author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has +been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady _Lyre,_ in the hope that +he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and +ideal perfection for which the humbler bards have hitherto striven in +vain. + +"Sincerely and seriously yours, + +"P. PERCIVAL BINES" + +Thus ran the exalted poem on a sheet of note-paper: + + "AVICE MILBREY. + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey. + And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +Plans for the Journey East + + +Until late in the afternoon they rode through a land that was bleak and +barren of all grace or cheer. The dull browns and greys of the +landscape were unrelieved by any green or freshness save close by the +banks of an occasional stream. The vivid blue of a cloudless sky served +only to light up its desolation to greater disadvantage. It was a grim +unsmiling land, hard to like. + +"This may be God's own country," said Percival once, looking out over a +stretch of grey sage-brush to a mass of red sandstone jutting up, high, +sharp, and ragged, in the distance--"but it looks to me as if He got +tired of it Himself and gave up before it was half finished." + +"A man has to work here a few years to love it," said Uncle Peter, +shortly. + +As they left the car at Montana City in the early dusk, that thriving +metropolis had never seemed so unattractive to Percival; so rough, new, +garish, and wanting so many of the softening charms of the East. +Through the wide, unpaved streets, lined with their low wooden +buildings, they drove to the Bines mansion, a landmark in the oldest +and most fashionable part of the town. For such distinctions are made +in Western towns as soon as the first two shanties are built. The Bines +house had been a monument to new wealth from the earliest days of the +town, which was a fairly decent antiquity for the region. But the house +and the town grated harshly now upon the young man. He burned with a +fever of haste to be off toward the East--over the far rim of hills, +and the farther higher mountain range, to a land that had warmed +genially under three hundred years of civilised occupancy--where people +had lived and fraternised long enough to create the atmosphere he +craved so ardently. + +While Chinese Wung lighted the hall gas and busied himself with their +hats and bags, Psyche Bines came down the stairs to greet them. Never +had her youthful freshness so appealed to her brother. The black gown +she wore emphasised her blond beauty. As to give her the aspect of +mourning one might have tried as reasonably to hide the radiance of the +earth in springtime with that trifling pall. + +Her brother kissed her with more than his usual warmth. Here was one to +feel what he felt, to sympathise warmly with all those new yearnings +that were to take him out of the crude West. She wanted, for his own +reasons, all that he wanted. She understood him; and she was his ally +against the aged and narrow man who would have held them to life in +that physical and social desert. + +"Well, sis, here we are!" he began. "How fine you're looking! And how +is Mrs. Throckmorton? Give her my love and ask her if she can be ready +to start for the effete East in twenty minutes." + +It was his habit to affect that he constantly forgot his mother's name. +He had discovered years before that he was sometimes able thus to +puzzle her momentarily. + +"Why, Percival!" exclaimed this excellent lady, coming hurriedly from +the kitchen regions, "I haven't a thing packed. Twenty minutes! +Goodness! I do declare!" + +It was an infirmity of Mrs. Bines that she was unable to take otherwise +than literally whatever might be said to her; an infirmity known and +played upon relentlessly by her son. + +"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, with a show of irritation. "I suppose we'll +be delayed then. That's like a woman. Never ready on time. Probably we +can't start now till after dinner. Now hurry! You know that boat leaves +the dock for Tonsilitis at 8.23--I hope you won't be seasick." + +"Boat--dock--" Mrs. Bines stopped to convince herself beyond a +certainty that no dock nor boat could be within many hundred miles of +her by any possible chance. + +"Never mind," said Psyche; "give ma half an hour's notice and she can +start for any old place." + +"Can't she though!" and Percival, seizing his astounded mother, waltzed +with her down the hall, leaving her at the far end with profusely +polite assurances that he would bring her immediately a lemon-ice, an +ice-pick, and a cold roast turkey with pink stockings on. + +"Never mind, Mrs. Cartwright," he called back to her--"oh, beg +pardon--Bines? yes, yes, to be sure--well, never mind, Mrs. Brennings. +We'll give you time to put your gloves and a bottle of horse-radish and +a nail-file and hammer into that neat travelling-bag of yours. + +"Now let me go up and get clean again. That lovely alkali dust has +worked clear into my bearings so I'm liable to have a hot box just as +we get the line open ninety miles ahead." + +At dinner and afterwards the new West and the old aligned themselves +into hostile camps, as of yore. The young people chatted with lively +interest of the coming change, of the New York people who had visited +the mine, of the attractions and advantages of life in New York. + +Uncle Peter, though he had long since recognised his cause as lost, +remained doggedly inimical to the migration. The home was being broken +up and he was depressed. + +"Anyhow, you'll soon be back," he warned them. "You won't like it a +mite. I tried it myself thirty years ago. I'll jest camp here until you +do come back. My! but you'll be glad to get here again." + +"Why not have Billy Brue come stay with you," suggested Mrs. Bines, who +was hurting herself with pictures of the old man's loneliness, "in case +you should want a plaster on your back or some nutmeg tea brewed, or +anything? That Wung is so trifling." + +"Maybe I might," replied the old man, "but Billy Brue ain't exactly +broke to a shack like this. I know just what he'd do all his spare +time; he'd set down to that new-fangled horseless piano and play it to +death." + +Uncle Peter meant the new automatic piano in the parlour. As far as the +new cabinet was from the what-not this modern bit of mechanism was from +the old cottage organ--the latter with its "Casket of Household +Melodies" and the former with its perforated paper repertoire of "The +World's Best Music," ranging without prejudice from Beethoven's Fifth +Symphony to "I Never Did Like a Nigger Nohow," by a composer who shall +be unnamed on this page. + +"And Uncle Peter won't have any one to bother him when he makes a +litter with all those old plans and estimates and maps of his," said +Psyche; "you'll be able to do a lot more work, Uncle Peter, this +winter." + +"Yes, only I ain't got any more work to do than I ever had, and I +always managed to do that, no matter how you did clean up after me and +mix up my papers. I'm like old Nigger Pomeroy. He was doin' a job of +whitewashin' one day, and he had an old whitewash brush with most of +the hair gone out of it. I says to him, 'Pomeroy, why don't you get you +a new brush? you could do twice as much work.' And Pomeroy says, +'That's right, Mr. Bines, but the trouble is I ain't got twice as much +work to do.' So don't you folks get out on _my_ account," he concluded, +politely. + +"And you know we shall be in mourning," said Psyche to her brother. + +"I've thought of that. We can't do any entertaining, except of the most +informal kind, and we can't go out, except very informally; but, then, +you know, there aren't many people that have us on their lists, and +while we're keeping quiet we shall have a chance to get acquainted a +little." + +"I hear they do have dreadful times with help in New York," said Mrs. +Bines. + +"Don't let that bother you, ma," her son reassured her. "We'll go to +the Hightower Hotel, first. You remember you and pa were there when it +first opened. It's twice as large now, and we'll take a suite, have our +meals served privately, our own servants provided by the hotel, and you +won't have a thing to worry you. We'll be snug there for the winter. +Then for the summer we'll go to Newport, and when we come back from +there we'll take a house. Meantime, after we've looked around a bit, +we'll build, maybe up on one of those fine corners east of the Park." + +"I almost dread it," his mother rejoined. "I never _did_ see how they +kept track of all the help in that hotel, and if it's twice as +monstrous now, however _do_ they do it--and have the beds all made +every day and the meals always on time?" + +"And you can _get_ meals there," said Percival. + +"I've been needing a broiled lobster all summer--and now the oysters +will be due--fine fat Buzzard's Bays--and oyster crabs." + +"He ain't been able to touch a morsel out here," observed Uncle Peter, +with a palpably false air of concern. "I got all worried up about him, +barely peckin' at a crumb or two." + +"I never could learn to eat those oysters out of their shells," Mrs. +Bines confessed. "They taste so much better out of the can. Once we had +them raw and on two of mine were those horrid little green crabs, +actually squirming. I was going to send them back, but your pa laughed +and ate them himself--ate them alive and kicking." + +"And terrapin!" exclaimed Percival, with anticipatory relish. + +"That terrapin stew does taste kind of good," his mother admitted, +"but, land's sakes! it has so many little bits of bones in it I always +get nervous eating it. It makes me feel as if all my teeth was coming +out." + +"You'll soon learn all those things, ma," said her daughter--"and not +to talk to the waiters, and everything like that. She always asks them +how much they earn, and if they have a family, and how many children, +and if any of them are sick, you know," she explained to Percival. + +"And I s'pose you ain't much of a hand fur smokin' cigarettes, are you, +ma?" inquired Uncle Peter, casually. + +"Me!" exclaimed Mrs. Bines, in horror; "I never smoked one of the nasty +little things in my life." + +"Son," said the old man to Percival, reproachfully, "is that any way to +treat your own mother? Here she's had all this summer to learn +cigarette smokin', and you ain't put her at it--all that time wasted, +when you _know_ she's got to learn. Get her one now so she can light +up." + +"Why, Uncle Peter Bines, how absurd!" exclaimed his granddaughter. + +"Well, them ladies smoked the other day, and they was some of the +reg'ler original van Vanvans. You don't want your poor ma kep' out of +the game, do you? Goin' to let her set around and toy with the coppers, +or maybe keep cases now and then, are you? Or, you goin' to get her a +stack of every colour and let her play with you? Pish, now, havin' been +to a 'Frisco seminary--she can pick it up, prob'ly in no time; but ma +ought to have practice here at home, so she can find out what brand she +likes best. Now, Marthy, them Turkish cigarettes, in a nice silver box +with some naked ladies painted on the outside, and your own monogram +'M.B.' in gold letters on every cigarette--" + +"Don't let him scare you, ma," Percival interrupted. "You'll get into +the game all right, and I'll see that you have a good time." + +"Only I hope the First M.E. Church of Montana City never hears of her +outrageous cuttin's-up," said Uncle Peter, as if to himself. "They'd +have her up and church her, sure--smokin' cigarettes with her gold +monogram on, at _her_ age!" "And of course we must go to the Episcopal +church there," said Psyche. "I think those Episcopal ministers are just +the smartest looking men ever. So swell looking, and anyway it's the +only church the right sort of people go to. We must be awfully high +church, too. It's the very best way to know nice people." + +"I s'pose if every day'd be Sunday by-and-bye, like the old song says, +it'd be easier fur you, wouldn't it?" asked the old man. "You and Petie +would be 401 and 402 in jest no time at all." + +Uncle Peter continued to be perversely frivolous about the most +exclusive metropolitan society in the world. But Uncle Peter was a +crabbed old man, lingering past his generation, and the young people +made generous allowance for his infirmities. + +"Only there's one thing," said his sister to Percival, when later they +were alone, "we must be careful about ma; she _will_ persist in making +such dreadful breaks, in spite of everything I can do. In San Francisco +last June, just before we went to Steaming Springs, there was one hot +day, and of course everybody was complaining. Mrs. Beale remarked that +it wasn't the heat that bothered us so, but the humidity. It was so +damp, you know. Ma spoke right up so everybody could hear her, and +said, 'Yes; isn't the humidity dreadful? Why, it's just running off me +from every pore!'" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun + + +It was mid-October. The two saddle-horses and a team for carriage use +had been shipped ahead. In the private car the little party was +beginning its own journey Eastward. From the rear platform they had +watched the tall figure of Uncle Peter Bines standing in the bright +autumn sun, aloof from the band of kerchief-waving friends, the droop +of his head and shoulders showing the dejection he felt at seeing them +go. He had resisted all entreaties to accompany them. + +His last injunction to Percival had been to marry early. + +"I know your stock and I know _you_" he said; "and you got no call to +be rangin' them pastures without a brand. You never was meant fur a +maverick. Only don't let the first woman that comes ridin' herd get her +iron on you. No man knows much about the critters, of course, but I've +noticed a few things in my time. You pick one that's full-chested, +that's got a fairish-sized nose, and that likes cats. The full chest +means she's healthy, the nose means she ain't finicky, and likin' cats +means she's kind and honest and unselfish. Ever notice some women when +a cat's around? They pretend to like 'em and say 'Nice kitty!' but you +can see they're viewin' 'em with bitter hate and suspicion. If they +have to stroke 'em they do it plenty gingerly and you can see 'em +shudderin' inside like. It means they're catty themselves. But when one +grabs a cat up as if she was goin' to eat it and cuddles it in her neck +and talks baby-talk to it, you play her fur bein' sound and true. Pass +up the others, son. + +"And speakin' of the fair sex," he added, as he and Percival were alone +for a moment, "that enterprisin' lady we settled with is goin' to do +one thing you'll approve of. + +"She's goin'," he continued, in answer to Percival's look of inquiry, +"to take her bank-roll to New York. She says it's the only place fur +folks with money, jest like you say. She tells Coplen that there wa'n't +any fit society out here at all,--no advantages fur a lady of capacity +and ambitions. I reckon she's goin' to be 403 all right." + +"Seems to me she did pretty well here; I don't see any kicks due her." + +"Yes, but she's like all the rest. The West was good enough to make her +money in, but the East gets her when spendin' time comes." + +As the train started he swung himself off with a sad little "Be good to +yourself!" + +"Thank the Lord we're under way at last!" cried Percival, fervently, +when the group at the station had been shut from view. "Isn't it just +heavenly!" exclaimed his sister. + +"Think of having all of New York you want--being at home there--and not +having to look forward to this desolation of a place." + +Mrs. Bines was neither depressed nor elated. She was maintaining that +calm level of submission to fate which had been her lifelong habit. The +journey and the new life were to be undertaken because they formed for +her the line of least resistance along which all energy must flow. Had +her children elected to camp for the remainder of their days in the +centre of the desert of Gobi, she would have faced that life with as +little sense of personal concern and with no more misgivings. + +Down out of the maze of hills the train wound; and then by easy grades +after two days of travel down off the great plateau to where the plains +of Nebraska lay away to a far horizon in brown billows of withered +grass. + +Then came the crossing of the sullen, sluggish Missouri, that highway +of an earlier day to the great Northwest; and after that the better +wooded and better settled lands of Iowa and Illinois. + +"Now we're getting where Christians live," said Percival, with warm +appreciation. + +"Why, Percival," exclaimed his mother, reprovingly, "do you mean to say +there aren't any Christians in Montana City? How you talk! There are +lots of good Christian people there, though I must say I have my doubts +about that new Christian Science church they started last spring." "The +term, Mrs. Thorndike, was used in its social rather than its +theological significance," replied her son, urbanely. "Far be it from +me to impugn the religion of that community of which we are ceasing to +be integers at the pleasing rate of sixty miles an hour. God knows they +need their faith in a different kind of land hereafter!" + +And even Mrs. Bines was not without a sense of quiet and rest induced +by the gentler contours of the landscape through which they now sped. + +"The country here does seem a lot cosier," she admitted. + +The hills rolled away amiably and reassuringly; the wooded slopes in +their gay colouring of autumn invited confidence. Here were no +forbidding stretches of the grey alkali desert, no grim bare mountains, +no solitude of desolation. It was a kind land, fat with riches. The +shorn yellow fields, the capacious red barns, the well-conditioned +homes, all told eloquently of peace and plenty. So, too, did the +villages--those lively little clearing-houses for immense farming +districts. To the adventurer from New York they seem always new and +crude. To our travellers from a newer, cruder region they were actually +aesthetic in their suggestions of an old and well-established +civilisation. + +In due time they were rattling over a tangled maze of switches, dodging +interminable processions of freight-cars, barely missing crowded +passenger trains whose bells struck clear and then flatted as the +trains flew by; defiling by narrow water-ways, crowded with small +shipping; winding through streets lined with high, gloomy warehouses, +amid the clang and clatter, the strangely-sounding bells and whistles +of a thousand industries, each sending up its just contribution of +black smoke to the pall that lay always spread above; and steaming at +last into a great roomy shed where all was system, and where the big +engine trembled and panted as if in relief at having run in safety a +gantlet so hazardous. + +"Anyway, I'd rather live in Montana City than Chicago," ventured Mrs. +Bines. + +"Whatever pride you may feel in your discernment, Mrs. Cadwallader, is +amply justified," replied her son, performing before the amazed lady a +bow that indicated the lowest depths of slavish deference. + +"I am now," he continued, "going out to pace the floor of this +locomotive-boudoir for a few exhilarating breaths of smoke, and pretend +to myself that I've got to live in Chicago for ever. A little +discipline like that is salutary to keep one from forgetting the great +blessing which a merciful Providence has conferred upon one." + +"I'll walk a bit with you," said his sister, donning her jacket and a +cap. + +"Lest my remarks have seemed indeterminate, madam," sternly continued +Percival at the door of the car, "permit me to add that if Chicago were +heaven I should at once enter upon a life of crime. Do not affect to +misunderstand me, I beg of you. I should leave no avenue of salvation +open to my precious soul. I should incur no risk of being numbered +among the saved. I should be _b-a-d_, and I should sit up nights to +invent new ways of evil. If I had any leisure left from being as wicked +as I could be, I should devote it to teaching those I loved how to +become abandoned. I should doubtless issue a pamphlet, 'How to Merit +Perdition Without a Master. Learn to be Wicked in your Own Home in Ten +Lessons. Instructions Sent Securely Sealed from Observation. Thousands +of Testimonials from the Most Accomplished Reprobates of the Day.' I +trust Mrs. Llewellen Leffingwell-Thompson, that you will never again so +far forget yourself as to utter that word 'Chicago' in my presence. If +you feel that you must give way to the evil impulse, go off by yourself +and utter the name behind the protection of closed doors--where this +innocent girl cannot hear you. Come, sister. Otherwise I may behave in +a manner to be regretted in my calmer moments. Let us leave the woman +alone, now. Besides, I've got to go out and help the hands make up that +New York train. You never can tell. Some horrible accident might happen +to delay us here thirty minutes. Cheer up, ma; it's always darkest just +before leaving Chicago, you know." + +Thus flippantly do some of the younger sons of men blaspheme this +metropolis of the mid-West--a city the creation of which is, by many +persons of discrimination, held to be the chief romance and abiding +miracle of the nineteenth century. Let us rejoice that one such +partisan was now at hand to stem the torrent of abuse. As Percival held +back the door for his sister to pass out, a stout little ruddy-faced +man with trim grey sidewhiskers came quickly up the steps and barred +their way with cheery aggressiveness. + +"Ah! Mr. Higbee--well, well!" exclaimed Percival, cordially. + +"Thought it might be some of you folks when I saw the car," said +Higbee, shaking hands all around. + +"And Mrs. Bines, too! and the girl, looking like a Delaware peach when +the crop's 'failed.' How's everybody, and how long you going to be in +the good old town?" + +"Ah! we were just speaking of Chicago as you came in," said Percival, +blandly. "_Isn't_ she a great old town, though--a wonder!" + +"My boy," said Higbee, in low, solemn tones that came straight from his +heart, "she gets greater every day you live. You can see her at it, +fairly. How long since you been here?" + +"I came through last June, you know, after I left your yacht at +Newport." + +"Yes, yes; to be sure; so you did--poor Daniel J.--but say, you +wouldn't know the town now if you haven't seen it since then. Why, I +run over from New York every thirty days or so and she grows out of my +ken every time, like a five-year-old boy. Say, I've got Mrs. Higbee up +in the New York sleeper, but if you're going to be here a spell we'll +stop a few days longer and I'll drive you around--what say?--packing +houses--Lake Shore Drive--Lincoln Park--" + +He waited, glowing confidently, as one submitting irresistible +temptations. + +Percival beamed upon him with moist eyes. + +"By Jove, Mr. Higbee! that's clever of you--it's royal! Sis and I would +like nothing better--but you see my poor mother here is almost down +with nervous prostration and we've got to hurry her to New York without +an hour's delay to consult a specialist. We're afraid"--he glanced +anxiously at the astounded Mrs. Bines, and lowered his voice--"we're +afraid she may not be with us long." + +"Why, Percival," began Mrs. Bines, dazedly, "you was just saying--" + +"Now don't fly all to pieces, ma!--take it easy--you're with friends, +be sure of that. You needn't beg us to go on. You know we wouldn't +think of stopping when it may mean life or death to you. You see just +the way she is," he continued to the sympathetic Higbee--"we're afraid +she may collapse any moment. So we must wait for another time; but I'll +tell you what you do; go get Mrs. Higbee and your traps and come let us +put you up to New York. We've got lots of room--run along now--and +we'll have some of that ham, 'the kind you have always bought,' for +lunch. A.L. Jackson is a miserable cook, too, if I don't know the +truth." Gently urging Higbee through the door, he stifled a systematic +inquiry into the details of Mrs. Bines's affliction. + +"Come along quick! I'll go help you and we'll have Mrs. Higbee back +before the train starts." + +"Do you know," Mrs. Bines thoughtfully observed to her daughter, "I +sometimes mistrust Percival ain't just right in his head; you remember +he did have a bad fall on it when he was two years and five months +old--two years, five months, and eighteen days. The way he carries on +right before folks' faces! That time I went through the asylum at Butte +there was a young man kept going on with the same outlandish rigmarole +just like Percival. The idea of Percival telling me to eat a lemon-ice +with an ice-pick, and 'Oh, why don't the flesh-brushes wear nice, +proper clothes-brushes!' and be sure and hammer my nails good and hard +after I get them manicured. And back home he was always wanting to know +where the meat-augers were, saying he'd just bought nine hundred new +ones and he'd have to order a ton more if they were all lost. I don't +believe there is such a thing as a meat-auger. I don't know what on +earth a body could do with one. And that other young man," she +concluded, significantly, "they had him in a little bit of a room with +an iron-barred door to it like a prison-cell." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information + + +The Higbees were presently at home in the Bines car. Mrs. Higbee was a +pleasant, bustling, plump little woman, sparkling-eyed and sprightly. +Prominent in her manner was a helpless little confession of inadequacy +to her ambitions that made her personality engaging. To be energetic +and friendly, and deeply absorbed in people who were bold and +confident, was her attitude. + +She began bubbling at once to Mrs. Bines and Psyche of the latest +fashions for mourners. Crepe was more swagger than ever before, both as +trimming and for entire costumes. + +"House gowns, my dear, and dinner gowns, made entirely of crepe in the +Princesse style, will exactly suit your daughter--and on the dinner +gowns she can wear a trimming of that dull jet passementerie." + +From gowns she went naturally to the difficulty of knowing whom to meet +in a city like New York--and how to meet them--and the watchfulness +required to keep daughter Millie from becoming entangled with leading +theatrical gentlemen. Amid Percival's lamentations that he must so soon +leave Chicago, the train moved slowly out of the big shed to search in +the interwoven puzzle of tracks for one that led to the East. + +As they left the centre of the city Higbee drew Percival to one of the +broad side windows. + +"Pull up your chair and sit here a minute," he said, with a mysterious +little air of importance. "There's a thing this train's going to pass +right along here that I want you to look at. Maybe you've seen better +ones, of course--and then again--" + +It proved to be a sign some twenty feet high and a whole block long. +Emblazoned upon its broad surface was "Higbee's Hams." At one end and +towering another ten feet or so above the mammoth letters was a +white-capped and aproned chef abandoning his mercurial French +temperament to an utter frenzy of delight over a "Higbee's Ham" which +had apparently just been vouchsafed to him by an invisible benefactor. + +"There, now!" exclaimed Higbee; "what do you call that--I want to +know--hey?" + +"Great! Magnificent!" cried Percival, with the automatic and ready +hypocrisy of a sympathetic nature. "That certainly is great." + +"Notice the size of it?" queried Higbee, when they had flitted by. + +"_Did_ I!" exclaimed the young man, reproachfully. + +"We went by pretty fast--you couldn't see it well. I tell you the way +they're allowed to run trains so fast right here in this crowded city +is an outrage. I'm blamed if I don't have my lawyer take it up with the +Board of Aldermen--slaughtering people on their tracks right and +left--you'd think these railroad companies owned the earth--But that +sign, now. Did you notice you could read every letter in the label on +that ham? You wouldn't think it was a hundred yards back from the +track, would you? Why, that label by actual measure is six feet, four +inches across--and yet it looks as small--and everything all in the +right proportion, it's wonderful. It's what I call art," he concluded, +in a slightly dogmatic tone. + +"Of course it's art," Percival agreed; "er--all--hand-painted, I +suppose?" + +"Sure! that painting alone, letters and all, cost four hundred and +fifty dollars. I've just had it put up. I've been after that place for +years, but it was held on a long lease by Max, the Square Tailor--you +know. You probably remember the sign he had there--'Peerless Pants Worn +by Chicago's Best Dressers' with a man in his shirt sleeves looking at +a new pair. Well, finally, I got a chance to buy those two back lots, +and that give me the site, and there she is, all finished and up. +That's partly what I come on this time to see about. How'd you like the +wording of that sign?" + +"Fine--simple and effective," replied Percival. + +"That's it--simple and effective. It goes right to the point and it +don't slop over beyond any, after it gets there. We studied a good deal +over that sign. The other man, the tailor, had too many words for the +board space. My advertisin' man wanted it to be, first, 'Higbee's Hams, +That's All.' But, I don't know--for so big a space that seemed to me +kind of--well--kind of flippant and undignified. Then I got it down to +'Eat Higbee's Hams.' That seemed short enough--but after studying it, I +says, What's the use of saying 'eat'? No one would think, I says, that +a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa-cushions with--so off +comes 'eat' as being superfluous, and leaving it simple and +dignified--'Higbee's Hams.'" + +"By the way," said Percival, when they were sitting together again, +later in the day, "where is Henry, now?" + +Higbee chuckled. + +"That's the other thing took me back this time--the new sign and +getting Hank started. Henry is now working ten hours a day out to the +packinghouse. After a year of that, he'll be taken into the office and +his hours will be cut down to eight. Eight hours a day will seem like +sinful idleness to Henry by that time." + +Percival whistled in amazement. + +"I thought you'd be surprised. But the short of it is, Henry found +himself facing work or starvation. He didn't want to starve a little +bit, and he finally concluded he'd rather work for his dad than any one +else. + +"You see Henry was doing the Rake's Progress act there in New +York--being a gilded youth and such like. Now being a gilded youth and +'a well-known man about town' is something that wants to be done in +moderation, and Henry didn't seem to know the meaning of the word. I +put up something like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for Hank's +gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't +doing him any good. He was making a monkey of himself with it, Henry +was. A good bit of that hundred and eighty went into a comic opera +company that was one of the worst I ever _did_ see. Henry had no +judgment. He was _too_ easy. Well, along this summer he was on the +point of making a break that would--well, I says to him, says I, 'Hank, +I'm no penny-squeezer; I like good stretchy legs myself,' I says; 'I +like to see them elastic so they'll give a plenty when they're pulled; +but,' I says, 'if you take that step,' I says, 'if you declare +yourself, then the rubber in your legs,' I says, 'will just naturally +snap; you'll find you've overplayed the tension,' I says, 'and there +won't be any more stretch left in them.' + +"The secret is, Hank was being chased by a whole family of +wolves--that's the gist of it--fortune-hunters--with tushes like the +ravening lion in Afric's gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone +broke, mind you, but hyenas into the bargain--the father and the mother +and the girl, too. + +"They'd got their minds made up to marry the girl to a good wad of +money--and they'll do it, too, sooner or later, because she's a corker +for looks, all right--and they'd all made a dead set for Hank; so, +quick as I saw how it was, I says, 'Here,' I says, 'is where I save my +son and heir from a passel of butchers,' I says, 'before they have him +scalded and dressed and hung up outside the shop for the holiday +trade,' I says, 'with the red paper rosettes stuck in Henry's chest,' I +says." + +"Are the New York girls so designing?" asked Percival. + +"Is Higbee's ham good to eat?" replied Higbee, oracularly. + +"So," he continued, "when I made up my mind to put my foot down I just +casually mentioned to the old lady--say, she's got an eye that would +make liquid air shiver--that cold blue like an army overcoat--well, I +mentioned to her that Henry was a spendthrift and that he wasn't ever +going to get another cent from me that he didn't earn just the same as +if he wasn't any relation of mine. I made it plain, you bet; she found +just where little Henry-boy stood with his kind-hearted, liberal old +father. + +"Say, maybe Henry wasn't in cold storage with the whole family from +that moment. I see those fellows in the laboratories are puttering +around just now trying to get the absolute zero of temperature--say, +Henry got it, and he don't know a thing about chemistry. + +"Then I jounced Hank. I proceeded to let him know he was up against +it--right close up against it, so you couldn't see daylight between +'em. 'You're twenty-five,' I says, 'and you play the best game of pool, +I'm told, of any of the chappies in that Father-Made-the-Money club you +got into,' I says; 'but I've looked it up,' I says, 'and there ain't +really what you could call any great future for a pool champion,' I +says, 'and if you're ever going to learn anything else, it's time you +was at it,' I says. 'Now you go back home and tell the manager to set +you to work,' I says, 'and your wages won't be big enough to make you +interesting to any skirt-dancer, either,' I says. 'And you make a study +of the hog from the ground up. Exhaust his possibilities just like your +father done, and make a man of yourself, and then sometime,' I says, +'you'll be able to give good medicine to a cub of your own when he +needs it.'" + +"And how did poor Henry take all that?" + +"Well, Hank squealed at first like he was getting the knife; but +finally when he see he was up against it, and especially when he see +how this girl and her family throwed him down the elevator-shaft from +the tenth story, why, he come around beautifully. He's really got +sense, though he doesn't look it--Henry has--though Lord knows I didn't +pull him up a bit too quick. But he come out and went to work like I +told him. It's the greatest thing ever happened to him. He ain't so +fat-headed as he was, already. Henry'll be a man before his dad's +through with him." + +"But weren't the young people disappointed?" asked Percival; "weren't +they in love with each other?" + +"In _love?_" In an effort to express scorn adequately Mr. Higbee came +perilously near to snorting. "What do you suppose a girl like that +cares for love? She was dead in love with the nice long yellow-backs +that I've piled up because the public knows good ham when they taste +it. As for being in love with Henry or with any man--say, young fellow, +you've got something to learn about those New York girls. And this one, +especially. Why, it's been known for the three years we've been there +that she's simply hunting night and day for a rich husband. She tries +for 'em all as fast as they get in line." + +"Henry was unlucky in finding that kind. They're not all like +that--those New York girls are not," and he had the air of being able +if he chose to name one or two luminous exceptions. + +"Silas," called Mrs. Higbee, "are you telling Mr. Bines about our Henry +and that Milbrey girl?" + +"Yep," answered Higbee, "I told him." + +"About what girl?--what was her name?" asked Percival, in a lower tone. + +"Milbrey's that family's name--Horace Milbrey--" + +"Why," Percival interrupted, somewhat awkwardly, "I know the +family--the young lady--we met the family out in Montana a few weeks +ago." + +"Sure enough--they were in Chicago and had dinner with us on their way +out." "I remember Mr. Milbrey spoke of what fine claret you gave him." + +"Yes, and I wasn't stingy with ice, either, the way those New York +people always are. Why, at that fellow's house he gives you that claret +wine as warm as soup. + +"But as for that girl," he added, "say, she'd marry me in a minute if I +wasn't tied up with the little lady over there. Of course she'd rather +marry a sub-treasury; she's got about that much heart in +her--cold-blooded as a German carp. She'd marry me--she'd marry _you_, +if you was the best thing in sight. But say, if you was broke, she'd +have about as much use for you as Chicago's got for St. Louis." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +Some Light With a Few Side-lights + + +The real spring in New York comes when blundering nature has painted +the outer wilderness for autumn. What is called "spring" in the city by +unreflecting users of the word is a tame, insipid season yawning into +not more than half-wakefulness at best. The trees in the gas-poisoned +soil are slow in their greening, the grass has but a pallid city +vitality, and the rows of gaudy tulips set out primly about the +fountains in the squares are palpably forced and alien. + +For the sumptuous blending and flaunt of colour, the spontaneous +awakening of warm, throbbing new life, and all those inspiring miracles +of regeneration which are performed elsewhere in April and May, the +city-pent must wait until mid-October. + +This is the spring of the city's year. There be those to hint +captiously that they find it an affair of false seeming; that the +gorgeous colouring is a mere trick of shop-window cunning; that the +time is juiceless and devoid of all but the specious delights of +surface. Yet these, perhaps, are unduly imaginative for a world where +any satisfaction is held by a tenure precarious at best. And even these +carpers, be they never so analytical, can at least find no lack of +springtime fervour in the eager throngs that pass entranced before the +window show. They, the free-swinging, quick-moving men and women--the +best dressed of all throngs in this young world--sun-browned, +sun-enlivened, recreated to a fine mettle for enjoyment by their months +of mountain or ocean sport--these are, indeed, the ones for whom this +afterspring is made to bloom. And, since they find it to be a shifting +miracle of perfections, how are they to be quarrelled with? + +In the big polished windows waxen effigies of fine ladies, gracefully +patient, display the latest dinner-gown from Paris, or the creamiest of +be-ribboned tea-gowns. Or they pose in attitudes of polite adieux and +greeting, all but smothered in a king's ransom of sable and ermine. Or, +to the other extreme, they complacently permit themselves to be +observed in the intimate revelations of Parisian lingerie, with its +misty froth of embroideries, its fine-spun webs of foamy lace. + +In another window, behold a sprightly and enlivening ballet of shapely +silken hosiery, fitting its sculptured models to perfection, ranging in +tints from the first tender green of spring foliage to the rose-pink of +the spring sun's after-glow. + +A few steps beyond we may study a window where the waxen ladies have +been dismembered. Yet a second glance shows the retained portions to be +all that woman herself considers important when she tries on the +bird-toque or the picture hat, or the gauze confection for afternoons. +The satisfied smiles of these waxen counterfeits show them to have been +amply recompensed, with the headgear, for their physical +incompleteness. + +But if these terraces of colour and grace that line the sides of this +narrow spring valley be said to contain only the dry husks of +adornment, surely there may be found others more technically +springlike. + +Here in this broad window, foregathered in a congress of colours +designed to appetise, are the ripe fruits of every clime and every +season: the Southern pomegranate beside the hardy Northern apple, +scarlet and yellow; the early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs +from the Orient and pines from the Antilles; dates from Tunis and tawny +persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from the +hothouse--tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and +royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow +blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable +stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas--of more +integrity, perhaps, than the same colourings simulated by the +confectioner's craft, in the near-by window-display of impossible +sweets. + +And still more of this belated spring will gladden the eye in the +florist's window. In June the florist's shop is a poor place, +sedulously to be shunned. Nothing of note blooms there then. The +florist himself is patently ashamed of himself. The burden of +sustaining his traditions he puts upon a few dejected shrubs called +"hardy perennials" that have to labour the year around. All summer it +is as if the place feared to compete with nature when colour and grace +flower so cheaply on every southern hillside. But now its glories bloom +anew, and its superiority over nature becomes again manifest. Now it +assembles the blossoms of a whole long year to bewilder and allure. Its +windows are shaded glens, vine-embowered, where spring, summer, and +autumn blend in all their regal and diverse abundance; and the closing +door of the shop fans out odours as from a thousand Persian gardens. + +But spring is not all of life, nor what at once chiefly concerns us. +There are people to be noted: a little series of more or less related +phenomena to be observed. + +One of the people, a young man, stands conveniently before this same +florist's window, at that hour when the sun briefly flushes this narrow +canon of Broadway from wall to wall. + +He had loitered along the lively highway an hour or more, his nerves +tingling responsively to all its stimuli. And now he mused as he stared +at the tangled tracery of ferns against the high bank of wine-red +autumn foliage, the royal cluster of white chrysanthemums and the big +jar of American Beauties. + +He had looked forward to this moment, too--when he should enter that +same door and order at least an armful of those same haughty roses sent +to an address his memory cherished. Yet now, the time having come, the +zest for the feat was gone. It would be done; it were ungraceful not to +do it, after certain expressions; but it would be done with no heart +because of the certain knowledge that no one--at least no one to be +desired--could possibly care for him, or consider him even with +interest for anything but his money--the same kind of money Higbee made +by purveying hams--"and she wouldn't care in the least whether it was +mine or Higbee's, so there was a lot of it." + +Yet he stepped in and ordered the roses, nor did the florist once +suspect that so lavish a buyer of flowers could be a prey to emotions +of corroding cynicism toward the person for whom they were meant. + +From the florist's he returned directly to the hotel to find his mother +and Psyche making homelike the suite to which they had been assigned. A +maid was unpacking trunks under his sister's supervision. Mrs. Bines +was in converse with a person of authoritative manner regarding the +service to be supplied them. Two maids would be required, and madame +would of course wish a butler-- + +Mrs. Bines looked helplessly at her son who had just entered. + +"I think--we've--we've always did our own buttling," she faltered. + +The person was politely interested. + +"I'll attend to these things, ma," said Percival, rather suddenly. +"Yes, we'll want a butler and the two maids, and see that the butler +knows his business, please, and--here--take this, and see that we're +properly looked after, will you?" + +As the bill bore a large "C" on its face, and the person was rather a +gentleman anyway, this unfortunate essay at irregular conjugation never +fell into a certain class of anecdotes which Mrs. Bines's best friends +could now and then bring themselves to relate of her. + +But other matters are forward. We may next overtake two people who +loiter on this bracing October day down a leaf-strewn aisle in Central +Park. + +"You," said the girl of the pair, "least of all men can accuse me of +lacking heart." + +"You are cold to me now." + +"But look, think--what did I offer--you've had my trust,--everything I +could bring myself to give you. Look what I would have sacrificed at +your call. Think how I waited and longed for that call." + +"You know how helpless I was." + +"Yes, if you wanted more than my bare self. I should have been +helpless, too, if I had wanted more than--than you." + +"It would have been folly--madness--that way." + +"Folly--madness? Do you remember the 'Sonnet of Revolt' you sent me? +Sit on this bench; I wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want +you to hear it while you keep your later attitude in mind. + +"Life--what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of +every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the +hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the +self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights, +eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale--'" + +"But I know the verse." + +"No; hear it out;--hear what you sent me: + + "'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see + The man who sells his soul in some wild cause: + The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss, + All that he was and all he thought to be: + The rebel stark against his country's laws: + God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'" + +She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones. + +"Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving +you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here +never really forget those things--and we'd have been helpless--some day +you'll thank me for thinking for you." + +"Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?" + +"Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you." +"And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a +woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready. +Surely that showed my spirit--and you haven't known me these years +without knowing it would have to be that or nothing." + +"Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're +not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?" + +Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn. + +"No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind +so little; there's been so little depth to it all; you couldn't dare. +It was foolish to think I could show you my mind." + +"But you still care for me?" + +"No; no, I don't. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When +I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let +us go back. No, no, please don't touch me--ever again." + +Farther down-town in the cosy drawing-room of a house in a side street +east of the Avenue, two other persons were talking. A florid and +profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the +hearth-rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better. + +"But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can't take a curate +with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come +downstairs and marry me directly--not when I've not seen her, you +know!" "Nonsense!" replied the lady, unimpressed. "You can do it +nearly that way, if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite +in that manner, I assure you. They call it 'hustling.'" + +"_Dear_ me!" + +"Yes, indeed, 'dear you.' And another thing, I want you to forestall +that Milbrey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away than +Tuxedo or Meadowbrook. Now, they arrived yesterday; they'll be +unpacking to-day and settling to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and +you shall be with me." + +"And you forget that--that devil--suppose she's as good as her threat?" + +"Absurd! how could she be?" + +"You don't know her, you know, nor the old beggar either, by Jove!" + +"All the more reason for haste. We'll call to-morrow. Wait. Better +still, perhaps I can enlist the Gwilt-Athelston; I'm to meet her +to-morrow. I'll let you know. Now I must get into my teaharness, so run +along." + +We are next constrained to glance at a strong man bowed in the hurt of +a great grief. Horace Milbrey sits alone in his gloomy, high-ceilinged +library. His attire is immaculate. His slender, delicate hands are +beautifully white. The sensitive lines of his fine face tell of the +strain under which he labours. What dire tragedies are those we must +face wholly alone--where we must hide the wound, perforce, because no +comprehending sympathy flows out to us; because instinct warns that no +help may come save from the soul's own well of divine fortitude. Some +hope, tenderly, almost fearfully, held and guarded, had perished on the +day that should have seen its triumphant fruition. He raised his +handsome head from the antique, claw-footed desk, sat up in his chair, +and stared tensely before him. His emotion was not to be suppressed. Do +tears tremble in the eyes of the strong man? Let us not inquire too +curiously. If they tremble down the fine-skinned cheek, let us avert +our gaze. For grief in men is no thing to make a show of. + +A servant passed the open door bearing an immense pasteboard box with +one end cut out to accommodate the long stems of many roses. + +"Jarvis!" + +"Yes, sir!" + +"What is it?" + +"Flowers, sir, for Miss Avice." + +"Let me see--and the card?" + +He took the card from the florist's envelope and glanced at the name. + +"Take them away." + +The stricken man was once more alone; yet now it was as if the tender +beauty of the flowers had balmed his hurt--taught him to hope anew. Let +us in all sympathy and hope retire. + +For cheerfuller sights we might observe Launton Oldaker in a musty +curio-shop, delighted over a pair of silver candlesticks with square +bases and fluted columns, fabricated in the reign of that fortuitous +monarch, Charles the Second; or we might glance in upon the Higbees in +their section of a French chateau, reproduced up on the stately +Riverside Drive, where they complete the details of a dinner to be +given on the morrow. + +Or perhaps it were better to be concerned with a matter more weighty +than dinners and antique candlesticks. The search need never be vain, +even in this world of persistent frivolity. As, for example: + +"Tell Mrs. Van Geist if she can't come down, I'll run up to her." + +"Yes, Miss Milbrey." + +Mrs. Van Geist entered a moment later. + +"Why, Avice, child, you're glowing, aren't you?" + +"I must be, I suppose--I've just walked down from 59th Street, and +before that I walked in the Park. Feel how cold my cheeks +are,--Mütterchen." + +"It's good for you. Now we shall have some tea, and talk." + +"Yes--I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes." + +"Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought. +There, take the big chair." + +"It always feels like you--like your arms, Mütterchen--and I am tired." + +"And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afraid of +cream." + +"I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream." + +"You told me you weren't afraid of that--that cad--any more." + +"I'm not--I just told him so. But I'm afraid of it all; I'm tired +trying not to drift--tired trying not to try, and tired trying to +try--Oh, dear--sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it? Have you any +one to-night? No? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some +one home to say I'll be here. I can always think so much better +here--and you, dear old thing, to mother me!" + +"Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly." + +"He will go to the house of mourning." + +"What's the latest?" + +"Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was +striving so bravely and nobly to bear up. No one knows what that man +suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about everything. Just before +I left, he was saying that, when one considers the number of American +homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are +you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it." + +"Nothing has happened?" + +"Well, there'll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but a +very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the +cruellest blows of his life. I fancy he didn't sleep at all last night, +and he looked thoroughly bowled over this morning." + +"But what is it?" + +"Well--oh, it's awful!--first of all there were six dozen of +early-bottled, 1875 Château Lafitte--that was the bitterest--but he had +to see the rest go, too--Château Margeaux of '80--some terribly ancient +port and Madeira--the dryest kind of sherry--a lot of fine, full +clarets of '77 and '78--oh, you can't know how agonising it was to +him--I've heard them so often I know them all myself." + +"But what on earth about them?" + +"Nothing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar--auctioned off, you +know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every +bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it. +Sometimes he sounded like a French lesson--and he's been under a +fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great +day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn't bid in a single +drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully +all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that +Château Lafitte go--and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of +that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar +_nouveaux riches_ when he came home--he talked quite like an anarchist. +But by to-night he'll be blaming me for his misfortunes. That's why I +chose to stay here with you." + +"Poor Horace. Whatever are you going to do?" + +"Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could do anything but +one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West." + +"You called him your 'athletic Bayard' once." + +"The other's more to the point at present. And what else can I do? Oh, +if some one would just be brave enough to live the raw, quivering life +with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go +by the board--but I am so alone and so helpless and no man is equal to +it, nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a 'half +portion' of life." + +"Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those +flying-machines that are constantly being tested by the credulous +inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things +come tumbling." + +"Very well; then I shall be wise--I suppose I shall be--and I'll do it +quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at +once, and be accepted--so that I shall be able to look my dear old +father in the face again--and then, after I'm married--well, don't +blame me for anything that happens." + +"I'm sure you'll be happy with him--it's only your silly notions. He's +in love with you." + +"That makes me hesitate. He really is a man--I like him--see this +letter--a long review from the Arcady _Lyre_ of the 'poem' he wrote, a +poem consisting of 'Avice Milbrey.' The reviewer has been quite +enthusiastic over it, too,--written from some awful place in Montana." + +"What more could you ask? He'll be kind." + +"You don't understand, Mütterchen. He seems too decent to marry that +way--and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me +out--oh, think of what marriage _is_--he'd _have_ to find it out--I +couldn't _act_ long--doubtless he wouldn't even be kind to me then." + +"You are morbid, child." + +"But I will do it; I shall; I will be a credit to my training--and I +shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn--well, a great deal +that he doesn't know about women." + +She stared into the fire and added, after a moment's silence: + +"Oh, if a man only _could_ live up to the verses he cuts out of +magazines!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +With the Barbaric Hosts + + +History repeats itself so cleverly, with a variance of stage-settings +and accessories so cunning, that the repetition seldom bores, and is, +indeed, frequently undetected. Thus, the descent of the Barbarians upon +a decadent people is a little _tour de force_ that has been performed +again and again since the oldest day. But because the assault nowadays +is made not with force of arms we are prone to believe it is no longer +made at all;--as if human ways had changed a bit since those ugly, +hairy tribes from the Northern forests descended upon the Roman empire. +And yet the mere difference that the assault is now made with force of +money in no way alters the process nor does it permit the result to +vary. On the surface all is cordiality and peaceful negotiation. +Beneath is the same immemorial strife, the life-and-death +struggle,--pitiless, inexorable. + +What would have been a hostile bivouac within the city's gates, but for +the matter of a few centuries, is now, to select an example which +remotely concerns us, a noble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the +lordly Hudson and the majestic Palisades that form its farther wall. +And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly +reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes, +fighting for captive vestals, and bickering in uncouth tongues over the +golden spoils, what have we now to make the parallel convince? Why, the +same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined, +all-conquering, animal force; a red-faced, big-handed lot, imbued with +hearty good nature and an easy tolerance for the ways of those upon +whom they have descended. + +Here are chiefs of renown from the farthest fastnesses; they and their +curious households: the ironmonger from Pittsburg, the gold-miner from +Dawson, the copper chief from Butte, the silver chief from Denver, the +cattle chief from Oklahoma, lord of three hundred thousand good acres +and thirty thousand cattle, the lumber prince from Michigan, the +founder of a later dynasty in oil, from Texas. And, for the unaesthetic +but effective Attila, an able fashioner of pork products from Chicago. + +Here they make festival, carelessly, unafraid, unmolested. For, in the +lapse of time, the older peoples have learned not only the folly of +resisting inevitables, but that the huge and hairy invaders may be +treated and bartered with not unprofitably. Doubtless it often results +from this amity that the patrician strain is corrupted by the alien +admixture,--but business has been business since as many as two persons +met on the face of the new earth. + +For example, this particular shelter is builded upon land which one of +the patrician families had held for a century solely because it could +not be disposed of. Yet the tribesmen came, clamouring for palaces, and +now this same land, with some adjoining areas of trifling extent, +produces an income that will suffice to maintain that family almost in +its ancient and befitting estate. + +In this mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand +dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and +entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of +ornamentation, the building is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blois, +those splendid palaces of Francis I. Inside are all the line and colour +and device of elegant opulence, modern to the last note. + +To this palace of an October evening comes the tribe of Bines, and many +another such, for a triumphal feast in the abode of Barbarian Silas +Higbee. The carriages pass through a pair of lordly iron gates, swung +from massive stone pillars, under an arch of wrought iron with its +antique lamp, and into the echoing courtyard flanked by trim hedges of +box. + +Alighting, the barbaric guests of Higbee are ushered through a +marble-walled vestibule, from which a wrought-iron and bronze screen +gives way to the main entrance-hall. The ceiling here reproduces that +of a feudal castle in Rouen, with some trifling and effective touches +of decoration in blue, scarlet, and gold. The walls are of white Caen +stone, with ornate windows and balconies jutting out above. In one +corner is a stately stone mantel with richly carved hood, bearing in +its central panel the escutcheon of the gallant French monarch. Up a +little flight of marble steps, guarded by its hand-rail of heavy metal, +shod with crimson velvet, one reaches the elevator. This pretty +enclosure of iron and glass, of classic detail in the period of Henry +II., of Circassian walnut trim, with crotch panels, has more the aspect +of boudoir than elevator. The deep seat is of walnut, upholstered with +fat cushions of crimson velvet edged in dull gold galloon. Over the +seat is a mirror cut into small squares by wooden muntins. At each side +are electric candles softened by red silk shades. One's last view +before the door closes noiselessly is of a bay-window opposite, set +with cathedral glass casement-lights, which sheds soft colours upon the +hall-bench of carven stone and upon the tessellated floor. + +The door to the Higbee domain is of polished mahogany, set between +lights of antique verte Italian glass, and bearing an ancient brass +knocker. From the reception-room, with its walls of green empire silk, +one passes through a foyer hall, of Cordova leather hangings, to the +drawing-room with its three broad windows. Opposite the entrance to +this superb room is a mantel of carved Caen stone, faced with golden +Pavanazza marble, with old Roman andirons of gold ending in the +fleur-de-lis. The walls are hung with blue Florentine silk, embossed in +silver. Beyond a bronze grill is the music-room, a library done in +Austrian oak with stained burlap panelled by dull-forged nails, a +conservatory, a billiard-room, a smoking-room. This latter has walls of +red damask and a mantel with "_Post Tenebras Lux_" cut into one of its +marble panels,--a legend at which the worthy lessee of all this +splendour is wont often to glance with respectful interest. + +The admirable host--if one be broad-minded--is now in the drawing-room, +seconding his worthy wife and pretty daughter who welcome the +dinner-guests. + +For a man who has a fad for ham and doesn't care who knows it, his +bearing is all we have a right to expect that it should be. Among the +group of arrivals, men of his own sort, he is speaking of the +ever-shifting fashion in beards, to the evangel of a Texas oil-field +who flaunts to the world one of those heavy moustaches spuriously +extended below the corners of the mouth by means of the chin-growth of +hair. Another, a worthy tribesman from Snohomish, Washington, wears a +beard which, for a score of years, has been let to be its own true +self; to express, fearlessly, its own unique capacity for variation +from type. These two have rallied their host upon his modishly trimmed +side-whiskers. + +"You're right," says Mr. Higbee, amiably, "I ain't stuck any myself on +this way of trimming up a man's face, but the madam will have it this +way--says it looks more refined and New Yorky. And now, do you know, +ever since I've wore 'em this way--ever since I had 'em scraped from +around under my neck here--I have to go to Florida every winter. Come +January or February, I get bronchitis every blamed year!" + +Two of the guests only are alien to the barbaric throng. + +There is the noble Baron Ronault de Palliac, decorated, reserved, +observant,--almost wistful. For the moment he is picturing dutifully +the luxuries a certain marriage would enable him to procure for his +noble father and his aged mother, who eagerly await the news of his +quest for the golden fleece. For the baron contemplates, after the +fashion of many conscientious explorers, a marriage with a native +woman; though he permits himself to cherish the hope that it may not be +conditioned upon his adopting the manners and customs of the particular +tribe that he means to honour. Monsieur the Baron has long since been +obliged to confess that a suitable _mesalliance_ is none too easy of +achievement, and, in testimony of his vicissitudes, he has written for +a Paris comic paper a series of grimly satiric essays upon New York +society. Recently, moreover, he has been upon the verge of accepting +employment in the candy factory of a bourgeois compatriot. But hope has +a little revived in the noble breast since chance brought him and his +title under the scrutiny of the bewitching Miss Millicent Higbee and +her appreciative mother. + +And to-night there is not only the pretty Miss Higbee, but the winning +Miss Bines, whose _dot_, the baron has been led to understand, would +permit his beloved father unlimited piquet at his club, to say nothing +of regenerating the family chateau. Yet these are hardly matters to be +gossiped of. It is enough to know that the Baron Ronault de Palliac +when he discovers himself at table between Miss Bines and the adorable +Miss Higbee, becomes less saturnine than has for some time been his +wont. He does not forget previous disappointments, but desperately +snaps his swarthy jaws in commendable superiority to any adverse fate. + +"_Je ne donne pas un damn_," he says to himself, and translates, as was +his practice, to better his English--"I do not present a damn. I shall +take what it is that it may be." + +The noble Baron de Palliac at this feast of the tribesmen was like the +captive patrician of old led in chains that galled. The other alien, +Launton Oldaker, was present under terms of honourable truce, willingly +and without ulterior motive saving--as he confessed to himself--a +consuming desire to see "how the other half lives." He was no longer +the hunted and dismayed being Percival had met in that far-off and +impossible Montana; but was now untroubled, remembering, it is true, +that this "slumming expedition," as he termed it, had taken him beyond +the recognised bounds of his beloved New York, but serene in the +consciousness that half an hour's drive would land him safely back at +his club. + +Oldaker observed Miss Psyche Bines approvingly. + +"We are so glad to be in New York!" she had confided to him, sitting at +her right. + +"My dear young woman," he warned her, "you haven't reached New York +yet." The talk being general and loud, he ventured further. + +"This is Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver--almost anything but +New York." + +"Of course I know these are not the swell old families." + +Oldaker sipped his glass of old Oloroso sherry and discoursed. + +"And our prominent families, the ones whose names you read, are not New +York any more, either. They are rather London and Paris. Their +furniture, clothing, plate, pictures, and servants come from one or the +other. Yes, and their manners, too, their interests and sympathies and +concerns, their fashions--and--sometimes, their--er--morals. They are +assuredly not New York any more than Gobelin tapestries and Fortuny +pictures and Louis Seize chairs are New York." + +"How queerly you talk. Where is New York, then?" + +Oldaker sighed thoughtfully between two spoonfuls of _tortue verte, +claire_. + +"Well, I suppose the truth is that there isn't much of New York left in +New York. As a matter of fact I think it died with the old Volunteer +Fire Department. Anyway the surviving remnant is coy. Real old New +Yorkers like myself--neither poor nor rich--are swamped in these days +like those prehistoric animals whose bones we find. There comes a time +when we can't live, and deposits form over us and we're lost even to +memory." + +But this talk was even harder for Miss Bines to understand than the +English speech of the Baron Ronault de Palliac, and she turned to that +noble gentleman as the turbot with sauce Corail was served. + +The dining-room, its wall wainscotted from floor to ceiling in Spanish +oak, was flooded with soft light from the red silk dome that depended +from its crown of gold above the table. The laughter and talk were as +little subdued as the scheme of the rooms. It was an atmosphere of +prodigal and confident opulence. From the music-room near by came the +soft strains of a Haydn quartet, exquisitely performed by finished and +expensive artists. + +"Say, Higbee!" it was the oil chief from Texas, "see if them fiddlers +of yours can't play 'Ma Honolulu Lulu!'" + +Oldaker, wincing and turning to Miss Bines for sympathy, heard her say: + +"Yes, do, Mr. Higbee! I do love those ragtime songs--and then have them +play 'Tell Me, Pretty Maiden,' and the 'Intermezzo.'" + +He groaned in anguish. + +The talk ran mostly on practical affairs: the current values of the +great staple commodities; why the corn crop had been light; what wheat +promised to bring; how young Burman of the Chicago Board of Trade had +been pinched in his own wheat corner for four millions--"put up" by his +admiring father; what beef on the hoof commanded; how the Federal Oil +Company would presently own the State of Texas. + +Almost every Barbarian at the table had made his own fortune. Hardly +one but could recall early days when he toiled on farm or in shop or +forest, herded cattle, prospected, sought adventure in remote and +hazardous wilds. + +"'Tain't much like them old days, eh, Higbee?" queried the Crown Prince +of Cripple Creek--"when you and me had to walk from Chicago to Green +Bay, Wisconsin, because we didn't have enough shillings for +stage-fare?" He gazed about him suggestively. + +"Corn-beef and cabbage was pretty good then, eh?" and with sure, +vigorous strokes he fell to demolishing his _filet de dinde a la +Perigueux_, while a butler refilled his glass with Chateau Malescot, +1878. + +"Well, it does beat the two rooms the madam and me started to keep +house in when we was married," admitted the host. "That was on the +banks of the Chicago River, and now we got the Hudson flowin' right +through the front yard, you might say, right past our own +yacht-landing." + +From old days of work and hardship they came to discuss the present and +their immediate surroundings, social and financial. + +Their daughters, it appeared, were being sought in marriage by the sons +of those among whom they sojourned. + +"Oh, they're a nice band of hand-shakers, all right, all right," +asserted the gentleman from Kansas City. "One of 'em tried to keep +company with our Caroline, but I wouldn't stand for it. He was a +crackin' good shinny player, and he could lead them cotillion-dances +blowin' a whistle and callin', 'All right, Up!' or something, like a +car-starter,--but, 'Tell me something good about him,' I says to an old +friend of his family. Well, he hemmed and hawed--he was a New York +gentleman, and says he, 'I don't know whether I could make you +understand or not,' he says, 'but he's got Family,' jest like that, +bearin' down hard on 'Family'--'and you've got money,' he says, 'and +Money and Family need each other badly in this town,' he says. 'Yes,' +says I, 'I met up with a number of people here,' I says, 'but I ain't +met none yet that you'd have to blindfold and back into a lot of +money,' I says, 'family or no family,' I says. 'And that young man,' he +says, 'is a pleasant, charming fellow; why,' he says, 'he's the +best-coated man in New York.' Well, I looked at him and I says, 'Well,' +says I, 'he may be the best-coated man in New York, but he'll be the +best-booted man in New York, too,' I says, 'if he comes around trying +to spark Caroline any more,--or would be if I had my way. His chin's +pushed too far back under his face,' I says, 'and besides,' I says, +'Caroline is being waited on by a young hardware drummer, a good steady +young fellow travelling out of little old K.C.,' I says, 'and while he +ain't much for fam'ly,' I says, he'll have one of his own before he +gets through,' I says; 'we start fam'lies where I come from,' I says." + +"Good boy! Good for you," cheered the self-made Barbarians, and drank +success to the absent disseminator of hardware. + +With much loud talk of this unedifying character the dinner progressed +to an end; through _selle d'agneau_, floated in '84 champagne, terrapin +convoyed by a special Madeira of 1850, and canvas-back duck with +_Romanee Conti_, 1865, to a triumphant finale of Turkish coffee and +1811 brandy. + +After dinner the ladies gossiped of New York society, while the +barbaric males smoked their big oily cigars and bandied reminiscences. +Higbee showed them through every one of the apartment's twenty-two +rooms, from reception-hall to laundry, manipulating the electric lights +with the skill of a stage-manager. + +The evening ended with a cake-walk, for the musical artists had by rare +wines been mellowed from their classic reserve into a mood of ragtime +abandon. And if Monsieur the Baron with his ceremonious grace was less +exuberant than the Crown Prince of Cripple Creek, who sang as he +stepped the sensuous measure, his pleasure was not less. He joyed to +observe that these men of incredible millions had no hauteur. + +"I do not," wrote the baron to his noble father the marquis, that +night, "yet understand their joke; why should it be droll to wish that +the man whose coat is of the best should also wear boots of the best? +but as for what they call _une promenade de gateau_, I find it very +enjoyable. I have met a Mlle. Bines to whom I shall at once pay my +addresses. Unlike Mlle. Higbee, she has not the father from Chicago nor +elsewhere. _Quel diable d'homme!_" + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +The Patricians Entertain + + +To reward the enduring who read politely through the garish revel of +the preceding chapter, covers for fourteen are now laid with correct +and tasteful quietness at the sophisticated board of that fine old New +York family, the Milbreys. Shaded candles leave all but the glowing +table in a gloom discreetly pleasant. One need not look so high as the +old-fashioned stuccoed ceiling. The family portraits tone agreeably +into the halflight of the walls; the huge old-fashioned walnut +sideboard, soberly ornate with its mirrors, its white marble top and +its wood-carved fruit, towers majestically aloft in proud scorn of the +frivolous Chippendale fad. + +Jarvis, the accomplished and incomparable butler, would be subdued and +scholarly looking but for the flagrant scandal of his port-wine nose. +He gives finishing little fillips to the white chrysanthemums massed in +the central epergne on the long silver plateau, and bestows a last +cautious survey upon the cut-glass and silver radiating over the dull +white damask. Finding the table and its appointments faultless, he +assures himself once more that the sherry will come on irreproachably +at a temperature of 60 degrees; that the Burgundy will not fall below +65 nor mount above 70; for Jarvis wots of a palate so acutely sensitive +that it never fails to record a variation of so much as one degree from +the approved standard of temperature. + +How restful this quiet and reserve after the colour and line tumult of +the Higbee apartment. There the flush and bloom of newness were +oppressive to the right-minded. All smelt of the shop. Here the dull +tones and decorous lines caress and soothe instead of overwhelming the +imagination with effects too grossly literal. Here is the veritable +spirit of good form. + +Throughout the house this contrast might be noted. It is the +brown-stone, high-stoop house, guarded by a cast-iron fence, built in +vast numbers when the world of fashion moved North to Murray Hill and +Fifth Avenue a generation ago. One of these houses was like all the +others inside and out, built of unimaginative "builder's architecture." +The hall, the long parlour, the back parlour or library, the high +stuccoed ceilings--not only were these alike in all the houses, but the +furnishings, too, were apt to be of a sameness in them all, rather +heavy and tasteless, but serving the ends that such things should be +meant to serve, and never flamboyant. Of these relics of a simpler day +not many survive to us, save in the shameful degeneracy of +boarding-houses. But in such as are left, we may confidently expect to +find the traditions of that more dignified time kept unsullied;--to +find, indeed, as we find in the house of Milbrey, a settled air of +gloom that suggests insolvent but stubbornly determined exclusiveness. + +Something of this air, too, may be noticed in the surviving tenants of +these austere relics. Yet it would hardly be observed in this house on +this night, for not only do arriving guests bring the aroma of a later +prosperity, but the hearts of our host and hostess beat high with a new +hope. For the fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of +Milbrey, after many ominous mutterings, delays, and frank rebellions, +has declared at last her readiness to be a credit to her training by +conferring her family prestige, distinction of manner and charms of +person upon one equipped for their suitable maintenance. + +Already her imaginative father is ravishing in fancy the mouldiest +wine-cellars of Continental Europe. Already the fond mother has +idealised a house in "Millionaire's Row" east of the Park, where there +shall be twenty servants instead of three, and there shall cease that +gnawing worry lest the treacherous north-setting current sweep them +west of the Park into one of those hideously new apartment houses, +where the halls are done in marble that seems to have been sliced from +a huge Roquefort cheese, and where one must vie, perhaps, with a +shop-keeper for the favours of an irreverent and materialistic janitor. + +The young woman herself entertains privately a state of mind which she +has no intention of making public. It is enough, she reasons, that her +action should outwardly accord with the best traditions of her class; +and indeed, her family would never dream of demanding more. + +Her gown to-night is of orchard green, trimmed with apple-blossoms, a +single pink spray of them caught in her hair. The rounding, satin grace +of her slender arms, sloping to the opal-tipped fingers, the exquisite +line from ear to shoulder strap, the melting ripeness of her chin and +throat, the tender pink and white of her fine skin, the capricious, +inciting tilt of her small head, the dainty lift of her short +nose,--these allurements she has inventoried with a calculating and +satisfied eye. She is glad to believe that there is every reason why it +will soon be over. + +And, since the whole loaf is notoriously better than a half, here is +the engaging son of the house, also firmly bent upon the high emprise +of matrimony; handsome, with the chin, it may be, slightly receding; +but an unexcelled leader of cotillions, a surpassing polo-player, +clever, winning, and dressed with an effect that has long made him +remarked in polite circles, which no mere money can achieve. Money, +indeed, if certain ill-natured gossip of tradesmen be true, has been an +inconsiderable factor in the encompassment of this sartorial +distinction. He waits now, eager for a first glimpse of the young woman +whose charms, even by report, have already won the best devotion he has +to give. A grievous error it is to suppose that Cupid's artillery is +limited to bow and arrows. + +And now, instead of the rude commercial horde that laughed loudly and +ate uncouthly at the board of the Barbarian, we shall sit at table with +people born to the only manner said to be worth possessing;--if we +except, indeed, the visiting tribe of Bines, who may be relied upon, +however, to behave at least unobtrusively. + +As a contrast to the oppressively Western matron from Kansas City, here +is Mistress Fidelia Oldaker on the arm of her attentive son. She would +be very old but for the circumstance that she began early in life to be +a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her +back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair +name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the +dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the +single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a +bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence, +her vivacity unimpaired, her energy amazing, and her coquetry +faultless. From which we should learn, and be grateful therefor, that +when a girl is brought up in the way she ought to go she will never be +able to depart from it. + +Here also is Cornelia Van Geist, sister of our admirable +hostess--relict of a gentleman who had been first or second cousin to +half the people in society it were really desirable to know, and whose +taste in wines, dinners, and sports had been widely praised at his +death by those who had had the fortune to be numbered among his +friends. Mrs. Van Geist has a kind, shrewd face, and her hair, which +turned prematurely grey while she was yet a wife, gives her a look of +age that her actual years belie. + +Here, too, is Rulon Shepler, the money-god, his large, round head +turning upon his immense shoulders without the aid of a +neck--sharp-eyed, grizzled, fifty, short of stature, and with as few +illusions concerning life as the New York financier is apt to retain at +his age. + +If we be forced to wait for another guest of note, it is hardly more +than her due; for Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is truly a personage, and the +best people on more than one continent do not become unduly provoked at +being made to wait for her. Those less than the very best frankly +esteem it a privilege. Yet the great lady is not careless of +engagements, and the wait is never prolonged. Mrs. Milbrey has time to +say to her sister, "Yes, we think it's going; and really, it will do +very well, you know. The girl has had some nonsense in her mind for a +year past--none of us can tell what--but now she seems actually +sensible, and she's promised to accept when the chap proposes." But +there is time for no more gossip. + +The belated guest arrives, enveloped in a vast cloak, and accompanied +by her two nephews, whom Percival Bines recognises for the solemn and +taciturn young men he had met in Shepler's party at the mine. + +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, albeit a decorative personality, is constructed +on the same broad and generously graceful lines as her own victoria. +The great lady has not only two chins, but what any fair-minded +observer would accept as sufficient promise of a good third. Yet hardly +could a slighter person display to advantage the famous Gwilt-Athelstan +jewels. The rope of pierced diamonds with pigeon-blood rubies strung +between them, which she wears wound over her corsage, would assuredly +overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and +diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the +stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have +clasped becomingly a figure that was _svelte_--or "skinny," as the +great lady herself is frank enough to term all persons even remotely +inclined to be _svelte_. + +But let us sit and enliven a proper dinner with talk upon topics of +legitimate interest and genuine propriety. + +Here will be no discussion of the vulgar matter of markets, staples, +and prices, such as we perforce endured through the overwined and +too-abundant repast of Higbee. Instead of learning what beef on the +hoof brings per hundred-weight, f.o.b. at Cheyenne, we shall here glean +at once the invaluable fact that while good society in London used to +be limited to those who had been presented at court, the presentations +have now become so numerous that the limitation has lost its +significance. Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan thus discloses, as if it were a +trifle, something we should never learn at the table of Higbee though +we ate his heavy dinners to the day of ultimate chaos. And while we +learned at that distressingly new table that one should keep one's +heifers and sell off one's steer calves, we never should have been +informed there that Dinard had just enjoyed the gayest season of its +history under the patronage of this enterprising American; nor that +Lady de Muzzy had opened a tea-room in Grafton Street, and Cynthia, +Marchioness of Angleberry, a beauty-improvement parlour on the Strand +"because she needs the money." + +"Lots of 'em takin' to trade nowadays; it's a smart sayin' there now +that all the peers are marryin' actresses and all the peeresses goin' +into business." Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan nodded little shocks of brilliance +from her tiara and hungrily speared another oyster. + +"Only trouble is, it's such rotten hard work collectin' bills from +their intimate friends; they simply _won't_ pay." + +Nor at the barbaric Higbee's should we have been vouchsafed, to +treasure for our own, the knowledge that Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan had +merely run over for the cup-fortnight, meaning to return directly to +her daughter, Katharine, Duchess of Blanchmere, in time for the Melton +Mowbray hunting-season; nor that she had been rather taken by the new +way of country life among us, and so tempted to protract her gracious +sojourn. + +"Really," she admits, "we're comin' to do the right thing over here; a +few years were all we needed. Hardly a town-house to be opened before +Thanksgivin', I understand; and down at the Hills some of the houses +will stay open all winter. It's coachin', ridin', and golf and +auto-racin' and polo and squash; really the young folks don't go in at +all except to dance and eat; and it's quite right, you know. It's quite +decently English, now. Why, at Morris Park the other day, the crowd on +the lawn looked quite like Ascot, actually." + +Nor could we have learned in the hostile camp the current gossip of +Tuxedo, Meadowbrook, Lenox, Morristown, and Ardsley; of the mishap to +Mrs. "Jimmie" Whettin, twice unseated at a recent meet; of the woman's +championship tournament at Chatsworth; or the good points of the new +runner-up at Baltusrol, daily to be seen on the links. Where we might +incur knowledge of Beaumont "gusher" or Pittsburg mill we should never +have discovered that teas and receptions are really falling into +disrepute; that a series of dinner-dances will be organised by the +mothers of debutantes to bring them forward; and that big subscription +balls are in disfavour, since they benefit no one but the caterers who +serve poor suppers and bad champagne. + +Mrs. takes only Scotch whiskey and soda. + +"But I'm glad," she confides to Horace Milbrey on her left, "that you +haven't got to followin' this fad of havin' one wine at dinner; I know +it's English, but it's downright shoddy." + +Her host's eyes swam with gratitude for this appreciation. + +"I stick to my peg," she continued; "but I like to see a Chablis with +the oysters and good dry sherry with the soup, and a Moselle with the +fish, and then you're ready to be livened with a bit of champagne for +the roast, and steadied a bit by Burgundy with the game. Phim sticks to +it, too; tells me my peg is downright encouragement to the bacteria. +But I tell him I've no quarrel with _my_ bacteria. 'Live and let live' +is my motto, I tell him,--and if the microbes and I both like Scotch +and soda, why, what harm. I'm forty-two and not so much of a fool that +I ain't a little bit of a physician. I know my stomach, I tell him." + +"What about these Western people?" she asked Oldaker at her other side, +after a little. + +"Decent, unpretentious folks, somewhat new, but with loads of money." + +"I've heard how the breed's stormin' New York in droves; but they tell +me some of us need the money." + +"I dined with one last night, a sugar-cured ham magnate from Chicago." + +"_Dear_ me! how shockin'!" + +"But they're good, whole-souled people." + +"And well-_heeled_--and that's what we need, it seems. Some of us been +so busy bein' well-familied that we've forgot to make money." + +"It's a good thing, too. Nature has her own building laws about +fortunes. When they get too sky-scrapy she topples them over. These +people with their thrifty habits would have _all_ the money in time if +their sons and daughters didn't marry aristocrats with expensive tastes +who know how to be spenders. Nature keeps things fairly even, one way +or another." + +"You're thinkin' about Kitty and the duke." + +"No, not then I wasn't, though that's one of the class I mean. I was +thinking especially about these Westerners." + +"Well, my grandfather made the best barrels in New York, and I'm +mother-in-law of a chap whose ancestors for three hundred and fifty +years haven't done a stroke of work; but he's the Duke of Blanchmere, +and I hope our friends here will come as near gettin' the worth of +their money as we did. And if that chap"--she glanced at +Percival--"marries a certain young woman, he'll never have a dull +moment. I'd vouch for that. I'm quite sure she's the devil in her." + +"And if the yellow-haired girl marries the fellow next her--" + +"He might do worse." + +"Yes, but might _she_? He's already doing worse, and he'll keep on +doing it, even if he does marry her." + +"Nonsense--about that, you know; all rot! What can you expect of these +chaps? So does the duke do worse, but you'll never hear Kitty complain +so long as he lets her alone and she can wear the strawberry leaves. I +fancy I'll have those young ones down to the Hills for Hallowe'en and +the week-end. Might as well help 'em along." + +At the other end of the table, the fine old ivory of her cheeks gently +suffused with pink until they looked like slightly crumpled leaves of a +la France rose, Mrs. Oldaker was flirting brazenly with Shepler, and +prattling impartially to him and to one of the twin nephews of old days +in social New York; of a time when the world of fashion occupied a +little space at the Battery and along Broadway; of its migration to the +far north of Great Jones Street, St. Mark's Place, and Second Avenue. +In Waverly Place had been the flowering of her belle-hood, and the day +when her set moved on to Murray Hill was to her still recent and +revolutionary. + +Between the solemn Angstead twins, Mrs. Bines had sat in silence until +by some happy chance it transpired that "horse" was the word to unlock +their lips. As Mrs. Bines knew all about horses the twins at once +became voluble, showing her marked attention. The twins were notably +devoid of prejudice if your sympathies happened to run with theirs. + +Miss Bines and young Milbrey were already on excellent terms. Percival +and Miss Milbrey, on the other hand, were doing badly. Some disturbing +element seemed to have put them aloof. Miss Milbrey wondered somewhat; +but her mind was easy, for her resolution had been taken. + +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan extended her invitation to the young people, who +accepted joyfully. + +"Come down and camp with us, and help Phim keep the batteries of his +autos run out. You know they deteriorate when they're left +half-charged, and it's one of the cares of his life to see to the whole +six of 'em when they come in. He gets in one and the men get in the +others, and he leads a solemn parade around the stables until they've +been run out. Tell me the leisure class isn't a hard-workin' class, +now." + +Over coffee and chartreuse in the drawing-room there was more general +talk of money and marriage, and of one for the other. + +"And so he married money," concluded Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan of one they +had discussed. + +"Happy marriage!" Shepler called out. + +"No; money talks! and this time, on my word, now, it made you want to +put on those thick sealskin ear-muffs. Poor chap, and he'd been talkin' +to me about the monotony of married life. 'Monotony, my boy,' I said to +him, 'you don't _know_ lovely woman!' and now he wishes jolly well that +he'd not done it, you know." + +Here, too, was earned by Mrs. Bines a reputation for wit that she was +never able quite to destroy. There had been talk of a banquet to a +visiting celebrity the night before, for which the _menu_ was one of +unusual costliness. Mr. Milbrey had dwelt with feeling upon certain of +its eminent excellences, such as loin of young bear, a la Granville, +and the boned quail, stuffed with goose-livers. + +"Really," he concluded, "from an artistic standpoint, although large +dinners are apt to be slurred and slighted, it was a creation of +undoubted worth." + +"And the orchestra," spoke up Mrs. Bines, who had read of the banquet, +"played 'Hail to the _Chef!_'" + +The laughter at this sally was all it should have been, even the host +joining in it. Only two of those present knew that the good woman had +been warned not to call "chef" "chief," as Silas Higbee did. The fact +that neither should "chief" be called "chef" was impressed upon her +later, in a way to make her resolve ever again to eschew both of the +troublesome words. + +When the guests had gone Miss Milbrey received the praise of both +parents for her blameless attitude toward young Bines. + +"It will be fixed when we come back from Wheatly," said that knowing +young woman, "and now don't worry any more about it." + +"And, Fred," said the mother, "do keep straight down there. She's a +commonplace girl, with lots of mannerisms to unlearn, but she's pretty +and sweet and teachable." + +"And she'll learn a lot from Fred that she doesn't know now," finished +that young man's sister from the foot of the stairway. + +Back at their hotel Psyche Bines was saying: + +"Isn't it queer about Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan? We've read so much about +her in the papers. I thought she must be some one awful to meet--I was +that scared--and instead, she's like any one, and real chummy besides; +and, actually, ma, don't you think her dress was dowdy--all except the +diamonds? I suppose that comes from living in England so much. And +hasn't Mrs. Milbrey twice as grand a manner, and the son--he's a +precious--he knows everything and everybody; I shall like him." + +Her brother, who had flung himself into a cushioned corner, spoke with +the air of one who had reluctantly consented to be interviewed and who +was anxious to be quoted correctly: + +"Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is all right. She reminds me of what Uncle Peter +writes about that new herd of short-horns: 'This breed has a mild +disposition, is a good feeder, and produces a fine quality of flesh.' +But I'll tell you one thing, sis," he concluded with sudden emphasis, +"with all this talk about marrying for money I'm beginning to feel as +if you and I were a couple of white rabbits out in the open with all +the game laws off!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +The Course of True Love at a House Party + + +Among sundry maxims and observations of King Solomon, collated by the +discerning men of Hezekiah, it will be recalled that the way of a man +with a maid is held up to wonder. "There be," says the wise king, who +composed a little in the crisp manner of Mr. Kipling, "three things +which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not: the way of +an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a +ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." Why he +neglected to include the way of a maid with a man is not at once +apparent. His unusual facilities for observation must seemingly have +inspired him to wonder at the maid's way even more than at the man's; +and wise men later than he have not hesitated to confess their entire +lack of understanding in the matter. But if Solomon included this item +in his summary, the men of Hezekiah omitted to report the fact, and by +their chronicles we learn only that the woman "eateth and wipeth her +mouth and saith 'I have done no wickedness.'" Perhaps it was Solomon's +mischance to observe phenomena of this character too much in the mass. + +Miss Milbrey's way, at any rate, with the man she had decided to marry, +would undoubtedly have made more work for the unnamed Boswells of the +king, could it have been brought to his notice. + +For, as she journeyed to the meeting-place on a bright October +afternoon, she confessed to herself that it was of a depth beyond her +own fathoming. Lolling easily back in the wicker chair of the car that +bore her, and gazing idly out over the brown fields and yellow forests +of Long Island as they swirled by her, she found herself wishing once +that her eyes were made like those of a doll. She had lately discovered +of one that when it appeared to fall asleep, it merely turned its eyes +around to look into its own head. With any lesser opportunity for +introspection she felt that certain doubts as to her own motives and +processes would remain for ever unresolved. It was not that she could +not say "I have done no wickedness;" let us place this heroine in no +false light. She was little concerned with the morality of her course +as others might appraise it. The fault, if fault it be, is neither ours +nor hers, and Mr. Darwin wrote a big book chiefly to prove that it +isn't. From the force of her environment and heredity Miss Milbrey had +debated almost exclusively her own chances of happiness under given +conditions; and if she had, for a time, questioned the wisdom of the +obvious course, entirely from her own selfish standpoint, it is all +that, and perhaps more than, we were justified in expecting from her. +Let her, then, cheat the reader of no sympathy that might flow to a +heroine struggling for a high moral ideal. Merely is she clear-headed +enough to have discovered that selfishness is not the thing of easy +bonds it is reputed to be; that its delights are not certain; that one +does not unerringly achieve happiness by the bare circumstance of being +uniformly selfish. Yet even this is a discovery not often made, nor one +to be lightly esteemed; for have not the wise ones of Church and State +ever implied that the way of selfishness is a way of sure delight, to +be shunned only because its joys endure not? So it may be, after all, +no small merit we claim for this girl in that, trained to selfishness +and a certain course, she yet had the wit to suspect that its joys have +been overvalued even by its professional enemies. It is no small merit, +perhaps, even though, after due and selfish reflection, she determined +upon the obvious course. + +If sometimes her heart was sick with the hunger to love and be loved by +the one she loved, so that there were times when she would have +bartered the world for its plenary feeding, it is all that, we insist, +and more, than could be expected of this sort of heroine. + +And so she had resolved upon surrender--upon an outward surrender. +Inwardly she knew it to be not more than a capitulation under duress, +whose terms would remain for ever secret except to those clever at +induction. And now, as the train took her swiftly to her fate, she made +the best of it. + +There would be a town-house fit for her; a country-house at Tuxedo or +Lenox or Westbury, a thousand good acres with greeneries, a game +preserve, trout pond, and race-course; a cottage at Newport; a place in +Scotland; a house in London, perhaps. Then there would be jewels such +as she had longed for, a portrait by Chartran, she thought. And there +was the dazzling thought of going to Felix or Doucet with credit +unlimited. + +And he--would the thought of him as it had always come to her keep on +hurting with a hurt she could neither explain nor appease? Would he +annoy her, enrage her perhaps, or even worse, tire her? He would be +very much in earnest, of course, and so few men could be in earnest +gracefully. But would he be stupid enough to stay so? And if not, would +he become brutal? She suspected he might have capacities for that. +Would she be able to hide all but her pleasant emotions from him,--hide +that want, the great want, to which she would once have done sacrifice? + +Well, it was easier to try than not to try, and the sacrifice--one +could always sacrifice if the need became imperative. + +"And I'm making much of nothing," she concluded. "No other girl I know +would do it. And papa shall 'give me away.' What a pretty euphemism +that is, to be sure!" + +But her troubled musings ended with her time alone. From a whirl over +the crisp, firm macadam, tucked into one of Phimister Gwilt-Athelstan's +automobiles with four other guests, with no less a person than her +genial host for chauffeur, she was presently ushered into the great +hall where a huge log-fire crackled welcome, and where blew a lively +little gale of tea-chatter from a dozen people. + +Tea Miss Milbrey justly reckoned among the little sanities of life. Her +wrap doffed and her veil pushed up, she was in a moment restored to her +normal ease, a part of the group, and making her part of the talk that +touched the latest news from town, the flower show, automobile show, +Irving and Terry, the morning's meet, the weekly musicale and +dinner-dance at the club; and at length upon certain matters of +marriage and divorce. + +"Ladies, ladies--this is degenerating into a mere hammer-fest." Thus +spoke a male wit who had listened. "Give over, and be nice to the +absent." + +"The end of the fairy story was," continued the previous speaker, +unheeding, "and so they were divorced and lived happily ever after." + +"I think she took the Chicago motto, 'Marry early and often,'" said +another, "but here she comes." + +And as blond and fluffy little Mrs. Akemit, a late divorcee, joined the +group the talk ranged back to the flourishing new hunt at Goshen, the +driving over of Tuxedo people for the meet, the nasty accident to +Warner Ridgeway when his blue-ribbon winner Musette fell upon him in +taking a double-jump. + +Miss Milbrey had taken stock of her fellow guests. Especially was she +interested to note the presence of Mrs. Drelmer and her protege, +Mauburn. It meant, she was sure, that her brother's wooing of Miss +Bines would not be uncontested. + +Another load of guests from a later train bustled in, the Bineses among +them, and there was more tea and fresher gossip, while the butler +circulated again with his tray for the trunk-keys. + +The breezy hostess now took pains to impress upon all that only by +doing exactly as they pleased, as to going and coming, could they hope +to please her. Had she not, by this policy, conquered the cold, +Scottish exclusiveness of Inverness-shire, so that the right sort of +people fought to be at her house-parties during the shooting, even +though she would persist in travelling back and forth to London in +gowns that would be conspicuously elaborate at an afternoon reception, +and even though, in any condition of dress, she never left quite enough +of her jewels in their strong-box? + +During the hour of dressing-sacque and slippers, while maids fluttered +through the long corridors on hair-tending and dress-hooking +expeditions, Mrs. Drelmer favoured her hostess with a confidential chat +in that lady's boudoir, and, over Scotch and soda and a cigarette, +suggested that Mr. Mauburn, in a house where he could really do as he +pleased, would assuredly take Miss Bines out to dinner. + +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan was instantly sympathetic. + +"Only I can't take sides, you know, my dear, and young Milbrey will +think me shabby if he doesn't have first go; but I'll be impartial; +Milbrey shall take her in, and Mauburn shall be at her other side, and +may God have mercy on her soul! These people have so much money, I +hear, it amounts to financial embarrassment, but with those two chaps +for the girl, and Avice Milbrey for that decent young chap, I fancy +they'll be disembarrassed, in a measure. But I mustn't 'play +favourites,' as those slangy nephews of mine put it." + +And so it befell at dinner in the tapestried dining-room that Psyche +Bines received assiduous attention from two gentlemen whom she +considered equally and superlatively fascinating. While she looked at +one, she listened to the other, and her neck grew tired with turning. +Of anything, save the talk, her mind was afterward a blank; but why is +not that the ideal dinner for any but mere feeders? + +Nor was the dazzled girl conscious of others at the table,--of Florence +Akemit, the babyish blond, listening with feverish attention to the +German savant, Doctor von Herzlich, who had translated Goethe's +"Iphigenie in Tauris" into Greek merely as recreation, and who was now +justifying his choice of certain words and phrases by citing passages +from various Greek authors; a choice which the sympathetic listener, +after discreet intervals for reflection, invariably commended. + +"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man, you!" she exclaimed, resolving to +sit by some one less wonderful another time. + +Or there was Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, like a motherly Venus rising from a +sea of pink velvet and white silk lace, asserting that some one or +other would never get within sniffing-distance of the Sandringham set. + +Or her husband, whose face, when he settled it in his collar, made the +lines of a perfect lyre, and of whom it would presently become +inaccurate to say that he was getting bald. He was insisting that "too +many houses spoil the home," and that, with six establishments, he was +without a place to lay his head, that is, with any satisfaction. + +Or there was pale, thin, ascetic Winnie Wilberforce, who, as a +theosophist, is understood to believe that, in a former incarnation, he +came near to having an affair with a danseuse; he was expounding the +esoterics of his cult to a high-coloured brunette with many turquoises, +who, in turn, was rather inclined to the horse-talk of one of the +nephews. + +Or there were Miss Milbrey and Percival Bines, of whom the former had +noted with some surprise that the latter was studying her with the eyes +of rather cold calculation, something she had never before detected in +him. + +After dinner there were bridge and music from the big pipe-organ in the +music-room, and billiards and some dancing. + +The rival cavaliers of Miss Bines, perceiving simultaneously that +neither would have the delicacy to withdraw from the field, cunningly +inveigled each other into the billiard-room, where they watchfully +consumed whiskey and soda together with the design of making each other +drunk. This resulted in the two nephews, who invariably hunted as a +pair, capturing Miss Bines to see if she could talk horse as ably as +her mother, and, when they found that she could, planning a coaching +trip for the morrow. + +It also resulted in Miss Bines seeing no more of either cavalier that +night, since they abandoned their contest only after every one but a +sleepy butler had retired, and at a time when it became necessary for +the Englishman to assist the American up the stairs, though the latter +was moved to protest, as a matter of cheerful generality, that he was +"aw ri'--entirely cap'le." At parting he repeatedly urged Mauburn, with +tears in his eyes, to point out one single instance in which he had +ever proved false to a friend. + +To herself, when the pink rose came out of her hair that night, Miss +Milbrey admitted that it wasn't going to be so bad, after all. + +She had feared he might rush his proposal through that night; he had +been so much in earnest. But he had not done so, and she was glad he +could be restrained and deliberate in that "breedy" sort of way. It +promised well, that he could wait until the morrow. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe + + +Miss Milbrey, the next morning, faced with becoming resignation what +she felt would be her last day of entire freedom. She was down and out +philosophically to play nine holes with her host before breakfast. + +Her brother, awakening less happily, made a series of discoveries +regarding his bodily sensations that caused him to view life with +disaffection. Noting that the hour was early, however, he took cheer, +and after a long, strong, cold drink, which he rang for, and a pricking +icy shower, which he nerved himself to, he was ready to ignore his +aching head and get the start of Mauburn. + +The Englishman, he seemed to recall, had drunk even more than he, and, +as it was barely eight o'clock, would probably not come to life for a +couple of hours yet. He made his way to the breakfast-room. The thought +of food was not pleasant, but another brandy and soda, beading +vivaciously in its tall glass, would enable him to watch with fortitude +the spectacle of others who might chance to be eating. And he would +have at least two hours of Miss Bines before Mauburn's head should ache +him back to consciousness. + +He opened the door of the spacious breakfast-room. Through the broad +windows from the south-east came the glorious shine of the morning sun +to make him blink; and seated where it flooded him as a calcium was +Mauburn, resplendent in his myriad freckles, trim, alive, and obviously +hungry. Around his plate were cold mutton, a game pie, eggs, bacon, +tarts, toast, and sodden-looking marmalade. Mauburn was eating of these +with a voracity that published his singleness of mind to all who might +observe. + +Milbrey steadied himself with one hand upon the door-post, and with the +other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes. +But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only +more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the +sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ice, and a siphon +beckoned. + +Between two gulps of coffee Mauburn grinned affably. + +"Mornin', old chap! Feelin' a bit seedy? By Jove! I don't wonder. I'm +not so fit myself. I fancy, you know, it must have been that beastly +anchovy paste we had on the biscuits." + +Milbrey's burning eyes beheld him reach out for another slice of the +cold, terrible mutton. + +"Life," said Milbrey, as he inflated his brandy from the siphon, "is an +empty dream this morning." + +"Wake up then, old chap!" Mauburn cordially urged, engaging the game +pie in deadly conflict; "try a rasher; nothing like it; better'n +peggin' it so early. Never drink till dinner-time, old chap, and you'll +be able to eat in the morning like--like a blooming baby." And he +proceeded to crown this notion of infancy's breakfast with a jam tart +of majestic proportions. + +"Where are the people?" inquired Milbrey, eking out his own moist +breakfast with a cigarette. + +"All down and out except some of the women. Miss Bines just drove off a +four-in-hand with the two Angsteads--held the reins like an old whip, +too, by Jove; but they'll be back for luncheon;--and directly after +luncheon she's promised to ride with me. I fancy we'll have a little +practice over the sticks." + +"And I fancy I'm going straight back to bed,--that is, if it's all +right to fancy a thing you're certain about." + +Outside most of the others had scattered for life in the open, each to +his taste. Some were on the links. Some had gone with the coach. A few +had ridden early to the meet of the Essex hounds near Easthampton, +where a stiff run was expected. Others had gone to follow the hunt in +traps. A lively group came back now to read the morning papers by the +log-fire in the big cheery hall. Among these were Percival and Miss +Milbrey. When they had dawdled over the papers for an hour Miss Milbrey +grew slightly restive. + +"Why doesn't he have it over?" she asked herself, with some impatience. +And she delicately gave Percival, not an opportunity, but opportunities +to make an opportunity, which is a vastly different form of procedure. + +But the luncheon hour came and people straggled back, and the afternoon +began, and the request for Miss Milbrey's heart and hand was still +unaccountably deferred. Nor could she feel any of those subtle +premonitions that usually warn a woman when the event is preparing in a +lover's secret heart. + +Reminding herself of his letters, she began to suspect that, while he +could write unreservedly, he might be shy and reluctant of speech; and +that shyness now deterred him. So much being clear, she determined to +force the issue and end the strain for both. + +Percival had shown not a little interest in pretty Mrs. Akemit, and was +now talking with that fascinating creature as she lolled on a low seat +before the fire in her lacy blue house-gown. At the moment she was +adroitly posing one foot and then the other before the warmth of the +grate. It may be disclosed without damage to this tale that the feet of +Mrs. Akemit were not cold; but that they were trifles most daintily +shod, and, as her slender silken ankles curved them toward the blaze +from her froth of a petticoat, they were worth looking at. + +Miss Milbrey disunited the chatting couple with swiftness and aplomb. + +"Come, Mr. Bines, if I'm to take that tramp you made me promise you, +it's time we were off." + +Outside she laughed deliciously. "You know you did make me promise it +mentally, because I knew you'd want to come and want me to come, but I +was afraid Mrs. Akemit mightn't understand about telepathy, so I +pretended we'd arranged it all in words." + +"Of course! Great joke, wasn't it?" assented the young man, rather +awkwardly. + +Down the broad sweep of roadway, running between its granite coping, +they strode at a smart pace. + +"You know you complimented my walking powers on that other walk we +took, away off there where the sun goes down." + +"Yes, of course," he replied absently. + +"Now, he's beginning," she said to herself, noting his absent and +somewhat embarrassed manner. + +In reality he was thinking how few were the days ago he would have held +this the dearest of all privileges, and how strange that he should now +prize it so lightly, almost prefer, indeed, not to have it; that he +should regard her, of all women, "the fairest of all flesh on earth" +with nervous distrust. + +She was dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as +she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands +were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of +her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these +impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: _"She's hunting +night and day for a rich husband; she tries for them as fast as they +come; she'd rather marry a sub-treasury--she'd marry me in a +minute--she'd marry_ YOU; _but if you were broke she'd have about as +much use for you...."_ + +Her glance was frank, friendly, and encouraging. Her deep eyes were +clear as a trout-brook. He thought he saw in them once almost a +tenderness for him. + +She thought, "He _does_ love me!" + +Outside the grounds they turned down a bridle-path that led off through +the woods--off through the golden sun-wine of an October day. The air +bore a clean autumn spice, and a faint salty scent blended with it from +the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect +silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance, +suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the +pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear +an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling +nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a +lightning flash of vivid turquoise and heard a jay's harsh scream. + +In this stillness their voices instinctively lowered, while their eyes +did homage to the wondrous play of colour about them. Over a yielding +brown carpet they went among maple and chestnut and oak, with their +bewildering changes through crimson, russet, and amber to pale yellow; +under the deep-stained leaves of the sweet-gum they went, and past the +dogwood with scarlet berries gemming the clusters of its dim red +leaves. + +But through all this waiting, inciting silence Miss Milbrey listened in +vain for the words she had felt so certain would come. + +Sometimes her companion was voluble; again he was taciturn--and through +it all he was doggedly aloof. + +Miss Milbrey had put herself bravely in the path of Destiny. Destiny +had turned aside. She had turned to meet it, and now it frankly fled. +Destiny, as she had construed it, was turned a fugitive. She was +bruised, puzzled, and not a little piqued. During the walk back, when +this much had been made clear, the silence was intolerably oppressive. +Without knowing why, they understood perfectly now that neither had +been ingenuous. + +"She would love the money and play me for a fool," he thought, under +the surface talk. Youth is prone to endow its opinions with all the +dignity of certain knowledge. + +"Yet I am certain he loves me," thought she. On the other hand, youth +is often gifted with a credulity divine and unerring. + +At the door as they came up the roadway a trap was depositing a man +whom Miss Milbrey greeted with evident surprise and some restraint. He +was slight, dark, and quick of movement, with finely cut nostrils that +expanded and quivered nervously like those of a high-bred horse in +tight check. + +Miss Milbrey introduced him to Percival as Mr. Ristine. + +"I didn't know you were hereabouts," she said. + +"I've run over from the Bloynes to dine and do Hallowe'en with you," he +answered, flashing his dark eyes quickly over Percival and again +lighting the girl with them. + +"Surprises never come singly," she returned, and Percival noted a +curious little air of defiance in her glance and manner. + +Now it is possible that Solomon's implied distinction as to the man's +way with a maid was not, after all, so ill advised. + +For young Bines, after dinner, fell in love with Miss Milbrey all over +again. The normal human mind going to one extreme will inevitably +gravitate to its opposite if given time. Having put her away in the +conviction that she was heartless and mercenary--having fasted in the +desert of doubt--he now found himself detecting in her an unmistakable +appeal for sympathy, for human kindness, perhaps for love. He forgot +the words of Higbee and became again the confident, unquestioning +lover. He noted her rather subdued and reserved demeanour, and the +suggestions of weariness about her eyes. They drew him. He resolved at +once to seek her and give his love freedom to tell itself. He would no +longer meanly restrain it. He would even tell her all his distrust. Now +that they had gone she should know every ignoble suspicion; and, +whether she cared for him or not, she would comfort him for the hurt +they had been to him. + +The Hallowe'en frolic was on. Through the long hall, lighted to +pleasant dusk by real Jack-o'-lanterns, stray couples strolled, with +subdued murmurs and soft laughter. In the big white and gold parlour, +in the dining-room, billiard-room, and in the tropic jungle of the +immense palm-garden the party had bestowed itself in congenial groups, +ever intersecting and forming anew. Little flutters of high laughter +now and then told of tests that were being made with roasting +chestnuts, apple-parings, the white of an egg dropped into water, or +the lighted candle before an open window. + +Percival watched for the chance to find Miss Milbrey alone. His sister +had just ventured alone with a candle into the library to study the +face of her future husband in a mirror. The result had been, in a +sense, unsatisfactory. She had beheld looking over her shoulder the +faces of Mauburn, Fred Milbrey, and the Angstead twins, and had +declared herself unnerved by the weird prophecy. + +Before the fire in the hall Percival stood while Mrs. Akemit reclined +picturesquely near by, and Doctor von Herzlich explained, with +excessive care as to his enunciation, that protoplasm can be analysed +but cannot be reconstructed; following this with his own view as to why +the synthesis does not produce life. + +"You wonderful man!" from Mrs. Akemit; "I fairly tremble when I think +of all you know. Oh, what a delight science must be to her votaries!" + +The Angstead twins joined the group, attracted by Mrs. Akemit's inquiry +of the savant if he did not consider civilisation a failure. The twins +did. They considered civilisation a failure because it was killing off +all the big game. There was none to speak of left now except in Africa; +and they were pessimistic about Africa. + +Percival listened absently to the talk and watched Miss Milbrey, now +one of the group in the dining-room. Presently he saw her take a +lighted candle from one of the laughing girls and go toward the +library. + +His heart-beats quickened. Now she should know his love and it would be +well. He walked down the hall leisurely, turned into the big parlour, +momentarily deserted, walked quickly but softly over its polished floor +to a door that gave into the library, pushed the heavy portiere aside +and stepped noiselessly in. + +The large room was lighted dimly by two immense yellow pumpkins, their +sides cut into faces of grinning grotesqueness. At the far side of the +room Miss Milbrey had that instant arrived before an antique oval +mirror whose gilded carvings reflected the light of the candle. She +held it above her head with one rounded arm. He stood in deep shadow +and the girl had been too absorbed in the play to note his coming. He +took one noiseless step toward her, but then through the curtained +doorway by which she had come he saw a man enter swiftly and furtively. + +Trembling on the verge of laughing speech, something held him back, +some unexplainable instinct, making itself known in a thrill that went +from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle. +The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl. +Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the +very swiftness of what followed. + +In the mirror under the candle-light he saw the man's dark face come +beside the other, heard a little cry from the girl as she half-turned; +then he saw the man take her in his arms, saw her head fall on to his +shoulder, and her face turn to his kiss. + +He tried to stop breathing, fearful of discovery, grasping with one +hand the heavy fold of the curtain back of him to steady himself. + +There was the space of two long, trembling breaths; then he heard her +say, in a low, tense voice, as she drew away: + +"Oh, you are my bad angel--why?--why?" + +She fled toward the door to the hall. + +"Don't come this way," she called back, in quick, low tones of caution. + +The man turned toward the door where Percival stood, and in the +darkness stumbled over a hassock. Instantly Percival was on the other +side of the portiere, and, before the other had groped his way to the +dark corner where the door was, had recrossed the empty parlour and was +safely in the hall. + +He made his way to the dining-room, where supper was under way. + +"Mr. Bines has seen a ghost," said the sharp-eyed Mrs. Drelmer. + +"Poor chap's only starved to death," said Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan. "Eat +something, Mr. Bines; this supper is go-as-you-please. Nobody's to wait +for anybody." + +Strung loosely about the big table a dozen people were eating hot +scones and bannocks with clotted cream and marmalade, and drinking +mulled cider. + +"And there's cold fowl and baked beans and doughnuts and all, for those +who can't eat with a Scotch accent," said the host, cheerfully. + +Percival dropped into one of the chairs. + +"I'm Scotch enough to want a Scotch high-ball." + +"And you're getting it so high it's top-heavy," cautioned Mrs. Drelmer. + +Above the chatter of the table could be heard the voices of men and the +musical laughter of women from the other rooms. + +"I simply can't get 'em together," said the hostess. + +"It's nice to have 'em all over the place," said her husband, "fair +women and brave men, you know." + +"The men _have_ to be brave," she answered, shortly, with a glance at +little Mrs. Akemit, who had permitted Percival to seat her at his side, +and was now pleading with him to agree that simple ways of life are +requisite to the needed measure of spirituality. + +Then came strains of music from the rich-toned organ. + +"Oh, that dear Ned Ristine is playing," cried one; and several of the +group sauntered toward the music-room. + +The music flooded the hall and the room, so that the talk died low. + +"He's improvising," exclaimed Mrs. Akemit. "How splendid! He seems to +be breathing a paean of triumph, some high, exalted spiritual triumph, +as if his soul had risen above us--how precious!" + +When the deep swell had subsided to silvery ripples and the last +cadence had fainted, she looked at Percival with moistened parted lips +and eyes half-shielded, as if her full gaze would betray too much of +her quivering soul. + +Then Percival heard the turquoised brunette say: "What a pity his wife +is such an unsympathetic creature!" + +"But Mr. Ristine is unmarried, is he not?" he asked, quickly. + +There was a little laugh from Mrs. Drelmer. + +"Not yet--not that I've heard of." + +"I beg pardon!" + +"There have been rumours lots of times that he was going to be +_unmarried_, but they always seem to adjust their little difficulties. +He and his wife are now staying over at the Bloynes." + +"Oh! I see," answered Percival; "you're a jester, Mrs. Drelmer." + +"Ristine," observed the theosophic Wilberforce, in the manner of a +hired oracle, "is, in his present incarnation, imperfectly monogamous." + +Some people came from the music-room. + +"Miss Milbrey has stayed by the organist," said one; "and she's +promised to make him play one more. Isn't he divine?" + +The music came again. + +"Oh!" from Mrs. Akemit, again in an ecstasy, '"' he's playing that +heavenly stuff from the second act of 'Tristan and Isolde'--the one +triumphant, perfect love-poem of all music." + +"That Scotch whiskey is good in some of the lesser emergencies," +remarked Percival, turning to her; "but it has its limitations. Let's +you and me trifle with a nice cold quart of champagne!" + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +Doctor Von Herzlich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied +Phenomena + + +The Hightower Hotel is by many observers held to be an instructive +microcosm of New York, more especially of upper Broadway, with correct +proportions of the native and the visiting provincial. With correct +proportions, again, of the money-making native and the money-spending +native, male and female. A splendid place is this New York; splendid +but terrible. London for the stranger has a steady-going, hearty +hospitality. Paris on short notice will be cosily and coaxingly +intimate. New York is never either. It overwhelms with its lavish +display of wealth, it stuns with its tireless, battering energy. But it +stays always aloof, indifferent if it be loved or hated; if it crush or +sustain. + +The ground floor of the Hightower Hotel reproduces this magnificent, +brutal indifference. One might live years in its mile or so of stately +corridors and its acre or so of resplendent cafes, parlours, +reception-rooms, and restaurants, elbowed by thousands, suffocated by +that dense air of human crowdedness, that miasma of brain emanations, +and still remain in splendid isolation, as had he worn the magic ring +of Gyges. Here is every species of visitor: the money-burdened who +"stop" here and cultivate an air of being blase to the wealth of +polished splendours; and the less opulent who "stop" cheaply elsewhere +and venture in to tread the corridors timidly, to stare with honest, +drooping-jawed wonder at its marvels of architecture and decoration, +and to gaze with becoming reverence at those persons whom they shrewdly +conceive to be social celebrities. + +This mixture of many and strange elements is never at rest. Its units +wait expectantly, chat, drink, eat, or stroll with varying airs through +reception-room, corridor, and office. It is an endless function, +attended by all of Broadway, with entertainment diversely contrived for +every taste by a catholic-minded host with a sincere desire to please +the paying public. + +"Isn't it a huge bear-garden, though?" asks Launton Oldaker of the +estimable Doctor von Herzlich, after the two had observed the scene in +silence for a time. + +The wise German dropped an olive into his Rhine wine, and gazed +reflectively about the room. Men and women sat at tables drinking. +Beyond the tables at the farther side of the room, other men were +playing billiards. It was four o'clock and the tide was high. + +"It is yet more," answered the doctor. "In my prolonged studies of +natural phenomena this is the most valuable of all which I have been +privileged to observe." + +He called them "brifiletched" and "awbsairf" with great nicety. Perhaps +his discernment was less at fault. + +"Having," continued the doctor, "granted myself some respite from toil +in the laboratory at Marburg, I chose to pleasure voyage, to study yet +more the social conditions in this loveworthy land. I suspected that +much tiredness of travel would be involved. Yet here I find all +conditions whatsoever--here in that which you denominate 'bear-garden'. +They have been reduced here for my edification, yes? But your term is a +term of inadequate comprehensiveness. It is to me more what you call a +'beast-garden,' to include all species of fauna. Are there not here +moths and human flames? are there not cunning serpents crawling with +apples of knowledge to unreluctant, idling Eves, yes? Do we not hear +the amazing converse of parrots and note the pea-fowl negotiating +admiration from observers? Mark at that yet farther table also the +swine and the song-bird; again, mark our draught-horses who have +achieved a competence, yes? You note also the presence of wolves and +lambs. And, endly, mark our tailed arborean ancestors, trained to the +wearing of garments and a single eye-glass. May I ask, have you +bestowed upon this diversity your completest high attention? _Hanh_!" + +This explosion of the doctor's meant that he invited and awaited some +contradiction. As none ensued, he went on: + +"For wolf and lamb I direct your attention to the group at yonder +table. I notice that you greeted the young man as he entered--a common +friend to us then--Mr. Bines, with financial resources incredibly +unlimited? Also he is possessed of an unexperienced freedom from +suspectedness-of-ulterior-motive-in-others--one may not in English as +in German make the word to fit his need of the moment--that +unsuspectedness, I repeat, which has ever characterised the lamb about +to be converted into nutrition. You note the large, loose gentleman +with wide-brimmed hat and beard after my own, somewhat, yes? He would +dispose of some valuable oil-wells which he shall discover at Texas the +moment he shall have sufficiently disposed of them. A wolf he is, yes? +The more correctly attired person at his right, with the beak of a hawk +and lips so thin that his big white teeth gleam through them when they +are yet shut, he is what he calls himself a promoter. He has made +sundry efforts to promote myself. I conclude 'promoter' is one other +fashion of wolf-saying. The yet littler and yet younger man at his left +of our friend, the one of soft voice and insinuating manner, much +resembling a stray scion of aristocracy, discloses to those with whom +he affably acquaints himself the location of a luxurious gaming house +not far off; he will even consent to accompany one to its tables; and +still yet he has but yesterday evening invited me the all-town to see. + +"As a scientist, I remind you, I permit myself no prejudices. I observe +the workings of unemotional law and sometimes record them. You have a +saying here that there are three generations between shirt-sleeves and +shirt-sleeves. I observe the process of the progress. It is benign as +are all processes. I have lately observed it in England. There, by +their law of entail, the same process is unswifter,--yet does it +unvary. The poor aristocrats, almost back to shirt-sleeves, with their +taxes and entailed lands, seek for the money in shops of dress and +bonnet and ale, and graciously rent their castles to the +but-newly-opulent in American oil or the diamonds of South Africa. Here +the posterity of your Mynherr Knickerbocker do likewise. The ancestor +they boast was a toiler, a market-gardener, a fur-trader, a boatman, +hardworking, simple-wayed, unspending. The woman ancestor +kitchen-gardened, spun, wove, and nourished the poultry. Their +descendants upon the savings of these labours have forgotten how to +labour themselves. They could not yet produce should they even +relinquish the illusion that to produce is of a baseness, that only to +consume is noble. I gather reports that a few retain enough of the +ancient strain to become sturdy tradesmen and gardeners once more. +Others seek out and assimilate this new-richness, which, in its turn, +will become impoverished and helpless. Ah, what beautiful showing of +Evolution! + +"See the pendulum swing from useful penury to useless opulence. Why +does it not halt midway, you inquire? Because the race is so young. +Ach! a mere two hundred and forty million years from our +grandfather-grandmother amoeba in the ancestral morass! What can one be +expecting? Certain faculties develop in response to the pressure of +environment. Omit the pressure and the faculties no longer ensue. Yes? +Withdraw the pressure, and the faculties decay. Sightless moles, their +environment demands not the sight; nor of the fishes that inhabit the +streams of your Mammoth Cave. Your aristocrats between the +sleeve-of-the-shirt periods likewise degenerate. There is no need to +work, they lose the power. No need to sustain themselves, they become +helpless. They are as animals grown in an environment that demands no +struggle of them. Yet their environment is artificial. They live on +stored energy, stored by another. It is exhausted, they perish. All but +the few that can modify to correspond with the changed environment, as +when your social celebrities venture into trade, and the also few that +in their life of idleness have acquired graces of person and manner to +let them find pleasure in the eyes of marryers among the but-now-rich." + +The learned doctor submitted to have his glass refilled from the cooler +at his side, dropped another olive into the wine, and resumed before +Oldaker could manage an escape. + +"And how long, you ask, shall the cosmic pendulum swing between these +extremes of penurious industry and opulent idleness?" + +Oldaker had not asked it. But he tried politely to appear as if he had +meant to. He had really meant to ask the doctor what time it was and +then pretend to recall an engagement for which he would be already +late. + +"It will so continue," the doctor placidly resumed, "until the race +achieves a different ideal. Now you will say, but there can be no ideal +so long as there is no imagination; and as I have directly--a +moment-soon--said, the race is too young to have achieved imagination. +The highest felicity which we are yet able to imagine is a felicity +based upon much money; our highest pleasures the material pleasures +which money buys, yes? We strive for it, developing the money-getting +faculty at the expense of all others; and when the money is obtained we +cannot enjoy it. We can imagine to do with it only delicate-eating and +drinking and dressing for show-to-others and building houses immense +and splendidly uncalculated for homes of rational dwelling. Art, +science, music, literature, sociology, the great study and play of our +humanity, they are shut to us. + +"Our young friend Bines is a specimen. It is as if he were a child, +having received from another a laboratory full of the most beautiful +instruments of science. They are valuable, but he can do but common +things with them because he knows not their possibilities. Or, we may +call it stored energy he has; for such is money, the finest, subtlest, +most potent form of stored energy; it may command the highest fruits of +genius, the lowest fruits of animality; it is also volatile, elusive. +Our young friend has many powerful batteries of it. But he is no +electrician. Some he will happily waste without harm to himself. Much +of it, apparently, he will convert into that champagne he now drinks. +For a week since I had the pleasure of becoming known to him he has +drunk it here each day, copiously. He cannot imagine a more salutary +mode of exhausting his force. I am told he comes of a father who died +at fifty, and who did in many ways like that. This one, at the rate I +have observed, will not last so long. He will not so long correspond +with an environment even so unexacting as this. And his son, perhaps +his grandson, will become what you call broke; will from lack of +pressure to learn some useful art, and from spending only, become +useless and helpless. For besides drink, there is gambling. He plays +what you say, the game of poker, this Bines. You see the gentleman, +rounded gracefully in front, who has much the air of seeming to stand +behind himself,--he drinks whiskey at my far right, yes? He is of a +rich trust, the magnate-director as you say, and plays at cards nightly +with our young friend. He jested with him in my presence before you +entered, saying, 'I will make you look like'--I forget it now, but his +humourous threat was to reduce our young friend to the aspect of some +inconsiderable sum in the money of your country. I cannot recall the +precise amount, but it was not so much as what you call one dollar. +Strange, is it not, that the rich who have too much money gamble as +feverishly as the poor who have none, and therefore have an excuse? And +the love of display-for-display. If one were not a scientist one might +be tempted to say there is no progress. The Peruvian grandee shod his +mules with pure gold, albeit that metal makes but inferior shodding for +beasts of burden. The London factory girl hires the dyed feathers of +the ostrich to make her bonnet gay; and your money people are as +display-loving. Lucullus and your latest millionaire joy in the same +emotion of pleasure at making a show. Ach! we are truly in the race's +childhood yet. The way of evolution is so unfast, yes? Ah! you will go +now, Mr. Oldaker. I shall hope to enjoy you more again. Your +observations have interested me deeply; they shall have my most high +attention. Another time you shall discuss with me how it must be that +the cosmic process shall produce a happy mean between stoic and +epicure, by learning the valuable arts of compromise, yes? How Zeno +with his bread and dates shall learn not to despise a few luxuries, and +Vitellius shall learn that the mind may sometimes feast to advantage +while the body fasts." + +Through the marbled corridors and regal parlours, down long +perspectives of Persian rugs and onyx pillars, the function raged. + +The group at Percival's table broke up. He had an appointment to meet +Colonel Poindexter the next morning to consummate the purchase of some +oil stock certain to appreciate fabulously in value. He had promised to +listen further to Mr. Isidore Lewis regarding a plan for obtaining +control of a certain line of one of the metal stocks. And he had +signified his desire to make one of a party the affable younger man +would guide later in the evening to a sumptuous temple of chance, to +which, by good luck, he had gained the entree. The three gentlemen +parted most cordially from him after he had paid the check. + +To Mr. Lewis, when Colonel Poindexter had also left, the young man with +a taste for gaming remarked, ingenuously: + +"Say, Izzy, on the level, there's the readiest money that ever +registered at this joint. You don't have to be Mr. William Wisenham to +do business with him. You can have all you want of that at track odds." + +"I'm making book that way myself," responded the cheerful Mr. Lewis; +"fifty'll get you a thousand any time, my lad. It's a lead-pipe at +twenty to one. But say, with all these Petroleum Pete oil-stock +grafters and Dawson City Daves with frozen feet and mining-stock in +their mitts, a man's got to play them close in to his bosom to win out +anything. Competition is killing this place, my boy." + +In the Turkish room Percival found Mrs. Akemit, gowned to perfection, +glowing, and wearing a bunch of violets bigger than her pretty head. + +"I've just sent cards to your mother and sister," she explained, as she +made room for him upon the divan. + +To them came presently Mrs. Drelmer, well-groomed and aggressively +cheerful. + +"How de do! Just been down to Wall Street seeing how my other half +lives, and now I'm famished for tea and things. Ah! here are your +mother and our proud Western beauty!" And she went forward to greet +them. + +"It's more than _her_ other half knows about her," was Mrs. Akemit's +observation to the violets on her breast. + +"Come sit with me here in this corner, dear," said Mrs. Drelmer to +Psyche, while Mrs. Bines joined her son and Mrs. Akemit. "I've so much +to tell you. And that poor little Florence Akemit, isn't it too bad +about her. You know one of those bright French women said it's so +inconvenient to be a widow because it's necessary to resume the modesty +of a young girl without being able to feign her ignorance. No wonder +Florence has a hard time of it; but isn't it wretched of me to gossip? +And I wanted to tell you especially about Mr. Mauburn. You know of +course he'll be Lord Casselthorpe when the present Lord Casselthorpe +dies; a splendid title, really quite one of the best in all England; +and, my dear, he's out-and-out smitten with you; there's no use in +denying it; you should hear him rave to me about you; really these +young men in love are so inconsiderate of us old women. Ah! here is +that Mrs. Errol who does those fascinating miniatures of all the smart +people. Excuse me one moment, my dear; I want her to meet your mother." + +The fashionable miniature artist was presently arranging with the dazed +Mrs. Bines for miniatures of herself and Psyche. Mrs. Drelmer, +beholding the pair with the satisfied glance of one who has performed a +kindly action, resumed her _tete-a-tete_ with Psyche. + +Percival, across the room, listened to Mrs. Akemit's artless disclosure +that she found life too complex--far too hazardous, indeed, for a poor +little creature in her unfortunate position, so liable to cruel +misjudgment for thoughtless, harmless acts, the result of a young zest +for life. She had often thought most seriously of a convent, indeed she +had--"and, really, Mr. Bines, I'm amazed that I talk this way--so +freely to you--you know, when I've known you so short a time; but +something in you compels my confidences, poor little me! and my poor +little confidences! One so seldom meets a man nowadays with whom one +can venture to talk about any of the _real_ things!" + +A little later, as Mrs. Drelmer was leaving, the majestic figure of the +Baron Ronault de Palliac framed itself in the handsome doorway. He +sauntered in, as if to give the picture tone, and then with purposeful +air took the seat Mrs. Drelmer had just vacated. Miss Bines had been +entertained by involuntary visions of herself as Lady Casselthorpe. She +now became in fancy the noble Baroness de Palliac, speaking faultless +French and consorting with the rare old families of the Faubourg St. +Germain. For, despite his artistic indirection, the baron's manner was +conclusive, his intentions unmistakable. + +And this day was much like many days in the life of the Bines and in +the life of the Hightower Hotel. The scene from parlour to cafe was +surveyed at intervals by a quiet-mannered person with watchful eyes, +who appeared to enjoy it as one upon whom it conferred benefits. Now he +washed his hands in the invisible sweet waters of satisfaction, and +murmured softly to himself, "Setters and Buyers!" Perhaps the term fits +the family of Bines as well as might many another coined especially for +it. + +When the three groups in the Turkish room dissolved, Percival with his +mother and sister went to their suite on the fourth floor. + +"Think of a real live French nobleman!" cried Psyche, with enthusiasm, +"and French must be such a funny language--he talks such funny English. +I wish now I'd learned more of it at the Sem, and talked more with that +French Delpasse girl that was always toasting marshmallows on a +hat-pin." + +"That lady Mrs. Drelmer introduced me to," said Mrs. Bines, "is an +artist, miniature artist, hand-painted you know, and she's going to +paint our miniatures for a thousand dollars each because we're friends +of Mrs. Drelmer." + +"Oh, yes," exclaimed Psyche, with new enthusiasm, "and Mrs. Drelmer has +promised to teach me bridge whist if I'll go to her house to-morrow. +Isn't she kind? Really, every one must play bridge now, she tells me." + +"Well, ladies," said the son and brother, "I'm glad to see you both +getting some of the white meat. I guess we'll do well here. I'm going +into oil stock and lead, myself." + +"How girlish your little friend Mrs. Akemit is!" said his mother. "How +did she come to lose her husband?" + +"Lost him in South Dakota," replied her son, shortly. + +"Divorced, ma," explained Psyche, "and Mrs. Drelmer says her family's +good, but she's too gay." + +"Ah!" exclaimed Percival, "Mrs. Drelmer's hammer must be one of those +cute little gold ones, all set with precious stones. As a matter of +fact, she's anything but gay. She's sad. She couldn't get along with +her husband because he had no dignity of soul." + +He became conscious of sympathising generously with all men not thus +equipped. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire + + +To be idle and lavish of money, twenty-five years old, with the +appetites keen and the need for action always pressing; then to have +loved a girl with quick, strong, youthful ardour, and to have had the +ideal smirched by gossip, then shattered before his amazed eyes,--this +is a situation in which the male animal is apt to behave inequably. In +the language of the estimable Herr Doctor von Herzlich, he will seek +those avenues of modification in which the least struggle is required. +In the simpler phrasing of Uncle Peter Bines, he will "cut loose." + +During the winter that now followed Percival Bines behaved according to +either formula, as the reader may prefer. He early ascertained his +limitations with respect to New York and its people. + +"Say, old man," he asked Herbert Delancey Livingston one night, across +the table at their college club, "are all the people in New York +society impecunious?" + +Livingston had been with him at Harvard, and Livingston's family was so +notoriously not impecunious that the question was devoid of any +personal element. Livingston, moreover, had dined just unwisely enough +to be truthful. + +"Well, to be candid with you, Bines," the young man had replied, in a +burst of alcoholic confidence, "about all that you are likely to meet +are broke--else you wouldn't meet 'em, you know," he explained +cheerfully. "You know, old chap, a few of you Western people have got +into the right set here; there's the Nesbits, for instance. On my word +the good wife and mother hasn't the kinks out of her fingers yet, nor +the callouses from her hands, by Jove! She worked so hard cooking and +washing woollen shirts for miners before Nesbit made his strike. As for +him--well caviare, I'm afraid, will always be caviare to Jimmy Nesbit. +And now the son's married a girl that had everything but money--my boy, +Nellie Wemple has fairly got that family of Nesbits awestricken since +she married into it, just by the way she can spend money--but what was +I saying, old chap? Oh, yes, about getting in--it takes time, you know; +on my word, I think they were as much as eight years, and had to start +in abroad at that. At first, you know, you can only expect to meet a +crowd that can't afford to be exclusive any longer." + +From which friendly counsel, and from certain confirming observations +of his own, Percival had concluded that his lot in New York was to +spend money. This he began to do with a large Western carelessness that +speedily earned him fame of a sort. Along upper Broadway, his advent +was a golden joy. Tradesmen learned to love him; florists, jewelers, +and tailors hailed his coming with honest fervour; waiters told moving +tales of his tips; cabmen fought for the privilege of transporting him; +and the hangers-on of rich young men picked pieces of lint assiduously +and solicitously from his coat. + +One of his favourite resorts was the sumptuous gambling-house in +Forty-fourth Street. The man who slides back the panel of the stout +oaken door early learned to welcome him through the slit, barred by its +grill of wrought iron. The attendant who took his coat and hat, the +waiter who took his order for food, and the croupier who took his +money, were all gladdened by his coming; for his gratuities were as +large when he lost as when he won Even the reserved proprietor, +accustomed as he was to a wealthy and careless clientele, treated +Percival with marked consideration after a night when the young man +persuaded him to withdraw the limit at roulette, and spent a large sum +in testing a system for breaking the wheel, given to him by a friend +lately returned from Monte Carlo. + +"I think, really the fellow who gave me that system is an ass," he +said, lighting a cigarette when the play was done. "Now I'm going down +and demolish eight dollars' worth of food and drink--you won't be all +to the good on that, you know." + +His host decided that a young man who was hungry, after losing a +hundred thousand dollars in five hours' play, was a person to be not +lightly considered. + +And, though he loved the rhythmic whir and the ensuing rattle of the +little ivory ball at the roulette wheel, he did not disdain the quieter +faro, playing that dignified game exclusively with the chocolate-coloured +chips, which cost a thousand dollars a stack. Sometimes he won; but not +often enough to disturb his host's belief that there is less of chance in +his business than in any other known to the captains of industry. + +There were, too, sociable games of poker, played with Garmer, of the +Lead Trust, Burman, the intrepid young wheat operator from Chicago, and +half a dozen other well-moneyed spirits; games in which the limit, to +use the Chicagoan's phrase, was "the beautiful but lofty North Star." +At these games he lost even more regularly than at those where, with +the exception of a trifling percentage, he was solely at the mercy of +chance. But he was a joyous loser, endearing himself to the other +players; to Garmer, whom Burman habitually accused of being "closer +than a warm night," as well as to the open-handed son of the +chewing-gum magnate, who had been raised abroad and who protested +nightly that there was an element of beastly American commercialism in the +game. When Percival was by some chance absent from a sitting, the others +calculated the precise sum he probably would have lost and humourously +acquainted him with the amount by telegraph next morning,--it was apt to +be nine hundred and some odd dollars,--requesting that he cover by check +at his early convenience. + +Yet the diversion was not all gambling. There were Jong sessions at +all-night restaurants where the element of chance in his favour, +inconspicuous elsewhere, was wholly eliminated; suppers for hungry +Thespians and thirsty parasites, protracted with song and talk until +the gas-flames grew pale yellow, and the cabmen, when the party went +out into the wan light, would be low-voiced, confidential, and +suggestive in their approaches. + +Broadway would be weirdly quiet at such times, save for the occasional +frenzied clatter of a hurrying milk-wagon. Even the cars seemed to move +with less sound than by day, and the early-rising workers inside, +holding dinner-pails and lunch-baskets, were subdued and silent, yet +strangely observing, as if the hour were one in which the vision was +made clear to appraise the values of life justly. To the north, whence +the cars bulked silently, would be an awakening sky of such tender +beauty that the revellers often paid it the tribute of a moment's +notice. + +"Pure turquoise," one would declare. + +"With just a dash of orange bitters in it," another might add. + +And then perhaps they burst into song under the spell, blending their +voices into what the professional gentlemen termed "barber-shop +harmonies," until a policeman would saunter across the street, +pretending, however, that he was not aware of them. + +Then perhaps a ride toward the beautiful northern sky would be +proposed, whereupon three or four hansom or coupe loads would begin a +journey that wound up through Central Park toward the northern light, +but which never attained a point remoter than some suburban road-house, +where sleepy cooks and bartenders would have to be routed out to +collaborate toward breakfast. + +Oftener the party fell away into straggling groups with notions for +sleep, chanting at last, perhaps: + +"While beer brings gladness, don't forget That water only makes you +wet!" + +Percival would walk to the hotel, sobered and perhaps made a little +reflective by the unwonted quiet. But they were pleasant, careless +folk, he concluded always. They permitted him to spend his money, but +he was quite sure they would spend it as freely as he if they had it. +More than one appreciative soubrette, met under such circumstances, was +subsequently enabled to laud the sureness of his taste in jewels,--he +cared little for anything but large diamonds, it transpired. It was a +feeling tribute paid to his munificence by one of these in converse +with a sister artist, who had yet to meet him: + +"Say, Myrtle, on the dead, he spends money just like a young Jew trying +to be white!" + +Under this more or less happy surface of diversion, however, was an +experience decidedly less felicitous. He knew he should not, must not, +hold Avice Milbrey in his mind; yet when he tried to put her out it +hurt him. + +At first he had plumed himself upon his lucky escape that night, when +he would have declared his love to her. To have married a girl who +cared only for his money; that would have been dire enough. But to +marry a girl like _that!_ He had been lucky indeed! + +Yet, as the weeks went by the shock of the scene wore off. The scene +itself remained clear, with the grinning grotesquerie of the +Jack-o'-lanterns lighting it and mocking his simplicity. But the first +sharp physical hurt had healed. He was forced to admit that the girl +still had power to trouble him. At times his strained nerves would +relax to no other device than the picturing of her as his own. Exactly +in the measure that he indulged this would his pride smart. With a +budding gift for negation he could imagine her caring for nothing but +his money; and there was that other picture, swift and awful, a +pantomime in shadow, with the leering yellow faces above it. + +In the far night, when he awoke to sudden and hungry aloneness, he +would let his arms feel their hunger for her. The vision of her would +be flowers and music and sunlight and time and all things perfect to +mystify and delight, to satisfy and--greatest of all boons--to +unsatisfy. The thought of her became a rest-house for all weariness; a +haven where he was free to choose his nook and lie down away from all +that was not her, which was all that was not beautiful. He would go +back to seek the lost sweetness of their first meeting; to mount the +poor dead belief that she would care for him--that he could make her +care for him--and endow the thing with artificial life, trying to +capture the faint breath of it; but the memory was always fleeting, +attenuated, like the spirit of the memory of a perfume that had been +elusive at best. And always, to banish what joy even this poor device +might bring, came the more vivid vision of the brutal, sordid facts. He +forced himself to face them regularly as a penance and a corrective. + +They came before him with especial clearness when he met her from time +to time during the winter. He watched her in talk with others, noting +the contradiction in her that she would at one moment appear knowing +and masterful, with depths of reserve that the other people neither +fathomed nor knew of; and at another moment frankly girlish, with an +appealing feminine helplessness which is woman's greatest strength, +coercing every strong masculine instinct. + +When the reserve showed in her, he became afraid. What was she not +capable of? In the other mood, frankly appealing, she drew him +mightily, so that he abandoned himself for the moment, responding to +her fresh exulting youth, longing to take her, to give her things, to +make her laugh, to enfold and protect her, to tell her secrets, to +feather her cheek with the softest kiss, to be the child-mate of her. + +Toward him, directly, when they met she would sometimes be glacial and +forbidding, sometimes uninterestedly frank, as if they were but the +best of commonplace friends. Yet sometimes she made him feel that she, +too, threw herself heartily to rest in the thought of their loving, and +cheated herself, as he did, with dreams of comradeship. She left him at +these times with the feeling that they were deaf, dumb, and blind to +each other; that if some means of communication could be devised, +something surer than the invisible play of secret longings, all might +yet be well. They talked as the people about them talked, words that +meant nothing to either, and if there were mute questionings, naked +appeals, unuttered declarations, they were only such as language serves +to divert attention from. Speech, doubtless, has its uses as well as +its abuses. Politics, for example, would be less entertaining without +it. But in matters of the heart, certain it is that there would be +fewer misunderstandings if it were forbidden between the couple under +the penalty of immediate separation. In this affair real meanings are +rarely conveyed except by silences. Words are not more than tasteless +drapery to obscure their lines. The silence of lovers is the plainest +of all speech, warning, disconcerting indeed, by its very bluntness, +any but the truly mated. An hour's silence with these two people by +themselves might have worked wonders. + +Another diversion of Percival's during this somewhat feverish winter +was Mrs. Akemit. Not only was she a woman of finished and expert +daintiness in dress and manner and surroundings, but she soothed, +flattered, and stimulated him. With the wisdom of her thirty-two years, +devoted chiefly to a study of his species, she took care never to be +exigent. She had the way of referring to herself as "poor little me," +yet she never made demands or allowed him to feel that she expected +anything from him in the way of allegiance. + +Mrs. Akemit was not only like St. Paul, "all things to all men," but +she had gone a step beyond that excellent theologue. She could be all +things to one man. She was light-heartedly frivolous, soberly +reflective, shallow, profound, cynical or naive, ingenuous, or +inscrutable. She prized dearly the ecclesiastical background provided +by her uncle, the bishop, and had him to dine with the same unerring +sense of artistry that led her to select swiftly the becoming shade of +sofa-cushion to put her blond head back upon. + +The good bishop believed she had jeopardised her soul with divorce. He +feared now she meant to lose it irrevocably through remarriage. As a +foil to his austerity, therefore, she would be audaciously gay in his +presence. + +"Hell," she said to him one evening, "is given up _so_ reluctantly by +those who don't expect to go there." And while the bishop frowned into +his salad she invited Percival to drink with her in the manner of a +woman who is mad to invite perdition. If the good man could have beheld +her before a background of frivolity he might have suffered less +anxiety. For there her sense of contrast-values led her to be grave and +deep, to express distaste for society with its hollowness, and to +expose timidly the cruel scars on a soul meant for higher things. + +Many afternoons Percival drank tea with her in the little red +drawing-room of her dainty apartment up the avenue. Here in the half +light which she had preferred since thirty, in a soft corner with which +she harmonised faultlessly, and where the blaze from the open fire +coloured her animated face just enough, she talked him usually into the +glow of a high conceit with himself. When she dwelt upon the +shortcomings of man, she did it with the air of frankly presuming him +to be different from all others, one who could sympathise with her +through knowing the frailties of his sex, yet one immeasurably superior +to them. When he was led to talk of himself--of whom, it seemed, she +could never learn enough--he at once came to take high views of +himself: to gaze, through her tactful prompting, with a gentle, purring +appreciation upon the manifest spectacle of his own worth. + +Sometimes, away from her, he wondered how she did it. Sometimes, in her +very presence, his sense of humour became alert and suspicious. Part of +the time he decided her to be a charming woman, with a depth and +quality of sweetness unguessed by the world. The rest of the time he +remembered a saying about alfalfa made by Uncle Peter: "It's an +innocent lookin', triflin' vegetable, but its roots go right down into +the ground a hundred feet." + +"My dear," Mrs. Akemit had once confided to an intimate in an hour of +_negligee_, "to meet a man, any man, from a red-cheeked butcher boy to +a bloodless monk, and not make him feel something new for +you--something he never before felt for any other woman--really it's as +criminal as a wrinkled stocking, or for blondes to wear shiny things. +Every woman can do it, if she'll study a little how to reduce them to +their least common denominator--how to make them primitive." + +Of another member of Mrs. Akemit's household Percival acknowledged the +sway with never a misgiving. He had been the devoted lover of Baby +Akemit from the afternoon when he had first cajoled her into +autobiography--a vivid, fire-tipped little thing with her mother's +piquancy. He gleaned that day that she was "a quarter to four years +old;" that she was mamma's girl, but papa was a friend of Santa Claus; +that she went to "ball-dances" every day clad in "dest a stirt 'cause +big ladies don't ever wear waist-es at night;" that she had once ridden +in a merry-go-round and it made her "all homesick right here," patting +her stomach; and that "elephants are horrid, but you mustn't be cruel +to them and cut their eyes out. Oh, no!" + +Her Percival courted with results that left nothing to be desired. She +fell to the floor in helpless, shrieking laughter when he came. In his +honour she composed and sang songs to an improvised and spirited +accompaniment upon her toy piano. His favourites among these were +"'Cause Why I Love You" and "Darling, Ask Myself to Come to You." She +rendered them with much feeling. If he were present when her bed-time +came she refused to sleep until he had consented to an interview. + +Avice Milbrey had the fortune to witness one of these bed-time +_causeries_. One late afternoon the young man's summons came while he +was one of a group that lingered late about Mrs. Akemit's little +tea-table, Miss Milbrey being of the number. + +He followed the maid dutifully out through the hall to the door of the +bedroom, and entered on all-fours with what they two had agreed was the +growl of a famished bear. + +The familiar performance was viewed by the mother and by Miss Milbrey, +whom the mother had urged to follow. Baby Akemit in her crib, modestly +arrayed in blue pajamas, after simulating the extreme terror required +by the situation, fell to chatting, while her mother and Miss Milbrey +looked on from the doorway. + +Miss Akemit had once been out in the woods, it appeared, and a +"biting-wolf" chased her, and she ran and ran until she came to a river +all full of pigs and fishes and berries, so she jumped in and had +supper, and it wasn't a "biting-wolf" at all--and then-- + +But the narrative was cut short by her mother. + +"Come, Pet! Mr. Bines wishes to go now." + +Miss Akemit, it appeared, was bent upon relating the adventures of +Goldie Locks, subsequent to her leap from the window of the bears' +house. She had, it seemed, been compelled to ride nine-twenty miles on +a trolley, and, reaching home too late for luncheon, had been obliged +to eat in the kitchen with the cook. + +"Mr. Bines can't stay, darling!" + +Baby Akemit calculated briefly, and consented to his departure if Mr. +Bines would bring her something next time. + +Mr. Bines promised, and moved away after the customary embrace, but she +was not through: + +"Oh! oh! go out like a bear! dere's a bear come in here!" + +And so, having brought the bear in, he was forced to drop again and +growl the beast out, whereupon, appeased by this strict observance of +the unities, the child sat up and demanded: + +"You sure you'll bring me somefin next time?" + +"Yes, sure, Lady Grenville St. Clare." "Well, you sure you're _comin'_ +next time?" + +Being reassured on this point, and satisfied that no more bears were at +large, she lay down once more while Percival and the two observers +returned to the drawing-room. + +"You love children so!" Miss Milbrey said. And never had she been so +girlishly appealing to all that was strong in him as a man. The frolic +with the child seemed to have blown away a fog from between them. Yet +never had the other scene been more vivid to him, and never had the +pain of her heartlessness been more poignant. + +When he "played" with Baby Akemit thereafter, the pretence was not all +with the child. For while she might "play" at giving a vexatiously +large dinner, for which she was obliged to do the cooking because she +had discharged all the servants, or when they "played" that the big +couch was a splendid ferry-boat in which they were sailing to Chicago +where Uncle David lived--with many stern threats to tell the janitor of +the boat if the captain didn't behave himself and sail faster--Percival +"played" that his companion's name was Baby Bines, and that her mother, +who watched them with loving eyes, was a sweet and gracious young woman +named Avice. And when he told Baby Akemit that she was "the only +original sweetheart" he meant it of some one else than her. + +When the play was over he always conducted himself back to sane reality +by viewing this some one else in the cold light of truth. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines + + +The fame of the Bines family for despising money was not fed wholly by +Percival's unremitting activities. Miss Psyche Bines, during the +winter, achieved wide and enviable renown as a player of bridge whist. +Not for the excellence of her play; rather for the inveteracy and size +of her losses and the unconcerned cheerfulness with which she defrayed +them. She paid the considerable sums with an air of gratitude for +having been permitted to lose them. Especially did she seem grateful +for the zealous tutelage and chaperonage of Mrs. Drelmer. + +"Everybody in New York plays bridge, my dear, and of course you must +learn," that capable lady had said in the beginning. + +"But I never was bright at cards," the girl confessed, "and I'm afraid +I couldn't learn bridge well enough to interest you good players." + +"Nonsense!" was Mrs. Drelmer's assurance. "Bridge is easy to learn and +easy to play. I'll teach you, and I promise you the people you play +with shall never complain." + +Mrs. Drelmer, it soon appeared, knew what she was talking about. + +Indeed, that well-informed woman was always likely to. Her husband was +an intellectual delinquent whom she spoke of largely as being "in Wall +Street," and in that feat of jugglery known as "keeping up +appearances," his wife had long been the more dexterous performer. + +She was apt not only to know what she talked about, but she was a woman +of resource, unafraid of action. She drilled Miss Bines in the +rudiments of bridge. If the teacher became subsequently much the +largest winner of the pupil's losings, it was, perhaps, not more than +her fit recompense. For Miss Bines enjoyed not only the sport of the +game, but her manner of playing it, combined with the social prestige +of her amiable sponsor, procured her a circle of acquaintances that +would otherwise have remained considerably narrower. An enthusiastic +player of bridge, of passable exterior, mediocre skill, and unlimited +resources, need never want in New York for very excellent society. Not +only was the Western girl received by Mrs. Drelmer's immediate circle, +but more than one member of what the lady called "that snubby set" +would now and then make a place for her at the card-table. A few of +Mrs. Drelmer's intimates were so wanting in good taste as to intimate +that she exploited Miss Bines even to the degree of an understanding +expressed in bald percentage, with certain of those to whom she secured +the girl's society at cards. Whether this ill-natured gossip was true +or false, it is certain that the exigencies of life on next to nothing +a year, with a husband who could boast of next to nothing but Family, +had developed an unerring business sense in Mrs. Drelmer; and certain +it also is that this winter was one when the appearances with which she +had to strive were unwontedly buoyant. + +Miss Bines tirelessly memorised rules. She would disclose to her placid +mother that the lead of a trump to the third hand's go-over of hearts +is of doubtful expediency; or that one must "follow suit with the +smallest, except when you have only two, neither of them better than +the Jack. Then play the higher first, so that when the lower falls your +partner may know you are out of the suit, and ruff it." + +Mrs. Bines declared that it did seem to her very much like out-and-out +gambling. But Percival, looking over the stubs of his sister's +check-book, warmly protested her innocence of this charge. + +"Heaven knows sis has her shortcomings," he observed, patronisingly, in +that young woman's presence, "but she's no gambler; don't say it, ma, I +beg of you! She only knows five rules of the game, and I judge it's +cost her about three thousand dollars each to learn those. And the only +one she never forgets is, 'When in doubt, lead your highest check.' But +don't ever accuse her of gambling. Poor girl, if she keeps on playing +bridge she'll have writer's cramp; that's all I'm afraid of. I see +there's a new rapid-fire check-book on the market, and an improved +fountain pen that doesn't slobber. I'll have to get her one of each." + +Yet Psyche Bines's experience, like her brother's, was not without a +proper leaven of sentiment. There was Fred Milbrey, handsome, clever, +amusing, knowing every one, and giving her a pleasant sense of intimacy +with all that was worth while in New York. Him she felt very friendly +to. + +Then there was Mauburn, presently to be Lord Casselthorpe, with his +lazy, high-pitched drawl; good-natured, frank, carrying an atmosphere +of high-class British worldliness, and delicately awakening within her +while she was with him a sense of her own latent superiority to the +institutions of her native land. She liked Mauburn, too. + +More impressive than either of these, however, was the Baron Ronault de +Palliac. Tall, swarthy, saturnine, a polished man of all the world, of +manners finished, elaborate, and ceremonious, she found herself feeling +foreign and distinguished in his presence, quite as if she were the +heroine of a romantic novel, and might at any instant be called upon to +assist in royalist intrigues. The baron, to her intuition, nursed +secret sorrows. For these she secretly worshipped him. It is true that +when he dined with her and her mother, which he was frequently gracious +enough to do, he ate with a heartiness that belied this secret sorrow +she had imagined. But he was fascinating at all times, with a grace at +table not less finished than that with which he bowed at their meetings +and partings. It was not unpleasant to think of basking daily in the +shine of that grand manner, even if she did feel friendlier with +Milbrey, and more at ease with Mauburn. + +If the truth must be told, Miss Bines was less impressionable than +either of the three would have wished. Her heart seemed not easy to +reach; her impulses were not inflammable. Young Milbrey early confided +to his family a suspicion that she was singularly hard-headed, and the +definite information that she had "a hob-nailed Western way" of +treating her admirers. + +Mauburn, too, was shrewd enough to see that, while she frankly liked +him, he was for some reason less a favourite than the Baron de Palliac. + +"It'll be no easy matter marrying that girl," he told Mrs. Drelmer. +"She's really a dear, and awfully good fun, but she's not a bit silly, +and I dare say she'll marry some chap because she likes him, and not +because he's anybody, you know." + +"Make her like you," insisted his adviser. + +"On my word, I wish she did. And I'm not so sure, you know, she doesn't +fancy that Frenchman, or even young Milbrey." + +"I'll keep you before her," promised Mrs. Drelmer, "and I wish you'd +not think you can't win her. 'Tisn't like you." + +Miss Bines accordingly heard that it was such a pity young Milbrey +drank so, because his only salvation lay in making a rich marriage, and +a young man, nowadays, had to keep fairly sober to accomplish that. +Really, Mrs. Drelmer felt sorry for the poor weak fellow. "Good-hearted +chap, but he has no character, my dear, so I'm afraid there's no hope +for him. He has the soul of a merchant tailor, actually, but not the +tailor's manhood. Otherwise he'd be above marrying some unsuspecting +girl for her money and breaking her heart after marriage. Now, Mauburn +is a type so different; honest, unaffected, healthy, really he's a man +for any girl to be proud of, even if he were not heir to a title--one +of the best in all England, and an ornament of the most exclusively +correct set; of a line, my dear, that is truly great--not like that +shoddy French nobility, discredited in France, that sends so many of +its comic-opera barons here looking for large dowries to pay their +gambling debts and put furniture in their rattle-trap old chateaux, and +keep them in absinthe and their other peculiar diversions. And Mauburn, +you lucky minx, simply adores you--he's quite mad about you, really!" + +In spite of Mrs. Drelmer's two-edged sword, Miss Bines continued rather +more favourable to the line of De Palliac. The baron was so splendid, +so gloomy, so deferential. He had the air of laying at her feet, as a +rug, the whole glorious history of France. And he appeared so well in +the victoria when they drove in the park. + +It is true that the heart of Miss Bines was as yet quite untouched; and +it was not more than a cool, dim, aesthetic light in which she surveyed +the three suitors impartially, to behold the impressive figure of the +baron towering above the others. Had the baron proposed for her hand, +it is not impossible that, facing the question directly, she would have +parried or evaded. + +But certain events befell unpropitiously at a time when the baron was +most certain of his conquest; at the very time, indeed, when he had +determined to open his suit definitely by extending a proposal to the +young lady through the orthodox medium of her nearest male relative. + +"I admit," wrote the baron to his expectant father, "that it is what +one calls '_very chances_' in the English, but one must venture in this +country, and your son is not without much hope. And if not, there is +still Mlle. Higbee." + +The baron shuddered as he wrote it. He preferred not to recognise even +the existence of this alternative, for the reason that the father of +Mlle. Higbee distressed him by an incompleteness of suavity. + +"He conducts himself like a pork," the baron would declare to himself, +by way of perfecting his English. + +The secret cause of his subsequent determination not to propose for the +hand of Miss Bines lay in the hopelessly middle-class leanings of the +lady who might have incurred the supreme honour of becoming his +mother-in-law. Had Mrs. Bines been above talking to low people, a +catastrophe might have been averted. But Mrs. Bines was not above it. +She was quite unable to repress a vulgar interest in the menials that +served her. + +She knew the butler's life history two days after she had ceased to be +afraid of him. She knew the distressing family affairs of the maids; +how many were the ignoble progeny of the elevator-man, and what his +plebeian wife did for their croup; how much rent the hall-boy's +low-born father paid for his mean two-story dwelling in Jersey City; +and how many hours a day or night the debased scrub-women devoted to +their unrefining toil. + +Brazenly, too, she held converse with Philippe, the active and voluble +Alsatian who served her when she chose to dine in the public restaurant +instead of at her own private table. Philippe acquainted her with the +joys and griefs of his difficult profession. There were fourteen +thousand waiters in New York, if, by waiters, you meant any one. Of +course there were not so many like Philippe, men of the world who had +served their time as assistants and their three years as sub-waiters; +men who spoke English, French, and German, who knew something of +cooking, how to dress a salad, and how to carve. Only such, it +appeared, could be members of the exclusive Geneva Club that procured a +place for you when you were idle, and paid you eight dollars a week +when you were sick. + +Having the qualifications, one could earn twenty-five dollars a month +in salary and three or four times as much in gratuities. Philippe's +income was never less than one hundred and twenty dollars a month; for +was he not one who had come from Europe as a master, after two seasons +at Paris where a man acquires his polish--his perfection of manner, his +finish, his grace? Philippe could never enough prize that post-graduate +course at the _Maison d'Or_, where he had personally known--madame +might not believe it--the incomparable Casmir, a _chef_ who served two +generations of epicures, princes, kings, statesmen, travelling +Americans,--all the truly great. + +With his own lips Casmir had told him, Philippe, of the occasion when +Dumas, _pere_, had invited him to dinner that they might discuss the +esoterics of salad dressing and sauces; also of the time when the +Marquis de St. Georges embraced Casmir for inventing the precious soup +that afterwards became famous as _Potage Germine_. And now the skilled +and puissant Casmir had retired. It was a calamity. The _Maison +d'Or_--Paris--would no longer be what they had been. + +For that matter, since one must live, Philippe preferred it to be in +America, for in no other country could an adept acquire so much money. +And Philippe knew the whole dining world. With Celine and the baby, +Paul, Philippe dwelt in an apartment that would really amaze madame by +its appointments of luxury, in East 38th Street, and only the four +flights to climb. And Paul was three, the largest for his age, quite +the largest, that either Philippe or Celine had ever beheld. Even the +brother of Celine and his wife, who had a restaurant of their +own--serving the _table d'hote_ at two and one-half francs the plate, +with wine--even these swore they had never seen an infant so big, for +his years, as Paul. + +And so Mrs. Bines grew actually to feel an interest in the creature and +his wretched affairs, and even fell into the deplorable habit of +saying, "I must come to see you and your wife and Paul some pleasant +day, Philippe," and Philippe, being a man of the world, thought none +the less of her for believing that she did not mean it. + +Yet it befell on an afternoon that Mrs. Bines found herself in a +populous side-street, driving home from a visit to the rheumatic +scrub-woman who had now to be supported by the papers her miserable +offspring sold. Mrs. Bines had never seen so many children as flooded +this street. She wondered if an orphan asylum were in the +neighbourhood. And though the day was pleasantly warm, she decided that +there were about her at least a thousand cases of incipient pneumonia, +for not one child in five had on a hat. They raged and dashed and +rippled from curb to curb so that they might have made her think of a +swift mountain torrent at the bottom of a gloomy canyon, but that the +worthy woman was too literal-minded for such fancies. She only warned +the man to drive slowly. + +And then by a street sign she saw that she was near the home of +Philippe. It was three o'clock, and he would be resting from his work. +The man found the number. The waves parted and piled themselves on +either side in hushed wonder as she entered the hallway and searched +for the name on the little cards under the bells. She had never known +the surname, and on two of the cards "Ph." appeared. She rang one of +the bells, the door mysteriously opened with a repeated double click, +and she began the toilsome climb. The waves of children fell together +behind her in turbulent play again. + +At the top she breathed a moment and then knocked at a door before her. +A voice within called: + +"_Entres!_" and Mrs. Bines opened the door. + +It was the tiny kitchen of Philippe. Philippe, himself, in +shirt-sleeves, sat in a chair tilted back close to the gas-range, the +_Courier des Etats Unis_ in his hands and Paul on his lap. Celine +ironed the bosom of a gentleman's white shirt on an ironing board +supported by the backs of two chairs. + +Hemmed in the corner by this board and by the gas-range, seated at a +table covered by the oilcloth that simulates the marble of Italy's most +famous quarry, sat, undoubtedly, the Baron Ronault de Palliac. A +steaming plate of spaghetti _a la Italien_ was before him, to his left +a large bowl of salad, to his right a bottle of red wine. + +For a space of three seconds the entire party behaved as if it were +being photographed under time-exposure. Philippe and the baby stared, +motionless. Celine stared, resting no slight weight on the hot +flat-iron. The Baron Ronault de Palliac stared, his fork poised in +mid-air and festooned with gay little streamers of spaghetti. + +Then came smoke, the smell of scorching linen, and a cry of horror from +Celine. + +"_Ah, la seule chemise blanche de Monsieur le Baron!_" + +The spell was broken. Philippe was on his feet, bowing effusively. + +"Ah! it is Madame Bines. _Je suis tres honore_--I am very honoured to +welcome you, madame. It is madame, _ma femme_, Celine,--and--Monsieur +le Baron de Palliac--" + +Philippe had turned with evident distress toward the latter. But +Philippe was only a waiter, and had not behind him the centuries of +schooling that enable a gentleman to remain a gentleman under adverse +conditions. + +The Baron Ronault de Palliac arose with unruffled aplomb and favoured +the caller with his stateliest bow. He was at the moment a graceful and +silencing rebuke to those who aver that manner and attire be +interdependent. The baron's manner was ideal, undiminished in volume, +faultless as to decorative qualities. One fitted to savour its +exquisite finish would scarce have noted that above his waist the noble +gentleman was clad in a single woollen undergarment of revolutionary +red. + +Or, if such a one had observed this trifling circumstance, he would, +assuredly, have treated it as of no value to the moment; something to +note, perhaps, and then gracefully to forget. + +The baron's own behaviour would have served as a model. One swift +glance had shown him there was no way of instant retreat. That being +impossible, none other was graceful; hence none other was to be +considered. He permitted himself not even a glance at the shirt upon +whose fair, defenceless bosom the iron of the overcome Celine had +burned its cruel brown imprimature. Mrs. Bines had greeted him as he +would have wished, unconscious, apparently, that there could be cause +for embarrassment. + +[Illustration: "THE SPELL WAS BROKEN."] + +"Ah! madame," he said, handsomely, "you see me, I unfast with the fork. +You see me here, I have envy of the simple life. I am content of to do +it--_comme ca_--as that, see you," waving in the direction of his +unfinished repast. "All that magnificence of your grand hotel, there is +not the why of it, the most big of the world, and suchly stupefying, +with its 'infernil rackit' as you say. And of more--what droll of idea, +enough curious, by example! to dwell with the good Philippe and his +_femme aimable_. Their hotel is of the most littles, but I rest here +very volunteerly since longtime. Is it that one can to comprehend +liking the vast hotel American?" + +"Monsieur le Baron lodges with us; we have so much of the chambers," +ventured Celine. + +"Monsieur le Baron wishes to retire to his apartment," said Philippe, +raising the ironing-board. "Will madame be so good to enter our _petit +salon_ at the front, _n'est-ce-pas?_" + +The baron stepped forth from his corner and bowed himself graciously +out. + +"Madame, my compliments--and to the adorable Mademoiselle Bines! _Au +revoir_, madame--to the soontime--_avant peu_--before little!" + +On the farther side of his closed door the Baron Ronault de Palliac +swore--once. But the oath was one of the most awful that a Frenchman +may utter in his native tongue: "Sacred Name of a Name!" + +"But the baron wasn't done eating," protested Mrs. Bines. + +"Ah, yes, madame!" replied Philippe. "Monsieur le Baron has consumed +enough for now. _Paul, mon enfant, ne touche pas la robe de madame!_ He +is large, is he not, madame, as I have told you? A monster, yes?" + +Mrs. Bines, stooping, took the limp and wide-eyed Paul up in her arms. +Whereupon he began to talk so fast to her in French that she set him +quickly down again, with the slightly helpless air of one who has +picked up an innocent-looking clock only to have the clanging alarm go +suddenly off. + +"Madame will honour our little salon," urged Philippe, opening the door +and bowing low. + +"_Quel dommage!_" sighed Celine, moving after them; "_la seule chemise +blanche de Monsieur le Baron. Eh bien! il faut lui en acheter une +autre!_" + +At dinner that evening Mrs. Bines related her adventure, to the +unfeigned delight of her graceless son, and to the somewhat troubled +amazement of her daughter. + +"And, do you know," she ventured, "maybe he isn't a regular baron, +after all!" + +"Oh, I guess he's a regular one all right," said Percival; "only +perhaps he hasn't worked at it much lately." + +"But his sitting there eating in that--that shirt--" said his sister. + +"My dear young woman, even the nobility are prey to climatic rigours; +they are obliged, like the wretched low-born such as ourselves, to +wear--pardon me--undergarments. Again, I understand from Mrs. +Cadwallader here that the article in question was satisfactory and +fit--red, I believe you say, Mrs. Terwilliger?" + +"Awful red!" replied his mother--"and they call their parlour a +saloon." + +"And of necessity, even the noble have their moments of _deshabille_." + +"They needn't eat their lunch that way," declared his sister. + +"Is _deshabille_ French for underclothes?" asked Mrs. Bines, struck by +the word. + +"Partly," answered her son. + +"And the way that child of Philippe's jabbered French! It's wonderful +how they can learn so young." + +"They begin early, you know," Percival explained. "And as to our friend +the baron, I'm ready to make book that sis doesn't see him again, +except at a distance." + +Sometime afterwards he computed the round sum he might have won if any +such bets had been made; for his sister's list of suitors, to adopt his +own lucent phrase, was thereafter "shy a baron." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +The Summer Campaign Is Planned + + +Winter waned and spring charmed the land into blossom. The city-pent, +as we have intimated, must take this season largely on faith. If one +can find a patch of ground naked of stone or asphalt one may feel the +heart of the earth beat. But even now the shop-windows are more +inspiring. At least they copy the outer show. Tender-hued shirt-waists +first push up their sprouts of arms through the winter furs and +woollens, quite as the first violets out in the woodland thrust +themselves up through the brown carpet of leaves. Then every window +becomes a summery glade of lawn, tulle, and chiffon, more lavish of +tints, shades, and combinations, indeed, than ever nature dared to be. + +Outside, where the unspoiled earth begins, the blossoms are clouding +the trees with a mist of pink and white, and the city-dweller knows it +from the bloom and foliage of these same windows. + +Then it is that the spring "get away" urge is felt by each prisoner, by +those able to obey it, and by those, alike, who must wear it down in +the groomed and sophisticated wildness of the city parks. + +On a morning late in May Mrs. Bines and her daughter were at breakfast. + +"Isn't Percival coming?" asked his mother. "Everything will be cold." + +"Can't say," Psyche answered. "I don't even know if he came in last +night. But don't worry about cold things. You can't get them too cold +for Perce at breakfast, nowadays. He takes a lot of ice-water and a +little something out of the decanter, and maybe some black coffee." + +"Yes, and I'm sure it's bad for him. He doesn't look a bit healthy and +hasn't since he quit eating breakfast. He used to be such a hearty +eater at breakfast, steaks and bacon and chops and eggs and waffles. It +was a sight to see him eat; and since he's quit taking anything but +that cold stuff he's lost his colour and his eyes don't look right. I +know what he's got hold of--it's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I heard about +it from Mrs. Balldridge when we came here last fall. I never did +believe in it, either." + +The object of her solicitude entered in dressing-gown and slippers. + +"I'm just telling Psyche that this no-breakfast fad is hurting your +health, my son. Now do come and eat like you used to. You began to look +bad as soon as you left off your breakfast. It's a silly fad, that's +what it is. You can't tell _me!_" + +The young man stared at his mother until he had mastered her meaning. +Then he put both hands to his head and turned to the sideboard as if to +conceal his emotion. + +"That's it," he said, as he busied himself with a tall glass and the +cracked ice. "It's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I didn't think you knew +about it. The fact is," he continued, pouring out a measure of brandy, +and directing the butler to open a bottle of soda, "we all eat too +much. After a night of sound sleep we awaken refreshed and buoyant, all +our forces replenished; thirsty, of course, but not hungry"--he sat +down to the table and placed both hands again to his head--"and we have +no need of food. Yet such is the force of custom that we deaden +ourselves for the day by tanking up on coarse, loathsome stuff like +bacon. Ugh! Any one would think, the way you two eat so early in the +day, that you were a couple of cave-dwellers,--the kind that always +loaded up when they had a chance because it might be a week before they +got another." + +He drained his glass and brightened visibly. + +"Now, why not be reasonable?" he continued, pleadingly. "You know there +is plenty of food. I have observed it being brought into town in huge +wagon-loads in the early morning on many occasions. Why do you want to +eat it all at one sitting? No one's going to starve you. Why stupefy +yourselves when, by a little nervy self-denial, you can remain as fresh +and bright and clear-headed as I am at this moment? Why doesn't a fire +make its own escape, Mrs. Carstep-Jamwuddle?" + +"I don't believe you feel right, either. I just know you've got an +awful headache right now. Do let the man give you a nice piece of this +steak." + +"Don't, I beg of you, Lady Ashmorton! The suggestion is extremely +repugnant to me. Besides, I'm behaving this way because I arose with +the purely humourous fancy that my head was a fine large accordeon, and +that some meddler had drawn it out too far. I'm sportively pretending +that I can press it back into shape. Now you and sis never get up with +any such light poetic notion as that. You know you don't--don't attempt +to deceive me." He glanced over the table with swift disapproval. + +"Strawberries, oatmeal, rolls, steak three inches thick, bacon, +omelette--oh, that I should live to see this day! It's disgraceful! And +at your age--before your own innocent woman-child, and leading her into +the same excesses. Do you know what that breakfast is? No; I'll tell +you. That breakfast is No. 78 in that book of Mrs. Rorer's, and she +expressly warns everybody that it can be eaten safely only by +steeple-climbers, piano-movers, and sea-captains. Really, Mrs. +Wrangleberry, I blush for you." + +"I don't care how you go on. You ain't looked well for months." + +"But think of my great big heart--a heart like an ox,"--he seemed on +the verge of tears--"and to think that you, a woman I have never +treated with anything but respect since we met in Honduras in the fall +of '93--to think _you_ should throw it up to my own face that I'm not +beautiful. Others there are, thank God, who can look into a man's heart +and prize him for what he is--not condemn him for his mere superficial +blemishes." + +"And I just know you've got in with a fast set. I met Mr. Milbrey +yesterday in the corridor--" + +"Did he tell you how to make a lovely asparagus short-cake or +something?" + +"He told me those men you go with so much are dreadful gamblers, and +that when you all went to Palm Beach last February you played poker for +money night and day, and you told me you went for your health!" + +"Oh, he did, did he? Well, I didn't get anything else. He's a dear old +soul, if you've got the copper handy. If that man was a woman he'd be a +warm neighbourhood gossip. He'd be the nice kind old lady that _starts_ +things, that's what Hoddy Milbrey would be." + +"And you said yourself you played poker most of the time when you went +to Aiken on the car last month." + +"To be honest with you, ma, we did play poker. Say, they took it off of +me so fast I could feel myself catching cold." + +"There, you see--and you really ought to wear one of those chamois-skin +chest protectors in this damp climate." + +"Well, we'll see. If I can find one that an ace-full won't go through +I'll snatch it so quick the man'll think he's being robbed. Now I'll +join you ladies to the extent of some coffee, and then I want to know +what you two would rather do this summer _than_." + +"Of course," said Psyche, "no one stays in town in summer." + +"Exactly. And I've chartered a steam yacht as big as this hotel--all +but--But what I want to know is whether you two care to bunk on it or +whether you'd rather stay quietly at some place, Newport perhaps, and +maybe take a cruise with me now and then." + +"Oh, that would be good fun. But here's ma getting so I can't do a +thing with her, on account of all those beggars and horrid people down +in the slums." + +Mrs. Bines looked guilty and feebly deprecating. It was quite true that +in her own way she had achieved a reputation for prodigality not +inferior to that acquired by her children in ways of their own. + +"You know it's so, ma," the daughter went on, accusingly. "One night +last winter when you were away we dined at the Balldridge's, in +Eighty-sixth Street, and the pavements were so sleety the horses +couldn't stand, so Colonel Balldridge brought us home in the Elevated, +about eleven o'clock. Well, at one of the stations a big policeman got +on with a little baby all wrapped up in red flannel. He'd found it in +an area-way, nearly covered with snow--where some one had left it, and +he was taking it down to police-headquarters, he said. Well, ma went +crazy right away. She made him undo it, and then she insisted on +holding it all the way down to Thirty-third Street. One man said it +might be President of the United States, some day; and Colonel +Balldridge said, 'Yes, it has unknown possibilities--it may even be a +President's wife'--just like that. But I thought ma would be demented. +It was all fat and so warm and sleepy it could hardly hold its eyes +open, and I believe she'd have kept it then and there if the policeman +would have let her. She made him promise to get it a bottle of warm +milk the first thing, and borrowed twenty dollars of the colonel to +give to the policeman to get it things with, and then all the way down +she talked against the authorities for allowing such things--as if they +could help it--and when we got home she cried--you _know_ you did, +ma--and you pretended it was toothache--and ever since then she's been +perfectly daft about babies. Why, whenever she sees a woman going along +with one she thinks the poor thing is going to leave it some place; and +now she's in with those charity workers and says she won't leave New +York at all this summer." + +"I don't care," protested the guilty mother, "it would have frozen to +death in just a little while, and it's done so often. Why, up at the +Catholic Protectory they put out a basket at the side door, so a body +can leave their baby in it and ring the bell and run away; and they get +one twice a week sometimes; and this was such a sweet, fat little baby +with big blue eyes, and its forehead wrinkled, and it was all puckered +up around its little nose--" + +"And that isn't the worst of it," the relentless daughter broke in. +"She gets begging letters by the score and gives money to all sorts of +people, and a man from the Charities Organisation, who had heard about +it, came and warned her that they were impostors--only she doesn't +care. Do you know, there was a poor old blind woman with a dismal, +wheezy organ down at Broadway and Twenty-third Street--the organ would +hardly play at all, and just one wretched tune--only the woman wasn't +blind at all we found out--and ma bought her a nice new organ that cost +seventy-five dollars and had it taken up to her. Well, she found out +through this man from the Organisation that the woman had pawned the +new organ for twenty dollars and was still playing on the old one. She +didn't want a new one because it was too cheerful; it didn't make +people sad when they heard it, like her old one did. And yesterday ma +bought an Indian--" + +"A what?" asked her brother, in amazement. + +"An Indian--a tobacco sign." + +"You don't mean it? One of those lads that stand out in front and peer +under their hands to see what palefaces are moving into the house +across the street? Say, ma, what you going to do with him? There isn't +much room here, you know." + +"I didn't buy him for myself," replied Mrs. Bines, with dignity; "I +wouldn't want such an object." + +"She bought it," explained his sister, "for an Italian woman who keeps +a little tobacco-shop down in Rivington Street. A man goes around to +repaint them, you know, but hers was so battered that this man told her +it wasn't worth painting again, and she'd better get another, and the +woman said she didn't know what to do because they cost twenty-five +dollars and one doesn't last very long. The bad boys whittle him and +throw him down, and the people going along the street put their shoes +up to tie them and step on his feet, and they scratch matches on his +face, and when she goes out and says that isn't right they tell her +she's too fresh. And so ma gave her twenty-five dollars for a new one." + +"But she has to support five children, and her husband hasn't been able +to work for three years, since he fell through a fire-escape where he +was sleeping one hot night," pleaded Mrs. Bines, "and I think I'd +rather stay here this summer. Just think of all those poor babies when +the weather gets hot. I never thought there were so many babies in the +world." + +"Well, have your own way," said her son. "If you've started out to look +after all the babies in New York you won't have any time left to play +the races, I'll promise you that." + +"Why, my son, I never--" + +"But sis here would probably rather do other things." + +"I think," said Psyche, "I'd like Newport--Mrs. Drelmer says I +shouldn't think of going any place else. Only, of course, I can't go +there alone. She says she would be glad to chaperone me, but her +husband hasn't had a very good year in Wall Street, and she's afraid +she won't be able to go herself." + +"Maybe," began Mrs. Bines, "if you'd offer--" + +"Oh! she'd be offended," exclaimed Psyche. + +"I'm not so sure of that," said her brother, "not if you suggest it in +the right way--put it on the ground that you'll be quite helpless +without her, and that she'd oblige you world without end and all that. +The more I see of people here the more I think they're quite reasonable +in little matters like that. They look at them in the right light. Just +lead up to it delicately with Mrs. Drelmer and see. Then if she's +willing to go with you, your summer will be provided for; except that +we shall both have to look in upon Mrs. Juzzlebraggin here now and then +to see that she doesn't overplay the game and get sick herself, and +make sure that they don't get her vaccination mark away from her. And, +ma, you'll have to come off on the yacht once or twice, just to give it +tone." + +It appeared that Percival had been right in supposing that Mrs. Drelmer +might be led to regard Psyche's proposal in a light entirely rational. +She was reluctant, at first, it is true. + +"It's awfully dear of you to ask me, child, but really, I'm afraid it +will be quite impossible. Oh!--for reasons which you, of course, with +your endless bank-account, cannot at all comprehend. You see we old New +York families have a secure position _here_ by right of birth; and even +when we are forced to practice little economies in dress and household +management it doesn't count against us--so long as we _stay_ here. Now, +Newport is different. One cannot economise gracefully there--not even +one of _us_. There are quiet and very decent places for those of us +that must. But at Newport one must not fall behind in display. A sense +of loyalty to the others, a _noblesse oblige_, compels one to be as +lavish as those flamboyant outsiders who go there. One doesn't want +them to report, you know, that such and such families of our smart set +are falling behind for lack of means. So, while we of the real stock +are chummy enough here, where there is only _us_ in a position to +observe ourselves, there is a sort of tacit agreement that only those +shall go to Newport who are able to keep up the pace. One need not, for +one season or so, be a cottager; but, for example, in the matter of +dress, one must be sinfully lavish. Really, child, I could spend three +months in the Engadine for the price of one decent month at Newport; +the parasols, gloves, fans, shoes, 'frillies'--enough to stock the Rue +de la Paix, to say nothing of gowns--but why do I run on? Here am I +with a few little simple summer things, fit enough indeed for the quiet +place we shall reach for July and August, but ab-so-lute-ly impossible +for Newport--so say no more about it, dear. You're a sweet--but it's +madness to think of it." + +"And I had," reported Psyche to her mother that night, "such a time +getting her to agree. At first she wouldn't listen at all. Then, after +I'd just fairly begged her, she admitted she might because she's taken +such a fancy to me and hates to leave me--but she was sensitive about +what people might say. I told her they'd never have a chance to say a +word; and she was anxious Perce shouldn't know, because she says he's +so cynical about New York people since that Milbrey girl made such a +set for him; and at last she called me a dear and consented, though +she'd been looking forward to a quiet summer. To-morrow early we start +out for the shops." + +So it came that the three members of the Bines family pursued during +the summer their respective careers of diversion under conditions most +satisfactory to each. + +The steam yacht _Viluca_, chartered by Percival, was put into +commission early in June. Her first cruise of ten days was a signal +triumph. His eight guests were the men with whom he had played poker so +tirelessly during the winter. Perhaps the most illuminating log of that +cruise may be found in the reply of one of them whom Percival invited +for another early in July. + +"Much obliged, old man, but I haven't touched a drop now in over three +weeks. My doctor says I must let it be for at least two months, and I +mean to stick by him. Awfully kind of you, though!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee + + +From the landing on a still morning in late July, Mrs. Drelmer surveyed +the fleet of sailing and steam yachts at anchor in Newport harbour. She +was beautifully and expensively gowned in nun's grey chiffon; her toque +was of chiffon and lace, and she held a pale grey parasol, its ivory +handle studded with sapphires. She fixed a glass upon one of the white, +sharp-nosed steam yachts that rode in the distance near Goat Island. +"Can you tell me if that's the _Viluca?_" she asked a sailor landing +from a dinghy, "that boat just astern of the big schooner?" + +"No ma'am; that's the _Alta_, Commodore Weckford." + +"Looking for some one?" inquired a voice, and she turned to greet Fred +Milbrey descending the steps. + +"Oh! Good-morning! yes; but they've not come in, evidently. It's the +_Viluca_--Mr. Bines, you know; he's bringing his sister back to me. And +you?" + +"I'm expecting the folks on Shepler's craft. Been out two weeks now, +and were to have come down from New London last night. They're not in +sight either. Perhaps the gale last night kept them back." + +Mrs. Drelmer glanced above to where some one seemed to be waiting for +him. + +"Who's your perfectly gorgeous companion? You've been so devoted to her +for three days that you've hardly bowed to old friends. Don't you want +her to know any one?" + +The young man laughed with an air of great shrewdness. + +"Come, now, Mrs. Drelmer, you're too good a friend of Mauburn's--about +his marrying, I mean. You fixed him to tackle me low the very first +half of one game we know about, right when I was making a fine run down +the field, too. I'm going to have better interference this time." + +"Silly! Your chances are quite as good as his there this moment." + +"You may think so; I know better." + +"And of course, in any other affair, I'd never think of--" + +"P'r'aps so; but I'd rather not chance it just yet." + +"But who is she? What a magnificent mop of hair. It's like that rich +piece of ore Mr. Bines showed us, with copper and gold in it." + +"Well, I don't mind telling you she's the widow of a Southern +gentleman, Colonel Brench Wybert." + +"Ah, indeed! I did notice that two-inch band of black at the bottom of +her accordeon-plaited petticoat. I'll wager that's a _Rue de la Paix_ +idea of mourning for one's dead husband. And she confides her grief to +the world with such charming discretion. Half the New York women can't +hold their skirts up as daintily as she does it. I dare say, now, her +tears could be dried?--by the right comforter?" + +Milbrey looked important. + +"And I don't mind telling you the late Colonel Brench Wybert left her a +fortune made in Montana copper. Can't say how much, but two weeks ago +she asked the governor's advice about where to put a spare million and +a half in cash. Not so bad, eh?" + +"Oh, this new plutocracy! Where _do_ they get it?" + +"How old, now, should you say she was?" + +Mrs. Drelmer glanced up again at the colour-scheme of heliotrope seated +in a victoria upholstered in tan brocade. + +"Thirty-five, I should say--about." + +"Just twenty-eight." + +"Just about what I should say--she'd say." + +"Come now, you women can't help it, can you? But you can't deny she's +stunning?" + +"Indeed I can't! She's a beauty--and, good luck to you. Is that the +_Viluca_ coming in? No; it has two stacks; and it's not your people +because the _Lotus_ is black. I shall go back to the hotel. Bertie +Trafford brought me over on the trolley. I must find him first and do +an errand in Thames Street." + +At the head of the stairs they parted, Milbrey joining the lady who had +waited for him. + +Hers was a person to gladden the eye. Her figure, tall and full, was of +a graceful and abundant perfection of contours; her face, precisely +carved and showing the faintly generous rounding of maturity, was warm +in colouring, with dark eyes, well shaded and languorous; her full lips +betrayed their beauty in a ready and fascinating laugh; her voice was a +rich, warm contralto; and her speech bore just a hint of the soft +r-less drawl of the South. + +She had blazed into young Milbrey's darkness one night in the palm-room +of the Hightower Hotel, escorted by a pleased and beefy youth of his +acquaintance, who later told him of their meeting at the American +Embassy in Paris, and who unsuspectingly presented him. Since their +meeting the young man had been her abject cavalier. The elder Milbrey, +too, had met her at his son's suggestion. He had been as deeply +impressed by her helplessness in the matter of a million and a half +dollars of idle funds as she had been by his aristocratic bearing and +enviable position in New York society. + +"Sorry to have kept you waiting. The _Lotus_ hasn't come in sight yet. +Let's loaf over to the beach and have some tall, cold ones." + +"Who was your elderly friend?" she asked, as they were driven slowly up +the old-fashioned street. + +"Oh! that's Joe Drelmer. She's not so old, you know; not a day over +forty, Joe can't be; fine old stock; she was a Leydenbroek and her +husband's family is one of the very oldest in New York. Awfully +exclusive. Down to meet friends, but they'd not shown up, either. That +reminds me; they're friends of ours, too, and I must have you meet +them. They're from your part of the country--the Bines." + +"The--ah--" + +"Bines; family from Montana; decent enough sort; didn't know but you +might have heard of them, being from your part of the country." + +"Ah, I never think of that vulgar West as 'my part of the country' at +all. _My_ part is dear old Virginia, where my father, General Tulver, +and his father and his father's father all lived the lives of country +gentlemen, after the family came here from Devonshire. It was there +Colonel Wybert wooed me, though we later removed to New Orleans." Mrs. +Wybert called it "New _Aw_-leens." + +"But it was not until my husband became interested in Montana mines +that we ventured into that horrid West. So _do_ remember not to +confound me with your Western--ah--Bones,--was it not?" + +"No, Bines; they'll be here presently, and you can meet them, anyway." + +"Is there an old fellow--a queer old character, with them?" + +"No, only a son and daughter and the mother." + +"Of course I sha'n't mind meeting any friends of yours," she said, with +charming graciousness, "but, really, I always understood that you +Knickerbockers were so vastly more exclusive. I do recall this name +now. I remember hearing tales of the family in Spokane. They're a type, +you know. One sees many of the sort there. They make a strike in the +mines and set up ridiculous establishments regardless of expense. You +see them riding in their carriages with two men in the box--red-handed, +grizzled old vulgarians who've roughed it in the mountains for twenty +years with a pack-mule and a ham and a pick-axe--with their jug of +whiskey--and their frowsy red-faced wives decked out in impossible +finery. Yes, I do recall this family. There is a daughter, you say?" + +"Yes; Miss Psyche Bines." + +"Psyche; ah, yes; it's the same family. I recollect perfectly now. You +know they tell the funniest tales of them out there. Her mother found +the name 'Psyche' in a book, and liked it, but she pronounced it +'Pishy,' and so the girl was called until she became old enough to go +to school and learned better." + +"Dear me; fancy now!" + +"And there are countless tales of the mother's queer sayings. Once a +gentleman whom they were visiting in San Francisco was showing her a +cabinet of curios. 'Now, don't you find the Pompeiian figurines +exquisite?' he asked her. The poor creature, after looking around her +helplessly, declared that she _did_ like them; but that she liked the +California nectarines better--they were so much juicier." + +"You don't tell me; gad! that was a good one. Oh, well, she's a meek, +harmless old soul, and really, my family's not the snobbish sort, you +know." + +In from the shining sea late that afternoon steamed the _Viluca_. As +her chain was rattling through the hawse-hole, Percival, with his +sister and Mauburn, came on deck. + +"Why, there's the _Chicago_--Higbee's yacht." + +"That's the boat," said Mauburn, "that's been piling the white water up +in front of her all afternoon trying to overhaul us." + +"There's Millie Higbee and old Silas, now." + +"And, as I live," exclaimed Psyche, "there's the Baron de Palliac +between them!" + +"Sure enough," said her brother. "We must call ma up to see him dressed +in those sweet, pretty yachting flannels. Oh, there you are!" as Mrs. +Bines joined them. "Just take this glass and treat yourself to a look +at your old friend, the baron. You'll notice he has one +on--see--they're waving to us." + +"Doesn't the baron look just too distinguished beside Mr. Higbee?" said +Psyche, watching them. + +"And doesn't Higbee look just too Chicago beside the baron?" replied +her brother. + +The Higbee craft cut her way gracefully up to an anchorage near the +_Viluca_, and launches from both yachts now prepared to land their +people. At the landing Percival telephoned for a carriage. While they +were waiting the Higbee party came ashore. + +"Hello!" said Higbee; "if I'd known that was you we was chasing I'd +have put on steam and left you out of sight." + +"It's much better you didn't recognise us; these boiler explosions are +so messy." + +"Know the baron here?" + +"Of course we know the baron. Ah, baron!" + +"Ah, ha! very charmed, Mr. Bines and Miss Bines; it is of a long time +that we are not encountered." + +He was radiant; they had never before seen him thus. Mrs. Higbee +hovered near him with an air of proud ownership. Pretty Millie Higbee +posed gracefully at her side. + +"This your carriage?" asked Higbee; "I must telephone for one myself. +Going to the Mayson? So are we. See you again to-night. We're off for +Bar Harbour early to-morrow." + +"Looks as if there were something doing there," said Percival, as they +drove off the wharf. + +"Of course, stupid!" said his sister; "that's plain; only it isn't +doing, it's already done. Isn't it funny, ma?" + +"For a French person," observed Mrs. Bines, guardedly, "I always liked +the baron." + +"Of course," said her son, to Mauburn's mystification, "and the noblest +men on this earth have to wear 'em." + +The surmise regarding the Baron de Palliac and Millie Higbee proved to +be correct. Percival came upon Higbee in the meditative enjoyment of +his after-dinner cigar, out on the broad piazza. + +"I s'pose you're on," he began; "the girl's engaged to that Frenchy." + +"I congratulate him," said Percival, heartily. + +"A real baron," continued Higbee. "I looked him up and made sure of +that; title's good as wheat. God knows that never would 'a' got me, but +the madam was set on it, and the girl too, and I had to give in. It +seemed to be a question of him or some actor. The madam said I'd had my +way about Hank, puttin' his poor stubby nose to the grindstone out +there in Chicago, and makin' a plain insignificant business man out of +him, and I'd ought to let her have her way with the girl, being that I +couldn't expect her to go to work too. So Mil will work the society +end. I says to the madam, I says, 'All right, have your own way; and +we'll see whether you make more out of the girl than I make out of the +boy,' I says. But it ain't going to be _all_ digging up. I've made the +baron promise to go into business with me, and though I ain't told him +yet, I'm going to put out a line of Higbee's thin-sliced ham and bacon +in glass jars with his crest on 'em for the French trade. This baron'll +cost me more'n that sign I showed you coming out of the old town, and +he won't give any such returns, but the crest on them jars, printed in +three colours and gold, will be a bully ad; and it kept the women +quiet," he concluded, apologetically. + +"The baron's a good fellow," said Percival. + +"Sure," replied Higbee. "They're all good fellows. Hank had the makin's +of a good fellow in him. And say, young man, that reminds me; I hear +all kinds of reports about your getting to be one yourself. Now I knew +your father, Daniel J. Bines, and I liked him, and I like you; and I +hope you won't get huffy, but from what they tell me you ain't doing +yourself a bit of good." + +"Don't believe all you hear," laughed Percival. + +"Well, I'll tell you one thing plain, if you was my son, you'd fade +right back to the packing-house along with Henry-boy. It's a pity you +ain't got some one to shut down on you that way. They tell me you got +your father's capacity for carrying liquor, and I hear you're known +from one end of Broadway to the other as the easiest mark that ever +came to town. They say you couldn't walk in your sleep without spending +money. Now, excuse my plain speaking, but them are two reputations that +are mighty hard to live up to beyond a certain limit. They've put lots +of good weight-carriers off the track before they was due to go. I hear +you got pinched in that wheat deal of Burman's?" + +"Oh, only for a few hundred thousand. The reports of our losses were +exaggerated. And we stood to win over--" + +"Yes--you stood to win, and then you went 'way back and set down,' as +the saying is. But it ain't the money. You've got too much of that, +anyway, Lord knows. It's this everlasting hullabaloo and the drink that +goes with it, and the general trifling sort of a dub it makes out of a +young fellow. It's a pity you ain't my son; that's all I got to say. I +want to see you again along in September after I get back from San +Francisco; I'm going to try to get you interested in some business. +That'd be good for you." + +"You're kind, Mr. Higbee, and really I appreciate all you say; but +you'll see me settle down pretty soon, quick as I get my bearings, and +be a credit to the State of Montana." + +"I say," said Mauburn, coming up, "do you see that angel of the flaming +hair with that young Milbrey chap?" + +The two men gazed where he was indicating. + +"By Jove! she _is_ a stunner, isn't she?" exclaimed Percival. + +"Might be one of Shepler's party," suggested Higbee. "He has the +Milbrey family out with him, and I see they landed awhile ago. You can +bet that party's got more than her good looks, if the Milbreys are +taking any interest in her. Well, I've got to take the madam and the +young folks over to the Casino. So long!" + +Fred Milbrey came up. + +"Hello, you fellows!" + +"Who is she?" asked the two in faultless chorus. + +"We're going over to hear the music awhile. Come along and I'll present +you." + +"Rot the luck!" said Mauburn; "I'm slated to take Mrs. Drelmer and Miss +Bines to a musicale at the Van Lorrecks, where I'm certain to fall +asleep trying to look as if I quite liked it, you know." + +"You come," Milbrey urged Percival. "My sister's there and the governor +and mother." + +But for the moment Percival was reflecting, going over in his mind the +recent homily of Higbee. Higbee's opinion of the Milbreys also came +back to him. + +"Sorry, old man, but I've a headache, so you must excuse me for +to-night. But I'll tell you, we'll all come over in the morning and go +for a dip with you." + +"Good! Stop for us at the Laurels, about eleven, or p'r'aps I'll stroll +over and get you. I'm expecting some mail to be forwarded to this +hotel." + +He rejoined his companion, who had been chatting with a group of women +near the door, and they walked away. + +"_Isn't_ she a stunner!" exclaimed Mauburn. + +"She is a _peach!_" replied Percival, in tones of deliberate and +intense conviction. "Whoever she is, I'll meet her to-morrow and ask +her what she means by pretending to see anything in Milbrey. This thing +has gone too far!" + +Mauburn looked wistful but said nothing. After he had gone away with +Mrs. Drelmer and Psyche, who soon came for him, Percival still sat +revolving the paternal warnings of Higbee. He considered them +seriously. He decided he ought to think more about what he was doing +and what he should do. He decided, too, that he could think better with +something mechanical to occupy his hands. He took a cab and was driven +to the local branch of his favourite temple of chance. His host +welcomed him at the door. + +"Ah, Mr. Bines, a little recreation, eh? Your favourite dealer, Dutson, +is here to-night, if you prefer bank." + +Passing through the crowded, brightly-lighted rooms to one of the faro +tables, where his host promptly secured a seat for him, he played +meditatively until one o'clock; adding materially to his host's reasons +for believing he had done wisely to follow his New York clients to +their summer annex. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House + + +In the shade of the piazza at the Hotel Mayson next morning there was a +sorting out of the mail that had been forwarded from the hotel in New +York. The mail of Mrs. Bines was a joy to her son. There were three +conventional begging letters, heart-breaking in their pathos, and +composed with no mean literary skill. There was a letter from one of +the maids at the Hightower for whose mother Mrs. Bines had secured +employment in the family of a friend; a position, complained the +daughter, "in which she finds constant hard labour caused by the +quantity expected of her to attend to." There was also a letter from +the lady's employer, saying she would not so much mind her laziness if +she did not aggravate it by drink. Mrs. Bines sighed despairingly for +the recalcitrant. + +"And who's this wants more help until her husband's profession picks up +again?" asked Percival. + +"Oh, that's a poor little woman I helped. They call her husband 'the +Terrible Iceman.'" + +"But this is just the season for icemen!" + +"Well," confessed his mother, with manifest reluctance, "he's a +prize-fighter or something." + +Percival gasped. + +"--and he had a chance to make some money, only the man he fought +against had some of his friends drug this poor fellow before +their--their meeting--and so of course he lost. If he hadn't been +drugged he would have won the money, and now there's a law passed +against it, and of course it isn't a very nice trade, but I think the +law ought to be changed. He's got to live." + +"I don't see why; not if he's the man I saw box one night last winter. +He didn't have a single excuse for living. And what are these +tickets,--'Grand Annual Outing and Games of the Egg-Candlers & Butter +Drivers' Association at Sulzer's Harlem River Park. Ticket Admitting +Lady and Gent, One dollar.' Heavens! What is it?" + +"I promised to take ten tickets," said Mrs. Bines. "I must send them a +check." + +"But what are they?" her son insisted; "egg-candlers may be all right, +but what are butter-drivers? Are you quite sure it's respectable? Why, +I ask you, should an honest man wish to drive butter? That shows you +what life in a great city does for the morally weak. Look out you don't +get mixed up in it yourself, that's all I ask. They'll have you driving +butter first thing you know. Thank heaven! thus far no Bines has ever +candled an egg--and as for driving butter--" he stopped, with a shudder +of extreme repugnance. + +"And here's a notice about the excursions of the St. John's Guild. I've +been on four already, and I want you to get me back to New York right +away for the others. If you could only see all those babies we take out +on the floating hospital, with two men in little boats behind to pick +up those that fall overboard--and really it's a wonder any of them live +through the summer in that cruel city. Down in Hester Street the other +day four of them had a slice of watermelon from Mr. Slivinsky's stand +on the corner, and when I saw them they were actually eating the hard, +green rind. It was enough to kill a horse." + +"Well, have your own fun," said her son, cheerfully. "Here's a letter +from Uncle Peter I must read." + +He drew his chair aside and began the letter: + +"MONTANA CITY, July 21st, 1900. + +"DEAR PETE:--Your letter and Martha's rec'd, and glad to hear from you. +I leave latter part of this week for the mtns. Late setting out this +season acct. rhumatiz caught last winter that laid me up all spring. It +was so mortal dull here with you folks gone that I went out with a +locating party to get the M. P. branch located ahead of the Short Line +folks. So while you were having your fun there I was having mine here, +and I had it good and plenty. + +"The worst weather I ever did see, and I have seen some bad. Snow six +to eight feet on a level and the mercury down as low as 62 with an +ornery fierce wind. We lost four horses froze to death, and all but two +of the men got froze up bad. We reached the head of Madison Valley Feb. +19, north of Red Bank Canyon, but it wasn't as easy as it sounds. + +"Jan. 8, after getting out of supplies, we abandoned our camp at +Riverside and moved 10 m. down the river carrying what we could on our +backs. Met pack train with a few supplies that night, and next day I +took part of the force in boat to meet over-due load of supplies. We +got froze in the ice. Left party to break through and took Billy Brue +and went ahead to hunt team. Billy and me lived four days on one lb. +bacon. The second day Billy took some sickness so he could not eat +hardly any food; the next day he was worse, and the last day he was so +bad he said the bare sight of food made him gag. I think he was a liar, +because he wasn't troubled none after we got to supplies again, but I +couldn't do anything with him, and so I lived high and come out slick +and fat. Finally we found the team coming in. They had got stuck in the +river and we had to carry out the load on our backs, waist-deep in +running water. I see some man in the East has a fad for breaking the +ice in the river and going swimming. I would not do it for any fad. +Slept in snow-drift that night in wet clothes, mercury 40 below. Was 18 +days going 33 miles. Broke wagon twice, then broke sled and crippled +one horse. Packed the other five and went on till snow was too deep. +Left the horses where four out of five died and carried supplies the +rest of the way on our backs. Moved camp again on our backs and got +caught in a blizzard and nearly all of us got our last freezeup that +time. Finally a Chinook opened the river and I took a boat up to get +the abandoned camp. Got froze in harder than ever and had to walk out. +Most of the men quit on account of frozen feet, etc., etc. They are a +getting to be a sissy lot these days, rather lie around a hot stove all +winter. + +"I had to pull chain, cut brush, and shovel snow after the 1st Feb. Our +last stage was from Fire Hole Basin to Madison Valley, 45 m. It was +hell. Didn't see the sun but once after Feb. 1, and it stormed +insessant, making short sights necessary, and with each one we would +have to dig a hole to the ground and often a ditch or a tunnel through +the snow to look through. The snow was soft to the bottom and an +instrument would sink through." + +"Here's a fine letter to read on a hot day," called Percival. "I'm +catching cold." He continued. + +"We have a very good line, better than from Beaver Canon, our maps +filed and construction under way; all grading done and some track laid. +That's what you call hustling. The main drawback is that Red Bank +Canon. It's a regular avalanche for eight miles. The snow slides just +fill the river. One just above our camp filled it for 1/4 mile and 40 +feet deep and cut down 3 ft. trees like a razor shaves your face. I had +to run to get out of the way. Reached Madison Valley with one tent and +it looked more like mosquito bar than canvas. The old cloth wouldn't +hardly hold the patches together. I slept out doors for six weeks. I +got frost-bit considerable and the rhumatiz. I tell you, at 75 I ain't +the man I used to be. I find I need a stout tent and a good warm +sleeping bag for them kind of doings nowdays. + +"Well, this Western country would be pretty dull for you I suppose +going to balls and parties every night with the Astors and Vanderbilts. +I hope you ain't cut loose none. + +"By the way, that party that ground-sluiced us, Coplen he met a party +in Spokane the other day that seen her in Paris last spring. She was +laying in a stock of duds and the party gethered that she was going +back to New York--" + +The Milbreys, father and son, came up and greeted the group on the +piazza. + +"I've just frozen both ears reading a letter from my grandfather," said +Percival. "Excuse me one moment and I'll be done." + +"All right, old chap. I'll see if there's some mail for me. Dad can +chat with the ladies. Ah, here's Mrs. Drelmer. Mornin'!" + +Percival resumed his letter: + +"--going back to New York and make the society bluff. They say she's +got the face to do it all right. Coplen learned she come out here with +a gambler from New Orleans and she was dealing bank herself up to +Wallace for a spell while he was broke. This gambler he was the +slickest short-card player ever struck hereabouts. He was too good. He +was so good they shot him all up one night last fall over to Wardner. +She hadn't lived with him for some time then, though Coplen says they +was lawful man and wife, so I guess maybe she was glad when he got it +good in the chest-place--" + +Fred Milbrey came out of the hotel office. + +"No mail," he said. "Come, let's be getting along. Finish your letter +on the way, Bines." + +"I've just finished," said Percival, glancing down the last sheet. + +"--Coplen says she is now calling herself Mrs. Brench Wybert or some +such name. I just thought I'd tell you in case you might run acrost her +and--" + +"Come along, old chap," urged Milbrey; "Mrs. Wybert will be waiting." +His father had started off with Psyche. Mrs. Bines and Mrs. Drelmer +were preparing to follow. + +"I beg your pardon," said Percival, "I didn't quite catch the name." + +"I say Mrs. Wybert and mother will be waiting--come along!" + +"What name?" + +"Wybert--Mrs. Brench Wybert--my friend--what's the matter?" + +"We can't go;--that is--we can't meet her. Sis, come back a moment," he +called to Psyche, and then: + +"I want a word with you and your father, Milbrey." + +The two joined the elder Milbrey and the three strolled out to the +flower-bordered walk, while Psyche Bines went, wondering, back to her +mother. + +"What's all the row?" inquired Fred Milbrey. + +"You've been imposed upon. This woman--this Mrs. Brench Wybert--there +can be no mistake; you are sure that's the name?" + +"Of course I'm sure; she's the widow of a Southern gentleman, Colonel +Brench Wybert, from New Orleans." + +"Yes, the same woman. There is no doubt that you have been imposed +upon. The thing to do is to drop her quick--she isn't right." + +"In what way has my family been imposed upon, Mr. Bines?" asked the +elder Milbrey, somewhat perturbed; "Mrs. Wybert is a lady of family and +large means--" + +"Yes, I know, she has, or did have a while ago, two million dollars in +cold cash." + +"Well, Mr. Bines--?" + +"Can't you take my word for it, that she's not right--not the woman for +your wife and daughter to meet?" + +"Look here, Bines," the younger Milbrey spluttered, "this won't do, you +know. If you've anything to say against Mrs. Wybert, you'll have to say +it out and you'll have to be responsible to me, sir." + +"Take my word that you've been imposed upon; she's not--not the kind of +person you would care to know, to be thrown--" + +"I and my family have found her quite acceptable, Mr. Bines," +interposed the father, stiffly. "Her deportment is scrupulously +correct, and I am in her confidence regarding certain very extensive +investments--she cannot be an impostor, sir!" + +"But I tell you she isn't right," insisted Percival, warmly. + +"Oh, I see," said the younger Milbrey--his face clearing all at once. +"It's all right, dad, come on!" + +"If you insist," said Percival, "but none of us can meet her." + +"It's all right, dad--I understand--" + +"Nor can we know any one who receives her." + +"Really, sir," began the elder Milbrey, "your effrontery in assuming to +dictate the visiting list of my family is overwhelming." + +"If you won't take my word I shall have to dictate so far as I have any +personal control over it." + +"Don't mind him, dad--I know all about it, I tell you--I'll explain +later to you." + +"Why," exclaimed Percival, stung to the revelation, "that woman, this +woman now waiting with your wife and daughter, was my--" + +"Stop, Mr. Bines--not another word, if you please!" The father raised +his hand in graceful dismissal. "Let this terminate the acquaintance +between our families! No more, sir!" and he turned away, followed by +his son. As they walked out through the grounds and turned up the +street the young man spoke excitedly, while his father slightly bent +his head to listen, with an air of distant dignity. + +"What's the trouble, Perce?" asked his sister, as he joined the group +on the piazza. + +"The trouble is that we've just had to cut that fine old New York +family off our list." + +"What, not the Milbreys!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer. + +"The same. Now mind, sis, and you, ma--you're not to know them +again--and mind this--if any one else wants to present you to a Mrs. +Wybert--a Mrs. Brench Wybert--don't you let them. Understand?" + +"I thought as much," said Mrs. Drelmer; "she acted just the least +little bit _too_ right." + +"Well, I haven't my hammer with me--but remember, now, sis, it's for +something else than because her father's cravats were the ready-to-wear +kind, or because her worthy old grandfather inhaled his soup. Don't +forget that." + +"As there isn't anything else to do," he suggested, a few moments +later, "why not get under way and take a run up the coast?" + +"But I must get back to my babies," said Mrs. Bines, plaintively. "Here +I've been away four days." + +"All right, ma, I suppose we shall have to take you there, only let's +get out of here right away. We can bring sis and you back, Mrs. +Drelmer, when those people we don't know get off again. There's +Mauburn; I'll tell him." + +"I'll have my dunnage down directly," said Mauburn. + +Up the street driving a pony-cart came Avice Milbrey. Obeying a quick +impulse, Percival stepped to the curb as she came opposite to him. She +pulled over. She was radiant in the fluffs of summer white, her hat and +gown touched with bits of the same vivid blue that shone in her eyes. +The impulse that had prompted him to hail her now prompted wild words. +His long habit of thought concerning her enabled him to master this +foolishness. But at least he could give her a friendly word of warning. +She greeted him with the pretty reserve in her manner that had long +marked her bearing toward him. + +"Good-morning! I've borrowed this cart of Elsie Vainer to drive down to +the yacht station for lost mail. Isn't the day perfect--and isn't this +the dearest fat, sleepy pony, with his hair in his eyes?" + +"Miss Milbrey, there's a woman who seems to be a friend of your +family--a Mrs.--" + +"Mrs. Wybert; yes, you know her?" + +"No, I'd never seen her until last night, nor heard that name until +this morning; but I know of her." + +"Yes?" + +"It became necessary just now--really, it is not fair of me to speak to +you at all--" + +"Why, pray?--not fair?" + +"I had to tell your father and brother that we could not meet Mrs. +Wybert, and couldn't know any one who received her." + +"There! I knew the woman wasn't right directly I heard her speak. +Surely a word to my father was enough." + +"But it wasn't, I'm sorry to say. Neither he nor your brother would +take my word, and when I started to give my reasons--something it would +have been very painful for me to do--your father refused to listen, and +declared the acquaintance between our families at an end." + +"Oh!" + +"It hurt me in a way I can't tell you, and now, even this talk with you +is off-side play. Miss Milbrey!" + +"Mr. Bines!" + +"I wouldn't have said what I did to your father and brother without +good reason." + +"I am sure of that, Mr. Bines." + +"Without reasons I was sure of, you know, so there could be no chance +of any mistake." + +"Your word is enough for me, Mr. Bines." + +"Miss Milbrey--you and I--there's always been something between +us--something different from what is between most people. We've never +talked straight out since I came to New York--I'll be sorry, perhaps, +for saying as much as I am saying, after awhile--but we may not talk +again at all--I'm afraid you may misunderstand me--but I must say it--I +should like to go away knowing you would have no friendship,--no +intimacy whatever with that woman." + +"I promise you I shall not, Mr. Bines; they can row if they like." + +"And yet it doesn't seem fair to have you promise as if it were a +consideration for _me_, because I've no right to ask it. But if I felt +sure that you took my word quite as if I were a stranger, and relied +upon it enough to have no communication or intercourse of any sort +whatsoever with her, it would be a great satisfaction to me." + +"I shall not meet her again. And--thank you!" There was a slight +unsteadiness once in her voice, and he could almost have sworn her eyes +showed that old brave wistfulness. + +"--and quite as if you were a stranger." + +"Thank you! and, Miss Milbrey?" + +"Yes?" + +"Your brother may become entangled in some way with this woman." + +"It's entirely possible." + +Her voice was cool and even again. + +"He might even marry her." + +"She has money, I believe; he might indeed." + +"Always money!" he thought; then aloud: + +"If you find he means to, Miss Milbrey, do anything you can to prevent +it. It wouldn't do at all, you know." + +"Thank you, Mr. Bines; I shall remember." + +"I--I think that's all--and I'm sorry we're not--our families are not +to be friends any more." + +She smiled rather painfully, with an obvious effort to be conventional. + +"_So_ sorry! Good-bye!" + +He looked after her as she drove off. She sat erect, her head straight +to the front, her trim shoulders erect, and the whip grasped firmly. He +stood motionless until the fat pony had jolted sleepily around the +corner. + +"Bines, old boy!" he said to himself, "you nearly _made_ one of +yourself there. I didn't know you had such ready capabilities for being +an ass." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage + + +At five o'clock that day the prow of the _Viluca_ cut the waters of +Newport harbour around Goat Island, and pointed for New York. + +"Now is your time," said Mrs. Drelmer to Mauburn. "I'm sure the girl +likes you, and this row with the Milbreys has cut off any chance that +cub had. Why not propose to her to-night?" + +"I _have_ seemed to be getting on," answered Mauburn. "But wait a bit. +There's that confounded girl over there. No telling what she'll do. She +might knock things on the head any moment." + +"All the more reason for prompt action, and there couldn't very well be +anything to hurt you." + +"By Jove! that's so; there couldn't, very well, could there? I'll take +your advice." + +And so it befell that Mauburn and Miss Bines sat late on deck that +night, and under the witchery of a moon that must long since have +become hardened to the spectacle, the old, old story was told, to the +accompaniment of the engine's muffled throb, and the soft purring of +the silver waters as they slipped by the boat and blended with the +creamy track astern. So little variation was there in the time-worn +tale, and in the maid's reception of it, that neither need here be told +of in detail. + +Nor were the proceedings next morning less tamely orthodox. Mrs. Bines +managed to forget her relationship of elder sister to the poor long +enough to behave as a mother ought when the heart of her daughter has +been given into a true-love's keeping. Percival deported himself +cordially. + +"I'm really glad to hear it," he said to Mauburn. "I'm sure you'll make +sis as good a husband as she'll make you a wife; and that's very good, +indeed. Let's fracture a cold quart to the future Lady Casselthorpe." + +"And to the future Lord Casselthorpe!" added Mrs. Drelmer, who was +warmly enthusiastic. + +"Such a brilliant match," she murmured to Percival, when they had +touched glasses in the after-cabin. "I know more than one New York girl +who'd have jumped at the chance." + +"We'll try to bear our honours modestly," he answered her. + +The yacht lay at her anchorage in the East River. Percival made +preparations to go ashore with his mother. + +"Stay here with the turtle-doves," he said to Mrs. Drelmer, "far enough +off, of course, to let them coo, and I'll be back with any people I can +pick up for a cruise." + +"Trust me to contract the visual and aural infirmities of the ideal +chaperone," was Mrs. Drelmer's cheerful response. "And if you should +run across that poor dear of a husband of mine, tell him not to slave +himself to death for his thoughtless butterfly of a wife, who toils +not, neither does she spin. Tell him," she added, "that I'm playing +dragon to this engaged couple. It will cheer up the poor dear." + +The city was a fiery furnace. But its prisoners were not exempt from +its heat, like certain holy ones of old. On the dock where Percival and +his mother landed was a listless throng of them, gasping for the faint +little breezes that now and then blew in from the water. A worn woman +with unkempt hair, her waist flung open at the neck, sat in a spot of +shade, and soothed a baby already grown too weak to be fretful. Mrs. +Bines spoke to her, while Percival bought a morning paper from a tiny +newsboy, who held his complete attire under one arm, his papers under +the other, and his pennies in his mouth, keeping meantime a shifty +side-glance on the policeman a block away, who might be expected to +interfere with his contemplated plunge. + +"That poor soul's been there all night," said Mrs. Bines. "She's afraid +her baby's going to die; and yet she was so cheerful and polite about +it, and when I gave her some money the poor thing blushed. I told her +to bring the baby down to the floating hospital to-morrow, but I +mistrust it won't be alive, and--oh, there's an ambulance backed up to +the sidewalk; see what the matter is." + +As Percival pushed through the outer edge of the crowd, a battered +wreck of a man past middle age was being lifted into the ambulance. His +eyes were closed, his face a dead, chalky white, and his body hung +limp. + +"Sunstroke?" asked Percival. + +The overworked ambulance surgeon, who seemed himself to be in need of +help, looked up. + +"Nope; this is a case of plain starvation. I'm nearer sunstroke myself +than he is--not a wink of sleep for two nights now. Fifty-two runs +since yesterday at this time, and the bell still ringing. Gee! but it's +hot. This lad won't ever care about the weather again, though," he +concluded, jumping on to the rear step and grasping the rails on either +side while the driver clanged his gong and started off. + +"Was it sunstroke?" asked Mrs. Bines. + +"Man with stomach trouble," answered her son, shortly. + +"They're so careless about what they eat this hot weather," Mrs. Bines +began, as they walked toward a carriage; "all sorts of heavy foods and +green fruit--" + +"Well, if you must know, this one had been careless enough not to eat +anything at all. He was starved." + +"Oh, dear! What a place! here people are starving, and look at us! Why, +we wasted enough from breakfast to feed a small family. It isn't right. +They never would allow such a thing in Montana City." + +They entered the carriage and were driven slowly up a side street where +slovenly women idled in windows and doorways and half-naked children +chased excitedly after the ice-wagons. + +"I used to think it wasn't right myself until I learned not to question +the ways of Providence." + +"Providence, your grandmother! Look at those poor little mites fighting +for that ice!" + +"We have to accept it. It seems to be proof of the Creator's +versatility. It isn't every one who would be nervy enough and original +enough to make a world where people starve to death right beside those +who have too much." + +"That's rubbish!" + +"You're blasphemous! and you're overwrought about the few cases of need +here. Think of those two million people that have just starved to death +in India." + +"That wasn't my fault." + +"Exactly; if you'd been there the list might have been cut down four or +five thousand; not more. It was the fault of whoever makes the weather. +It didn't rain and their curry crop failed--or whatever they raise--and +there you are; and we couldn't help matters any by starving ourselves +to death." + +"Well, I know of a few matters here I can help. And just look at all +those empty houses boarded up!" she cried later, as they crossed +Madison Avenue. "Those poor things bake themselves to death down in +their little ovens, and these great cool places are all shut up. Why, +that poor little baby's hands were just like bird's claws." + +"Well, don't take your sociology too seriously," Percival warned her, +as they reached the hotel. "Being philanthropic is obeying an instinct +just as selfish as any of the others. A little of it is all right--but +don't be a slave to your passions. And be careful of your health." + +In his mail at the Hightower was a note from Mrs. Akemit: + +"NEW LONDON, July 29th. + +"You DEAR THOUGHTFUL MAN: I'll be delighted, and the aunt, a worthy +sister of the dear bishop, has consented. She is an acidulous maiden +person with ultra-ritualistic tendencies. At present she is strong on +the reunion of Christendom, and holds that the Anglican must be the +unifying medium of the two religious extremes. So don't say I didn't +warn you fairly. She will, however, impart an air of Episcopalian +propriety to that naughty yacht of yours--something sadly needed if I +am to believe the tales I hear about its little voyages to nowhere in +particular. + +"Babe sends her love, and says to tell 'Uncle Percibal' that the ocean +tastes 'all nassy.' She stood upon the beach yesterday after making +this discovery involuntarily, and proscribed it with one magnificent +wave of her hand and a brief exclamation of disgust--turned her back +disrespectfully upon a body of water that is said to cover +two-thirds--or is it three-fourths?--of the earth's surface. Think of +it! She seemed to suspect she had been imposed upon in the matter of +its taste, and is going to tell the janitor directly we get home, in +order that the guilty ones may be seen to. Her little gesture of +dismissal was superbly contemptuous. I wish you had been with me to +watch her. Yes, the bathing-suit does have little touches of red, and +red--but this will never do. Give us a day's notice, and believe me, + +"Sincerely, + +"FLORENCE VERDON AKEMIT. + +"P.S. Babe is on the back of my chair, cuddling down in my neck, and +says, 'Send him your love, too, Mommie. Now don't you forget.'" + +He telegraphed Mrs. Akemit: "Will reach New London to-morrow. Assure +your aunt of my delight at her acceptance. I have long held that the +reunion must come as she thinks it will." + +Then he ventured into the heat and glare of Broadway where humanity +stewed and wilted. At Thirty-second Street he ran into Burman, with +whom he had all but cornered wheat. + +"You're the man I wanted to see," said Percival. + +"Hurry and look! I'm melting fast." + +"Come off on the yacht." + +"My preserver! I was just going down to the Oriental, but your dug-out +wins me hands down. Come into this poor-man's club. I must have a cold +drink taller than a church steeple." + +"Anybody else in town we can take?" + +"There's Billy Yelverton--our chewing-gum friend; just off the +_Lucania_ last night; and Eddie Arledge and his wife. They're in town +because Eddie was up in supplementary or something--some low, coarse +brute of a tradesman wanted his old bill paid, and wouldn't believe +Eddie when he said he couldn't spare the money. Eddie is about as +lively as a dish of cold breakfast food, but his wife is all right, all +right. Retiring from the footlights' glare didn't spoil Mrs. E. +Wadsworth Arledge,--not so you could notice it." + +"Well, see Eddie if you can, and I'll find Yelverton; he's probably at +the hotel yet; and meet me there by five, so we can get out of this +little amateur hell." + +"And quit trying to save that collar," urged Burman, as they parted; +"you look foolisher than a horse in a straw hat with it on anyway. Let +it go and tuck in your handkerchief like the rest of us. See you at +five!" + +At the hour named the party had gathered. Percival, Arledge and his +lively wife, Yelverton, who enjoyed the rare distinction of having lost +money to Percival, and Burman. East they drove through the street where +less fortunate mortals panted in the dead afternoon shade, and out on +to the dock, whence the _Viluca's_ naphtha launch presently put them +aboard that sumptuous craft. A little breeze there made the heat less +oppressive. + +"We'll be under way as soon as they fetch that luggage out," Percival +assured his guests. + +"It's been frightfully oppressive all day, even out here," said Mrs. +Drelmer, "but the engaged ones haven't lost their tempers once, even if +the day was trying. And really they're the most unemotional and +matter-of-fact couple I ever saw. Oh! do give me that stack of papers +until I catch up with the news again." + +Percival relinquished to her the evening papers he had bought before +leaving the hotel, and Mrs. Drelmer in the awninged shade at the stern +of the boat was soon running through them. + +The others had gone below, where Percival was allotting staterooms, and +urging every one to "order whatever cold stuff you like and get into as +few things as the law allows. For my part, I'd like to wear nothing but +a cold bath." + +Mrs. Drelmer suddenly betrayed signs of excitement. She sat up straight +in the wicker deck-chair, glanced down a column of her newspaper, and +then looked up. + +Mauburn's head appeared out of the cabin's gloom. He was still speaking +to some one below. Mrs. Drelmer rattled the paper and waved it at him. +He came up the stairs. + +"What's the row?" + +"Read it!" + +He took the paper and glanced at the headlines. "I knew she'd do it. A +chap always comes up with something of that sort, and I was beginning +to feel so chippy!" He read: + +"London, July 30th.--Lord Casselthorpe to-day wed Miss 'Connie' Burke, +the music-hall singer who has been appearing at the Alhambra. The +marriage was performed, by special license, at St. Michael's Church, +Chester Square, London, the Rev. Canon Mecklin, sub-dean of the Chapel +Royal, officiating. The honeymoon will be spent at the town-house of +the groom, in York Terrace. Lord Casselthorpe has long been known as +the blackest sheep of the British Peerage, being called the 'Coster +Peer' on account of his unconventional language, his coarse manner, and +slovenly attire. Two years ago he was warned off Newmarket Heath and +the British turf by the Jockey Club. He is eighty-eight years old. The +bride, like some other lights of the music-hall who have become the +consorts of Britain's hereditary legislators, has enjoyed considerable +ante-nuptial celebrity among the gilded youth of the metropolis, and is +said to have been especially admired at one time by the next in line of +this illustrious family, the Hon. Cecil G.H. Mauburn. + +"The Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, mentioned in the above cable despatch, +has been rather well-known in New York society for two years past. His +engagement to the daughter of a Montana mining magnate, not long +deceased, has been persistently rumoured." + +Mauburn was pale under his freckles. + +"Have they seen it yet?" + +"I don't think so," she answered. "We might drop these papers over the +rail here." + +"That's rot, Mrs. Drelmer; it's sure to be talked of, and anyway I +don't want to be sneaky, you know." + +Percival came up from the cabin with a paper in his hand. + +"I see you have it, too," he said, smiling. "Burman just handed me +this." + +"Isn't it perfectly disreputable!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer. + +"Why? I only hope I'll have as much interest in life by the time I'm +that age." + +"But how will your sister take it?" asked Mauburn; "she may be afraid +this will knock my title on the head, you know." + +"Oh, I see," said Percival; "I hadn't thought of that." + +"Only it can't," continued Mauburn. "Hang it all, that blasted old +beggar will be eighty-nine, you know, in a fortnight. There simply +can't be any issue of the marriage, and that--that blasted--" + +"Better not try to describe her--while I'm by, you know," said Mrs. +Drelmer, sympathetically. + +"Well--his wife--you know, will simply worry him into the grave a bit +sooner, I fancy--that's all can possibly come of it." + +"Well, old man," said Percival, "I don't pretend to know the workings +of my sister's mind, but you ought to be able to win a girl on your own +merits, title or no title." + +"Awfully good of you, old chap. I'm sure she does care for me." + +"But of course it will be only fair to sis to lay the matter before her +just as it is." + +"To be sure!" Mauburn assented. + +"And now, thank the Lord, we're under way. Doesn't that breeze save +your life, though? We'll eat here on deck." + +The _Viluca_ swung into mid-stream, and was soon racing to the north +with a crowded Fall River boat. + +"But anyway," concluded Percival, after he had explained Mauburn's +position to his sister, "he's a good fellow, and if you suit each other +even the unexpected wouldn't make any difference." + +"Of course not," she assented, "'the rank is but the guinea's stamp,' I +know--but I wasn't meaning to be married for quite a time yet, +anyway,--it's such fun just being engaged." + +"A mint julep?" Mauburn was inquiring of one who had proposed it. "Does +it have whiskey in it?" + +"It does," replied Percival, overhearing the question; "whiskey may be +said to pervade, even to infest it. Try five or six, old man; that many +make a great one-night trouble cure. And I can't have any one with +troubles on this Cunarder--not for the next thirty days. I need +cheerfulness and rest for a long time after this day in town. Ah! +General Hemingway says that dinner is served; let's be at it before the +things get all hot!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes + + +It was a morning early in November. In the sedate Milbrey dining-room a +brisk wood-fire dulled the edge of the first autumn chill. At the +breakfast-table, comfortably near the hearth, sat Horace Milbrey. With +pointed spoon he had daintily scooped the golden pulp from a Florida +orange, touched the tips of his slender white fingers to the surface of +the water in the bowl, and was now glancing leisurely at the headlines +of his paper, while his breakfast appetite gained agreeable zest from +the acid fruit. + +On the second page of the paper the names in a brief item arrested his +errant glance. It disclosed that Mr. Percival Bines had left New York +the day before with a party of guests on his special car, to shoot +quail in North Carolina. Mr. Milbrey glanced at the two shells of the +orange which the butler was then removing. + +"What a hopeless brute that fellow was!" he reflected.. He was +recalling a dictum once pronounced by Mr. Bines. "Oranges should never +be eaten in public," he had said with that lordly air of dogmatism +characteristic of him. "The only right way to eat a juicy orange is to +disrobe, grasp the fruit firmly in both hands and climb into a bath-tub +half full of water." + +The finished epicure shuddered at the recollection, poignantly, quite +as if a saw were being filed in the next room. + +The disagreeable emotion was allayed, however, by the sight of his next +course--_oeufs aux saucissons_. Tender, poetic memories stirred within +him. The little truffled French sausages aroused his better nature. Two +of them reposed luxuriously upon an egg-divan in the dainty French +baking-dish of dull green. Over them--a fitting baptism, was the rich +wine sauce of golden brown--a sauce that might have been the tears of +envious angels, wept over a mortal creation so faultlessly precious. + +Mrs. Milbrey entered, news of importance visibly animating her. Her +husband arose mechanically, placed the chair for her, and resumed his +fork in an ecstasy of concentration. Yet, though Mrs. Milbrey was full +of talk, like a charged siphon, needing but a slight pressure to pour +forth matters of grave moment, she observed the engrossment of her +husband, and began on the half of an orange. She knew from experience +that he would be deaf, for the moment, to anything less than an alarm +of fire. + +When he had lovingly consumed the last morsel he awoke to her presence +and smiled benignantly. + +"My dear, don't fail to try them, they're exquisitely perfect!" + +"You really _must_ talk to Avice," his wife replied. + +Mr. Milbrey sighed, deprecatingly. He could remember no time within +five years when that necessity had not weighed upon his father's sense +of duty like a vast boulder of granite. He turned to welcome the +diversion provided by the _rognons sautees_ which Jarvis at that moment +uncovered before him with a discreet flourish. + +"Now you really must," continued his wife, "and you'll agree with me +when I tell you why." + +"But, my dear, I've already talked to the girl exhaustively. I've +pointed out that her treatment of Mrs. Wybert--her perverse refusal to +meet the lady at all, is quite as absurd as it is rude, and that if +Fred chooses to marry Mrs. Wybert it is her duty to act the part of a +sister even if she cannot bring herself to feel it. I've assured her +that Mrs. Wybert's antecedents are all they should be; not illustrious, +perhaps, but eminently respectable. Indeed, I quite approve of the +Southern aristocracy. But she constantly recalls what that snobbish +Bines was unfair enough to tell her. I've done my utmost to convince +her that Bines spoke in the way he did about Mrs. Wybert because he +knew she was aware of those ridiculous tales of his mother's +illiteracy. But Avice is--er--my dear, she is like her mother in more +ways than one. Assuredly she doesn't take it from me." + +He became interested in the kidneys. "If Marie had been a man," he +remarked, feelingly, "I often suspect that her fame as a _chef_ would +have been second to none. Really, the suavity of her sauces is a +never-ending delight to me." + +"I haven't told you yet the reason--a new reason--why you must talk to +Avice." + +"The money--yes, yes, my dear, I know, we all know. Indeed, I've put it +to her plainly. She knows how sorely Fred needs it. She knows how that +beast of a tailor is threatening to be nasty--and I've explained how +invaluable Mrs. Wybert would be, reminding her of that lady's generous +hint about the rise in Federal Steel, which enabled me to net the neat +little profit of ten thousand dollars a month ago, and how, but for +that, we might have been acutely distressed. Yet she stubbornly clings +to the notion that this marriage would be a _mesalliance_ for the +Milbreys." + +"I agree with her," replied his wife, tersely. + +Mr. Milbrey looked perplexed but polite. + +"I quite agree with Avice," continued the lady. "That woman hasn't been +right, Horace, and she isn't right. Young Bines knew what he was +talking about. I haven't lived my years without being able to tell that +after five minutes with her, clever as she is. I can read her. Like so +many of those women, she has an intense passion to be thought +respectable, and she's come into money enough--God only knows how--to +gratify it. I could tell it, if nothing else showed it, by the way in +which she overdoes respectability. She has the thousand and one +artificial little rules for propriety that one never does have when one +has been bred to it. That kind of woman is certain to lapse sooner or +later. She would marry Fred because of his standing, because he's a +favourite with the smart people she thinks she'd like to be pally with. +Then, after a little she'd run off with a German-dialect comedian or +something, like that appalling person Normie Whitmund married." + +"But the desire to be respectable, my dear--and you say this woman has +it--is a mighty lever. I'm no cynic about your sex, but I shudder to +think of their--ah--eccentricities if it should cease to be a factor in +the feminine equation." + +"It's nothing more than a passing fad with this person--besides, that's +not what I've to tell you." + +"But you, yourself, were not averse to Fred's marrying her, in spite of +these opinions you must secretly have held." + +"Not while it seemed absolutely necessary--not while the case was so +brutally desperate, when we were actually pressed--" + +"Remember, my dear, there's nothing magic in those ten thousand +dollars. They're winged dollars like all their mates, and most of them, +I'm sorry to say, have already flown to places where they'd long been +expected." + +Mrs. Milbrey's sensation was no longer to be repressed. She had toyed +with the situation sufficiently. Her husband was now skilfully +dissecting the devilled thighs of an immature chicken. + +"Horace," said his wife, impressively, "Avice has had an offer of +marriage--from--" + +He looked up with new interest. + +"From Rulon Shepler." + +He dropped knife and fork. Shepler, the man of mighty millions! The +undisputed monarch of finance! The cold-blooded, calculating sybarite +in his lighter moments, but a man whose values as a son-in-law were so +ideally superb that the Milbrey ambition had never vaulted high enough +even to overlook them for one daring moment! Shepler, whom he had known +so long and so intimately, with never the audacious thought of a union +so stupendously glorious! + +"Margaret, you're jesting!" + +Mrs. Milbrey scorned to be dazzled by her triumph. + +"Nonsense! Shepler asked her last night to marry him." + +"It's bewildering! I never dreamed--" + +"I've expected it for months. I could tell you the very moment when the +idea first seized the man--on the yacht last summer. I was sure she +interested him, even before his wife died two years ago." + +"Margaret, it's too good to be true!" + +"If you think it is I'll tell you something that isn't: Avice +practically refused him." + +Her husband pushed away his plate; the omission of even one regretful +glance at its treasures betrayed the strong emotion under which he +laboured. + +"This is serious," he said, quietly. "Let us get at it. Tell me if you +please!" + +"She came to me and cried half the night. She refused him definitely at +first, but he begged her to consider, to take a month to think it +over--" + +Milbrey gasped. Shepler, who commanded markets to rise and they rose, +or to fall and they fell--Shepler begging, entreating a child of his! +Despite the soul-sickening tragedy of it, the situation was not without +its element of sublimity. + +"She will consider; she _will_ reflect?" + +"You're guessing now, and you're as keen at that as I. Avice is not +only amazingly self-willed, as you intimated a moment since, but she is +intensely secretive. When she left me I could get nothing from her +whatever. She was wretchedly sullen and taciturn." + +"But why _should_ she hesitate? Shepler--Rulon Shepler! My God! is the +girl crazy? The very idea of hesitation is preposterous!" + +"I can't divine her. You know she has acted perversely in the past. I +used to think she might have some affair of which we knew +nothing--something silly and romantic. But if she had any such thing +I'm sure it was ended, and she'd have jumped at this chance a year ago. +You know yourself she was ready to marry young Bines, and was really +disappointed when he didn't propose." + +"But this is too serious." He tinkled the little silver bell. + +"Find out if Miss Avice will be down to breakfast." + +"Yes, sir." + +"If she's not coming down I shall go up," declared Mr. Milbrey when the +man had gone. + +"She's stubborn," cautioned his wife. + +"Gad! don't I know it?" + +Jarvis returned. + +"Miss Avice won't be down, sir, and I'm to fetch her up a pot of +coffee, sir." + +"Take it at once, and tell her I shall be up to see her presently." +Jarvis vanished. + +"I think I see a way to put pressure on her, that is if the morning +hasn't already brought her back to her senses." + +At four o'clock that afternoon, Avice Milbrey's ring brought Mrs. Van +Geist's butler to the door. + +"Sandon, is Aunt Cornelia at home?" + +"Yes, Miss Milbrey, she's confined to her room h'account h'of a cold, +miss." + +"Thank heaven!" + +"Yes, miss--certainly! will you go h'up to her?" + +"And Mutterchen, dear, it was a regular bombshell," she concluded after +she had fluttered some of the November freshness into Mrs. Van Geist's +room, and breathlessly related the facts. + +"You demented creature! I should say it must have been." + +"Now, don't lecture!" + +"But Shepler is one of the richest men in New York." + +"Dad already suspects as much." + +"And he's kind, he's a big-hearted chap, a man of the world, +generous--a--" + +"'A woman fancier,' Fidelia Oldaker calls him." + +"My dear, if he fancies you--" + +"There, you old conservative, I've heard all his good points, and my +duty has been written before me in letters of fire. Dad devoted three +hours to writing it this morning, so don't, please, say over any of the +moral maxims I'm likely to have heard." + +"But why are you unwilling?" + +"Because--because I'm wild, I fancy--just because I don't like the idea +of marrying that man. He's such a big, funny, round head, and +positively no neck--his head just rolls around on his big, pillowy +shoulders--and then he gets little right at once, tapers right off to a +point with those tiny feet." + +"It isn't easy to have everything." + +"It wouldn't be easy to have him, either." + +Mrs. Van Geist fixed her niece with a sudden look of suspicion. + +"Has--has that man anything to do with your refusal?" + +"No--not a thing--I give you my word, auntie. If he had been what I +once dreamed he was no one would be asking me to marry him now, but--do +you know what I've decided? Why, that he is a joke--that's all--just a +joke. You needn't think of him, Mutterchen--I don't, except to think it +was funny that he should have impressed me so--he's simply a joke." + +"I could have told you as much long ago." + +"Tell me something now. Suppose Fred marries that Wybert woman." + +"It will be a sorry day for Fred." + +"Of course! Now see how I'm pinned. Dad and the mater both say the same +now--they're more severe than I was. Only we were never in such straits +for money. It must be had. So this is the gist of it: I ought to marry +Rulon Shepler in order to save Fred from a marriage that might get us +into all sorts of scandal." + +"Well?" + +"Well, I would do a lot for Fred. He has faults, but he's always been +good to me." + +"And so?" + +"And so it's a question whether he marries a very certain kind of woman +or whether I marry a very different kind of man." + +"How do you feel?" + +"For one thing Fred sha'n't get into that kind of muss if I can save +him from it." + +"Then you'll marry Shepler?" + +"I'm still uncertain about Mr. Shepler." + +"But you say--" + +"Yes, I know, but I've reasons for being uncertain. If I told you you'd +say they're like the most of a woman's reasons, mere fond, foolish +hopes, so I won't tell you." + +"Well, dear, work it out by your lonely if you must. I believe you'll +do what's best for everybody in the end. And I am glad that your father +and Margaret take your view of that woman." + +"I was sure she wasn't right--and I knew Mr. Bines was too much of a +man to speak of her as he did without positive knowledge. Now please +give me some tea and funny little cakes; I'm famished." + +"Speaking of Mr. Bines," said Mrs. Van Geist, when the tea had been +brought by Sandon, "I read in the paper this morning that he'd taken a +party to North Carolina for the quail shooting, Eddie Arledge and his +wife and that Mr. and Mrs. Garmer, and of course Florence Akemit. +Should you have thought she'd marry so soon after her divorce? They say +Bishop Doolittle is frightfully vexed with her." + +"Really I hadn't heard. Whom is Florence to marry?" + +"Mr. Bines, to be sure! Where have you been? You know she was on his +yacht a whole month last summer--the bishop's sister was with her-- +highly scandalised all the time by the drinking and gaiety, and now +every one's looking for the engagement to be announced. Here, what did +I do with that _Town Topics_ Cousin Clint left? There it is on the +tabouret. Read the paragraph at the top of the page." Avice read: + +"An engagement that is rumoured with uncommon persistence will put +society on the _qui vive_ when it is definitely announced. The man in +the case is the young son of a mining Croesus from Montana, who has +inherited the major portion of his father's millions and who began to +dazzle upper Broadway about a year since by the reckless prodigality of +his ways. His blond _innamorata_ is a recent _divorcee_ of high social +standing, noted for her sparkling wit and an unflagging exuberance of +spirits. The interest of the gossips, however, centres chiefly in the +uncle of the lady, a Right Reverend presiding over a bishopric not a +thousand miles from New York, and in the attitude he will assume toward +her contemplated remarriage. At the last Episcopal convention this +godly and well-learned gentleman was a vehement supporter of the +proposed canon to prohibit absolutely the marriage of divorced persons; +and though he stoutly championed his bewitching niece through the +infelicities that eventuated in South Dakota, _on dit_ that he is +highly wrought up over her present intentions, and has signified +unmistakably his severest disapproval. However, _nous verrons ce que +nous verrons."_ + +"But, Mutterchen, that's only one of those absurd, vulgar things that +wretched paper is always printing. I could write dozens of them myself. +Tom Banning says they keep one man writing them all the time, out of +his own imagination, and then they put them in like raisins in a cake." + +"But, my dear, I'm quite sure this is authentic. I know from Fidelia +Oldaker that the bishop began to cut up about it to Florence, and +Florence defied him. That ancient theory that most gossip is without +truth was exploded long ago. As a matter of fact most gossip, at least +about the people we know, doesn't do half justice to the facts. But, +really, I can't see why he fancied Florence Akemit. I should have +thought he'd want some one a bit less fluttery." + +"I dare say you're right, about the gossip, I mean--" Miss Milbrey +remarked when she had finished her tea, and refused the cakes. "I +remember, now, one day when we met at her place, and he seemed so much +at home there. Of course, it must be so. How stupid of me to doubt it! +Now I must run. Good-bye, you old dear, and be good to the cold." + +"Let me know what you do." + +"Indeed I shall; you shall be the first one to know. My mind is really, +you know, _almost_ made up." + +A week later Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milbrey announced in the public prints +the engagement of their daughter Avice to Mr. Rulon Shepler. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man + + +One day in December Peter Bines of Montana City dropped in on the +family,--came with his gaunt length of limb, his kind, brown old face +with eyes sparkling shrewdly far back under his grizzled brows, with +his rough, resonant, musical voice, the spring of youth in his step, +and the fresh, confident strength of the big hills in his bearing. + +He brought Billy Brue with him, a person whose exact social status some +of Percival's friends were never able to fix with any desirable +certainty. Thus, Percival had presented the old man, the morning after +his arrival, to no less a person than Herbert Delancey Livingston, with +whom he had smoked a cigar of unusual excellence in the _cafe_ of the +Hightower Hotel. + +"If you fancy that weed, Mr. Bines," said Livingston, graciously, to +the old man, "I've a spare couple of hundred I'd like to let you have. +The things were sent me, but I find them rather stiffish. If your man's +about the hotel I'll give him a card to my man, and let him fetch +them." + +"My man?" queried Uncle Peter, and, sighting Billy Brue at that moment, +"why, yes, here's my man, now. Mr. Brue, shake hands with Mr. +Livingston. Billy, go up to the address he gives you, and get some of +these se-gars. You'll relish 'em as much as I do. Now don't talk to any +strangers, don't get run over, and don't lose yourself." + +Livingston had surrendered a wavering and uncertain hand to the warm, +reassuring clasp of Mr. Brue. + +"He ain't much fur style, Billy ain't," Uncle Peter explained when that +person had gone upon his errand, "he ain't a mite gaudy, but he's got +friendly feelings." + +The dazed scion of the Livingstons had thereupon made a conscientious +tour of his clubs in a public hansom, solely for the purpose of +relating this curious adventure to those best qualified to marvel at +it. + +The old man's arrival had been quite unexpected. Not only had he sent +no word of his coming, but he seemed, indeed, not to know what his +reasons had been for doing a thing so unusual. + +"Thought I'd just drop in on your all and say 'howdy,'" had been his +first avowal, which was lucid as far as it went. Later he involved +himself in explanations that were both obscure and conflicting. Once it +was that he had felt a sudden great longing for the life of a gay city. +Then it was that he would have been content in Montana City, but that +he had undertaken the winter in New York out of consideration for Billy +Brue. + +"Just think of it," he said to Percival, "that poor fellow ain't ever +been east of Denver before now. It wa'n't good for him to be holed up +out there in them hills all his life. He hadn't got any chance to +improve his mind." + +"He'd better improve his whiskers first thing he does," suggested +Percival. "He'll be gold-bricked if he wears 'em scrambled that way +around this place." + +But in neither of these explanations did the curious old man impress +Percival as being wholly ingenuous. + +Then he remarked casually one day that he had lately met Higbee, who +was on his way to San Francisco. + +"I only had a few minutes with him while they changed engines at Green +River, but he told me all about you folks--what a fine time you was +havin', yachts and card-parties, and all like that. Higbee said a man +had ought to come to New York every now and then, jest to keep from +gettin' rusty." + +Back of this Percival imagined for a time that he had discovered Uncle +Peter's true reason for descending upon them. Higbee would have regaled +him with wild tales of the New York dissipations, and Uncle Peter had +come promptly on to pull him up. Percival could hear the story as +Higbee would word it, with the improving moral incident of his own son +snatched as a brand from the "Tenderloin," to live a life of +impecunious usefulness in far Chicago. But, when he tried to hold this +belief, and to prove it from his observations, he was bound to admit +its falsity. For Uncle Peter had shown no inclination to act the part +of an evangel from the virtuous West. He had delivered no homilies, no +warnings as to the fate of people who incontinently "cut loose." He had +evinced not the least sign of any disposition even to criticise. + +On the contrary, indeed, he appeared to joy immensely in Percival's way +of life. He manifested a willingness and a capacity for unbending in +boon companionship that were, both of them, quite amazing to his +accomplished grandson. By degrees, and by virtue of being never at all +censorious, he familiarised himself with the young man's habits and +diversions. He listened delightedly to the tales of his large gambling +losses, of the bouts at poker, the fruitless venture in Texas Oil land, +the disastrous corner in wheat, engineered by Burman, and the uniformly +unsuccessful efforts to "break the bank" in Forty-fourth Street. He +never tired of hearing whatever adventures Percival chose to relate; +and, finding that he really enjoyed them, the young man came to confide +freely in him, and to associate with him without restraint. + +Uncle Peter begged to be introduced at the temple of chance, and spent +a number of late evenings there with his popular grandson. He also +frequently made himself one of the poker coterie, and relished keenly +the stock jokes as to his grandson's proneness to lose. + +"Your pa," he would say, "never _could_ learn to stay out of a Jack-pot +unless he had Jacks or better; he'd come in and draw four cards to an +ace any time, and then call it 'hard luck' when he didn't draw out. And +he just loved straights open in the middle; said anybody could fill +them that's open at both ends; but, after all, I guess that's the only +way to have fun at the game. If a man ain't got the sperrit to overplay +aces-up when he gets 'em, he might as well be clerkin' in a bank for +all the fun he'll have out of the game." + +The old man's endurance of late suppers and later hours, and his +unsuspected disposition to "cut loose," became twin marvels to +Percival. He could not avoid contrasting this behaviour with his past +preaching. After a few weeks he was forced to the charitable conclusion +that Uncle Peter's faculties were failing. The exposure and hardships +of the winter before had undoubtedly impaired his mental powers. + +"I can't make him out," he confided to his mother. "He never wants to +go home nights; he can drink more than I can without batting an eye, +and show up fresher in the morning, and he behaves like a young fellow +just out of college. I don't know where he would bring up if he didn't +have me to watch over him." + +"I think it's just awful--at his time of life, too," said Mrs. Bines. + +"I think that's it. He's getting old, and he's come along into his +second childhood. A couple of more months at this rate, and I'm afraid +I'll have to ring up one of those nice shiny black wagons to take him +off to the foolish-house." + +"Can't you talk to him, and tell him better?" + +"I could. I know it all by heart--all the things to say to a man on the +downward path. Heaven knows I've heard them often enough, but I'd feel +ashamed to talk that way to Uncle Peter. If he were my son, now, I'd +cut off his allowance and send him back to make something of himself, +like Sile Higbee with little Hennery; but I'm afraid all I can do is to +watch him and see that he doesn't marry one of those little pink-silk +chorus girls, or lick a policeman, or anything." + +"You're carryin' on the same way yourself," ventured his mother. + +"That's different," replied her perspicacious son. + +Uncle Peter had refused to live at the Hightower after three days in +that splendid and populous caravansary. + +"It suits me well enough," he explained to Percival, "but I have to +look after Billy Brue, and this ain't any place for Billy. You see +Billy ain't city broke yet. Look at him now over there, the way he goes +around butting into strangers. He does that way because he's all the +time looking down at his new patent-leather shoes--first pair he ever +had. He'll be plumb stoop-shouldered if he don't hurry up and get the +new kicked off of 'em. I'll have to get him a nice warm box-stall in +some place that ain't so much on the band-wagon as this one. The +ceilings here are too high fur Billy. And I found him shootin' craps +with the bell-boy this mornin'. The boy thinks Billy, bein' from the +West, is a stage robber, or somethin' like he reads about in the Cap' +Collier libr'ies, and follows him around every chance he gets. And +Billy laps up too many of them little striped drinks; and them +French-cooked dishes ain't so good fur him, either. He caught on to the +bill-of-fare right away. Now he won't order anything but them +allas--them dishes that has 'a la' something or other after 'em," he +explained, when Percival looked puzzled. "He knows they'll always be +something all fussed up with red, white, and blue gravy, and a little +paper bouquet stuck into 'em. I never knew Billy was such a fancy eater +before." + +So Uncle Peter and his charge had established themselves in an +old-fashioned but very comfortable hotel down on one of the squares, a +dingy monument to the time when life had been less hurried. Uncle Peter +had stayed there thirty years before, and he found the place unchanged. +The carpets and hangings were a bit faded, but the rooms were +generously broad, the chairs, as the old man remarked, were "made to +sit in," and the _cuisine_ was held, by a few knowing old epicures who +still frequented the place, to be superior even to that of the more +pretentious Hightower. The service, it is true, was apt to be slow. +Strangers who chanced in to order a meal not infrequently became +enraged, and left before their food came, trailing plain short words of +extreme dissatisfaction behind them as they went. But the elect knew +that these delays betokened the presence of an artistic conscience in +the kitchen, and that the food was worth tarrying for. "They know how +to make you come back hungry for some more the next day," said Uncle +Peter Bines. + +From this headquarters the old man went forth to join in the diversions +of his grandson. And here he kept a watchful eye upon the uncertain +Billy Brue; at least approximately. Between them, his days and nights +were occupied to crowding. But Uncle Peter had already put in some hard +winters, and was not wanting in fortitude. + +Billy Brue was a sore trouble to the old man. "I jest can't keep him +off the streets nights," was his chief complaint. By day Billy Brue +walked the streets in a decent, orderly trance of bewilderment. He was +properly puzzled and amazed by many strange matters. He never could +find out what was "going on" to bring so many folks into town. They all +hurried somewhere constantly, but he was never able to reach the centre +of excitement. Nor did he ever learn how any one could reach those high +clothes-lines, strung forty feet above ground between the backs of +houses; nor how there could be "so many shows in town, all on one +night;" nor why you should get so many good things to eat by merely +buying a "slug of whiskey;" nor why a thousand people weren't run over +in Broadway each twenty-four hours. + +At night, Billy Brue ceased to be the astounded alien, and, as Percival +said Dr. Von Herzlich would say, "began to mingle and cooperate with +his environment." In the course of this process he fell into +adventures, some of them, perhaps, unedifying. But it may be told that +his silver watch with the braided leather fob was stolen from him the +second night out; also that the following week, in a Twenty-ninth +Street saloon, he accepted the hospitality of an affable stranger, who +had often been in Montana City. His explanation of subsequent events +was entirely satisfactory, at least, from the time that he returned to +consciousness of them. + +"I only had about thirty dollars in my clothes," he told Percival, "but +what made me so darned hot, he took my breastpin, too, made out of the +first nugget ever found in the Early Bird mine over Silver Bow way. +Gee! when I woke up I couldn't tell where I was. This cop that found me +in a hallway, he says I must have been give a dose of Peter. I says, +'All right--I'm here to go against all the games,' I says, 'but pass me +when the Peter comes around again,' I says. And he says Peter was +knockout drops. Say, honestly, I didn't know my own name till I had a +chanst to look me over. The clothes and my hands looked like I'd seen +'em before, somehow--and then I come to myself." + +After this adventure, Uncle Peter would caution him of an evening: + +"Now, Billy, don't stay out late. If you ain't been gone through by +eleven, just hand what you got on you over to the first man you +meet--none of 'em'll ask any questions--and then pike fur home. The +later at night it gets in New York the harder it is fur strangers to +stay alive. You're all right in Wardner or Hellandgone, Billy, but in +this here camp you're jest a tender little bed of pansies by the +wayside, and these New Yorkers are terrible careless where they step +after dark." + +Notwithstanding which, Mr. Brue continued to behave uniformly in a +manner to make all judicious persons grieve. His place of supreme +delight was the Hightower. Its marble splendours, its myriad lights, +the throngs of men and women in evening dress, made for him a scene of +unfailing fascination. The evenings when he was invited to sit in the +_cafe_ with Uncle Peter and Percival made memories long to be +cherished. + +He spent such an evening there at the end of their first month in New +York. Half a dozen of Percival's friends sat at the table with them +from time to time. There had been young Beverly Van Arsdel, who, +Percival disclosed, was heir to all the Van Arsdel millions, and no end +of a swell. And there was big, handsome, Eddie Arledge, whose father +had treated him shabbily. These two young gentlemen spoke freely about +the inferiority of many things "on this side"--as they denominated this +glorious Land of Freedom--of many things from horses to wine. The +country was rapidly becoming, they agreed, no place for a gentleman to +live. Eddie Arledge confessed that, from motives of economy, he had +been beguiled into purchasing an American claret. + +"I fancied, you know," he explained to Uncle Peter, "that it might do +for an ordinary luncheon claret, but on my sacred honour, the stuff is +villainous. Now you'll agree with me, Mr. Bines, I dare say, that a +Bordeaux of even recent vintage is vastly superior to the very best +so-called American claret." + +Whereupon Beverly Van Arsdel having said, "To be sure--fancy an +American Burgundy, now! or a Chablis!" Uncle Peter betrayed the first +sign of irritation Percival had detected since his coming. + +"Well, you see, young men, we're not much on vintages in Montana. +Whiskey is mostly our drink--whiskey and spring water--and if our +whiskey is strong, it's good enough. When we want to test a new barrel, +we inject three drops of it into a jack-rabbit, and if he doesn't lick +a bull clog in six seconds, we turn down the goods. That's as far's our +education has ever gone in vintages." + +It sounded like the old Uncle Peter, but he was afterward so +good-natured that Percival concluded the irritation could have been but +momentary. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something + + +Uncle Peter and Billy Brue left the Hightower at midnight. Billy Brue +wanted to walk down to their hotel, on the plea that they might see a +fight or a fire "or something." He never ceased to feel cheated when he +was obliged to ride in New York. But Uncle Peter insisted on the cab. + +"Say, Uncle Peter," he said, as they rode down, "I got a good notion to +get me one of them first-part suits--like the minstrels wear in the +grand first part, you know--only I'd never be able to git on to the +track right without a hostler to harness me and see to all the buckles +and cinch the straps right. They're mighty fine, though." + +Finding Uncle Peter uncommunicative, he mused during the remainder of +the ride, envying the careless ease with which Percival and his +friends, and even Uncle Peter, wore the prescribed evening regalia of +gentlemen, and yearning for the distinguished effect of its black and +white elegance upon himself. + +They went to their connecting rooms, and Billy Brue regretfully sought +his bed, marvelling how free people in a town like New York could ever +bring themselves to waste time in sleep. As he dozed off, he could hear +the slow, measured tread of Uncle Peter pacing the floor in the next +room. + +He was awakened by hearing his name called. Uncle Peter stood in a +flood of light at the door of his room. He was fully dressed. + +"Awake, Billy?" + +"Is it gittin'-up time?" + +The old man came into the room and lighted a gas-jet. He looked at his +watch. + +"No; only a quarter to four. I ain't been to bed yet." + +Billy Brue sat up and rubbed his eyes. + +"Rheumatiz again, Uncle Peter?" + +"No; I been thinkin', Billy. How do you like the game?" + +He began to pace the floor again from one room to the other. + +"What game?'! Billy Brue had encountered a number in New York. + +"This whole game--livin' in New York." + +Mr. Brue became judicial. + +"It's a good game as long as you got money to buy chips. I'd hate like +darnation to go broke here. All the pay-claims have been located, I +guess." + +"I doubt it's bein' a good game any time, Billy. I been actin' as kind +of a lookout now fur about forty days and forty nights, and the chances +is all in favour of the house. You don't even get half your money on +the high card when the splits come." + +Billy Brue pondered this sentiment. It was not his own. + +"The United States of America is all right, Billy." + +This was safe ground. + +"Sure!" His mind reverted to the evening just past. "Of course there +was a couple of Clarences in high collars there to-night that made out +like they was throwin' it down; but they ain't the whole thing, not by +a long shot." + +"Yes, and that young shrimp that was talkin' about 'vintages' and +'trouserings.'" The old man paused in his walk. + +"What _are_ 'trouserings,' Billy?" + +Mr. Brue had not looked into shop windows day after day without +enlarging his knowledge. + +"Trouserings," he proclaimed, rather importantly, "is the cloth they +make pants out of." + +"Oh! is that all? I didn't know but it might be some new kind of duds. +And that fellow don't ever get up till eleven o'clock A.M. I don't +reckon I would myself if I didn't have anything but trouserings and +vintages to worry about. And that Van Arsdel boy!" + +"Say!" said Billy, with enthusiasm, "I never thought I'd be even in the +same room with one of that family, 'less I prized open the door with a +jimmy." + +"Well, who's _he?_ My father knew his grandfather when he kep' tavern +over on the Raritan River, and his grandmother!--this shrimp's +grandmother!--she tended bar." + +"Gee!" + +"Yes, they kep' tavern, and the old lady passed the rum bottle over the +bar, and took in the greasy money. This here fellow, now, couldn't make +an honest livin' like that, I bet you. He's like a dogbreeder would +say--got the pedigree, but not the points." + +Mr. Brue emitted a high, throaty giggle. + +"But they ain't all like that here, Uncle Peter. Say, you come out with +me some night jest in your workin' clothes. I can show you people all +right that won't ask to see your union card. Say, on the dead, Uncle +Peter, I wish you'd come. There's a lady perfessor in a dime museum +right down here on Fourteenth Street that eats fire and juggles the big +snakes;--say, she's got a complexion--" + +"There's enough like that kind, though," interrupted Uncle Peter. "I +could take a double-barrel shotgun up to that hotel and get nine with +each barrel around in them hallways; the shot wouldn't have to be +rammed, either; 'twouldn't have to scatter so blamed much." + +"Oh, well, them society sports--there's got to be some of _them_--" + +"Yes, and the way they make 'em reminds me of what Dal Mutzig tells +about the time they started Pasco. 'What you fellows makin' a town here +fur?' Dal says he asked 'em, and he says they says, 'Well, why not? The +land ain't good fur anything else, is it?' they says. That's the way +with these shrimps; they ain't good fur anything else. There's that +Arledge, the lad that keeps his mouth hangin' open all the time he's +lookin' at you--he'll catch cold in his works, first thing _he_ +knows--with his gold monogram on his cigarettes." + +"He said he was poor," urged Billy, who had been rather taken with the +ease of Arledge's manner. + +"Fine, big, handsome fellow, ain't he? Strong as an ox, active, and +perfectly healthy, ain't he? Well, he's a _pill_! But _his_ old man +must 'a' been on to him. Here, here's a piece in the paper about that +fine big strappin' giant--it's partly what got me to thinkin' to-night, +so I couldn't sleep. Just listen to this," and Uncle Peter read: + +"E. Wadsworth Arledge, son of the late James Townsend Arledge, of the +dry-goods firm of Arledge & Jackson, presented a long affidavit to +Justice Dutcher, of the Supreme Court, yesterday, to show why his +income of six thousand dollars a year from his father's estate should +not be abridged to pay a debt of $489.32. Henry T. Gotleib, a grocer, +who obtained a judgment for that amount against him in 1895, and has +been unable to collect, asked the Court to enjoin Judge Henley P. +Manderson, and the Union Fidelity Trust Company, as executors of the +Arledge estate, from paying Mr. Arledge his full income until the debt +has been discharged. Gotleib contended that Arledge could sustain the +reduction required. + +"James T. Arledge died about two years ago, leaving an estate of about +$3,000,000. He had disapproved of the marriage of his son and evinced +his displeasure in his will. The son had married Flora Florenza, an +actress. To the son was given an income of $6,000 a year for life. The +rest of the estate went to the testator's widow for life, and then to +charity. + +"Here is the affidavit of E. Wadsworth Arledge: + +"'I have been brought up in idleness, under the idea that I was to +inherit a large estate. I have never acquired any business habits so as +to fit me to acquire property, or to make me take care of it. + +"'I have never been in business, except many years ago, when I was a +boy, when I was for a short time employed in one of the stores owned by +my father. For many years prior to my father's death I was not +employed, but lived on a liberal allowance made to me by him. I am a +married man, and in addition to my wife have a family of two children +to support from my income. + +"'All our friends are persons of wealth and of high social standing, +and we are compelled to spend money in entertaining the many friends +who entertain us. I am a member of many expensive clubs. I have +absolutely no income except the allowance I receive from my father's +estate, and the same is barely sufficient to support my family. + +"'I have received no technical or scientific education, fitting me for +any business or profession, and should I be deprived of any portion of +my income, I will be plunged in debt anew.' + +"The Court reserved decision." + +"You hear that, Billy? The Court reserved decision. Mr. Arledge has to +buy so many gold cigarettes and vintages and trouserings, and belong to +so many clubs, that he wants the Court to help him chouse a poor grocer +out of his money. Say, Billy, that judge could fine me for contempt of +court, right now, fur reservin' his decision. You bet Mr. Arledge would +'a' got my decision right hot off the griddle. I'd 'a' told him, +'You're the meanest kind of a crook I ever heard of fur wantin' to lie +down on your fat back and whine out of payin' fur the grub you put in +your big gander paunch,' I'd tell him, 'and now you march to the +lock-up till you can look honest folks in the face,' I'd tell him. Say, +Billy, some crooks are worse than others. Take Nate Leverson out there. +Nate set up night and day for six years inventin' a process fur +sweatin' gold into ore; finally he gets it; how he does it, nobody +knows, but he sweat gold eighteen inches into the solid rock. The first +few holes he salted he gets rid of all right, then of course they catch +him, and Nate's doin' time now. But say, I got respect fur Nate since +readin' that piece. There's a good deal of a man about him, or about +any common burglar or sneak thief, compared to this duck. They take +chances, say nothin' of the hard work they do. This fellow won't take a +chance and won't work a day. Billy, that's the meanest specimen of +crook I ever run against, bar none, and that crook is produced and +tolerated in a place that's said to be the centre of 'culture and +refinement and practical achievement.' Billy, he's a pill!" + +"That's right," said Billy Brue, promptly throwing the recalcitrant +Arledge overboard. + +"But it ain't none of my business. What I do spleen again, is havin' a +grandson of mine livin' in a community where a man that'll act like +that is actually let in their houses by honest folks. Think of a son of +Daniel J. Bines treatin' folks like that as if they was his equals. +Say, Dan'l had a line of faults, all right--but, by God! he'd a trammed +ore fur two twenty-five a day any time in his life rather'n not pay a +dollar he owed. And think of this lad making his bed in this kind of a +place where men are brought up to them ways; and that name; think of a +husky, two-fisted boy like him lettin' himself be called by a measly +little gum-drop name like Percival, when he's got a right to be called +Pete. And he's right in with 'em. He'd be jest as bad--give him a +little time; and Pishy engaged to a damned fortune-hunting Englishman +into the bargain. It's all Higbee said it was, only it goes double. +Say, Billy, I been thinkin' this over all night." + +"'Tis mighty worryin', ain't it, Uncle Peter?" + +"And I got it thought out." + +"Sure, you must 'a' got it down to cases." + +"Billy,' listen now. There's a fellow down in Wall Street. His name is +Shepler, Rulon Shepler. He's most the biggest man down there." + +"Sure! I heard of him." + +"Listen! I'm goin' to bed now. I can sleep since I got my mind made up. +But I want to see Shepler in private to-morrow. Don't wake me up in the +morning. But get up yourself, and go find his office--look in a +directory, then ask a policeman. Shepler's a busy man. You tell the +clerk or whoever holds you up that Mr. Peter Bines wants an appointment +with Mr. Shepler as soon as he can make it--Mr. Peter Bines, of +Montana City. Be there by 9.30 so's to get him soon as he comes. He +knows me; tell him I want to see him on business soon as possible, and +find out when he can give me time. And don't you say to any one else +that I ever seen him or sent you there. Understand? Don't ever say a +word to any one. Remember, now, be there at 9.30, and don't let any +clerk put you off, and ask him what hour'll be convenient for him. Now +get what sleep's comin' to you. It's five o'clock." + +At noon Billy Brue returned to the hotel to find Uncle Peter finishing +a hearty breakfast. + +"I found him all right, Uncle Peter. The lookout acted suspicious, but +I saw the main guy himself come out of a door--like I'd seen his +picture in the papers, so I just called to him, and said, 'Mr. Peter +Bines wants to see you,' like that. He took me right into his office, +and I told him what you said, and he'll be ready for you at two +o'clock. He knows mines, all right, out our way, don't he?--and he +crowded a handful of these tin-foil cigars on to me, and acted real +sociable. Told me to drop in any time. Say, he'd run purty high in the +yellow stuff all right." + +"At two o'clock, you say?" + +"Yes." + +"And what's his number?" + +"Gee, I forgot; I can tell you, though. You go down Broadway to that +old church--say, Uncle Peter, there's folks in that buryin'-ground +been dead over two hundred years, if you can go by their gravestones. +Gee! I didn't s'pose _anybody'd_ been dead that long--then you turn +down the gulch right opposite, until you come to the Vandevere +Building, a few rods down on the left. Shepler's there. Git into the +bucket and go up to the second level, and you'll find him in the +left-hand back stope--his name's on the door in gold letters." + +"All right. And look here, Billy, keep your head shut about all I said +last night about anything. Don't you ever let on to a soul that I ain't +stuck on this place and its people--no matter what I do." + +"Sure not! What _are_ you going to do, Uncle Peter?" + +The old man's jaws were set for some seconds in a way to make Billy +Brue suspect he might be suffering from cramp. It seemed, however, that +he had merely been thinking intently. Presently he said: + +"I'm goin' to raise hell, Billy." + +"Sure!" said Mr. Brue--approvingly on general principles. "Sure! Why +not?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions + + +On three successive days the old man held lengthy interviews with +Shepler in the latter's private office. At the close of the third day's +interview, Shepler sent for Relpin, of the brokerage firm of Relpin and +Hendricks. A few days after this Uncle Peter said to Percival one +morning: + +"I want to have a talk with you, son." + +"All right, Uncle Peter," was the cheerful answer. He suspected the old +man might at last be going to preach a bit, since for a week past he +had been rather less expansive. He resolved to listen with good grace +to any homilies that might issue. He took his suspicion to be confirmed +when Uncle Peter began: + +"You folks been cuttin' a pretty wide swath here in New York." + +"That's so, Uncle Peter,--wider than we could have cut in Montana +City." + +"Been spendin' money purty free for a year." + +"Yes; you need money here." + +"I reckon you can't say about how much, now?" + +"Oh, I shouldn't wonder," Percival answered, going over to the +escritoire, and taking out some folded sheets and several check-books. +"Of course, I haven't it all here, but I have the bulk of it. Let me +figure a little." + +He began to work with a pencil on a sheet of paper. He was busy almost +half an hour, while Uncle Peter smoked in silence. + +"It struck me the other night we might have been getting a little near +to the limit, so I figured a bit then, too, and I guess this will give +you some idea of it. Of course this isn't all mine; it includes ma's +and Psyche's. Sis has been a mark for every bridge-player between the +Battery and the Bronx, and the way ma has been plunging on her indigent +poor is a caution,--she certainly does hold the large golden medal for +amateur cross-country philanthropy. Now here's a rough expense +account--of course only approximate, except some of the items I +happened to have." Uncle Peter took the statement, and studied it +carefully. + +Paid Hightower Hotel................ $ 42,983.75 + +Keep of horses, and extra horse and carriage +hire....................... 5,628.50 + +Chartering steam-yacht _Viluca_ three +months.............................. 24,000.00 + +Expenses running yacht.............. 46,850.28 + +W. U. Telegraph Company............. 32.65 + +Incidentals......................... 882,763.90 + +Total $1,002,259.08 + +His sharp old eyes ran up and down the column of figures. Something +among the items seemed to annoy him. + +"Looking at those 'incidentals'? I took those from the check-books. +They are pretty heavy." + +"It's an outrage!" exclaimed the old man, indignantly, "that there +$32.50 to the telegraph company. How's it come you didn't have a +Western Union frank this year? I s'posed you had one. They sent me +mine." + +"Oh, well, they didn't send me one, and I didn't bother to ask for it," +the young man answered in a tone of relief. "Of course the expenses +have been pretty heavy, coming here strangers as we did. Now, another +year--" + +"Oh, that ain't anything. Of course you got to spend money. I see one +of them high-toned gents that died the other day said a gentleman +couldn't possibly get along on less'n two thousand dollars a day and +expenses. I'm glad to see you ain't cut under the limit none--you got +right into his class jest like you'd always lived here, didn't you? +But, now, I been kind of lookin' over the ground since I come here, and +it's struck me you ain't been gettin' enough for your money. You've +spent free, but the goods ain't been delivered. I'm talkin' about +yourself. Both your ma and Pishy has got more out of it than you have. +Why, your ma gets her name in the papers as a philanthropist along with +that--how do the papers call her?--'the well-known club woman'--that +Mrs. Helen Wyot Lamson that always has her name spelled out in full? +Your ma is getting public recognition fur her money, and look at Pishy. +What's she gone and done while you been laxin' about? Why, she's got +engaged to a lord, or just as good. Look at the prospects she's got! +She'll enter the aristocracy of England and have a title. But look at +you! Really, son, I'm ashamed of you. People over there'll be sayin' +'Lady What's-her-name? Oh, yes! She _has_ got a brother, but he don't +amount to shucks--he ain't much more'n a three-spot. He can't do +anything but play bank and drink like a fish. He's throwed away his +opportunities'--that's what them dukes and counts will be sayin' about +you behind your back." + +"I understood you didn't think much of sis's choice." + +"Well, of course, he wouldn't be much in Montana City, but he's all +right in his place, and he seems to be healthy. What knocks _me_ is how +he ever got all them freckles. He never come by 'em honestly, I bet. He +must 'a' got caught in an explosion of freckles sometime. But that +ain't neither here nor there. He has the goods and Pish'll get 'em +delivered. She's got something to show fur her dust. But what _you_ got +to show? Not a blamed thing but a lot of stubs in a check-book, and a +little fat. Now I ain't makin' any kick. I got no right to; but I do +hate to see you leadin' this life of idleness and dissipation when you +might be makin' something of yourself. Your pa was quite a man. He left +his mark out there in that Western country. Now you're here settled in +the East among big people, with a barrel of money and fine chances to +do something, and you're jest layin' down on the family name. You +wouldn't think near so much of your pa if he'd laid down before his +time; and your own children will always have to say 'Poor pa--he had a +good heart, but he never could amount to anything more'n a threespot; +he didn't have any stuff in him,' they'll be sayin'. Now, on the level, +you don't want to go through life bein' just known as a good thing and +easy money, do you?" + +"Why, of course not, Uncle Peter; only I had to look around some at +first,--for a year or so." + +"Well, if you need to look any more, then your eyes ain't right. That's +my say. I ain't askin' you to go West. I don't expect that!" + +Percival brightened. + +"But I am tryin' to nag you into doin' something here. People can say +what they want to about you," he continued, stubbornly, as one who +confesses the most arrant bigotry, "but I know you _have_ got some +brains, some ability--I really believe you got a whole lot--and you got +the means to take your place right at the top. You can head 'em all in +this country or any other. Now what you ought to do, you ought to take +your place in the world of finance--put your mind on it night and +day--swing out--get action--and set the ball to rolling. Your pa was a +big man in the West, and there ain't any reason as I can see of why you +can't be just as big a man in proportion here. People can talk all they +want to about your bein' just a dub--I won't believe 'em. And there's +London. You ain't been ambitious enough. Get a down-hill pull on New +York, and then branch out. Be a man of affairs like your pa, and like +that fellow Shepler. Let's _be_ somebody. If Montana City was too small +fur us, that's no reason why New York should be too big." + +Percival had walked the floor in deep attention to the old man's words. + +"You've got me right, Uncle Peter," he said at last. "And you're right +about what I ought to do. I've often thought I'd go into some of these +big operations here. But for one thing I was afraid of what you'd say. +And then, I didn't know the game very well. But I see I ought to do +something. You're dead right." + +"And we need more money, too," urged the old man. "I was reading a +piece the other day about the big fortunes in New York. Why, we ain't +one, two, three, with the dinky little twelve or thirteen millions we +could swing. You don't want to be a piker, do you? If you go in the +game at all, play her open and high. Make 'em take the ceiling off. You +can just as well get into the hundred million class as not, and I know +it. They needn't talk to _me_--I know you _have_ got some brains. If +you was to go in now it would keep you straight and busy, and take you +out of this pin-head class that only spends their pa's money." + +"You're all right, Uncle Peter! I certainly did need you to come along +right now and set me straight. You founded the fortune, pa trebled it, +and now I'll get to work and roll it up like a big snowball." + +"That's the talk. Get into the hundred million class, and show these +wise folks you got something in you besides hot air, like the sayin' +is. _Then_ they won't always be askin' who your pa was--they'll be +wantin' to know who you are, by Gripes! Then you can have the biggest +steam yacht afloat, two or three of 'em, and the best house in New +York, and palaces over in England; and Pish'll be able to hold up her +head in company over there. You can finance _that_ proposition right up +to the nines." + +"By Jove! but you're right. You're a wonder, Uncle Peter. And that +reminds me--" + +He stopped in his walk. + +"I gave it hardly any thought at the time, but now it looks bigger than +a mountain. I know just the things to start in on systematically. Now +don't breathe a word of this, but there's a big deal on in Consolidated +Copper. I happened on to the fact in a queer way the other night. +There's a broker I've known down-town--fellow by the name of Relpin. +Met him last summer. He does most of Shepler's business; he's supposed +to be closer to Shepler and know more about the inside of his deals +than any man in the Street. Well, I ran across Relpin down in the cafe +the other night and he was wearing one of those gents' nobby +three-button souses. Nothing would do but I should dine with him, so I +did. It was the night you and the folks went to the opera with the +Oldakers. Relpin was full of lovely talk and dark hints about a rise in +copper stock, and another rise in Western Trolley, and a bigger rise +than either of them in Union Cordage. How that fellow can do Shepler's +business and drink the stuff that makes you talk I don't see. Anyway he +said--and you can bet what he says goes--that the Consolidated is going +to control the world's supply of copper inside of three months, and the +stock is bound to kite, and so are these other two stocks; Shepler's +back of all three. The insiders are buying up now, slowly and +cautiously, so as not to start any boom prematurely. Consolidated is no +now, and it'll be up to 150 by April at the latest. The others may go +beyond that. I wasn't looking for the game at the time, so I didn't +give it any thought, but now, you see, there's our chance. We'll plunge +in those three lines before they start to rise, and be in on the ground +floor." "Now don't you be rash! That Shepler's old enough to suck eggs +and hide the shells. I heard a man say the other day copper was none +too good at no." + +"Exactly. You can hear anything you're looking to hear, down there. But +I tell you this was straight. Don't you suppose Shepler knows what he's +about?--there's a boy that won't be peddling shoe-laces and gum-drops +off one of these neat little bosom-trays--not for eighty-five or +ninety-thousand years yet--and Relpin, even if he was drunk, knows +Shepler's deals like you know Skiplap. They'll bear the stocks all they +can while they're buying up. I wouldn't be surprised if the next +Consolidated dividend was reduced. That would send her down a few +points, and throw more stock on the market. Meantime, they're quietly +workin' to get control of the European mines--and as to Western Trolley +and Union Cordage--say, Relpin actually got to crying--they're so +good--he had one of those loving ones, the kind where you want to be +good to every one in the world. I'm surprised he didn't get into a +sandwich sign and patrol Broadway, giving those tips to everybody.". + +"Course, we're on a proposition now that you know more about it than I +do; you certainly do take right hold at once--that was your pa's way, +too. Daniel J. could look farther ahead in a minute than most men could +in a year. I got to trust you wholly in these matters, and I know I can +do it, too. I got confidence in you, no matter _what_ other people say. +They don't know you like I do. And if there's any other things you know +about fur sure--" + +"Well, there's Burman. He's plunging in corn now. His father has staked +him, and he swears he can't lose. He was after me to put aside a +million. Of course if he does win out it would be big money." + +"Well, son, I can't advise you none--except I know you have got a head +on you, no matter how people talk. You know about this end of the game, +and I'll have to be led entirely by you. If you think Burman's got a +good proposition, why, there ain't anything like gettin' action all +along the layout, from ace down to seven-spot and back to the king +card." + +"That's the talk. I'll see Relpin to-day or to-morrow. I'll bet he +tries to hedge on what he said. But I got him too straight--let a +drunken man alone for telling the truth when he's got it in him. We'll +start in buying at once." + +"It does sound good. I must say you take hold of it considerable like +Dan'l J. would 'a' done--and use my money jest like your own. I do want +to see you takin' your place where you belong. This life of idleness +you been leadin'--one continual potlatch the whole time--it wa'n't +doin' you a bit of good." + +"We'll get action, don't you worry. Now let's have lunch down-stairs, +and then go for a drive. It's too fine a day to stay in. I'll order the +cart around and show you that blue-ribbon cob I bought at the horse +show. I just want you to see his action. He's a beaut, all right. He's +been worked a half in 1.17, and he can go to his speed in ten lengths, +any time." + +In the afternoon they fell into the procession of carriages streaming +toward the park. The day was pleasantly sharp, the clear sunshine +enlivening, and the cob was one with the spirit of the occasion, +alertly active, from his rubber-shod, varnished hoofs to the tips of +his sensitive ears. + +"Central Park," said Uncle Peter, "always seems to me just like a tidy +little parlour, livin' around in them hills the way I have." + +He watched the glinting of varnished spokes, and listened absently to +the rhythmic "click-clump" of trotting horses, with its accompanying +jingle of silver harness trappings. + +"These people must have lots of money," he observed. "But you'll go in +and outdo 'em all." + +"That's what! Uncle Peter." + +Toward the upper end of the East Drive they passed a victoria in which +were Miss Milbrey and her mother with Rulon Shepler. The men raised +their hats. Miss Milbrey flashed the blue of her eyes to them and +pointed down her chin in the least bit of a bow. Mrs. Milbrey stared. + +"Wa'n't that Shepler?" + +"Yes, Shepler and the Milbreys. That woman certainly has the haughtiest +lorgnon ever built." + +"She didn't speak to us. Is her eyes bad?" + +"Yes, ever since that time at Newport. None of them has spoken to me +but the girl--she's engaged to Shepler." + +"She's a right nice lookin' little lady. I thought you was kind of +taken there." + +"She would have married me for my roll. I got far enough along to tell +that. But that was before Shepler proposed. I'd give long odds she +wouldn't consider me now. I haven't enough for her with him in the +game." + +"Well, you go in and make her wish she'd waited for you." + +"I'll do that; I'll make Shepler look like a well-to-do business man +from Pontiac, Michigan." + +"Is that brother of hers you told me about still makin' up to that +party?" + +"Can't say. I suppose he'll be a little more fastidious, as the +brother-in-law of Shepler. In fact I heard that the family had shut +down on any talk of his marrying her." + +"Still, she ought to be able to do well here. Any man that would marry +a woman fur money wouldn't object to her. One of these fortune-hunting +Englishmen, now, would snap her up." + +"She hasn't quite enough for that. Two millions isn't so much here, you +know, and she must have spent a lot of hers. I hear she has a very +expensive suite back there at the Arlingham, and lives high. I did +hear, too, that she takes a flyer in the Street now and then. She'll be +broke soon if she keeps that up." + +"Too bad she ain't got a few more millions," said Uncle Peter, +ruminantly. "Take one of these titled Englishmen looking for an heiress +to keep 'em--she'd make just the kind of a wife he'd ought to get. She +certainly ought to have a few more millions. If she had, now, she might +cure some decent girl of her infatuation. Where'd you say she was +stoppin'?" + +"Arlingham--that big private hotel I showed you back there." + +Percival confessed to his mother that night that he had wronged Uncle +Peter. + +"That old boy is all right yet," he said, with deep conviction. "Don't +make any mistake there. He has bigger ideas than I gave him credit for. +I suggested branching out here in a business way, to-day, and the old +fellow got right in line. If anybody tells you that old Petie Bines +hasn't got the leaves of his little calendar torn off right up to date +you just feel wise inside, and see what odds are posted on it!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers + + +Consolidated copper at 110. The day after his talk with Uncle Peter, +Percival through three different brokers gave orders to buy ten +thousand shares. + +"I tried to give Relpin an order for five thousand shares over the +telephone," he said to Uncle Peter; "but they're used to those fifty +and a hundred thousand dollar pikers down in that neighbourhood. He +seemed to think I was joshing him. When I told him I meant it and was +ready to take practically all he could buy for the next few weeks or +so, I think he fell over in the booth and had to be helped out." + +Orders for twenty thousand more shares in thousand share lots during +the next three weeks sent the stock to 115. Yet wise men in the Street +seemed to fear the stock. They were waiting cautiously for more +definite leadings. The plunging of Bines made rather a sensation, and +when it became known that his holdings were large and growing almost +daily larger, the waning confidence of a speculator here and there +would be revived. + +At 115 the stock rested again, with few sales recorded. A certain few +of the elect regarded this calm as ominous. It was half believed by +others that the manipulations of the inner ring would presently advance +the stock to a sensational figure, and that the reckless young man from +Montana might be acting upon information of a definite character. But +among the veteran speculators the feeling was conservative. Before +buying they preferred to await some sign that the advance had actually +begun. The conservatives were mostly the bald old fellows. Among the +illusions that rarely survive a man's hair in Wall Street is the one +that "sure things" are necessarily sure. + +Percival watched Consolidated Copper go back to 110, and bought +again--ten thousand shares. The price went up two points the day after +his orders were placed, and two days later dropped back to 110. The +conservatives began to agree with the younger set of speculators, in so +far as both now believed that the stock was behaving in an unnatural +manner, indicating that "something was doing"--that manipulation behind +the scenes was under way to a definite end. The conservatives and the +radicals differed as to what this end was. But then, Wall Street is +nourished almost exclusively upon differences of opinion. + +Percival now had accounts with five firms of brokers. + +"Relpin," he explained to Uncle Peter, "is a foxy boy. He's foxier than +a fox. He not only tried to hedge on what he told me,--said he'd been +drinking absinthe _frappé_ that day, and it always gets him +dreamy,--but he actually had the nerve to give me the opposite steer. +Of course he knows the deal clear to the centre, and Shepler knows that +he knows, and he must have been afraid Shepler would suspect he'd been +talking. So I only traded a few thousand shares with him. I didn't want +to embarrass him. Funny about him, too. I never heard before of his +drinking anything to speak of. And there isn't a man in the Street +comes so near to knowing what the big boys are up to. But we're on the +winning cards all right. I get exactly the same information from a +dozen confidential sources; some of it I can trace to Relpin, and some +of it right to Shepler himself." "Course I'm leavin' it all to you," +answered Uncle Peter; "and I must say I do admire the way you take hold +and get things on the move. You don't let any grass grow under _your_ +heels. You got a good head fur them things. I can tell by the way you +start out--just like your pa fur all the world. I'll feel safe enough +about my money as long as you keep your health. If only you got the +nerve. I've known men would play a big proposition half-through and +then get scared and pull out. Your pa wa'n't that way. He could get a +proposition right by its handle every time, and they never come any too +big fur him; the bigger they was, better he liked 'em. That's the kind +of genius I think you got. You ain't afraid to take a chance." + +Percival beamed modestly under praise of this sort which now came to +him daily. + +"It's good discipline for me, too, Uncle Peter. It's what I needed, +something to put my mind on. I needed a new interest in life. You had +me down right. I wasn't doing myself a bit of good with nothing to +occupy my mind." + +"Well, I'm mighty glad you thought up this stock deal. It'll give you +good business habits and experience, say nothing of doubling your +capital." + +"And I've gone in with Burman on his corn deal. He's begun to buy, and +he has it cinched this time. He'll be the corn king all right by June +1st; don't make any mistake on that. I thought as long as we were +plunging so heavy in Western Trolley and Union Cordage, along with the +copper, we might as well take the side line of corn. Then we won't have +our eggs all in one basket." + +"All right, son, all right! I'm trustin' you. A corner in corn is +better'n a corner in wild-oats any day; anything to keep you straight, +and doin' something. I don't care _how_ many millions you pile up! I +hear the Federal Oil people's back of the copper deal." + +"That's right; the oil crowd and Shepler. I had it straight from Relpin +that night. They're negotiating now with the Rothschilds to limit the +output of the Rio Tinto mines. They'll end by controlling them, and +then--well, we'll have a roll of the yellow boys--say, we'll have to +lay quiet for a year just to count it." + +"Do it good while you're doin' it," urged Uncle Peter, cheerfully. "I +rely so much on your judgment, I want you to get action on my stuff, +too. I got a couple millions that ought to be workin' harder than they +are." + +"Good; I didn't think you had so much gambler in you." + +"It's fur a worthy purpose, son. And it seems too bad that Pishy can't +pull out something with her bit, when it's to be had so easy. From what +that spangle-faced beau of hers tells me there's got to be some +expensive plumbing done in that castle he gets sawed off on to him." + +"We'll let sis in, too," exclaimed her brother, generously, "and ma +could use a little more in her business. She's sitting up nights to +corner all the Amalgamated Hard-luck on the island. We'll pool issue, +and say, we'll make those Federal Oil pikers think we've gnawed a +corner off the subtreasury. I'll put an order in for twenty thousand +more shares to-morrow--among the three stocks. And then we'll have to +see about getting all our capital here. We'll need every cent of it +that's loose; and maybe we better sell off some of those dead-wood +stocks." + +The twenty thousand shares were bought by the following week, five +thousand of them being Consolidated Copper, ten thousand Western +Trolley, and five thousand Union Cordage. Consolidated Copper fell off +two points, upon rumours, traceable to no source, that the company had +on hand a large secret supply of copper, and was producing largely in +excess of the demand every month. + +Percival told Uncle Peter of these rumours, and chuckled with the easy +confidence of a man who knows secrets. + +"You see, it's coming the way Relpin said. The insiders are hammering +down the stock with those reports, hammering with one hand, and buying +up small lots quietly with the other. But you'll notice the price of +copper doesn't go down any. They keep it at seventeen cents all right. +Now, the moment they get control of the European supply they'll hold +the stuff, force up the selling price to awful figures, and squeeze out +dividends that will make you wear blue glasses to look at them." + +"You certainly do know your business, son," said Uncle Peter, +fervently. "You certainly got your pa's head on you. You remind me more +and more of Dan'l J. Bines every day. I'd rather trust your judgment +now than lots of older men down there. You know their tricks all right. +Get in good and hard so long as you got a sure thing. I'd hate to have +you come meachin' around after that stock has kited, and be kickin' +because you hadn't bet what your hand was worth." + +"Trust me for that, Uncle Peter. Garmer tried to steer me off this line +of stocks the other night. He'd heard these rumours about a slump, and +he's fifty years old at that. I thanked him for his tip and coppered it +with another thousand shares all around next day. The way Garmer can +tell when you're playing a busted flush makes you nervous, but I +haven't looked over his license to know everything down in the Street +yet." + +The moral gain to Percival from his new devotion to the stock market +was commented upon approvingly both by Uncle Peter and by his mother. +It was quite as tangible as his money profits promised to be. He ceased +to frequent the temple of chance in Forty-fourth Street, to the +proprietor's genuine regret. The poker-games at the hotel he abandoned +as being trivial. And the cabmen along upper Broadway had seldom now +the opportunity to compete for his early morning patronage. He began to +keep early hours and to do less casual drinking during the day. After +three weeks of this comparatively regular living his mother rejoiced to +note signs that his breakfast-appetite was returning. + +"You see," he explained earnestly to Uncle Peter, "a man to make +anything at this game must keep his head clear, and he must have good +health to do that. I meet a lot of those fellows down there that queer +themselves by drink. It doesn't do so much hurt when a man isn't +needing his brains,--but no more of it for me just now!" + +"That's right, son. I knew I could make something more than a polite +sosh out of you. I knew you'd pull up if you got into business like you +been doin'." + +"Come down-town with me this afternoon, and see me make a play, Uncle +Peter. I think I'll begin now to buy on a margin. The rise can't hold +off much longer." + +"I'd like to, son, but I'd laid out to take a walk up to the park this +afternoon, and look in at the monkeys awhile. I need the out-doors, and +anyway you don't need me down there. You know _your_ part all right. +My! but I'd begin to feel nervous with all that money up, if it was +anybody but you, now." + +In pursuance of his pronounced plan, Uncle Peter walked up Fifth Avenue +that afternoon. But he stopped short of the park. At the imposing +entrance of the Arlingham he turned in. At the desk he asked for Mrs. +Wybert. + +"I'll see if Mrs. Wybert is in," said the clerk, handing him a blank +card; "your name, please!" + +The old man wrote, "Mr. Peter Bines of Montana City would like a few +minutes' talk with Mrs. Wybert." + +The boy was gone so long that Uncle Peter, waiting, began to suspect he +would not be received. He returned at length with the message, "The +lady says will you please step up-stairs." + +Going up in the elevator, the old man was ushered by a maid into a +violet-scented little nest whose pale green walls were touched +discreetly with hangings of heliotrope. An artist, in Uncle Peter's +place, might have fancied that the colour scheme of the apartment cried +out for a bit of warmth. A glowing, warm-haired woman was needed to +set the walls afire; and the need was met when Mrs. Wybert entered. + +She wore a long coat of seal trimmed with chinchilla, and had been, +apparently, about to go out. + +Uncle Peter rose and bowed. Mrs. Wybert nodded rather uncertainly. + +"You wished to see me, Mr. Bines?" + +"I did want to have a little talk with you, Mrs. Wybert, but you're +goin' out, and I won't keep you. I know how pressed you New York +society ladies are with your engagements." + +Mrs. Wybert had seemed to be puzzled. She was still puzzled but +unmistakably pleased. The old man was looking at her with frank and +friendly apology for his intrusion. Plainly she had nothing to fear +from him. She became gracious. + +"It was only a little shopping tour, Mr. Bines, that and a call at the +hospital, where they have one of my maids who slipped on the avenue +yesterday and fractured one of her--er--limbs. Do sit down." + +Mrs. Wybert said "limb" for leg with the rather conscious air of +escaping from an awkward situation only by the subtlest finesse. + +She seated herself before a green and heliotrope background that +instantly took warmth from her colour. Uncle Peter still hesitated. + +"You see, I wanted kind of a long chat with you, Mrs. Wybert--a +friendly chat if you didn't mind, and I'd feel a mite nervous if you're +bundled up that way." + +"I shall be delighted, Mr. Bines, to have a long, friendly chat. I'll +send my cloak back, and you take your own time. There now, do be right +comfortable!" + +The old man settled himself and bestowed upon his hostess a long look +of approval. + +"The reports never done you justice, Mrs. Wybert, and they was very +glowin' reports, too." + +"You're very kind, Mr. Bines, awfully good of you!" + +"I'm goin' to be more, Mrs. Wybert. I'm goin' to be a little bit +confidential--right out in the straight open with you." + +"I am sure of that." + +"And if you want to, you can be the same with me. I ain't ever held +anything against you, and maybe now I can do you a favour." + +"It's right good of you to say so." + +"Now, look here, ma'am, lets you and me get right down to cases about +this society game here in New York." + +Mrs. Wybert laughed charmingly and relaxed in manner. + +"I'm with you, Mr. Bines. What about it, now?" + +"Now don't get suspicious, and tell me to mind my own business when I +ask you questions." + +"I couldn't be suspicious of you--really I feel as if I'd have to tell +you everything you asked me, some way." + +"Well, there's been some talk of your marrying that young Milbrey. Now +tell me the inside of it." + +She looked at the old man closely. Her intuition confirmed his own +protestations of friendliness. + +"I don't mind telling you in strict confidence, there _was_ talk of +marriage, and his people, all but the sister, encouraged it. Then after +she was engaged to Shepler they talked him out of it. Now that's the +whole God's truth, if it does you any good." + +"If you had married him you'd 'a' had a position, like they say here, +right away." + +"Oh, dear, yes! awfully swagger people--dead swell, every one of them. +There's no doubt about that." + +"Exactly; and there ain't really any reason why you can't be somebody +here." + +"Well, between you and I, Mr. Bines, I can play the part as well as a +whole lot of these women here. I don't want to talk, of course, +but--well!" + +"Exactly, you can give half of 'em cards and spades and both casinos, +Mrs. Wybert." + +"And I'll do it yet. I'm not through by any means. They're not the only +perfectly elegant people in this town!" + +"Of course you'll do it, and you could do it better if you had three or +four times the stake you got." + +"Dollars are worth more apiece in New York than any town I've ever been +in." + +"Mrs. Wybert, I can put you right square into a good thing, and I'm +going to do it. Heard anything about Consolidated Copper?" + +"I've heard something big was doing in it; but nobody seems to know for +certain. My broker is afraid of it." + +"Very well. Now you do as I tell you, and you can clean up a big lot +inside of the next two months. If you do as I tell you, mind, no matter +_what_ you hear, and if you don't talk." + +Mrs. Wybert meditated. + +"Mr. Bines, I'm--it's natural that I'm a little uneasy. Why should you +want to see me do well, after our little affair? Now, out with it! What +are you trying to do with me? What do you expect me to do for you? Get +down to cases yourself, Mr. Bines!" + +"I will, ma'am, in a few words. My granddaughter, you may have heard, +is engaged to an Englishman. He's next thing to broke, but he's got a +title coming. Naturally he's looking fur money. Naturally he don't care +fur the girl. But I'm afraid she's infatuated with him. Now then, if he +had a chance at some one with more money than she's got, why, naturally +he'd jump at it." + +"Aren't you a little bit wild?" + +"Not a little bit. He saw you at Newport last summer, and he's seen you +here. He was tearing the adjectives up telling me about you the other +night, not knowing, you understand, that I'd ever heard tell of you +before. You could marry him in a jiffy if you follow my directions." + +"But your granddaughter has a fortune." + +"You'll have as much if you play this the way I tell you. And--you +never can tell in these times--she might lose a good bit of hers." + +"It's very peculiar, Mr. Bines--your proposition." + +[Illustration: "'_WHY, YOU'D BE LADY CASSELTHORPE, WITH DUKES AND +COUNTS TAKIN' OFF THEIR CROWNS TO YOU_.'"] + +"Look at what a brilliant match it would be fur you. Why, you'd be +Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off their crowns to +you. And that other one--that Milbrey--from all I hear he's lighter'n +cork--cut his galluses and he'd float right up into the sky. He ain't +got anything but his good family and a thirst." + +"I see. This Mauburn isn't good enough for your family, but you reckon +he's good enough for me? Is that it, now?" + +"Come, Mrs. Wybert, let's be broad. That's the game you like, and I +don't criticise you fur it. It's a good game if that's the kind of a +game you're huntin' fur. And you can play it better'n my granddaughter. +She wa'n't meant fur it--and I'd rather have her marry an American, +anyhow. Now you like it, and you got beauty--only you need more money. +I'll put you in the way of it, and you can cut out my granddaughter." + +"I must think about it. Suppose I plunge in copper, and your tip isn't +straight. I've seen hard times, Mr. Bines, in my life. I haven't always +wore sealskin and diamonds." + +"Mrs. Wybert, you was in Montana long enough to know how I stand +there?" + +"I know you're A1, and your word's as good as another man's money. I +don't question your good intentions." + +"It's my judgment, hey? Now, look here, I won't tell you what I know +and how I know it, but you can take my word that I know I do know. You +plunge in copper right off, without saying a word to anybody or makin' +any splurge, and here--" + +From the little table at his elbow he picked up the card that had +announced him and drew out his pencil. + +"You said my word was as good as another man's money. Now I'm going to +write on this card just what you have to do, and you're to follow +directions, no matter what you hear about other people doing. There'll +be all sorts of reports about that stock, but you follow my +directions." + +He wrote on the back of the card with his pencil. + +"Consolidated Copper, remember--and now I'm a-goin' to write something +else under them directions. + +"'Do this up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything +you lose.' There, Mrs. Wybert, I've signed that 'Peter Bines.' That +card wouldn't be worth a red apple in a court of law, but you know me, +and you know it's good fur every penny you lose." + +"Really, Mr. Bines, you half-way persuade me. I'll certainly try the +copper play--and about the other--well,--we'll see; I don't promise, +mind you!" + +"You think over it. I'm sure you'll like the idea--think of bein' in +that great nobility, and bein' around them palaces with their dukes and +counts. Think how these same New York women will meach to you then!" + +The old man rose. + +"And mind, follow them directions and no other--makes no difference +what you hear, or I won't be responsible. And I'll rely on you, ma'am, +never to let anyone know about my visit, and to send me back that +little document after you've cashed in." + +He left her studying the card with a curious little flash of surprise. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting + + +In the weeks that now followed, Percival became a model of sobriety and +patient, unremitting industry, according to his own ideas of industry. +He visited the offices of his various brokers daily, reading the tape +with the single-hearted devotion of a veteran speculator. He acquired a +general knowledge of the ebb and flow of popular stocks. He frequently +saw opportunities for quick profit in other stocks than the three he +was dealing in, but he would not let himself be diverted. + +"I'm centering on those three," he told Uncle Peter. "When they win out +we'll take up some other lines. I could have cleared a quarter of a +million in that Northern Pacific deal last week, as easy as not. I saw +just what was being done by that Ledrick combine. But we've got +something better, and I don't want to take chances on tying up some +ready money we might need in a hurry. If a man gets started on those +little side issues he's too apt to lose his head. He jumps in one day, +and out the next, and gets to be what they call a 'kangaroo,' down in +the Street. It's all right for amusement, but the big money is in +cinching one deal and pushing hard. It's a bull market now, too; buy +A.O.T. is the good word--Any Old Thing--but I'm going to stay right by +my little line." + +"You certainly have a genius fur finance," declared Uncle Peter, with +fervent admiration. "This going into business will be the makin' of +you. You'll be good fur something else besides holdin' one of them +dinky little teacups, and talking about 'trouserings'--no matter _what_ +people say. Let 'em _talk_ about you--sayin' you'll never be anything +like the man your pa was--_you'll_ show 'em." + +And Percival, important with his secret knowledge of the great _coup_, +went back to the ticker, and laughed inwardly at the seasoned experts +who frankly admitted their bewilderment as to what was "doing" in +copper and Western Trolley. + +"When it's all over," he confided gaily to the old man, "we ought to +pinch off about ten per cent of the winnings, and put up a monument to +absinthe _frappé_--the stuff Relpin had been drinking that day. +They'll give us a fine public square for it in Paris if they won't here +in New York. And it wouldn't do any good to give it to Relpin, who's +really earned it--he'd only lush himself into one of those drunkard's +graves--I understand there's a few left yet." + +Early in March, Coplen, the lawyer, was sent for, and with him Percival +spent two laborious weeks, going over inventories of the properties, +securities, and moneys of the estate. The major portion of the latter +was now invested in the three stocks, and the remainder was at hand +where it could be conveniently reached. + +Percival informed himself minutely as to the values of the different +mining properties, railroad and other securities. A group of the +lesser-paying mines was disposed of to an English syndicate, the +proceeds being retained for the stock deal. All but the best paying of +the railroad, smelting, and land-improvement securities were also +thrown on the market. + +The experience was a valuable one to the young man, enlarging greatly +his knowledge of affairs, and giving him a needed insight into the +methods by which the fortune had been accumulated. + +"That was a slow, clumsy, old-fashioned way to make money," he declared +to Coplen. "Nowadays it's done quicker." + +His grasp of details delighted Uncle Peter and surprised Coplen. + +"I didn't know but he might be getting plucked," said Coplen to the old +man, "with all that money being drawn out so fast. If I hadn't known +you were with him, I'd have taken it on myself to find out something +about his operations. But he's all right, apparently. He had a scent +like a hound for those dead-wood properties--got rid of them while we +would have been making up our minds to. That boy will make his way +unless I'm mistaken. He has a head for detail." + + +"I'll make him a bigger man than his pa was yet," declared Uncle Peter. +"But I wouldn't want to let on that I'd had anything to do with it. +He'll think he's done it all himself, and it's right he should. It +stimulates 'em. Boys of his age need just about so much conceit, and it +don't do to take it out of 'em." + +Reports of the most encouraging character came from Burman. The deal in +corn was being engineered with a riper caution than had been displayed +in the ill-fated wheat deal of the spring before. + +"Burman's drawn close up to a million already," said Percival to Uncle +Peter, "and now he wants me to stand ready for another million." + +"Is Burman," asked Uncle Peter, "that young fellow that had a habit of +standin' pat on a pair of Jacks, and then bettin' everybody off the +board?" + +"Yes, that was Burman." + +"Well, I liked his ways. I should say he could do you a whole lot of +good in a corn deal." + +"It certainly does look good--and Burman has learned the ropes and +spars. They're already calling him the 'corn-king' out on the Chicago +Board of Trade." + +"Use your own judgment," Uncle Peter urged him. "You're the one that +knows all about these things. My Lord! how you ever _do_ manage to keep +things runnin' in your head gets me. If you got confidence in Burman, +all I can say is--well, your pa was a fine judge of men, and I don't +see why you shouldn't have the gift." + + +"Between you and me, Uncle Peter, I _am_ a good judge of human nature, +and I know this much about Burman: when he does win out he'll win big. +And I think he's going to whipsaw the market to a standstill this time, +for sure. Here's a little item from this morning's paper that sounds +right, all along the line." + +"COPPER, CORN, AND CORDAGE. + +"There are just now three great movements in the market, Copper Trust +stock, corn, and cordage stock. The upward movement in corn seems to be +in the main not speculative but natural--the result of a short supply +and a long demand. The movements in Copper and Cordage Trust stocks are +purely speculative. The copper movement is based on this proposition: +Can the Copper Trust maintain the price for standard copper at +seventeen cents a pound, in face of enormously increased supply and the +rapidly decreasing demand, notably in Germany? The bears think not. The +bulls, contrarily, persist in behaving as if they had inside +information of a superior value. Just possibly a simultaneous rise in +corn, copper, and cordage will be the next sensation in the trading +world." + +"You see?" said Percival. "They're beginning to wake up, down +there--beginning to turn over in their sleep and mutter. Pretty soon +they'll begin to stretch lazily; when they finally hear something drop +and jump out of bed it will be too late. The bulls will be counting +their chips to cash in, and the man waiting around to put out the +lights. And I don't see why Burman isn't as safe as I am." "I don't, +either," said Uncle Peter. + +"'A short supply and a long demand,'--it would be a sin to let any one +else in. I'll just wire him we're on, and that we need all of that good +thing ourselves." + +In the flush of his great plans and great expectations came a chance +meeting with Miss Milbrey. He had seen her only at a distance since +their talk at Newport. Yet the thought of her had persisted as a +plaintive undertone through all the days after. Only the sharp hurt to +his sensitive pride--from the conviction that she had found him +tolerable solely because of the money--had saved him from the willing +admission to himself that he had carried off too much of her ever to +forget. In his quiet moments, the tones of her clear, low voice came +movingly to his ears, and his eyes conjured involuntarily her girlish +animation, her rounded young form, her colour and fire--the choked, +smouldering fire of opals. He saw the curve of her wrist, the confident +swing of her walk, the easy poise of her head, her bearing, at once +girlish and womanly, the little air, half of wistful appeal, and half +of self-reliant assertion. Yet he failed not to regard these +indulgences as utter folly. It had been folly enough while he believed +that she stood ready to accept him and his wealth. It was more +flagrant, now that her quest for a husband with millions had been so +handsomely rewarded. + +But again, the fact that she was now clearly impossible for him, so +that even a degrading submission on his part could no longer secure +her, served only to bring her attractiveness into greater relief. With +the fear gone that a sudden impulse to possess her might lead him to +stultify himself, he could see more clearly than ever why she was and +promised always to be to him the very dearest woman in the +world--dearest in spite of all he could reason about so lucidly. He +felt, then, a little shock of unreasoning joy to find one night that +they were dining together at the Oldakers'. + +At four o'clock he had received a hasty note signed "Fidelia Oldaker," +penned in the fine, precise script of some young ladies' finishing +school--perhaps extinct now for fifty years--imploring him, if aught of +chivalry survived within his breast, to fetch his young grandfather and +dine with her that evening. Two men had inconsiderately succumbed, at +this eleventh hour, to the prevailing grip-epidemic, and the lady +threw herself confidently on the well-known generosity of the Bines +male--"like one of the big, stout nets those acrobatic people fall into +from their high bars," she concluded. + +Uncle Peter was more than willing. He liked the Oldakers. + +"They're the only sane folks I've met among your friends," he had told +his grandson. He had dined there frequently during the winter, and +professed to be enamoured of the hostess. That fragile but sprightly +bit of antiquity professed in turn to find Uncle Peter a very dangerous +man among the ladies. They flirted outrageously at every opportunity, +and Uncle Peter sent her more violets than many a popular _débutante_ +received that winter. + +Percival, with his new air of Wall Street operator, was inclined to +hesitate. + +"You know I'm up early now, Uncle Peter, to get the day's run of the +markets before I go downtown, and a man can't do much in the way of +dinners when his mind is working all day. Perhaps Mauburn will go." + +But Mauburn was taking Psyche and Mrs. Drelmer to the first night of a +play, and Percival was finally persuaded by the old man to relax, for +one evening, the austerity of his _régime_. + +"But how your pa would love to see you so conscientious," he said, "and +you with Wall Street, or a good part of it, right under your heel, just +like _that_," and the old man ground his heel viciously into the +carpet. + +When Percival found Shepler with Mrs. Van Geist and Miss Milbrey among +the Oldakers' guests, he rejoiced. Now he would talk to her without any +of that old awkward self-consciousness. He was even audacious enough to +insist that Mrs. Oldaker direct him to take Miss Milbrey out to dinner. + +"I claim it as the price of coming, you know, when I was only an +afterthought." + +"You shall be paid, sir," his hostess declared, "if you consider it pay +to sit beside an engaged girl whose mind is full of her _trousseau_. +And here's this captivating young scapegrace relative of yours. What +price does he demand for coming?" and she glanced up at Uncle Peter +with arch liberality in her bright eyes. + +That gentleman bowed low--a bow that had been the admiration of the +smartest society in Marietta County, Ohio, fifty years and more ago. + +"I'm paid fur coming by coming," he replied, urbanely. + +"There, now!" cried his hostess, "that's pretty, and means something. +You shall take me in for that." + +"I'll have to give you a credit-slip, ma'am. You've overpaid me." And +Mrs. Oldaker, with a coy fillip of her fan, called him a naughty boy. + +"Here, Rulon," she called to Shepler, "are two young daredevils who've +been good enough to save me as many empty chairs. Now you shall take +out Cornelia, and this juvenile sprig shall relieve you of Avice +Milbrey. It's a providence. You engaged couples are always so dull when +you're banished from your own _ciel à deux_." + +Shepler bowed and greeted the two men. Percival sought Miss Milbrey, +who was with her aunt at the other side of the old-fashioned room, a +room whose brocade hangings had been imported from England in the days +of the Georges, and whose furniture was fabricated in the time when +France was suffering its last kings. + +He no longer felt the presence of anything overt between them. The girl +herself seemed to have regained the charming frankness of her first +manner with him. Their relationship was defined irrevocably. No +uncertainty of doubt or false seeming lurked now under the surface to +perplex and embarrass. The relief was felt at once by each. + +"I'm to have the pleasure of taking you in, Miss Milbrey--hostess +issues special commands to that effect." + +"Isn't that jolly! We've not met for an age." + +"And I've such an appetite for talk with you, I fear I won't eat a +thing. If I'd known you were to be here I'd have taken the forethought +to eat a gored ox, or something--what is the proverb, 'better a dinner +of stalled ox where--'" + +"'Where talk is,'" suggested Miss Milbrey, quickly. + +"Oh, yes--.' than to have your own ox gored without a word of talk.' I +remember it perfectly now. And--there--we're moving on to this feast of +reason--" + +"And the flow of something superior to reason," finished Shepler, who +had come over for Mrs. Van Geist. "Oldaker has some port that lay in +the wood in his cellar for forty years--and went around the world +between keel and canvas." + +"That sounds good," said Percival, and then to Miss Milbrey, "But come, +let us reason together." His next sentiment, unuttered, was that the +soft touch of her hand under his arm was headier than any drink, how +ancient soever. + +Throughout the dinner their entire absorption in each other was all but +unbroken. Percival never could remember who had sat at his left; and +Miss Milbrey's right-hand neighbour saw more than the winning line of +her profile but twice. Percival began-- + +"Do you know, I've never been able to classify you at all. I never +could tell how to take you." + +"I'll tell you a secret, Mr. Bines; I think I'm not to be taken at all. +I've begun to suspect that I'm like one of those words that haven't any +rhyme--like 'orange' and 'month,' you know." + +"But you find poetry in life? I do." + +"Plenty of verse--not much poetry." + +"How would you order life now, if the little old wishing-lady came to +your door and knocked?" + +And they plunged forthwith, buoyed by youth's divine effrontery, into +mysteries that have vexed diners, not less than hermit sages, since +"the fog of old time" first obscured truth. Of life and death--the +ugliness of life, and the beauty of death-- + +"... even as death might smile, Petting the plumes of some surprised +soul," + +quoted the girl. Of loving and hating, they talked; of trying and +failing--of the implacable urge under which men must strive in the face +of certain defeat--of the probability that men are purposely born +fools, since, if they were born wise they would refuse to strive; +whereupon life and death would merge, and naught would prevail but a +vast indifference. In fact, they were very deep, and affected to +consider these grave matters seriously. They affected that they never +habitually thought of lesser concerns. And they had the air of +listening to each other as if they were weighing the words judicially, +and were quite above any mere sensuous considerations of personality. + +Once they emerged long enough to hear the hostess speaking, as it were +of yesterday, of a day when the new "German cotillion" was introduced, +to make a sensation in New York; of a time when the best ballrooms were +heated with wood stoves and lighted with lamps; and of a later but +apparently still remote time when the Assemblies were "really, quite +the smartest function of the season." + +In another pause, they caught the kernel of a story being told by Uncle +Peter: + +"The girl was a half-breed, but had a fair skin and the biggest shock +of hair you ever saw--bright yellow hair. She was awful proud of her +hair. So when her husband, Clem Dewler, went to this priest, Father +McNally, and complained that she _would_ run away from the shack and +hang around the dance-halls down at this mining-camp, Father McNally +made up his mind to learn her a lesson. Well, he goes down and finds +her jest comin' out of Tim Healy's place with two other women. He +rushes up to her, catches hold of this big shock of hair that was +trailin' behind her, and before she knew what was comin' he whipped out +a big pair of sharp, shiny shears, and made as if he was going to give +her a hair-cut. At that she begins to scream, but the priest he +wouldn't let go. 'I'll cut it off,' he says, 'close,' he says, 'if you +don't swear on this crucifix to be a good squaw to Clem Dewler, and +never set so much as one of your little feet in these places again.' +She could feel the shears against her hair, and she was so scared she +swore like he told her. And so she was that afraid of losin' her fine +yellow hair afterward, knowin' Father McNally was a man that didn't +make no idle threats, that she kept prim and proper--fur a half-breed." + +"That poor creature had countless sisters," was Miss Milbrey's comment +to Percival. And they fell together once more in deciding whether, +after all, the brightest women ever cease to believe that men are +influenced most by surface beauties. They fired each other's enthusiasm +for expressing opinions, and they took the opinions very seriously. Yet +of their meeting, to an observer, their talk would have seemed the part +least worth recording. + +Twice Percival caught Shepler's regard bent upon them. It amused him to +think he detected signs of uneasiness back of the survey, cool, +friendly, and guarded as it was on the surface. + +At parting, later, Percival spoke for the first time to Miss Milbrey of +her engagement. + +"You must know that I wish you all the happiness you hope for yourself; +and if I were as lucky in love as Mr. Shepler has been, I surely would +never dare to gamble in anything else--you know the saying." + +"And you, Mr. Bines. I've been hearing so much of your marriage. I hope +the rumour I heard to-day is true, that your engagement has been +announced." + +He laughed. + +"Come, now! That's all gossip, you know; not a word of truth in it, and +it's been very annoying to us both. Please demolish that rumour on my +authority next time you hear it, thoroughly, so they can make nothing +out of the pieces." + +Miss Milbrey showed genuine disappointment. + +"I had thought, naturally--" + +"The only member of that household I could marry is not suited to my +age." + +Miss Milbrey was puzzled. + +"But, really, she's not so old." + +"No, not so very old. Still, she's going on five, and you know how time +flies--and so much disparity in our ages--twenty-one years or so; no, +she was no wife for me, although I don't mind confessing that there has +been an affair between us, but--really you can't imagine what a +frivolous and trifling creature she is." + +Miss Milbrey laughed now, rather painfully he fancied. + +"You mean the baby? Isn't she a little dear?" + +"I'll tell you something, just between us--the baby's mother is--well, +I like her--but she's a joke. That's all, a joke." + +"I beg your pardon for talking of it. It had seemed so definite. +They're waiting for me--good night--_so_ glad to have seen you--and, +nevertheless, she's a very _practical_ joke!" + +He watched her with frank, utter longing, as she moved over to Mrs. +Oldaker, tender, girlish, appealing, with the old air of timid +wistfulness, kept guard over by her woman's knowledge. His fingers +still curved, as if they were loth to forget the clasp of her warm, +firm little hand. She was gowned in white fleece, and she wore one pink +rose where she could bend her blue eyes down upon it. + +And she was going to marry Shepler for his millions. She might even yet +regret that she had not waited for him, when his own name had been +written up as the wizard of markets, and the master of millions. Since +money was all she loved, he would show her that even in that he was +pre-eminent; though he would still have none of her. And as for +Shepler--he wondered if Shepler knew just what risks he might be taking +on. + +"Oh, Mütterchen! Wasn't it the jolliest evening?" + +They were in the carriage. + +"Did you and Mr. Bines enjoy yourselves as much as you seemed to?" + +"And isn't his grandfather an old dear? What an interesting little +story about that woman. I know just how she felt. You see, sir," she +turned to Shepler, "there is always a way to manage a woman--you must +find her weakness." + +"He's a very unusual old chap," said Shepler. "I had occasion not long +since to tell him that a certain business plan he proposed was entirely +without precedent. His answer was characteristic. He said, 'We _make_ +precedents in the West when we can't find one to suit us.' It seemed so +typical of the people to me. You never can tell what they may do. You +see they were started out of old ruts by some form of necessity, almost +every one of them, when they went West, and as necessity stimulates +only the brightest people to action, those Westerners are apt to be of +a pretty keen, active, and sturdy mental type. As this old chap says, +they never hang back for lack of precedents; they go ahead and make +them. They're not afraid to take sudden queer steps. But, really, I +like them both." + +"So do I," said his betrothed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street + + +At the beginning of April, the situation in the three stocks Percival +had bought so heavily grew undeniably tense. Consolidated Copper went +from 109 to 103 in a week. But Percival's enthusiasm suffered little +abatement from the drop. "You see," he reminded Uncle Peter, "it isn't +exactly what I expected, but it's right in line with it, so it doesn't +alarm me. I knew those fellows inside were bound to hammer it down if +they could. It wouldn't phase me a bit if it sagged to 95." + +"My! My!" Uncle Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you +master this business certainly does win _me_. I tell you, it's a mighty +good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other +side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where +everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there, +everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the +best of it. I told that to one of them smarties last night. But you'll +put them in their place all right. You know both ends of the game and +the middle. We certainly got a right to be proud of you, son. Dan'l J. +liked big propositions himself--but, well, I'd just like to have him +see the nerve you've showed, that's all." + +Uncle Peter's professions of confidence were unfailing, and Percival +took new hope and faith in his judgment from them daily. + +Nevertheless, as the weeks passed, and the mysterious insiders +succeeded in their design of keeping the stock from rising, he came to +feel a touch of anxiety. More, indeed, than he was able to communicate +to Uncle Peter, without confessing outright that he had lost faith in +himself. That he was unable to do, even if it were true, which he +doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the +Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old +man's confidence in the young man's acumen was invulnerable. No shaft +that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he +was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's faith in his +luck. + +"You got your father's head in business matters," was Uncle Peter's +invariable response to any suggestion of failure. "I know that +much--spite of what all these gossips say--and that's all I _want_ to +know. And of course you can't ever be no Shepler 'less you take your +share of chances. Only don't ask _my_ advice. You're master of the +game, and we're all layin' right smack down on your genius fur it." + +Whereupon the young man, with confidence in himself newly inflated, +would hurry off to the stock tickers. He had ceased to buy the stocks +outright, and for several weeks had bought only on margins. + +"There was one rule in poker your pa had," said Uncle Peter. "If a hand +is worth calling on, it's worth raising on. He jest never _would_ call. +If he didn't think a hand was worth raising, he'd bunch it in with the +discards, and wait fur another deal. I don't know much about the game, +but _he_ said it was a sound rule, and if it was sound in poker, why +it's got to be sound in this game. That's all I can tell you. You know +what you hold, and if 'tain't a hand to lay down, it must be a hand to +raise on. Of course, if you'd been brash and ignorant in your first +calculations--if you'd made a fool of yourself at the start--but +shucks! you're the son of Daniel J. Bines, ain't you?" + +The rule and the clever provocation had their effect. + +"I'll raise as long as I have a chip left, Uncle Peter. Why, only +to-day I had a tip that came straight from Shepler, though he never +dreamed it would reach me. That Pacific Cable bill is going to be +rushed through at this session of Congress, sure, and that means enough +increased demand to send Consolidated back where it was. And then, when +it comes out that they've got those Rio Tinto mines by the throat, +well, this anvil chorus will have to stop, and those Federal Oil sharks +and Shepler will be wondering how I had the face to stay in." + +The published rumours regarding Consolidated began to conflict very +sharply. Percival read them all hungrily, disregarding those that did +not confirm his own opinions. He called them irresponsible newspaper +gossip, or believed them to be inspired by the clique for its own ends. + +He studied the history of copper until he knew all its ups and downs +since the great electrical development began in 1887. When Fouts, the +broker he traded most heavily with, suggested that the Consolidated +Company was skating on thin ice, that it might, indeed, be going +through the same experience that shattered the famous Secretan corner a +dozen years before, Percival pointed out unerringly the vital +difference in the circumstances. The Consolidated had reduced the +production of its controlled mines, and the price was bound to be +maintained. When his adviser suggested that the companies not in the +combine might cut the price, he brought up the very lively rumours of a +"gentlemen's agreement" with the "non-combine" producers. + +"Of course, there's Calumet and Hecla. I know that couldn't be gunned +into the combination. They could pay dividends with copper at ten cents +a pound. But the other independents know which side of their stock is +spread with dividends, all right." + +When it was further suggested that the Rio Tinto mines had sold ahead +for a year, with the result that European imports from the United +States had fallen off, and that the Consolidated could not go on for +ever holding up the price, Percival said nothing. + +The answer to that was the secret negotiations for control of the +European output, which would make the Consolidated master of the copper +world. Instead of disclosing this, he pretended craftily to be +encouraged by the mere generally hopeful outlook in all lines. Western +Trolley, too, might be overcapitalised, and Union Cordage might also be +in the hands of a piratical clique; but the demand for trolley lines +was growing every day, and cordage products were not going out of +fashion by any means. + +"You see," he said to his adviser, "here's what the most conservative +man in the Street says in this afternoon's paper. 'That copper must +necessarily break badly, and the whole boom collapse I do not believe. +There is enough prosperity to maintain a strong demand for the metal +through another year at least. As to Western Trolley and Union Cordage, +the two other stocks about which doubt is now being so widely expressed +in the Street, I am persuaded that they are both due to rise, not +sensationally, but at a healthy upward rate that makes them sound +investments!' + +"There," said Percival, "there's the judgment of a man that knows the +game, but doesn't happen to have a dollar in either stock, and he +doesn't know one or two things that I know, either. Just hypothecate +ten thousand of those Union Cordage shares and five thousand Western +Trolley, and buy Consolidated on a twenty per cent margin. I want to +get bigger action. There's a good rule in poker: if your hand is worth +calling, it's worth raising." + +"I like your nerve," said the broker. + +"Well, I know some one who has a sleeve with something up it, that's +all." + +By the third week in April, it was believed that his holdings of +Consolidated were the largest in the Street, excepting those of the +Federal Oil people. Uncle Peter was delighted by the magnitude of his +operations, and by his newly formed habits of industry. + +"It'll be the makings of the boy," he said to Mrs. Bines in her son's +presence. "Not that I care so much myself about all the millions he'll +pile up, but it gives him a business training, and takes him out of the +pin-head class. I bet Shepler himself will be takin' off his silk hat +to your son, jest as soon as he's made this turn in copper--if he has +enough of Dan'l J.'s grit to hang on--and I think he has." + +"They needn't wait another day for me," Percival told him later. "The +family treasure is about all in now, except ma's amethyst earrings, and +the hair watch-chain Grandpa Cummings had. Of course I'm holding what +I promised for Burman. But that rise can't hold off much longer, and +the only thing I'll do, from now on, is to hock a few blocks of the +stock I bought outright, and buy on margins, so's to get bigger +action." + +"My! My! you jest do fairly dazzle me," exclaimed the old man, +delightedly. "Oh, I guess your pa wouldn't be at all proud of you if he +could see it. I tell you, this family's all right while you keep +hearty." + +"Well, I'm not pushing my chest out any," said the young man, with +becoming modesty, "but I don't mind telling you it will be the biggest +thing ever pulled off down there by any one man." + +"That's the true Western spirit," declared Uncle Peter, beside himself +with enthusiasm. "We do things big when we bother with 'em at all. We +ain't afraid of any pikers like Shepler, with his little two and five +thousand lots. Oh! I can jest hear 'em callin' you hard names down in +that Wall Street--Napoleon of Finance and Copper King and all like +that--in about thirty days!" + +He accepted Percival's invitation that afternoon to go down into the +Street with him. They stopped for a moment in the visitors' gallery of +the Stock Exchange and looked down into the mob of writhing, +dishevelled, shouting brokers. In and out, the throng swirled upon +itself, while above its muddy depths surged a froth of hands in +frenzied gesticulation. The frantic movement and din of shrieks +disturbed Uncle Peter. + +"Faro is such a lot quieter game," was his comment; "so much more ca'm +and restful. What a pity, now, 'tain't as Christian!" + +Then they made the rounds of the brokers' offices in New, Broad, and +Wall Streets. + +They reached the office of Fouts, in the, latter street, just as the +Exchange had closed. In the outer trading-room groups of men were still +about the tickers, rather excitedly discussing the last quotations. +Percival made his way toward one of them with a dim notion that he +might be concerned. He was relieved when he saw Gordon Blythe, suave +and smiling, in the midst of the group, still regarding the tape he +held in his hands. Blythe, too, had plunged in copper. He had been one +of the few as sanguine as Percival--and Blythe's manner now reassured +him. Copper had obviously not gone wrong. + +"Ah, Blythe, how did we close? Mr. Blythe, my grandfather, Mr. Bines." + +Blythe was the model of easy, indolent, happy middle-age. His tall hat, +frock coat with a carnation in the lapel, the precise crease of his +trousers, the spickness of his patent-leathers and his graceful +confidence of manner, proclaimed his mind to be free from all but the +pleasant things of life. He greeted Uncle Peter airily. + +"Come down to see how we do it, eh, Mr. Bines? It's vastly engrossing, +on my word. Here's copper just closed at 93, after opening strong this +morning at 105. I hardly fancied, you know, it could fall off so many +of those wretched little points. Rumours that the Consolidated has made +large sales of the stuff in London at sixteen, I believe. One never can +be quite aware of what really governs these absurd fluctuations." + +Percival was staring at Blythe in unconcealed amazement. He turned, +leaving Uncle Peter still chatting with him, and sought Fouts in the +inner office. When he came out ten minutes later Uncle Peter was +waiting for him alone. + +"Your friend Mr. Blythe is a clever sort of man, jolly and +light-hearted as a boy." + +"Let's go out and have a drink, before we go up-town." + +In the _café_ of the Savarin, to which he led Uncle Peter, they saw +Blythe again. He was seated at one of the tables with a younger man. +Uncle Peter and Percival sat down at a table near by. + +Blythe was having trouble about his wine. + +"Now, George," he was saying, "give us a real _lively_ pint of wine. +You see, yourself, that cork isn't fresh; show it to Frank there, and +look at the wine itself--come now, George! Hardly a bubble in it! Tell +Frank I'll leave it to him, by Gad! if this bottle is right." + +The waiter left with the rejected wine, and they heard Blythe resume to +his companion, with the relish of a connoisseur: + +"It's simply a matter of genius, old chap--you understand?--to tell +good wine--that is really to discriminate finely. If a chap's not born +with the gift he's an ass to think he can acquire it. Sometime you've a +setter pup that looks fit--head good, nose all right--all the +markings--but you try him out and you know in half an hour he'll never +do in the world. Then it's better to take him out back of the barn and +shoot him, by Gad! Rather than have his strain corrupt the rest of the +kennel. He can't acquire the gift, and no more can a chap acquire this +gift. Ah! I was right, was I, George? Look how different that cork is." + +He sipped the bubbling amber wine with cautious and exacting +appreciation. As the waiter would have refilled the glasses, Blythe +stopped him. + +"Now, George, let me tell you something. You're serving at this moment +the only gentleman's drink. Do it right, George. Listen! Never refill a +gentleman's glass until it's quite empty. Do you know why? Think, +George! You pour fresh wine into stale wine and what have +you?--neither. I've taught you something, George. Never fill a glass +till it's empty." + +"It beats me," said Uncle Peter, when Blythe and his companion had +gone, "how easy them rich codgers get along. That fellow must 'a' made +a study of wines, and nothing worse ever bothers him than a waiter +fillin' his glass wrong." + +"You'll be beat more," answered Percival, "when I tell you this slump +in copper has just ruined him--wiped out every cent he had. He'd just +taken it off the ticker when we found him in Fouts's place there. He's +lost a million and a half, every cent he had in the world, and he has a +wife and two grown daughters." + +"Shoo! you don't say! And I'd have sworn he didn't care a row of pins +whether copper went up or down. He was a lot more worried about that +champagne. Well, well! he certainly is a game loser. I got more respect +fur him now. This town does produce thoroughbreds, you can't deny +that." + +"Uncle Peter, she's down to 93, and I've had to margin up a good bit. I +didn't think it could get below 95 at the worst." + +"Oh, I can't bother about them things. Just think of when she booms." + +"I do--but say--do you think we better pinch our bets?" + +Uncle Peter finished his glass of beer. + +"Lord! don't ask _me_," he replied, with the unconcern of perfect +trust. "Of course if you've lost your nerve, or if you think all these +things you been tellin' me was jest some one foolin' you--" + +"No, I know better than that, and I haven't lost my nerve. After all, +it only means that the crowd is looking for a bigger rake-off." + +"Your pa always kept _his_ nerve," said Uncle Peter. "I've known him to +make big money by keepin' it when other men lost theirs. Of course he +had genius fur it, and you're purty young yet--" + +"I only thought of it for a minute. I didn't really mean it." + +They read the next afternoon that Gordon Blythe had been found dead of +asphyxiation in a little down-town hotel under circumstances that left +no doubt of his suicide. + +"That man wa'n't so game as we thought," said Uncle Peter. "He's left +his family to starve. Now your pa was a game loser fur fair. Dan'l J. +would'a' called fur another deck." + +"And copper's up two points to-day," said Percival, cheerfully. He had +begun to be depressed with forebodings of disaster, and this slight +recovery was cheering. + +"By the way," he continued, "there may be another gas-jet blown out in +a few days. That party, you know, our friend from Montana, has been +selling Consolidated right and left. Where do you suppose she got any +such tip as that? Well, I'm buying and she's selling, and we'll have +that money back. She'll be wiped off the board when Consolidated +soars." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +How the Chinook Came to Wall Street + + +The loss of much money is commonly a subject to be managed with brevity +and aversion by one who sits down with the right reverence for sheets +of clean paper. To bewail is painful. To affect lightness, on the other +hand, would, in this age, savour of insincerity, if not of downright +blasphemy. More than a bare recital of the wretched facts, therefore, +is not seemly. + +The Bines fortune disappeared much as a heavy fall of snow melts under +the Chinook wind. + +That phenomenon is not uninteresting. We may picture a far-reaching +waste of snow, wind-furrowed until it resembles a billowy white sea +frozen motionless. The wind blows half a gale and the air is full of +fine ice-crystals that sting the face viciously. The sun, lying low on +the southern horizon, seems a mere frozen globe, with lustrous pink +crescents encircling it. + +One day the wind backs and shifts. A change portends. Even the herds of +half-frozen range cattle sense it by some subtle beast-knowledge. They +are no longer afraid to lie down as they may have been for a week. The +danger of freezing has passed. The temperature has been at fifty +degrees below zero. Now, suddenly it begins to rise. The air is +scarcely in motion, but occasionally it descends as out of a +blast-furnace from overhead. To the southeast is a mass of dull black +clouds. Their face is unbroken. But the upper edges are ragged, torn by +a wind not yet felt below. Two hours later its warmth comes. In ten +minutes the mercury goes up thirty-five degrees. The wind comes at a +thirty-mile velocity. It increases in strength and warmth, blowing with +a mighty roar. + +Twelve hours afterward the snow, three feet deep on a level, has +melted. There are bald, brown hills everywhere to the horizon, and the +plains are flooded with water. The Chinook has come and gone. In this +manner suddenly went the Bines fortune. + +April 30th, Consolidated Copper closed at 91. Two days later, May 2d, +the same ill-fated stock closed at 5l--a drop of forty points. Roughly +the decline meant the loss of a hundred million dollars to the fifteen +thousand share-holders. From every city of importance in the country +came tales more or less tragic of holdings wiped out, of ruined +families, of defalcations and suicides. The losses in New York City +alone were said to be fifty millions. A few large holders, reputed to +enjoy inside information, were said to have put their stock aside and +"sold short" in the knowledge of what was coming. Such tales are always +popular in the Street. + +Others not less popular had to do with the reasons for the slump. Many +were plausible. A deal with the Rothschilds for control of the Spanish +mines had fallen through. Or, again, the slaughter was due to the +Shepler group of Federal Oil operators, who were bent on forcing some +one to unload a great quantity of the stock so that they might absorb +it. The immediate causes were less recondite. The Consolidated Company, +so far from controlling the output, was suddenly shown to control +actually less than fifty per cent of it. Its efforts to amend or repeal +the hardy old law of Supply and Demand had simply met with the +indifferent success that has marked all such efforts since the first +attempted corner in stone hatchets, or mastodon tusks, or whatever it +may have been. In the language of one of its newspaper critics, the +"Trust" had been "founded on misconception and prompted along lines of +self-destruction. Its fundamental principles were the restriction of +product, the increase of price, and the throttling of competition, a +trinity that would wreck any combination, business, political, or +social." + +With this generalisation we have no concern. As to the copper +situation, the comment was pat. It had been suddenly disclosed, not +only that no combination could be made to include the European mines, +but that the Consolidated Company had an unsold surplus of 150,000,000 +pounds of copper; that it was producing 20,000,000 pounds a month more +than could be sold, and that it had made large secret sales abroad at +from two to three cents below the market price. + +As if fearing that these adverse conditions did not sufficiently ensure +the stock's downfall, the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators beat +it down further with what was veritably a golden sledge. That is, they +exported gold at a loss. At a time when obligations could have been met +more cheaply with bought bills they sent out many golden cargoes at an +actual loss of three hundred dollars on the half million. As money was +already dear, and thus became dearer, the temptation and the means to +hold copper stock, in spite of all discouragements, were removed from +the paths of hundreds of the harried holders. + +Incidentally, Western Trolley had gone into the hands of a receiver, a +failure involving another hundred million dollars, and Union Cordage +had fallen thirty-five points through sensational disclosures as to +its overcapitalisation. + +Into this maelstrom of a panic market the Bines fortune had been sucked +with a swiftness so terrible that the family's chief advising member +was left dazed and incredulous. + +For two days he clung to the ticker tape as to a life line. He had +committed the millions of the family as lightly as ever he had staked a +hundred dollars on the turn of a card or left ten on the change-tray +for his waiter. + +Then he had seen his cunningly built foundations, rested upon with +hopes so high for three months, melt away like snow when the blistering +Chinook comes. + +It has been thought wise to adopt two somewhat differing similes in the +foregoing, in order that the direness of the tragedy may be +sufficiently apprehended. + +The morning of the first of the two last awful days, he was called to +the office of Fouts and Hendricks by telephone. + +"Something going to happen in Consolidated to-day." + +He had hurried down-town, flushed with confidence. He knew there was +but one thing _could_ happen. He had reached the office at ten and +heard the first vicious little click of the ticker--that beating heart +of the Stock Exchange--as it began the unemotional story of what men +bought and sold over on the floor. Its inventor died in the poorhouse, +but Capital would fare badly without his machine. Consolidated was down +three points. The crowd about the ticker grew absorbed at once. Reports +came in over the telephone. The bears had made a set for the stock. It +began to slump rapidly. As the stock was goaded down, point by point, +the crowd of traders waxed more excited. + +As the stock fell, the banks requested the brokers to margin up their +loans, and the brokers, in turn, requested Percival to margin up his +trades. The shares he had bought outright went to cover the shortage in +those he had bought on a twenty per cent margin. Loans were called +later, and marginal accounts wiped out with appalling informality. + +Yet when Consolidated suddenly rallied three points just at the close +of the day's trading, he took much comfort in it as an omen of the +morrow. That night, however, he took but little satisfaction in Uncle +Peter's renewed assurances of trust in his acumen. Uncle Peter, he +decided all at once, was a fatuous, doddering old man, unable to +realise that the whole fortune was gravely endangered. And with the +gambler's inveterate hope that luck must change he forbore to undeceive +the old man. + +Uncle Peter went with him to the office next morning, serenely +interested in the prospects. + +"You got your pa's way of taking hold of big propositions. That's all I +need to know," he reassured the young man, cheerfully. + +Consolidated Copper opened that day at 78, and went by two o'clock to +51. + +Percival watched the decline with a conviction that he was dreaming. He +laughed to think of his relief when he should awaken. The crowd surged +about the ticker, and their voices came as from afar. Their acts all +had the weird inconsequence of the people we see in dreams. Yet +presently it had gone too far to be amusing. He must arouse himself and +turn over on his side. In five minutes, according to the dream, he had +lost five million dollars as nearly as he could calculate. Losing a +million a minute, even in sleep, he thought, was disquieting. + +Then upon the tape he read another chapter of disaster. Western Trolley +had gone into the hands of a receiver,--a fine, fat, promising stock +ruined without a word of warning; and while he tried to master this +news the horrible clicking thing declared that Union Cordage was +selling down to 58,--a drop of exactly 35 points since morning. + +Fouts, with a slip of paper in his hand, beckoned him from the door of +his private office. He went dazedly in to him,--and was awakened from +the dream that he had been losing a fortune in his sleep. + +Coming out after a few moments, he went up to Uncle Peter, who had been +sitting, watchful but unconcerned, in one of the armchairs along the +wall. The old man looked up inquiringly. + +"Come inside, Uncle Peter!" + +They went into the private office of Fouts. Percival shut the door, and +they were alone. + +"Uncle Peter, Burman's been suspended on the Board of Trade; Fouts just +had this over his private wire. Corn broke to-day." + +"That so? Oh, well, maybe it was worth a couple of million to find out +Burman plays corn like he plays poker; 'twas if you couldn't get it fur +any less." + +"Uncle Peter, we're wiped out." + +"How, wiped out? What do you mean, son?" + +"We're done, I tell you. We needn't care a damn now where copper goes +to. We're out of it--and--Uncle Peter, we're broke." + +"Out of copper? Broke? But you said--" He seemed to be making an effort +to comprehend. His lack of grasp was pitiful. + +"Out of copper, but there's Western Trolley and that Cordage stock--" + +"Everything wiped out, I tell you--Union Cordage gone down thirty-five +points, somebody let out the inside secrets--and God only knows how far +Western Trolley's gone down." + +"Are you all in?" + +"Every dollar--you knew that. But say," he brightened out of his +despair, "there's the One Girl--a good producer--Shepler knows the +property--Shepler's in this block--" and he was gone. + +The old man strolled out into the trading-room again. A curious grim +smile softened his square jaw for a moment. He resumed his comfortable +chair and took up a newspaper, glancing incidentally at the crowd of +excited men about the tickers. He had about him that air of repose +which comes to big men who have stayed much in big out-of-door +solitudes. + +"Ain't he a nervy old guy?" said a crisp little money-broker to Fouts. +"They're wiped out, but you wouldn't think he cared any more about it +than Mike the porter with his brass polish out there." + +The old man held his paper up, but did not read. + +Percival rushed in by him, beckoning him to the inner room. + +"Shepler's all right about the One Girl. He'll take a mortgage on it +for two hundred thousand if you'll recommend it--only he can't get the +money before to-morrow. There's bound to be a rally in this stock, and +we'll go right back for some of the hair of the--why,--what's the +matter--Uncle Peter!" + +The old man had reeled, and then weakly caught at the top of the desk +with both hands for support. + +"Ruined!" he cried, hoarsely, as if the extent of the calamity had just +borne in upon him. "My God! Ruined, and at my time of life!" He seemed +about to collapse. Percíval quickly helped him into a chair, where he +became limp. + +"There, I'm all right. Oh, it's terrible! and we all trusted you so. I +thought you had your pa's brains. I'd 'a' trusted you soon's I would +Shepler, and now look what you led us into--fortune gone--broke--and +all your fault!" + +"Don't, Uncle Peter--don't, for God's sake--not when I'm down! I can't +stand it!" + +"Gamble away your own money--no, that wa'n't enough--take your poor +ma's share and your sister's, and take what little I had to keep me in +my old age--robbed us all--that's what comes of thinkin' a damned +tea-drinkin' fop could have a thimble-full of brains!" + +"Don't, please,--not just now--give it to me good later--to-morrow--all +you want to!" + +"And here I'm come to want in my last days when I'm too feeble to work. +I'll die in bitter privation because I was an old fool, and trusted a +young one." + +"Please don't, Uncle Peter!" + +"You led us in--robbed your poor ma and your sister. I told you I +didn't know anything about it and you talked me into trusting you--I +might 'a' known better." + +"Can't you stop awhile--just a moment?" + +"Of course I don't matter. Maybe I can hold a drill, or tram ore, or +something, but I can't support your ma and Pishy like they ought to be, +with my rheumatiz comin' on again, too. And your ma'll have to take in +boarders, and do washin' like as not, and think of poor Pishy--prob'ly +she'll have to teach school or clerk in a store--poor Pish--she'll be +lucky now if she can marry some common scrub American out in them +hills--like as not one of them shoe-clerks in the Boston Cash Store at +Montana City! And jest when I was lookin' forward to luxury and palaces +in England, and everything so grand! How much you lost?" "That's right, +no use whining! Nearly as I can get the round figures of it, about +twelve million." + +"Awful--awful! By Cripes! that man Blythe that done himself up the +other night had the right of it. What's the use of living if you got to +go to the poorhouse?" + +"Come, come!" said Percival, alarm over Uncle Peter crowding out his +other emotions. "Be a game loser, just as you said pa would be. Sit up +straight and make 'em bring on another deck." + +He slapped the old man on the back with simulated cheerfulness; but the +despairing one only cowered weakly under the blow. + +"We can't--we ain't got the stake for a new deck. Oh, dear! think of +your ma and me not knowin' where to turn fur a meal of victuals at our +time of life." + +Percival was being forced to cheerfulness in spite of himself. + +"Come, it isn't as bad as that, Uncle Peter. We've got properties left, +and good ones, too." + +Uncle Peter weakly waved the hand of finished discouragement. "Hush, +don't speak of that. Them properties need a manager to make 'em pay--a +plain business man--a man to stay on the ground and watch 'em and develop +'em with his brains--a young man with his health! What good am I--a poor, +broken-down old cuss, bent double with rheumatiz--almost--I'm ashamed of +you fur suggesting such a thing!" + +"I'll do it myself--I never thought of asking you." + +Uncle Peter emitted a nasal gasp of disgust. + +"You--you--you'd make a purty manager of anything, wouldn't you! As if +you could be trusted with anything again that needs a schoolboy's +intelligence. Even if you had the brains, you ain't got the taste nor +the sperrit in you. You're too lazy--too triflin'. _You_, a-goin' back +there, developin' mines, and gettin' out ties, and lumber, and breeding +shorthorns, and improvin' some of the finest land God ever made--_you_ +bein' sober and industrious, and smart, like a business man has got to +be out there nowadays. That ain't any bonanza country any more; 1901 +ain't like 1870; don't figure on that. You got to work the low-grade +ore now for a few dollars a ton, and you got to work it with brains. +No, sir, that country ain't what it used to be. There might 'a' been a +time when you'd made your board and clothes out there when things come +easier. Now it's full of men that hustle and keep their mind on their +work, and ain't runnin' off to pink teas in New York. It takes a man +with some of the brains your pa had to make the game pay now. But +_you_--don't let me hear any more of _that_ nonsense!" + +Percival had entered the room pale. He was now red. The old man's +bitter contempt had flushed him into momentary forgetfulness of the +disaster. + +"Look here, Uncle Peter, you've been telling me right along I _did_ +have my father's head and my father's ways and his nerve, and God knows +what I _didn't_ have that he had!" + +"I was fooled,--I can't deny it. What's the use of tryin' to crawl out +of it? You did fool me, and I own up to it; I thought you had some +sense, some capacity; but you was only like him on the surface; you +jest got one or two little ways like his, that's all--Dan'l J. now was +good stuff all the way through. He might 'a' guessed wrong on copper, +but he'd 'a' saved a get-away stake or borrowed one, and he'd 'a' piked +back fur Montana to make his pile right over--and he'd 'a' _made_ it, +too--that was the kind of man your pa was--he'd 'a' made it!" + +"I _have_ saved a get-away stake." + +"Your pa had the head, I tell you--and the spirit--" + +"And, by God, I'll show you I've got the head. You think because I wanted +to live here, and because I made this wrong play that I'm like all these +pinheads you've seen around here. I'll show you different!--I'll fool +you." + +"Now don't explode!" said the old man, wearily. "You meant well, poor +fellow--I'll say that fur you; you got a good heart. But there's lots +of good men that ain't good fur anything in particular. You've got a +good heart--yes--you're all right from the neck down." + +"See here," said Percival, more calmly, "listen: I've got you all into +this thing, and played you broke against copper; and I'm going to get +you out--understand that?" + +The old man looked at him pityingly. + +"I tell you I'm going to get you out. I'm going back there, and get +things in action, and I'm going to stay by them. I've got a good idea +of these properties--and you hear me, now--I'll finish with a +bank-roll that'll choke Red Bank Cañon." + +Fouts knocked and came in. + +"Now you go along up-town, Uncle Peter. I want a few minutes with Mr. +Fouts, and I'll come to your place at seven." + +The old man arose dejectedly. + +"Don't let me interfere a minute with your financial operations. I'm +too old a man to be around in folks' way." + +He slouched out with his head bent. + +A moment later Percival remembered his last words, also his reference +to Blythe. He was seized with fear for what he might do in his despair. +Uncle Peter would act quickly if his mind had been made up. + +He ran out into Wall Street, and hurried up to Broadway. A block off on +that crowded thoroughfare he saw the tall figure of Uncle Peter turning +into the door of a saloon. He might have bought poison. He ran the +length of the block and turned in. + +Uncle Peter stood at one end of the bar with a glass of creamy beer in +front of him. At the moment Percival entered he was enclosing a large +slab of Swiss cheese between two slices of rye bread. + +He turned and faced Percival, looking from him to his sandwich with +vacant eyes. + +"I'm that wrought up and distressed, son, I hardly know what I'm doin'! +Look at me now with this stuff in my hands." + +"I just wanted to be sure you were all right," said Percival, greatly +relieved. + +"All right," the old man repeated. "All right? My God,--ruined! There's +nothin' left to do now." + +He looked absently at the sandwich, and bit a generous semicircle into +it. + +"I don't see how you can eat, Uncle Peter. It's so horrible!" + +"I don't myself; it ain't a healthy appetite--can't be--must be some kind +of a fever inside of me--I s'pose--from all this trouble. And now I've +come to poverty and want in my old age. Say, son, I believe there's jest +one thing you can do to keep me from goin' crazy." + +"Name it, Uncle Peter. You bet I'll do it!" + +"Well, it ain't much--of course I wouldn't expect you to do all them +things you was jest braggin' about back there--about goin' to work the +properties and all that--you would do it if you could, I know--but it +ain't that. All I ask is, don't play this Wall Street game any more. If +we can save out enough by good luck to keep us decently, so your ma +won't have to take boarders, why, don't you go and lose that, too. +Don't mortgage the One Girl. I may be sort of superstitious, but +somehow, I don't believe Wall Street is your game. Course, I don't say +you ain't got a game--of some kind--but I got one of them presentiments +that it ain't Wall Street." "I don't believe it is, Uncle Peter--I +won't touch another share, and I won't go near Shepler again. We'll +keep the One Girl." + +He called a cab for the old man, and saw him started safely off +up-town. + +At the hotel Uncle Peter met Billy Brue flourishing an evening paper +that flared with exclamatory headlines. + +"It's all in the papers, Uncle Peter!" + +"Dead broke! Ain't it awful, Billy!" + +"Say, Uncle Peter, you said you'd raise hell, and you done it. You done +it good, didn't you?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken + + +At seven Percival found Uncle Peter at his hotel, still in abysmal +depths of woe. Together they went to break the awful news to the +unsuspecting Mrs. Bines and Psyche. + +"If you'd only learned something useful while you had the chance," +began Uncle Peter, dismally, as they were driven to the Hightower, "how +to do tricks with cards, or how to sing funny songs, like that little +friend of yours from Baltimore you was tellin' me about. Look at him, +now. He didn't have anything but his own ability. He could tell you +every time what card you was thinkin' about, and do a skirt dance and +give comic recitations and imitate a dog fight out in the back yard, +and now he's married to one of the richest ladies in New York. Why +couldn't you 'a' been learnin' some of them clever things, so you could +'a' married some good-hearted woman with lots of money--but no--" Uncle +Peter's tones were bitter to excess--"you was a rich man's son and +raised in idleness--and now, when the rainy day's come, you can't even +take a white rabbit out of a stove-pipe hat!" + + +To these senile maunderings Percival paid no attention. When they came +into the crowd and lights of the Hightower, he sent the old man up +alone. + +"You go, please, and break it to them, Uncle Peter. I'd rather not be +there just at first. I'll come along in a little bit." + +So Uncle Peter went, protesting that he was a broken old man and a +cumberer of God's green earth. + +Mrs. Bines and Psyche had that moment sat down to dinner. Uncle Peter's +manner at once alarmed them. + +"It's all over," he said, sinking into a chair. + +"Why, what's the matter, Uncle Peter?" + +"Percival has--" + +Mrs. Bines arose quickly, trembling. + +"There--I just knew it--it's all over?--he's been struck by one of +those terrible automobiles--Oh, take me to where he is!" + +"He ain't been run over--he's gone broke-lost all our money; every last +cent." + +"He hasn't been run over and killed?" + +"He's ruined us, I tell you, Marthy,--lost every cent of our money in +Wall Street." + +"Hasn't he been hurt at all?--not even his leg broke or a big gash in +his head and knocked senseless?" + +"That boy never had any sense. I tell you he's lost all our money." + +"And he ain't a bit hurt--nothing the matter with him?" + +"Ain't any more hurt than you or me this minute." + +"You're not fooling his mother, Uncle Peter?" + +"I tell you he's alive and well, only he's lost your money and Pish's +and mine and his own." + +Mrs. Bines breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief, and sat down to +the table again. + +"Well, no need to scare a body out of their wits--scaring his mother to +death won't bring his money back, will it? If it's gone it's gone." + +"But ma, it _is_ awful!" cried Psyche. "Listen to what Uncle Peter +says. We're poor! Don't you understand? Perce has lost all our money." + +Mrs. Bines was eating her soup defiantly. + +"Long's he's got his health," she began. + +"And me windin' up in the poorhouse," whined Uncle Peter. + +"Think of it, ma! Oh, what shall we do?" + +Percival entered. Uncle Peter did not raise his head. Psyche stared at +him. His mother ran to him, satisfied herself that he was sound in wind +and limb, that he had not treacherously donned his summer underwear, +and that his feet were not wet. Then she led him to the table. + +"Now you sit right down here and take some food. If you're all right, +everything is all right." + +With a weak attempt at his old gaiety he began: "Really, Mrs. +Crackenthorpe--" but he caught Psyche's look and had to stop. + +"I'm sorry, sis, clear into my bones. I made an ass of myself--a +regular fool right from the factory." + + +"Never mind, my son; eat your soup," said his mother. And then, with +honest intent to comfort him, "Remember that saying of your pa's, 'it +takes all kinds of fools to make a world.'" + +"But there ain't any fool like a damn fool!" said Uncle Peter, shortly. +"I been a-tellin' him." + +"Well, you just let him alone; you'll spoil his appetite, first thing +you know. My son, eat your soup, now before it gets cold." + +"If I only hadn't gone in so heavy," groaned Percival. "Or, if I'd only +got tied up in some way for a few weeks--something I could tide over." + +"Yes," said Uncle Peter, with a cheerful effort at sarcasm, "it's +always easy to think up a lot of holes you _could_ get out of--some +different kind of a hole besides the one you're in. That's all some +folks can do when they get in one hole, they say, 'Oh, if I was only in +that other one, now, how slick I could climb out!' I ain't ever met a +person yet was satisfied with the hole they was in. Always some +complaint to make about 'em." + +"And I had a chance to get out a week ago." + +"Yes, and you wouldn't take it, of course--you knew too much--swellin' +around here about bein' a Napoleon of finance--and a Shepler and a +Wizard of Wall Street, and all that kind of guff--and you wouldn't take +your chance, and old Mr. Chance went right off and left you, that's +what. I tell you, what some folks need is a breed of chances that'll +stand without hitchin'." + +Percival braced himself and began on his soup. + +[Illustration: _"'REMEMBER THAT SAYING OF YOUR PA'S--IT TAKES ALL KINDS +OF FOOLS TO MAKE A WORLD.'"_] + +"Never you mind, Uncle Peter. You remember what I told you." + +"That takes a different man from what you are. If your pa was alive +now--" + +"But what are we going to do?" cried Psyche. + +"First thing you'll do," said Uncle Peter, promptly, "you go write a +letter to that beau of your'n, tellin' him it's all off. You don't want +to let him be the one to break it because you lost your money, do you? +You go sign his release right this minute." + +"Yes--you're right, Uncle Peter--I suppose it must be done--but the +poor fellow really cares for me." + +"Oh, of course," answered the old man, "it'll fairly break his heart. +You do it just the same!" + +She withdrew, and presently came back with a note which she despatched +to Mauburn. + +Percival and his mother had continued their dinner, the former shaking +his head between the intervals of the old man's lashings, and appearing +to hold silent converse with himself. + +This was an encouraging sign. It is a curious fact that people never +talk to themselves except triumphantly. In moments of real despair we +are inwardly dumb. But observe the holders of imaginary conversations. +They are conquerors to the last one. They administer stinging rebukes +that leave the adversary writhing. They rise to Alpine heights of pure +wisdom and power, leaving him to flounder ignobly in the mire of his +own fatuity. + +They achieve repartee the brilliance of which dazzles him to +contemptible silence. If statistics were at hand we should doubtless +learn that no man has ever talked to himself save by way of +demonstrating his own godlike superiority, and the tawdry impotence of +all obstacles and opponents. Percival talked to himself and mentally +lived the next five years in a style that reduced Uncle Peter to +grudging but imperative awe for his superb gifts of administration. He +bathed in this imaginary future as in the waters of omnipotence. As +time went on he foresaw the shafts of Uncle Peter being turned back +upon him with such deadliness that, by the time the roast came, his +breast was swelling with pity for that senile scoffer. + +Uncle Peter had first declared that the thought of food sickened him. +Prevailed upon at last by Mrs. Bines to taste the soup, he was soon +eating as those present had of late rarely seen him eat. + +"'Tain't a natural appetite, though," he warned them. "It's a kind of a +mania before I go all to pieces, I s'pose." + +"Nonsense! We'll have you all right in a week," said Percival. "Just +remember that I'm going to take care of you." + +"My son can do anything he makes up his mind to," declared Mrs. +Bines--"just anything he lays out to do." + +They talked until late into the night of what he should "lay out" to +do. + +Meantime the stronghold of Mauburn's optimism was being desperately +stormed. + +In an evening paper he had read of Percival's losses. The afternoon +press of New York is not apt to understate the facts of a given case. +The account Mauburn read stated that the young Western millionaire had +beggared his family. + +Mauburn had gone to his room to be alone with this bitter news. He had +begun to face it when Psyche's note of release came. While he was +adjusting this development, another knock came on his door. It was the +same maid who had brought Psyche's note. This time she brought what he +saw to be a cablegram. + +"Excuse me, Mr. Mauburn,--now this came early to-day and you wasn't in +your room, and when you came in Mrs. Ferguson forgot it till just now." + +He tore open the envelope and read: + +"Male twins born to Lady Casselthorpe. Mother and sons doing finely. + +"HINKIE." + +Mauburn felt the rock foundations of Manhattan Island to be crumbling +to dust. For an hour he sat staring at the message. He did not talk to +himself once. + +Then he hurriedly dressed, took the note and the cablegram, and sought +Mrs. Drelmer. + +He found that capable lady gowned for the opera. She received his bits +of news with the aplomb of a resourceful commander. + +"Now, don't go seedy all at once--you've a chance." + +"Hang it all, Mrs. Drelmer, I've not. Life isn't worth living--" + +"Tut, tut! Death isn't, either!" + +"But we'd have been so nicely set up, even without the title, and now +Bines, the clumsy ass, has come this infernal cropper, and knocked +everything on the head. I say, you know, it's beastly!" + +"Hush, and let me think!" + +He paced the floor while his matrimonial adviser tapped a white kidded +foot on the floor, and appeared to read plans of new battle in a +mother-of-pearl paper-knife which she held between the tips of her +fingers. + +"I have it--and we'll do it quickly!--Mrs. Wybert!" + +Mauburn's eyes opened widely. + +"That absurd old Peter Bines has spoken to me of her three times +lately. She's made a lot more money than she had in this same copper +deal, and she'd a lot to begin with. I wondered why he spoke so +enthusiastically of her, and I don't see now, but--" + +"Well?" + +"She'll take you, and you'll be as well set up as you were before. +Listen. I met her last week at the Critchleys. She spoke of having seen +you. I could see she was dead set to make a good marriage. You know she +wanted to marry Fred Milbrey, but Horace and his mother wouldn't hear +of it after Avice became engaged to Rulon Shepler. I'm in the +Critchleys' box to-night and I understand she's to be there. Leave it +to me. Now it's after nine, so run along." + +"But, Mrs. Drelmer, there's that poor girl--she cares for me, and I +like her immensely, you know--truly I do--and she's a trump--see where +she says here she couldn't possibly leave her people now they've come +down--even if matters were not otherwise impossible." + +"Well, you see they're not only otherwise impossible, but every wise +impossible. What could you do? Go to Montana with them and learn to be +an Indian? Don't for heaven's sake sentimentalise! Go home and sleep +like a rational creature. Come in by eleven to-morrow. Even without the +title you'll be a splendid match for Mrs. Wybert, and she must have a +tidy lot of millions after this deal." + +Sorely distressed, he walked back to his lodgings in Thirty-second +Street. Wild, Quixotic notions of sacrifice flooded his mood of +dejection. If the worst came, he could go West with the family and +learn how to do something. And yet--Mrs. Wybert. Of course it must be +that. The other idea was absurd--too wild for serious consideration. He +was thirty years old, and there was only one way for an English +gentleman to live--even if it must break the heart of a poor girl who +had loved him devotedly, and for whom he had felt a steady and genuine +affection. He passed a troubled night. + +Down at the hotel of Peter Bines was an intimation from Mrs. Wybert +herself, bearing upon this same fortuity. When Uncle Peter reached +there at 2 A.M., he found in his box a small scented envelope which he +opened with wonder. + +Two enclosures fell out. One was a clipping from an evening paper, +announcing the birth of twin sons to Lord Casselthorpe. The other was +the card he had left with Mrs. Wybert on the day of his call; his name +on one side, announcing him; on the other the words he had written: + +"Sell Consolidated Copper all you can until it goes down to 65. Do this +up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything you lose. + +"PETER BINES." + +He read the note: + +"ARLINGHAM HOTEL--7.30. + +"MR. PETER BINES: + +"_Dear Sir_:--You funny old man, you. I don't pretend to understand +your game, but you may rely on my secrecy. I am more grateful to you +than words can utter--and I will always be glad to do anything for +you. + +"_Yours very truly_, + +"BLANCHE CATHERTON WYBERT. + +"P. S. About that other matter--him you know--you will see from this +notice I cut from the paper that the party won't get any title at all +now, so a dead swell New York man is in every way more eligible. In +fact the other party is not to be thought of for one moment, as I am +positive you would agree with me." + + * * * * * + +He tore the note and the card to fine bits. + +"It does beat all," he complained later to Billy Brue. "Put a beggar on +horseback and they begin right away to fuss around because the bridle +ain't set with diamonds--give 'em a little, and they want the whole +ball of wax!" + +"That's right," said Billy Brue, with the quick sympathy of the +experienced. "That guy that doped me, he wa'n't satisfied with my good +thirty-dollar wad. Not by no means! He had to go take my breast-pin +nugget from the Early Bird." + +At eleven o'clock the next morning Mauburn waited in Mrs. Drelmer's +drawing-room for the news she might have. + +When that competent person sailed in, he saw temporary defeat written +on her brow. His heart sank to its low level of the night before. + +"Well, I saw the creature," she began, "and it required no time at all +to reach a very definite understanding with her. I had feared it might +be rather a delicate matter, talking to her at once, you know--and we +needed to hurry--but she's a woman one can talk to. She's made heaps of +money, and the poor thing is society-mad--_so_ afraid the modish world +won't take her at her true value--but she talked very frankly about +marriage--really she's cool-headed for all the fire she seems to +have--and the short of it is that she's determined to marry some one of +the smart men here in New York. The creature's fascinated by the very +idea." + +"Did you mention me?" + +"You may be sure I did, but she'd read the papers, and, like so many of +these people, she has no use at all for an Englishman without a title. +Of course I couldn't be too definite with her, but she understood +perfectly, and she let me see she wouldn't hear of it at all. So she's +off the list. But don't give up. Now, there's--" + +But Mauburn was determinedly downcast. + +"It's uncommon handsome of you, Mrs. Drelmer, really, but we'll have to +leave off that, you know. If a chap isn't heir to a peerage or a city +fortune there's no getting on that way." + +"Why, the man is actually discouraged. Now you need some American +pluck, old chap. An American of your age wouldn't give up." + +"But, hang it all! an American knows how to do things, you know, and +like as not he'd nothing to begin with, by Jove! Now I'd a lot to begin +with, and here it's all taken away." + +"Look at young Bines. He's had a lot taken away, but I'll wager he +makes it all back again and more too before he's forty." + +"He might in this country; he'd never do it at home, you know." + +"This country is for you as much as for him. Now, there's Augusta +Hartong--those mixed-pickle millionaires, you know. I was chatting with +Augusta's mother only the other day, and if I'd only suspected this--" + +"Awfully kind of you, Mrs. Drelmer, but it's no use. I'm fairly played +out. I shall go to see Miss Bines, and have a chat with her people, you +know." + +"Now, for heaven's sake, don't make a silly of yourself, whatever you +do! Mind, the girl released you of her own accord!" + +"Awfully obliged. I'll think about it jolly well, first. See you soon. +Good-bye!" And Mauburn was off. + +He was reproaching himself. "That poor girl has been eating her heart +out for a word of love from me. I'm a brute!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI. + +The God in the Machine + + +Uncle Peter next morning was up to a late breakfast with the stricken +family. Percival found him a trifle less bitter, but not less convinced +in his despair. The young man himself had recovered his spirits +wonderfully. The utter collapse of the old man, always so reliant +before, had served to fire all his latent energy. He was now voluble +with plans for the future; not only determined to reassure Uncle Peter +that the family would be provided for, but not a little anxious to +justify the old man's earlier praise, and refute his calumnies of the +night before. + +Mrs. Bines, so complacent overnight, was the most disconsolate one of +the group. With her low tastes she was now regarding the loss of the +fortune as a calamity to the worthy infants of her own chosen field. + +"And there, I'd promised to give five thousand dollars to the new home +for crippled children, and five thousand to St. John's Guild for the +floating hospitals this summer--just yesterday--and I do declare, I +just couldn't stay in New York without money, and see those poor babies +suffer." + +"You couldn't stay in New York without money. Mrs. Good-thing," said +her son,--"not even if you couldn't see a thing; but don't you welsh +on any of your plays--we'll make that ten thousand good if I have to +get a sand-bag, and lay out a few of these lads around here some dark +night." + +"But anyway you can't do much to relieve them. I don't know but what +it's honester to be poor while the authorities allow such goings on." + +"You have the makings of a very dangerous anarchist in you, ma. I've +seen that for some time. But we're an honest family all right now, with +the exception of a few properties that I'll have to sit up with +nights--sit right by their sick-beds and wake them up to take their +meddy every half hour--" + +"Now, my son, don't you get to going without your sleep," began his +mother. + +"And wasn't it lucky about my sending that note to George!" said +Psyche. "Here in this morning's paper we find he isn't going to be Lord +Casselthorpe, after all. What _could_ I have done if we hadn't lost the +money?" From which it might be inferred that certain people who had +declared Miss Bines to be very hard-headed were not so far wrong as +the notorious "casual observer" is very apt to be. + +"Never you mind, sis," said her brother, cheerfully, "we'll be all +right yet. You wait a little, and hear Uncle Peter take back what he's +said about me. Uncle Peter, I'll have you taking off that hat of yours +every time you get sight of me, in about a year." + +He went again over the plans. The income from the One Girl was to be +used in developing the other properties: the stock ranch up on the +Bitter Root, the other mines that had been worked but little and with +crude appliances; the irrigation and land-improvement enterprises, and +the big timber tracts. + +"I got something of an idea of it when Uncle Peter took me around +summer before last, and I learned a lot more getting the stuff together +with Coplen. Now, I'm ready to buckle down to it." He looked at Uncle +Peter, hungry for a word of encouragement to soothe the hurts the old +man had put upon him. + +But all Uncle Peter would say was, "That _sounds_ very well," +compelling the inference that he regarded sound and substance as +phenomena not necessarily related. + +"But give me a chance, Uncle Peter. Just don't jump on me too hard for +a year!" + +"Well, I know that country. There's big chances for a young man with +brains--understand?--that has got all the high-living nonsense blasted +out of his upper levels--but it takes work. You _may_ do +something--there _are_ white blackbirds--but you're on a nasty piece +of road-bed--curves all down on the outside--wheels flatted under every +truck, and you've had her down in the corner so long I doubt if you can +even slow up, say nothin' of reversin'. And think of me gettin' fooled +that way at _my_ time of life," he continued, as if in confidence to +himself. "But then, I always was a terrible poor judge of human +nature." + +"Well, have your own way; but I'll fool you again, while you're +coppering me. You watch, that's all I ask. Just sit around and talk +wise about me all you want to, but watch. Now, I must go down and get +to work with Fouts. Thank the Lord, we didn't have to welsh either, any +more than Mrs. Give-up there did." + +"You won't touch any more stock; you won't get that money from +Shepler?" + +"I won't; I won't go near Shepler, I promise you. Now you'll believe me +in one thing, I know you will, Uncle Peter." He went over to the old +man. + +"I want to thank you for pulling me up on that play as you did last +night. You saved me, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say. But +for you I'd have gone in and dug the hole deeper." He made the old man +shake hands with him--though Uncle Peter's hand remained limp and +cheerless. "You can shake on that, at least. You saved me, and I thank +you for it." + +"Well, I'm glad you got _some_ sense," answered the old man, +grudgingly. "It's always the way in that stock game. There's always +goin' to be a big killing made in Wall Street to-morrow, only to-morrow +never comes. Reminds me of Hollings's old turtle out at +Spokane--Hollings that keeps the Little Gem restaurant. He's got an +enormous big turtle in his cellar that he's kept to my knowledge fur +fifteen years. Every time he gets a little turtle from the coast he +takes a can of red paint down cellar, and touches up the sign on old +Ben's back--they call the turtle Ben, after Hollings's father-in-law +that won't do a thing but lay around the house all the time, and kick +about the meals. Well, the sign on Ben's back is, 'Green Turtle Soup +To-morrow,' and Ben is drug up to the sidewalk in front of the Little +Gem. And Hollings does have turtle-soup next day, but it's always the +little turtles that's killed, and old Ben is hiked back to his boudoir +until another killing comes off. It's a good deal like that in Wall +Street; there's killings made, but the big fellers with the signs on +their back don't worry none." + +"You're right, Uncle Peter. It certainly wasn't my game. Will you come +down with me?" + +"Me? Shucks, no! I'm jest a poor, broken old man, now. I'm goin' down +to the square if I can walk that fur, and set on a bench in the sun." + +Uncle Peter did succeed in walking as far as Madison Square. He walked, +indeed, with a step of amazing springiness for a man of his years. But +there, instead of reposing in the sun, he entered a cab and was driven +to the Vandevere Building, where he sent in his name to Rulon Shepler. + +He was ushered into Shepler's office after a little delay. The two men +shook hands warmly. Uncle Peter was grinning now with rare +enjoyment--he who had in the presence of the family shown naught but +broken age and utter despondency. + +"You rough-housed the boy considerable yesterday." + +"I never believed the fellow would hold on," said Shepler. "I'm sure +you're right in a way about the West. There isn't another man in this +section who'd have plunged as he did. Really, Mr. Bines, the Street's +never known anything like it. Here are those matters." + +He handed the old man a dozen or so certified checks on as many +different banks. Each check had many figures on it. Uncle Peter placed +them in his old leather wallet. + +"I knew he'd plunge," he said, taking the chair proffered him, near +Shepler's desk. "I knew he was a natural born plunger, and I knew that +once he gets an idea in his head you can't blast it out; makes no +difference what he starts on he'll play the string out. His pa was jest +that way. Then of course he wa'n't used to money, and he was ignorant +of this game, and he didn't realise what he was doin'. He sort of +distrusted himself along toward the last--but I kept him swelled up +good and plenty." + +"Well, I'm glad it's over, Mr. Bines. Of course I concede the relative +insignificance of money to a young man of his qualities--" + +"Not its relative insignificance, Mr. Shepler--it's plain damned +insignificance, if you'll excuse the word. If that boy'd gone on he'd +'a' been one of what Billy Brue calls them high-collared Clarences--no +good fur anything but to spend money, and get apoplexy or worse by +forty. As it is now, he'll be a man. He's got his health turned on like +a steam radiator, he's full of responsibility, and he's really +long-headed." + +"How did he take the loss?" + +"He acted jest like a healthy baby does when you take one toy away from +him. He cries a minute, then forgets all about it, and grabs up +something else to play with. His other toy was bad. What he's playin' +with now will do him a lot of good." + +"He's not discouraged, then--he's really hopeful?" + +"That ain't any name fur it. Why, he's actin' this mornin' jest like +the world's his oyster--and every month had an 'r' in it at that." + +"I'm delighted to hear it. I've always been taken with the chap; and +I'm very glad you read him correctly. It seemed to me you were taking a +risk. It would have broken the spirit of most men." + +"Well, you see I knew the stock. It's pushin', fightin' stock. My +grandfather fought his way west to Pennsylvania when that country was +wilder'n Africa, and my father fought his way to Ohio when that was the +frontier. I seen some hard times myself, and this boy's father was a +fighter, too. So I knew the boy had it in him, all right. He's got his +faults, but they don't hurt him none." + +"Will he return West?" + +"He will that--and the West is the only place fur him. He was gettin' +bad notions about his own country here from them folks that's always +crackin' up the 'other side' 'sif there wa'n't any 'this side,' worth +speakin' of in company. This was no place fur him. Mr. Shepler, this +whole country is God's country. I don't talk much about them things, +but I believe in God--a man has to if he lives so much alone in them +wild places as I have--and I believe this country is His favourite. I +believe He set it apart fur great works. The history of the United +States bears me out so fur. And I didn't want any of my stock growin' +up without feelin' that he had the best native land on earth, and +without bein' ready to fight fur it at the drop of the hat. And jest +between you and me, I believe we can raise that kind in the West +better'n you can here in New York. You got a fine handsome town here, +it's a corkin' good place to see--and get out of--but it ain't any +breedin' place--there ain't the room to grow. Now we produce everything +in the West, includin' men. Here you don't do anything but +consume--includin' men. If the West stopped producin' men fur you, +you'd be as bad off as if it stopped producin' food. You can't grow a +big man on this island any more than you can grow wheat out there on +Broadway. You're all right. You folks have your uses. I ain't like one +of these crazy Populists that thinks you're rascals and all like that; +but my point is that you don't get the fun out of life. You don't get +the big feelin's. Out in the West they're the flesh and blood and bone; +and you people here, meanin' no disrespect--you're the dimples and +wrinkles and--the warts. You spend and gamble back and forth with that +money we raise and dig out of the ground, and you think you're gettin' +the best end of it, but you ain't. I found that out thirty-two years +ago this spring. I had a crazy fool notion then to go back there even +when I hadn't gone broke--and I done well to go. And that's why I +wanted that boy back there. And that's why I'm mighty proud of him, to +see he's so hot to go and take hold, like I knew he would be." + +"That's excellent. Now, Mr. Bines, I like him and I dare say you've +done the best thing for him, unusual as it was. But don't grind him. +Might it not be well to ease up a little after he's out there? You +might let it be understood that I am willing to finance any of those +propositions there liberally--" + +"No, no--that ain't the way to handle him. Say, I don't expect to quit +cussin' him fur another thirty days yet. I want him to think he ain't +got a friend on earth but himself. Why, I'd have made this play just as +I have done, Mr. Shepler, if there hadn't been a chance to get back a +cent of it--if we'd had to go plumb broke--back to the West in an +emigrant car, with bologna and crackers to eat, that's what I'd have +done. No, sir, no help fur him!" + +"Aren't you a little hard on him?" + +"Not a bit; don't I know the stock, and know just what he needs? Most +men you couldn't treat as I'm treatin' him; but with him, the harder +you bear down on him the more you'll get out of him. That was the way +with his pa--he was a different man after things got to comin' too easy +fur him. This fellow, the way I'm treatin' him, will keep his head even +after he gets things comin' easy again, or I miss my guess. He thinks I +despise him now. If you told him I was proud of him, I almost believe +you could get a bet out of him, sick as he is of gamblin'." + +"Has he suspected anything?" + +"Sure, not! Why, he just thanked me about an hour ago fur savin' +him--made me shake hands with him--and I could see the tears back in +his eyes." + +The old man chuckled. + +"It was like Len Carey's Nigger Jim. Len had Jim set apart on the +plantation fur his own nigger. They fished and went huntin' and +swimmin' together. One day they'd been swimmin', and was lyin' up on +the bank. Len got thinkin' he'd never seen any one drown. He knew Jim +couldn't swim a lick, so he thought he'd have Jim go drown. He says to +him, 'Jim, go jump off that rock there!' That was where the deep hole +was. Jim was scar't, but he had to go. After he'd gone down once, Len +says to him, 'Drown, now, you damn nigger!' and Jim come up and went +down twice more. Then Len begun to think Jim was worth a good bit of +money, and mebbe he'd be almighty walloped if the truth come out, so he +dives in after Jim and gets him shore, and after while he brought him +to. Anyway, he said, Jim had already sure-enough drowned as fur as +there was any fun in it. Well, Len Carey is an old man now, and Jim is +an old white-headed nigger still hangin' around the old place, and when +Len goes back there to visit his relatives, old Nigger Jim hunts him up +with tears in his eyes, and thanks Mister Leonard fur savin' his life +that time. Say, I felt this mornin' like Len Carey must feel them times +when Jim's thankin' him." + +Shepler laughed. + +"You're a rare man, Mr. Bines. I'll hope to have your cheerful, easy +views of life if I ever lose my hold here in the Street. I hope I'll +have the old Bines philosophy and the young Bines spirit. That reminds +me," he continued as Uncle Peter rose to go, "we've been pretty +confidential, Mr. Bines, and I don't mind telling you I was a bit +afraid of that young man until yesterday. Oh, not on the stock +proposition. On another matter. You may have noticed that night at the +Oldakers'--well, women, Mr. Bines, are uncertain. I know something +about markets and the ways of a dollar, but all I know about women is +that they're good to have. You can't know any more about them, because +they don't know any more themselves. Just between us, now, I never felt +any too sure of a certain young woman's state of mind until copper +reached 51 and Union Cordage had been blown up from inside." + +They parted with warm expressions of good-will, and Uncle Peter, in +high spirits at the success of his machinations, had himself driven +up-town. + +The only point where his plans had failed was in Mrs. Wybert's refusal +to consider Mauburn after the birth of the Casselthorpe twins. Yet he +felt that matters, in spite of this happening, must go as he wished +them to. The Englishman-Uncle Peter cherished the strong anti-British +sentiment peculiar to his generation--would surely never marry a girl +who was all but penniless, and the consideration of an alliance with +Mrs. Wybert, when the fortune should be lost, had, after all, been an +incident--a means of showing the girl, if she should prove to be too +deeply infatuated with Mauburn for her own peace of mind--how unworthy +and mercenary he was; for he had meant, in that event, to disillusion +her by disclosing something of Mrs. Wybert's history--the woman Mauburn +should prefer to her. He still counted confidently on the loss of the +fortune sufficing to break the match. + +When he reached the Hightower that night for dinner, he found Percival +down-stairs in great glee over what he conceived to be a funny +situation. + +"Don't ask me, Uncle Peter. I couldn't get it straight; but as near as +I could make out, Mauburn came up here afraid the blow of losing him +was going to kill sis with a broken heart, and sis was afraid the blow +was going to kill Mauburn, because she wouldn't have married him +anyway, rich or poor, after he'd lost the title. They found each other +out some way, and then Mauburn accused her of being heartless, of +caring only for his title, and she accused him of caring only for her +money, and he insisted she ought to marry him anyway, but she wouldn't +have it because of the twins--" + +Uncle Peter rubbed his big brown hands with the first signs of +cheerfulness he had permitted Percival to detect in him. + +"Good fur Pish--that's the way to take down them conceited +Britishers--" + +"But then they went at matters again from a new standpoint, and the +result is they've made it up." + +"What? Has them precious twin Casselthorpes perished?" + +"Not at all, both doing finely--haven't even had colic--growing +fast--probably learned to say 'fancy, now,' by this time. But Mauburn's +going West with us if we'll take him." + +"Get out!" + +"Fact! Say, it must have been an awful blow to him when he found sis +wouldn't think of him at all without his title, even if she was broke. +They had a stormy time of it from all I can hear. He said he was strong +enough to work and all that, and since he'd cared for her, and not for +her money, it was low down of her to throw him over; then she said she +wouldn't leave her mother and us, now that we might need her, not for +him or any other man--and he said that only made him love her all the +more, and then he got chesty, and said he was just as good as any +American, even if he never would have a title; so pretty soon they got +kind of interested in each other again, and by the time I came home it +was all over. They ratified the preliminary agreement for a merger." + +"Well, I snum!" + +"That's right, go ahead and snum. I'd snum myself if I knew how--it +knocked me. Better come up-stairs and congratulate the happy couple." + +"Shoo, now! I certainly am mighty disappointed in that fellow. Still he +_is_ well spotted, and them freckles mean iron in the blood. Maybe we +can develop him along with the other properties." + +They found Psyche already radiant, though showing about her eyes traces +of the storm's devastations. Mauburn was looking happy; also defiant +and stubborn. + +"Mr. Bines," he said to Uncle Peter, "I hope you'll side with me. I +know something about horses, and I've nearly a thousand pounds that +I'll be glad to put in with you out there if you can make a place for +me." + +The old man looked him over quizzically. Psyche put her arm through +Mauburn's. + +"I'd _have_ to marry some one, you know, Uncle Peter!" + +"Don't apologise, Pish. There's room for men that can work out there, +Mr. Mauburn, but there ain't any vintages or trouserings to speak of, +and the hours is long." + +"Try me, Mr. Bines!" + +"Well, come on! If you can't skin yourself you can hold a leg while +somebody else skins. But you ain't met my expectations, I'll say that." +And he shook hands cordially with the Englishman. + +"I say, you know," said Mauburn later to Psyche, "why _should_ I skin +myself? Why should I be skinned at all, you know?" + +"You shouldn't," she reassured him. "That's only Uncle Peter's way of +saying you can help the others, even if you can't do much yourself at +first. And won't Mrs. Drelmer be delighted to know it's all settled?" + +"Well," said Uncle Peter to Percival, later in the evening, "Pish has +done better than you have here. It's a pity you didn't pick out some +good sensible girl, and marry her in the midst of your other doings." + +"I couldn't find one that liked cats. I saw a lot that suited every +other way but I always said to myself, 'Remember Uncle Peter's +warning!' so I'd go to an animal store and get a basket of kittens and +take them around, and not one of the dozen stood your test. Of course +I'd never disregard your advice." + +"Hum," remarked Uncle Peter, in a tone to be noticed for its extreme +dryness. "Too bad, though--you certainly need a wife to take the +conceit out of you." + +"I lost that in the Street, along with the rest." + +"Well, son, I ain't no ways alarmed but what you'll soon be on your +feet again in that respect--say by next Tuesday or Wednesday. I wish +the money was comin' back as easy." + +"Well, there are girls in Montana City." + +"You could do worse. That reminds me--I happened to meet Shepler to-day +and he got kind of confidential,--talkin' over matters. He said he'd +never really felt sure about the affections of a certain young woman, +especially after that night at the Oldakers'--he'd never felt dead sure +of her until you went broke. He said you never could know anything +about a woman--not really." + +"He knows something about that one, all right, if he knows she wouldn't +have any use for me now. Shepler's coming on with the ladies. I feel +quite hopeful about him." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII. + +The Departure of Uncle Peter--And Some German Philosophy + + +The Bineses, with the exception of Psyche, were at breakfast a week +later. Miss Bines had been missing since the day that Mr. and Mrs. +Cecil G. H. Mauburn had left for Montana City to put the Bines home in +order. + +Uncle Peter and Mrs. Bines had now determined to go, leaving Percival +to follow when he had closed his business affairs. + +"It's like starting West again to make our fortune," said Uncle Peter. +He had suffered himself to regain something of his old cheerfulness of +manner. + +"I wish you two would wait until they can get the car here, and go back +with me," said Percival. "We can go back in style even if we didn't +save much more than a get-away stake." + +But his persuasions were unavailing. + +"I can't stand it another day," said Mrs. Bines, "and those letters +keep coming in from poor suffering people that haven't heard the news." + +"I'm too restless to stay," declared Uncle Peter. "I declare, with +spring all greenin' up this way I'd be found campin' up in Central Park +some night and took off to the calaboose. I just got to get out again +where you can feel the wind blow and see a hundred miles and don't have +to dodge horseless horse-cars every minute. It's a wonder one of 'em +ain't got me in this town. You come on in the car, and do the style fur +the family. One of them common Pullmans is good enough fur Marthy and +me. And besides, I got to get Billy Brue back. He's goin' plumb daft +lookin' night and day fur that man that got his thirty dollars and his +breastpin. He says there'll be an ambulance backed up at the spot where +he meets him--makes no difference if it's right on Fifth Avenue. +Billy's kind of nearsighted at that, so I'm mortal afraid he'll make a +mistake one of these nights and take some honest man's money and +trinkets away from him." + +"Well, here's a _Sun_ editorial to take back with us," said Percival; +"you remember we came East on one." He read aloud: + +"The great fall in the price of copper, Western Trolley, and cordage +stocks has ruined thousands of people all over this country. These +losses are doubtless irreparable so far as the stocks in question are +concerned. The losers will have to look elsewhere for recovery. That +they will do so with good courage is not to be doubted. It might be +argued with reasonable plausibility that Americans are the greatest +fatalists in the world; the readiest to take chances and the least +given to whining when the cards go against them. + +"A case in point is that of a certain Western family whose fortune has +been swept away by the recent financial hurricane. If ever a man liked +to match with Destiny, not 'for the beers,' but for big stakes, the +young head of the family in question appears to have been that man. He +persisted in believing that the power and desire of the rich men +controlling these three stocks were great enough to hold their +securities at a point far above their actual value. In this persistence +he displayed courage worthy of a better reward. A courage, moreover +--the gambler's courage--that is typically American. Now he has had a +plenty of that pleasure of losing which, in Mr. Fox's estimation, comes +next to the pleasure of winning. + +"From the point of view of the political economist or the moralist, +thrift, saving, and contentment with a modest competence are to be +encouraged, and the propensity to gamble is to be condemned. We stand +by the copy-book precepts. Yet it is only honest to confess that there +is something of this young American's love for chances in most of us. +American life is still so fluid, the range of opportunity so great, the +national temperament so buoyant, daring, and hopeful, that it is easier +for an American to try his luck again than to sit down snugly and enjoy +what he has. The fun and the excitement of the game are more than the +game. There are Americans and plenty of them who will lose all they +have in some magnificent scheme, and make much less fuss about it than +a Paris shopkeeper would over a bad twenty-franc piece. + +"Our disabled young Croesus from the West is a luminous specimen of the +type. The country would be less interesting without his kind, and, on +the whole, less healthy--for they provide one of the needed ferments. +May the young man make another fortune in his own far West--and come +once more to rattle the dry bones of our Bourse!" + +"He'll be too much stuck on Montana by the time he gets that fortune," +observed Uncle Peter. + +"I will _that,_ Uncle Peter. Still it's pleasant to know we've won +their good opinion." + +"Excuse me fur swearin', Marthy," said Uncle Peter, turning to Mrs. +Bines, "but he can win a better opinion than that in Montana fur a damn +sight less money." + +"That editor is right," said Mrs. Bines, "what he says about American +life being 'fluid.' There's altogether too much drinking goes on here, +and I'm glad my son quit it." + +Percival saw them to the train. + +"Take care of yourself," said Uncle Peter at parting. "You know I ain't +any good any more, and you got a whole family, includin' an Englishman, +dependin' on you--we'll throw him on the town, though, if he don't +take out his first papers the minute I get there." + +His last shot from the rear platform was: + +"Change your name back to 'Pete,' son, when you get west of Chicago. +'Tain't anything fancy, but it's a crackin' good business name fur a +hustler!" + +"All right, Uncle Peter,--and I hope I'll have a grandson that thinks +as much of it as I do of yours." + +When they had gone, he went back to the work of final adjustment. He +had the help of Coplen, whom they had sent for. With him he was busy +for a week. By lucky sales of some of the securities that had been +hypothecated they managed to save a little; but, on the whole, it was +what Percival described it, "a lovely autopsy." + +At last the vexatious work was finished, and he was free again. At the +end of the final day's work he left the office of Fouts in Wall Street, +and walked up Broadway. He went slowly, enjoying the freedom from care. +It was the afternoon of a day when the first summer heat had been felt, +and as he loitered before shop windows or walked slowly through that +street where all move quickly and most very hurriedly, a welcome little +breeze came up from the bay to fan him and encourage his spirit of +leisure. + +At Union Square, when he would have taken a car to go the remainder of +the distance, he saw Shepler, accompanied by Mrs. Van Geist and Miss +Milbrey, alight from a victoria and enter a jeweller's. + +He would have passed on, but Miss Milbrey had seen him, and stood +waiting in the doorway while Shepler and Mrs. Van Geist went on into +the store. + +"Mr. Bines--I'm _so_ glad!" + +She stood, flushed with pleasure, radiant in stuff of filmy pink, with +little flecks at her throat and waist of the first tender green of new +leaves. She was unaffectedly delighted to see him. + +"You are Miss Spring?" he said when she had given him her hand--"and +you've come into all your mother had that was worth inheriting, haven't +you?" + +"Mr. Bines, shall we not see you now? I wanted so much to talk with you +when I heard everything. Would it be impertinent to say I sympathised +with you?" + +He looked over her shoulder, in where Shepler and Mrs. Van Geist were +inspecting a tray of jewels. + +"Of course not impertinent--very kind--only I'm really not in need of +any sympathy at all. You won't understand it; but we don't care so much +for money in the West--for the loss of it--not so much as you New +Yorkers would. Besides we can always make a plenty more." + +The situation was, emphatically, not as he had so often dreamed it when +she should marvel, perhaps regretfully, over his superiority to her +husband as a money-maker. His only relief was to belittle the +importance of his loss. + +"Of course we've lost everything, almost--but I've not been a bit +downcast about it. There's more where it came from, and no end of fun +going after it. I'm looking forward to the adventures, I can tell you. +And every one will be glad to see me there; they won't think the less +of me, I assure you, because I've made a fluke here!" + +"Surely, Mr. Bines, no one here could think less of you. Indeed, I +think more of you. I think it's fine and big to go back with such +courage. Do you know, I wish I were a man--I'd show them!" + +"Really, Miss Milbrey--" + +He looked over her shoulder again, and saw that Shepler was waiting for +her. + +"I think your friends are impatient." + +"They can wait. Mr. Bines, I wonder if you have quite a correct idea of +all New York people." + +"Probably not; I've met so few, you know." + +"Well, of course,--but of those you've met?" + +"You can't know what my ideas are." + +"I wish we might have talked more--I'm sure--when are you leaving?" + +"I shall leave to-morrow." + +"And we're leaving for the country ourselves. Papa and mamma go +to-morrow--and, Mr. Bines, I _should_ have liked another talk with +you--I wish we were dining at the Oldakers' again." + +He observed Shepler strolling toward them. + +"I shall be staying with Aunt Cornelia a few days after to-morrow." + +Shepler came up. + +"And I shall be leaving to-morrow, Miss Milbrey." + +"Ah, Bines, glad to see you!" + +The accepted lover looked Miss Milbrey over with rather a complacent +air--with the unruffled confidence of assured possession. Percival +fancied there was a look almost of regret in the girl's eyes. + +"I'm afraid," said Shepler, "your aunt doesn't want to be kept waiting. +And she's already in a fever for fear you won't prefer the necklace she +insists you ought to prefer." + +"Tell Aunt Cornelia, please, that I shall be along in just a moment." +"She's quite impatient, you know," urged Shepler. + +Percival extended his hand. + +"Good-bye, Miss Milbrey. Don't let me detain you. Sorry I shall not see +you again." + +She gave him her hand uncertainly, as if she had still something to +say, but could find no words for it. + +"Good-bye, Mr. Bines." + +"Good-bye, young man," Shepler shook hands with him cordially, "and the +best of luck to you out there. I shall hope to hear good reports from +you. And mind, you're to look us up when you're in town again. We shall +always be glad to see you. Good-bye!" + +He led the girl back to the case where the largest diamonds reposed +chastely on their couches of royal velvet. + +Percival smiled as he resumed his walk--smiled with all that bitter +cynicism which only youth may feel to its full poignance. Yet, +heartless as she was, he recalled that while she talked to him he had +imprinted an imaginary kiss deliberately upon her full scarlet lips. +And now, too, he was forced to confess that, in spite of his very +certain knowledge about her, he would actually prefer to have +communicated it through the recognised physical media. He laughed +again, more cheerfully. + +"The spring has gotten a strangle-hold on my judgment," he said to +himself. + +At dinner that night he had the company of that estimable German +savant, the Herr Doctor von Herzlich. He did not seek to incur the +experience, but the amiable doctor was so effusive and interested that +he saw no way of avoiding it gracefully. Returned from his +archaeological expedition to Central America, the doctor was now on his +way back to Marburg. + +"I pleasure much in your news," said the cheerful man over his first +glass of Rhine wine with the olive in it. "You shall now, if I have +misapprehended you not, develop a new strongness of the character." + +Percival resigned himself to listen. He was not unfamiliar with the lot +of one who dines with the learned Von Herzlich. + +"Now he's off," he said to himself. + +"Ach! It is but now that you shall begin to live. Is it not that while +you planned the money-amassing you were deferring to live--ah, +yes--until some day when you had so much more? Yes? A common +thought-failure it is--a common failure of the to-take-thoughtedness of +life--its capacities and the intentions of the scheme under which we +survive. Ach! So few humans learn that this invitation to live +specifies not the hours, like a five-o'clock. It says--so well as +Father-Mother Nature has learned to write the words to our unseeing +eyes--'at once,' but we ever put off the living we are invited to at +once--until to-morrow-next day, next year--until this or that be done +or won. So now you will find this out. Before, you would have waited +for a time that never came--no matter the all-money you gathered. + +"Nor yet, my young friend, shall you take this matter to be of a +seriousness, to be sorrow-worthy. If you take of the courage, you shall +find the world to smile to your face, and father-mother you. You recall +what the English Huxley says--Ah! what fine, dear man, the good Huxley--he +says, yes, in the 'Genealogy of the Beasts,' 'It is a probable hypothesis +that what the world is to organisms in general, each organism is to the +molecules of which it is composed.' So you laugh at the world, the world +it laugh back 'ha! ha! ha!'--then--soly--all your little molecules +obediently respond--you thrill with the happiness--with the power--the +desire--the capacity--you out-go and achieve. Yes? So fret not. Ach! we +fret so much of what it shall be unwise to fret of. It is funny to fret. +Why? Why fret? Yet but the month last, they have excavated at Nippur, from +the pre-Sargonic strata, a lady and a gentleman of the House of Ptah. What +you say in New York--'a damned fine old family,' yes, is it not? I am read +their description, and seen of the photographs. + +"They have now the expressions of indifference--of disinterest--without +the prejudice--as if they say, 'Ach! those troubles of ours, three +thousand eight hundred years in the B.C.--nearly come to six thousand +years before now--Ach! those troubles,' say this philosophic-now lady +and gentleman, of the House of Ptah of Babylonia--'such a +silliness--those troubles and frets; it was not the while-worth that we +should ever have sorrowed, because the scheme of time and creation is +suchly big; had we grasped but its bigness, and the littleness of our +span, should we have felt griefs? Nay, nay--_nit_,' like the +street-youths say--would say the lady and gentleman now so passionless +as to have philosophers become. And you, it should mean to you much. +Humans are funniest when they weep and tremble before, like you say, +'the facts in the case.' Ha! I laugh to myself at them often when I +observe. Their funniness of the beards and eyebrows, the bald head, of +the dress, the solemnities of manner, as it were they were persons of +weight. Ah, they are of their insignificance so loftily unconscious. +Was it not great skill--to compel the admiration of the love-worthiest +scientist--to create a unit of a numberless mass of units and then to +enable it to feel each one the importance of the whole, as if each part +were big as the whole? So you shall not fret I say. + +"If the fret invade you, you shall do well to lie out in the friendly +space, and look at this small topspinning of a world through the glass +that reduces. + +"Yes? You had thought it of such bigness--its concerns of a sublime +tragicness? Yet see now, these funny little animals on the surface of +the spinning-ball. How frantic, as if all things were about to +eventuate, remembering not that nothing ends. So? Observe the marks of +their silliness, their unworthiness. You have reduced the ball to so +big as a melon, yes? Watch the insects run about in the craziness, +laughing, crying, loving their loves, hating their hates, fearing, +fretting--killing one the other in such funny little clothes, made for +such funny little purpose precisely--falling sick over the +money-losings--and the ball so small, but one of such many--as many +stars under the earth, remember, as above it. + +"So! you are back to earth; you are a human like the rest, so foolish, +so funny as any--so you say, 'Well, I shall not be more troubled again +yet. I play the same game, but it is only a game, a little game to last +an afternoon--I play my part--yes--the laughing part, crying +part--loving, hating, killing part--what matter if I say it is good?' +If the Maker there be to look down, what joys him most--the coward who +fears and frets, and the whine makes for his soul or body? Ach! no, it +is the one who say, it is _good_--I could not better have done +myself--a great game, yes--'let her rip,' like you West-people +remark--'let her rip--you cannot lose _me_,' like you say also. Ach, +so! And then he say, the great Planner of it,' Ach! I am understood at +last--good!--bright man that,' like you say, also--'bright man that--it +is of a pleasure to see him do well!' + +"So, my young friend, you shall pleasure yourself still much yet. It is +of an excellence to pleasure one's self judiciously. The lotus is a +leguminous plant--so excellent for the salad--not for the roast. You +have of the salad overeaten--you shall learn of your successful +capacity for it--you shall do well, then. You have been of the reckless +deportment--you may still be of it. That is not the matter. You shall +be reckless as you like--but without your stored energy surplus to harm +you. Your environment from the now demands of you the faculties you +will most pleasure yourself in developing. You shall produce what you +consume. The gods love such. Ach, yes!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII. + +Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring + + +He awoke early, refreshed and intensely alive. With the work done he +became conscious of a feeling of disassociation from the surroundings +in which he had so long been at home. Many words of the talkative +German were running in his mind from the night before. He was glad the +business was off his mind. He would now go the pleasant journey, and +think on the way. + +His trunks were ready for the car; and before he went down-stairs his +hand-bag was packed, and the preparations for the start completed. +When, after his breakfast, he read the telegram announcing that the car +had been delayed twenty-four hours in Chicago, he was bored by the +thought that he must pass another day in New York. He was eager now to +be off, and the time would hang heavily. + +He tried to recall some forgotten detail of the business that might +serve to occupy him. But the finishing had been thorough. + +He ran over in his mind the friends with whom he could spend the time +agreeably. He could recall no one he cared to see. He had no longer an +interest in the town or its people. + +He went aimlessly out on to Broadway in the full flood of a spring +morning, breathing the fresh air hungrily. It turned his thought to +places out of the grime and clamour of the city; to woods and fields +where he might rest and feel the stimulus of his new plans. He felt +aloof and sufficient unto himself. + +He swung on to an open car bound north, and watched without interest +the early quick-moving workers thronging south on the street, and +crowding the cars that passed him. At Forty-second Street, he changed +to a Boulevard car that took him to the Fort Lee Ferry at One Hundred +and Twenty-fifth Street. + +Out on the shining blue river he expanded his lungs to the clean, sweet +air. Excursion boats, fluttering gay streamers, worked sturdily up the +stream. Little yachts, in fresh-laundered suits of canvas, darted +across their bows or slanted in their wakes, looking like white +butterflies. The vivid blue of the sky was flecked with bits of broken +fleece, scurrying like the yachts below. Across the river was a +high-towering bank of green inviting him over its summit to the +languorous freshness beyond. + +He walked off the boat on the farther side and climbed a series of +steep wooden stairways, past a tiny cataract that foamed its way down +to the river. When he reached the top he walked through a stretch of +woods and turned off to the right, down a cool shaded road that wound +away to the north through the fresh greens of oak and chestnut. + +He was entranced at once by the royal abandon of spring, this wondrous +time of secret beginnings made visible. The old earth was become as a +young wife from the arms of an ardent spouse, blushing into new life +and beauty for the very joy of love. He breathed the dewy freshness, +and presently he whistled the "Spring Song" of Mendelssohn, that +bubbling, half-joyous, half-plaintive little prayer in melody. + +He was well into the spirit of the time and place. His soul sang. The +rested muscles of his body and mind craved the resistance of obstacles. +He rejoiced. He had been wise to leave the city for the fresh, +unspoiled country--the city with all its mean little fears, its petty +immoralities, and its very trifling great concerns. He did not analyse, +more than to remember, once, that the not reticent German would approve +his mood. He had sought the soothing quiet with the unfailing instinct +of the wounded animal. + +The mysterious green life in the woods at either side allured him with +its furtive pulsing. But he kept to the road and passed on. He was not +yet far enough from the town. + +Some words from a little song ran in his mind as he walked: + + "The naked boughs into green leaves slipped, + The longing buds into flowers tripped, + The little hills smiled as if they were glad, + The little rills ran as if they were mad. + + "There was green on the earth and blue in the sky, + The chrysalis changed to a butterfly, + And our lovers, the honey-bees, all a-hum, + To hunt for our hearts began to come." + +When he came to a village with an electric car clanging through it, he +skirted its borders, and struck off through a woodland toward the +river. Even the village was too human, too modern, for his early-pagan +mood. + +In the woods he felt that curious thrill of stealth, that impulse to +cautious concealment, which survives in man from the remote days when +enemies beset his forest ways. On a southern hillside he found a +dogwood-tree with its blossomed firmament of white stars. In low, moist +places the violets had sprung through the thatch of leaves and were +singing their purple beauties all unheard. Birds were nesting, and +squirrels chattered and scolded. + +Under these more obvious signs and sounds went the steady undertone of +life in root and branch and unfurling leaf--provoking, inciting, making +lawless whomsoever it thrilled. + +He came out of the wood on to another road that ran not far from the +river, and set off again to the north along the beaten track. + +In an old-fashioned garden in front of a small house a girl bent over a +flower bed, working with a trowel. + +He stopped and looked at her over the palings. She was freshly pretty, +with yellow hair blown about her face under the pushed back sunbonnet +of blue. The look in her blue eyes was the look of one who had heard +echoes; who had awakened with the spring to new life and longings, +mysterious and unwelcome, but compelling. + +She stood up when he spoke; her sleeves were turned prettily back upon +her fair round arms. + +"Yes, the road turns to the left, a bit ahead." + +She was blushing. + +"You are planting flower seeds." + +"Yes; so many flowers were killed by the cold last winter." + +"I see; there must a lot of them have died here, but their souls didn't +go far, did they now?" + +She went to digging again in the black moist earth. He lingered. The +girl worked on, and her blush deepened. He felt a lawless impulse to +vault the palings, and carry her off to be a flower for ever in some +wooded glade near by. He dismissed it as impracticable. His intentions +would probably be misconstrued. + +"I hope your garden will thrive. It has a pretty pattern to follow." + +"Thank you!" + +He raised his hat and passed on, thinking; thinking of all the old dead +flowers, and their pretty souls that had gone to bloom in the heaven of +the maid's face. + +Before the road turned to the left he found a path leading over to the +top of the palisade. There on a little rocky shelf, hundreds of feet +above the river, he lay a long time in the spring sun, looking over to +the farther shore, where the city crept to the south, and lost its +sharp lines in the smoky distance. There he smoked and gave himself up +to the moment. He was glad to be out of that rush. He could see matters +more clearly now--appraise values more justly. He was glad of +everything that had come. Above all, glad to go back and carry on that +big work of his father's--his father who had done so much to redeem the +wilderness--and incidentally he would redeem his own manhood. + +It will be recalled that the young man frequently expressed himself +with regrettable inelegance; that he habitually availed himself, +indeed, of a most infelicitous species of metaphor. It must not be +supposed that this spring day in the spring places had reformed his +manner of delivery. When he chose to word his emotions it was still +done in a manner to make the right-spoken grieve. Thus, going back +toward the road, after reviewing his great plans for the future, he +spoke aloud: "I believe it's going to be a good game." + +When he became hungry he thought with relief that he would not be +compelled to seek one of those "hurry-up" lunch places with its clamour +and crowd. What was the use of all that noise and crowding and piggish +hurry? A remark of the German's recurred to him: + +"It is a happy man who has divined the leisure of eternity, so he feels +it, like what you say, 'in his bones.'" + +When he came out on the road again he thought regretfully of the pretty +girl and her flower bed. He would have liked to go back and suggest +that she sing to the seeds as she put them to sleep in their earth +cradle, to make their awakening more beautiful. + +But he turned down the road that led away from the girl, and when he +came to a "wheelman's rest," he ate many sandwiches and drank much +milk. + +The face of the maid that served him had been no heaven for the souls +of dead flowers. Still she was a girl; and no girl could be wholly +without importance on such a day. So he thought the things he would +have said to her if matters had been different. + +When he had eaten, he loafed off again down the road. Through the long +afternoon he walked and lazed, turning into strange lanes and by-roads, +resting on grassy banks, and looking far up. He followed Doctor von +Herzlich's directions, and, going off into space, reduced the earth, +watching its little continents and oceans roll toward him, and viewing +the antics of its queer inhabitants in fancy as he had often in fact +viewed a populous little ant-hill, with its busy, serious citizens. +Then he would venture still farther--away out into timeless space, +beyond even the starry refuse of creation, and insolently regard the +universe as a tiny cloud of dust. + +When the shadows stretched in the dusky languor of the spring evening, +he began to take his bearings for the return. He heard the hum and +clang of an electric car off through a chestnut grove. + +The sound disturbed him, bringing premonitions of the city's unrest. He +determined to stay out for the night. It was restful--his car would not +arrive until late the next afternoon--there was no reason why he should +not. He found a little wayside hotel whose weather-beaten sign was +ancient enough to promise "entertainment for man and beast." + +"Just what I want," he declared. "I'm both of them--man and beast." + +Together they ate tirelessly of young chickens broiled, and a green +salad, and a wonderful pie, with a bottle of claret that had stood back +of the dingy little bar so long that it had attained, at least as to +its label, a very fair antiquity. + +This time the girl was pretty again, and, he at once discovered, not +indisposed to light conversation. Yet she was a shallow creature, with +little mind for the subtler things of life and the springtime. He +decided she was much better to look at than to talk to. With a just +appreciation of her own charms she appeared to pose perpetually before +an imaginary mirror, regaling him and herself with new postures, +tossing her brown head, curving her supple waist, exploiting her +thousand coquetries. He was pained to note, moreover, that she was more +than conscious of the red-cheeked youth who came in from the carriage +shed, whistling. + +When the man and the beast had been appeased they sat out under a +blossomed apple-tree and smoked together in a fine spirit of amity. + +He was not amazed when, in the gloom, he saw the red-cheeked youth with +both arms about the girl--nor was he shocked at detecting instantly +that her struggles were meant to be futile against her assailant's +might. The birds were mating, life was forward, and Nature loves to be +democratically lavish with her choicest secrets. Why not, then, the +blooming, full curved kitchen-maid and the red-cheeked boy-of-all-work? + +He smoked and saw the night fall. The dulled bronze jangle of cow-bells +came soothingly to him. An owl called a little way off. Swallows +flashed by in long graceful flights. A bat circled near, indecisively, +as if with a message it hesitated to give. Once he heard the flute-like +warble of a skylark. + +He was under the clean, sharp stars of a moonless night. His keen +senses tasted the pungent smoke and the softer feminine fragrance of +the apple-blossoms. His nerves were stilled to pleasant ease, except +when the laugh of the girl floated to him from the grape-arbour back of +the house. That disturbed him to fierce longings--the clear, high +measure of a woman's laugh floating to him in the night. And once she +sang--some song common to her class. It moved him as her laugh did, +making him vibrate to her, as when a practised hand flutters the +strings of a harp. He was glad without knowing why when she stopped. + +At ten o'clock he went in from under the peering little stars and fell +asleep in an ancient four-poster. He dreamed that he had the world, a +foot-ball, clasped to his breast, and was running down the field for a +gain of a hundred yards. Then, suddenly, in place of the world, it was +Avice Milbrey in his grasp, struggling frantically to be free; and +instead of behaving like a gentleman he flung both arms around her and +kissed her despite her struggles; kissed her time after time, until she +ceased to strive against him, and lay panting and helpless in his arms. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX. + +An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured + + +He was awakened by the unaccustomed silence. As he lay with his eyes +open, his first thought was that all things had stopped--the world had +come to its end. Then remembrance came, and he stretched in lazy +enjoyment of the stillness and the soft feather bed upon which he had +slept. Finding himself too wide awake for more sleep, he went over to +the little gable window and looked out. The unfermented wine of another +spring day came to his eager nostrils. The little ball had made another +turn. Its cheek was coming once more into the light. Already the east +was flushing with a wondrous vague pink. The little animals in the city +over there, he thought, would soon be tumbling out of their beds to +begin another of their funny, serious days of trial and failure; to +make ready for another night of forgetfulness, when their absurd little +ant-hill should turn again away from the big blazing star. He sat a +long time at the window, looking out to the east, where the light was +showing; meditating on many idle, little matters, but conscious all the +time of great power within himself. + +He felt ready now for any conflict. The need for some great immediate +action pressed upon him. He did not identify it. Something he must +do--he must have action--and that at once. He was glad to think how +Uncle Peter would begin to rejoice in him--secretly at first, and then +to praise him. He was equal to any work. He could not begin it quickly +enough. That queer need to do something at once was still pressing, +still unidentified. + +By five he was down-stairs. The girl, fresh as a dew-sprayed rose in +the garden outside, brought him breakfast of fruit, bacon and eggs, +coffee and waffles. He ate with relish, delighting meantime in the +girl's florid freshness, and even in the assertive, triumphant whistle +of the youth busy at his tasks outside. + +When he set out he meant to reach the car and go back to town at once. +Yet when he came to the road over which he had loitered the day before, +he turned off upon it with slower steps. There was a confusing whirl of +ideas in his brain, a chaos that required all his energy to feed it, so +that the spring went from his step. + +Then all at once, a new-born world cohered out of the nebula, and the +sight of its measured, orderly whirling dazed him. He had been seized +with a wish--almost an intention, so stunning in its audacity that he +all but reeled under the shock. It seemed to him that the thing must +have been germinated in his mind without his knowledge; it had lain +there, gathering force while he rested, now to burst forth and dazzle +him with its shine. All that undimmed freshness of longing he had felt +the day before-all the unnamed, unidentified, nameless desires--had +flooded back upon him, but now no longer aimless. They were acutely +definite. He wanted Avice Milbrey,--wanted her with an intensity as +unreasoning as it was resistless. This was the new world he had watched +swimming out of the chaos in his mind, taking its allotted orbit in a +planetary system of possible, rational, matter-of-course proceedings. + +And Avice Milbrey was to marry Shepler, the triumphant money-king. + +He sat down by the roadside, well-nigh helpless, surrendering all his +forces to the want. + +Then there came upon him to reinforce this want a burning sense of +defeat. He remembered Uncle Peter's first warnings in the mine about +"cupboard love;" the gossip of Higbee: "If you were broke, she'd have +about as much use for you--" all the talk he had listened to so long +about marriage for money; and, at the last, Shepler's words to Uncle +Peter: "I was uncertain until copper went to 51." Those were three wise +old men who had talked, men who knew something of women and much of the +world. And they were so irritating in their certainty. What a fine play +to fool them all! + +The sense of defeat burned into him more deeply. He had been vanquished, +cheated, scorned, shamefully flouted. The money was gone--all of Uncle +Peter's complaints and biting sarcasms came back to him with renewed +bitterness; but his revenge on Uncle Peter would be in showing him a big +man at work, with no nonsense about him. But Shepler, who was now certain, +and Higbee, who had always been certain,--especially Shepler, with his +easy sense of superiority with a woman over any poor man. That was a +different matter. There was a thing to think about. And he wanted Avice +Milbrey. He could not, he decided, go back without her. + +Something of the old lawless spirit of adventure that had spurred on +his reckless forbears urged him to carry the girl back with him. She +didn't love him. He would take her in spite of that; overpower her; +force her to go. It was a revenge of superb audacity. Shepler had not +been sure of her until now. Well, Shepler might be hurled from that +certainty by one hour of determined action. + +The great wild wish narrowed itself into a definite plan. He recalled +the story Uncle Peter had told at the Oldakers' about the woman and her +hair. A woman could be coerced if a man knew her weakness. He could +coerce her. He knew it instinctively; and the instinctive belief +rallied to its support a thousand little looks from her, little +intonations of her voice, little turnings of her head when they had +been together. In spite of her calculations, in spite of her love of +money, he could make her feel her weakness. He was a man with the +power. + +It was heady wine for the morning. He described himself briefly as a +lunatic, and walked on again. But the crazy notion would not be gone. +The day before he had been passive. Now he was active, acutely aware of +himself and all his wants. He walked a mile trying to dismiss the idea. +He sat down again, and it flooded back upon him with new force. + +Her people were gone. She had even intimated a wish to talk with him +again. It could be done quickly. He knew. He felt the primitive +superiority of man's mere brute force over woman. He gloried in his +knotted muscles and the crushing power of his desires. + +Afterward, she would reproach him bitterly. They would both be unhappy. +It was no matter. It was the present, the time when he should be +living. He would have her, and Shepler--Shepler might have had the One +Girl mine--but this girl, never! + +Again he tried faithfully to walk off the obsession. Again were his +essays at sober reason unavailing. + +His mind was set as it had been when he bought the stocks day after day +against the advice of the best judges in the Street. He could not turn +himself back. There must be success. There could not be a giving +up--and there must not be failure. + +Hour after hour he alternately walked and rested, combating and +favouring the mad project. It was a foolish little world, and people +were always waiting for another time to begin the living of life. The +German had quoted Martial: "To-morrow I will live, the fool says; +to-day itself's too late. The wise lived yesterday." + +If he did go away alone he knew he would always regret it. If he +carried her triumphantly off, doubtless his regret for that would +eventually be as great. The first regret was certain. The latter was +equally plausible; but, if it came, would it not be preferable to the +other? To have held her once--to have taken her away, to have triumphed +over her own calculations, and, best of all, to have triumphed over the +money-king resting fatuously confident behind his wealth, dignifying no +man as rival who was not rich. The present, so, was more than any +possible future, how dire soever it might be. + +He was mad to prove to her--and to Shepler--that she was more a woman +than either had supposed,--a woman in spite of herself, weak, +unreasoning; to prove to them both that a determined man has a vital +power to coerce which no money may ever equal. + +Not until five o'clock had he by turns urged and fought himself to the +ferry. By that time he had given up arguing. He was dwelling entirely +upon his plan of action. Strive and grope as he would, the thing had +driven him on relentlessly. His reason could not take him beyond the +reach of its goad. Far as he went he loved her even farther. She +belonged to him. He would have her. He seemed to have been storing, the +day before, a vast quantity of energy that he was now drawing lavishly +upon. For the time, he was pure, raw force, needing, to be resistless, +only the guidance of a definite purpose. + +He crossed the ferry and went to the hotel, where he shaved and +freshened himself. He found Grant, the porter, waiting for him when he +went downstairs, and gave him written directions to the railroad people +to have the car attached to the Chicago Express leaving at eight the +next morning; also instructions about his baggage. + +"I expect there will be two of us, Grant; see that the car is well +stocked; and here, take this; go to a florist's and get about four +dozen pink roses--_la France_--can you remember?--pink--don't take any +other colour, and be sure they're fresh. Have breakfast ready by the +time the train starts." + +"Yes, Mistah Puhs'val!" said Grant, and added to himself, "Yo' suttiny +do ca'y yo'se'f mighty han'some, Mistah Man!" + +Going out of the hotel, he met Launton Oldaker, with whom he chatted a +few moments, and then bade good-bye. + +Oldaker, with a sensitive regard for the decencies, refrained from +expressing the hearty sympathy he felt for a man who would henceforth +be compelled to live out of the world. + +Percival walked out to Broadway, revolving his plan. He saw it was but +six o'clock. He could do nothing for at least an hour. When he noted +this he became conscious of his hunger. He had eaten nothing since +morning. He turned into a restaurant on Madison Square and ordered +dinner. When he had eaten, he sat with his coffee for a final smoke of +deliberation. He went over once more the day's arguments for and +against the novel emprise. He had become insensible, however, to all +the dissenting ones. As a last rally, he tried to picture the +difficulties he might encounter. He faced all he could imagine. + +"By God, I'll do it!" + +"_Oui, monsieur!_" said the waiter, who had been standing dreamily +near, startled into attention by the spoken words. + +"That's all--give me the check." + +As he went out the door, a young woman passed him, looking him straight +in the eyes. From her light swishing skirts came the faint perfume of +the violet. It chilled the steel of his resolution. + +He entered a carriage. It was a hot, humid night. Already the mist was +making grey softness of the air, dulling the street lights to ruddy +orange. Northward, over the breast of Murray Hill a few late carriages +trickled down toward him. Their wheels, when they passed, made swift +reflections in the damp glare of the asphalt. + +He was pent force waiting to be translated into action. + +He drove first to the Milbrey house, on the chance that she might be at +home. Jarvis answered his ring. + +"Miss Milbrey is with Mrs. Van Geist, sir." + +Jarvis spoke regretfully. Pie had reasons of his own for believing that +the severance of the Milbrey relationship with Mr. Bines had been +nothing short of calamitous. + +He rang Mrs. Van Geist's bell, five minutes later. + +"The ladies haven't come back, sir. I don't know where they might be. +Perhaps at the Valners', in Fifty-second Street, sir." + +He rang the Valners' bell. + +"Mrs. Van Geist and Miss Milbrey? They left at least half an hour ago, +sir." + +"Go down the avenue slowly, driver!" + +At Fortieth Street he looked down to the middle of the block. + +Mrs. Van Geist, alone, was just alighting from her coupé. + +He signalled the driver. + +"Go to the other address again, in Thirty-seventh Street." + +Jarvis opened the door. + +"Yes, sir--thank you, sir--Miss Milbrey is in, sir. I'll see, sir." + +He crossed the Rubicon of a door-mat and stood in the unlighted hall. +At the far end he saw light coming from a door that he knew opened into +the library. + +Jarvis came into the light. Behind him appeared Miss Milbrey in the +doorway. + +"Miss Milbrey says will you enter the library, Mr. Bines?" + + + + +CHAPTER XL. + +Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty + + +He walked quickly back. At the doorway she gave him her hand, which he +took in silence. "Why--Mr. Bines!--you wouldn't have surprised me last +night. To-night I pictured you on your way West." + +Her gown was of dull blue dimity. She still wore her hat, an arch of +straw over her face, with ripe red cherries nodding upon it as she +moved. He closed the door behind him. + +"Do come in. I've been having a solitary rummage among old things. It +is my last night here. We're leaving for the country to-morrow, you +know." + +She stood by the table, the light from a shaded lamp making her colour +glow. + +Now she noted that he had not spoken. She turned quickly to him as if +to question. + +He took a swift little step toward her, still without speaking. She +stepped back with a sudden instinct of fright. + +He took two quick steps forward and grasped one of her wrists. He spoke +in cool, even tones, but the words came fast: + +"I've come to marry you to-night; to take you away with me to that +Western country. You may not like the life. You may grieve to death for +all I know--but you're going. I won't plead, I won't beg, but I am +going to take you." + +She had begun to pull away in alarm when he seized her wrist. His grasp +did not bruise, it did not seem to be tight; but the hand that held it +was immovable. + +"Mr. Bines, you forget yourself. Really, this is--" + +"Don't waste time. You can say all that needs to be said--I'll give you +time for that before we start--but don't waste the time saying all +those useless things. Don't waste time telling me I'm crazy. Perhaps I +am. We can settle that later." + +"Mr. Bines--how absurd! Oh! let me go! You're hurting my wrist! +Oh!--don't--don't--don't! Oh!" + +When he felt the slender wrist trying to writhe from his grasp he had +closed upon it more tightly, and thrusting his other arm quickly behind +her, had drawn her closely to him. Her cries and pleadings were being +smothered down on his breast. Her struggles met only the unbending, +pitiless resistance of steel. + +"Don't waste time, I tell you--can't you understand? Be sensible,--talk +if you must--only talk sense." + +"Let me go at once--I demand it--quick--oh!" + +"Take this hat off!" + +He forced the wrist he had been holding down between them, so that she +could not free the hand, and, with his own hand thus freed, he drew out +the two long hat-pins and flung the hat with its storm-tossed cherries +across the room. Still holding her tightly, he put the free hand on her +brow and thrust her head back, so that she was forced to look up at +him. + +"Let me see you--I want to see your eyes--they're my eyes now." + +Her head strained against his hand to be down again, and all her +strength was exerted to be away. She found she could not move in any +direction. + +"Oh, you're hurting my neck. What _shall_ I do? I can't scream--think +what it would mean!--you're hurting my neck!" + +"You are hurting your _own_ neck--stop it!" + +He kissed her face, softly, her cheeks, her eyes, her chin. + +"I've loved you so--don't--what's the use? Be sensible. My arms have +starved for you so--do you think they're going to loosen now? Avice +Milbrey--Avice Milbrey--Avice Milbrey!" + +His arms tightened about her as he said the name over and over. + +"That's poetry--it's all the poetry there is in the world. It's a verse +I say over in the night. You can't understand it yet--it's too deep for +you. It means I must have you--and the next verse means that you must +have me--a poor man--be a poor man's wife--and all the other +verses--millions of them--mean that I'll never give you up--and there's +a lot more verses for you to write, when you understand--meaning that +you'll never give _me_ up--and there's one in the beginning means I'm +going to carry you out and marry you to-night--_now_, do you +understand?--right off--this very night!" + +"Oh! Oh! this is so terrible! Oh, it's _so_ awful!" + +Her voice broke, and he felt her body quiver with sobs. Her face was +pitifully convulsed, and tears welled in her eyes. + +"Let me _go_--let--me--_go_!" + +He released her head, but still held her closely to him. Her sobs had +become uncontrollable. + +"Here--" he reached for the little lace-edged handkerchief that lay +beside her long gloves and her purse, on the table. + +She took it mechanically. + +"Please--oh, _please_ let me go--I beg you." She managed it with +difficulty between the convulsions that were rending her. + +He put his lips down upon the soft hair. + +"I _won't_--do you understand that? Stop talking nonsense." + +He thought there would be no end to the sobs. + +"Have it out, dear--there's plenty of time." + +Once she seemed to have stopped the tears. He turned her face up to his +own again, and softly kissed her wet eyes. Her full lips were parted +before him, but he did not kiss them. The sobs came again. + +"There--there!--it will soon be over." + +At last she ceased to cry from sheer exhaustion, and when, with his +hand under her chin, he forced up her head again, she looked at him a +full minute and then closed her eyes. + +He kissed their lids. + +There came from time to time the involuntary quick little indrawings of +breath,--the aftermath of her weeping. + +He held her so for a time, while neither spoke. She had become too weak +to struggle. + +"My arms have starved for you so," he murmured. She gave no sign. + +"Come over here." He led her, unresisting, around to the couch at the +other side of the table. + +"Sit here, and we'll talk it over sensibly, before you get ready." + +When he released her, she started quickly up toward the door that led +into the hall. + +"_Don't_ do that--please don't be foolish." + +He locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. Then he went over to +the big folding-doors, and satisfied himself they were locked from the +other side. He went back and stood in front of her. She had watched him +with dumb terror in her face. + +"Now we can talk--but there isn't much to be said. How soon can you be +ready?" + +"You _are_ crazy!" + +"Possibly--believe what you like." + +"How did you ever _dare?_ Oh, how _awful!_" + +"If you haven't passed that stage, I'll hold you again." + +"No, no--_please_ don't--please stand up again. Sit over there,--I can +think better." + +"Think quickly. This is Saturday, and to-morrow is their busy day. They +may not sit up late to-night." + +She arose with a little shrug of desperation that proclaimed her to be +in the power of a mad man. She looked at her face in the oval mirror, +wiping her eyes and making little passes and pats at her disordered +hair. He went over to her. + +"No, no--please go over there again. Sit down a moment--let me think. +I'll talk to you presently." + +There was silence for five minutes. He watched her, while she narrowed +her eyes in deep thought. + +Then he looked at his watch. + +"I can give you an hour, if you've anything to say before it's +done--not longer." + +She drew a long breath. + +"Mr. Bines, are you mad? Can't you be rational?" + +"I haven't been irrational, I give you my word, not once since I came +here." + +He looked at her steadily. All at once he saw her face go crimson. She +turned her eyes from his with an effort. + +"I'm going back to Montana in the morning. I want you to marry me +to-night--I won't even wait one more day--one more hour. I know it's a +thing you never dreamt of--marrying a poor man. You'll look at it as +the most disgraceful act of folly you could possibly commit, and so +will every one else here--but you'll _do_ it. To-morrow at this time +you'll be half-way to Chicago with me." + +"Mr. Bines,--I'm perfectly reasonable and serious--I mean it--are you +quite sure you didn't lose your wits when you lost your money?" + +"It _may_ be considered a witless thing to marry a girl who would marry +for money--but never mind _that_--I'm used to taking chances." + +She glanced up at him, curiously. + +"You know I'm to marry Mr. Shepler the tenth of next month." + +"Your grammar is faulty--tense is wrong--You should say 'I _was_ to +have married Mr. Shepler.' I'm fastidious about those little things, I +confess." + +"How can you jest?" + +"I can't. Don't think this is any joke. _He'll_ find out." + +"Who will find out,--what, pray?" + +"He will. He's already said he was afraid there might have been some +nonsense between you and me, because we talked that evening at the +Oldakers'. He told my grandfather he wasn't at all sure of you until +that day I lost my money." + +"Oh, I see--and of course you'd like your revenge--carrying me off from +him just to hurt him." + +"If you say that I'll hold you in my arms again." He started toward +her. "I've loved you _so_, I tell you--all the time--all the time." + +"Or perhaps it's a brutal revenge on me,--after thinking I'd only marry +for money." + +"I've loved you always, I tell you." + +He came up to her, more gently now, and took up her hand to kiss it. He +saw the ring. + +"Take his ring off!" + +She looked up at him with an amused little smile, but did not move. He +reached for the hand, and she put it behind her. + +"Take it off," he said, harshly. + +He forced her hand out, took off the ring with its gleaming stone, none +too gently, and laid it on the table behind him. Then he covered the +hand with kisses. + +"Now it's my hand. Perhaps there was a little of both those feelings +you accuse me of--perhaps I _did_ want to triumph over both you and +Shepler--and the other people who said you'd never marry for anything +but money--but do you think I'd have had either one of those desires if +I hadn't loved you? Do you think I'd have cared how many Sheplers you +married if I hadn't loved you so, night and day?--always turning to you +in spite of everything,--loving you always, under everything--always, I +tell you." + +"Under what--what 'everything'?" + +"When I was sure you had no heart--that you couldn't care for any man +except a rich man--that you would marry only for money." + +"You thought that?" + +"Of course I thought it." + +"What has changed you?" + +"Nothing. I'm going to change it now by proving differently. I shall +take you against your will--but I shall make you love me--in the end. I +know you--you're a woman, in spite of yourself!" + +"You were entirely right about me. I would even have married you +because of the money--" + +"Tell me what it is you're holding back--don't wait." + +"Let me think--don't talk, please!" + +She sat a long time silent, motionless, her eyes fixed ahead. At length +she stirred herself to speak. + +"You were right about me, partly--and partly wrong. I don't think I can +make you understand. I've always wanted so much from life--so much more +than it seemed possible to have. The only thing for a girl in my +position and circumstances was to make what is called a good marriage. +I wanted what that would bring, too. I was torn between the desires--or +rather the natural instincts and the trained desires. I had ideals +about loving and being loved, and I had the material ideals of my +experience in this world out here. + +"I was untrue to each by turns. Here--I want to show you something." + +She took up a book with closely written pages. + +"I came here to-night--I won't conceal from you that I thought of you +when I came. It was my last time here, and you had gone, I supposed. +Among other things I had out this old diary to burn, and I had found +this, written on my eighteenth birthday, when I came out--the fond, +romantic, secret ideal of a foolish girl--listen: + +"The Soul of Love wed the Soul of Truth and their daughter, Joy, was +born: who was immortal and in whom they lived for ever!' + +"You see--that was the sort of moonshine I started in to live. Two or +three times I was a grievous disappointment to my people, and once or +twice, perhaps, I was disappointed myself. I was never quite sure what +I wanted. But if you think I was consistently mercenary you are +mistaken. I shall tell you something more--something no one knows. +There was a man I met while that ideal was still strong and beautiful +to me--but after I'd come to see that here, in this life, it was not +easily to be kept. He was older than I, experienced with women--a lover +of women, I came to understand in time. I was a novelty to him, a fresh +recreation--he enjoyed all those romantic ideals of mine. I thought +then he loved me, and I worshipped him. He was married, but constantly +said he was about to leave his wife, so she would divorce him. I +promised to come to him when it was done. He had married for money and +he would have been poor again. I didn't mind in the least. I tell you +this to show you that I could have loved a poor man, not only well +enough to marry him, but to break with the traditions, and brave the +scandal of going to him in that common way. With all I felt for him I +should have been more than satisfied. But I came in time to see that he +was not as earnest as I had been. He wasn't capable of feeling what I +felt. He was more cowardly than I--or rather, I was more reckless than +he. I suspected it a long time; I became convinced of it a year ago and +a little over. He became hateful to me. I had wasted my love. Then he +became funny. But--you see--I am not altogether what you believed me. +Wait a bit longer, please. + +"Then I gave up, almost--and later, I gave up entirely. And when my +brother was about to marry that woman, and Mr. Shepler asked me to +marry him, I consented. It seemed an easy way to end it all. I'd quit +fondling ideals. And you had told me I must do anything I could to keep +Fred from marrying that woman--my people came to say the same +thing--and so--" + +"If he had married her--if they were married now--then you would feel +free to marry me?" + +"You would still be the absurdest man in New York--but we can't discuss +that. He isn't going to marry her." + +"But he _has_ married her--" + +"What do you mean?" + +"I supposed you knew--Oldaker told me as I left the hotel. He and your +father were witnesses. The marriage took place this afternoon at the +Arlingham." + +"You're not deceiving me?" + +"Come, come!--_girl!_" + +"Oh, _pardon_ me! please! Of course I didn't mean it--but you stunned +me. And papa said nothing to me about it before he left. The money must +have been too great a temptation to him and to Fred. She has just made +some enormous amount in copper stock or something." + +"I know, she had better advice than I had. I'd like to reward the man +who gave it to her." + +"And I was sure you were going to marry that other woman." + +"How could you think so?" + +"Of course I'm not the least bit jealous--it isn't my disposition; but +I _did_ think Florence Akemit wasn't the woman to make you happy--of +course I liked her immensely--and there were reports going +about--everybody seemed so sure--and you were with her so much. Oh, how +I did _hate_ her!" + +"I tell you she is a joke and always was." + +"It's funny--that's exactly what I told Aunt Cornelia about that--that +man." + +"Let's stop joking, then." + +"How absurd you are--with my plans all made and the day set--" + +There was a knock at the door. He went over and unlocked it. Jarvis was +there. + +"Mr. Shepler, Miss Avice." + +They looked at each other. + +"Jarvis, shut that door and wait outside." + +"Yes, Mr. Bines." + +"You can't see him." + +"But I must,--we're engaged, don't you understand?--of course I must!" + +"I tell you I won't let you. Can't you understand that I'm not talking +idly?" + +She tried to evade him and reach the door, but she was caught again in +his arms--held close to him. + +"If you like he shall come in now. But he's not going to take you away +from me, as he did in that jeweller's the other night--and you can't +see him at all except as you are now." + +She struggled to be free. + +"Oh, you're so _brutal_!" + +"I haven't begun yet--" + +He drew her toward the door. + +"Oh, not that--don't open it--I'll tell him--yes, I will!" + +"I'm taking no more chances, and the time is short." + +Still holding her closely with one arm, he opened the door. The man +stared impassively above their heads--a graven image of +unconsciousness. + +"Jarvis." + +"Yes, sir." + +"Miss Milbrey wishes you to say to Mr. Shepler that she is engaged--" + +"That I'm ill," she interrupted, still making little struggles to twist +from his grasp, her head still bent down. + +"That she is engaged with Mr. Bines, Jarvis, and can't see him. Say it +that way--'Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't see +you.'". + + +[Illustration: "'SAY IT THAT WAY--MISS MILBREY IS ENGAGED WITH MR. BINES +AND CAN'T SEE YOU.'"] + + +"Yes, sir!" + +He remained standing motionless, as he had been, his eyes still fixed +above them. But the eyes of Jarvis, from long training, did hot require +to be bent upon those things they needed to observe. They saw something +now that was at least two feet below their range. + +The girl made a little move with her right arm, which was imprisoned +fast between them, and which some intuition led her captor not to +restrain. The firm little hand worked its way slowly up, went +creepingly over his shoulder and bent tightly about his neck. + +"Yes, sir," repeated Jarvis, without the quiver of an eyelid, and went. + +He closed the door with his free hand, and they stood as they were +until they heard the noise of the front door closing and the soft +retreating footsteps of the butler. + +"Oh, you were mean--_mean_--to shame me so," and floods of tears came +again. + +"I hated to do it, but I _had_ to; it was a critical moment. And you +couldn't have made up your mind without it." + +She sobbed weakly in his arms, but her own arm was still tight about +his neck. He felt it for the first time. + +"But I _had_ made up my mind--I did make it up while we talked." + +They were back on the couch. He held her close and she no longer +resisted, but nestled in his arms with quick little sighs, as if +relieved from a great strain. He kissed her forehead and hair as she +dried her eyes. + +"Now, rest a little. Then we shall go." + +"I've so much to tell you. That day at the jeweller's--well, what could +I do but take one poor last little look of you--to keep?" + +"Tell me if you care for me." + +"Oh, I do, I do, I do care for you. I _have_--ever since that day we +walked in the woods. I do, I _do_!" + +She threw her head back and gave him her lips. + +She was crying again and trying to talk. + +"I did care for you, and that day I thought you were going to say +something, but you didn't--you were so distant and troubled, and seemed +not even to like me--though I felt sure you loved me. I had thought +you were going to tell me, and I'd have accepted--yes, for the +money--though I liked you so much. Why, when I first met you in that +mine and thought you were a workman, I'm not sure I wouldn't have +married you if you had asked me. But it was different again when I +found out about you. And that day in the woods I thought something had +come between us. Only after dinner you seemed kinder, and I knew at +once you thought better of me, and might even seek me--I knew it in the +way a woman knows things she doesn't know at all. I went into the +library with a candle to look into the mirror, almost sure you were +going to come. Then I heard your steps and I was so glad--but it wasn't +you-I'd been mistaken again-you still disliked me. I was so +disappointed and hurt and heartsick, and he kissed me and soothed me. +And after that directly I saw through him, and I knew I truly did love +you just as I'd wanted to love the man who would be my husband--only +all that nonsense about money that had been dinned into me so long kept +me from seeing it at first. But I was sure you didn't care for me when +they talked so about you, and that--you never _did_ care for her, did +you--you _couldn't_ have cared for her, could you?--and yet, after that +night, I'd such a queer little feeling as if you _had_ come for me, and +had seen--" + +"Surely a gentleman never sees anything he wasn't meant to see." + +"I'm so glad--I should have been _so_ ashamed--" + +They were still a moment, while he stroked her hair. + +"They'll be turning in early to-night, having to get up to-morrow and +preach sermons--what a dreary place heaven must be compared with this!" + +She sat up quickly. + +"Oh, I'd forgotten. How awful it is. _Isn't_ it awful?" + +"It will soon be over." + +"But think of my people, and what's expected of me--think of Mr. +Shepler." + +"Shepler's doing some hard thinking for himself by this time." + +"Really, you're a dreadful person--" + +There was a knock. + +"The cabman outside, sir, says how long is he to wait, sir?" + +"Tell him to wait all night if I don't come; tell him if he moves off +that spot I'll have his license taken away. Tell him I'm the mayor's +brother." + +"Yes, sir." + +"And, Jarvis, who's in the house besides you?" + +"Miss Briggs, the maid, sir--but she's just ready to go out, sir." + +"Stop her--say Miss Milbrey wishes to ask a favour of her; and Jarvis." + +"Yes, sir!" + +"Go put on that neat black street coat of yours that fits you so +beautifully in the back, and a purple cravat, and your shiny hat, and +wait for us with Briggs. We shall want you in a moment." + +"Yes, Mr. Bines." + +She looked at him wonderingly. + +"We need two witnesses, you know. I learned that from Oldaker just +now." + +"But do give me a _moment_, everything is all so whirling and hazy." + +"Yes, I know--like the solar system in its nebulous state. Well, hurry +and make those worlds take shape. I can give you sixty seconds to find +that I'm the North Star. Ach! I have the Doctor von Herzlich been +ge-speaking with--come, come! What's the use of any more delay? I've +wasted nearly three hours here now, dilly-dallying along. But then, a +woman never does know her own mind. + +"Put a thing before her--all as plain as the multiplication table--and +she must use up just so much good time telling a man that he's +crazy--and shedding tears because he won't admit that two times two are +thirty-seven." She was silent and motionless for another five minutes, +thinking intently. "Come, time's up." + +She arose. + +"I'm ready. I shall marry you, if you think I'm the woman to help you +in that big, new life of yours. They meant me not to know about Fred's +marriage until afterward." + +He kissed her. + +"I feel so rested and quiet now, as if I'd taken down a big old gate +and let the peace rush in on me. I'm sure it's right. I'm sure I can +help you." + +She picked up her hat and gloves. + +"Now I'll go bathe my eyes and fix my hair." + +"I can't let you out of my sight, yet. I'm incredulous. Perhaps in +seventy-five or eighty years--" + +"I thought you were so sure." + +"While I can reach you, yes." + +She gave a low, delicious little laugh. She reached both arms up around +him, pulled down his head and kissed him. + +"There--_boy!_" + +She took up the hat again. + +"I'll be down in a moment." + +"I'll be up in three, if you're not." + +When she had gone he picked up an envelope and put a bill inside. + +"Jarvis," he called. + +The butler came up from below, dressed for the street. + +"Jarvis, put this envelope in the inside of that excellent black coat +of yours and hand it--afterward--to the gentleman we're going to do +business with." + +"Yes, Mr. Bines." + +"And put your cravat down in the back, Jarvis--it makes you look +excited the way it is now." + +"Yes, sir; thank you, sir!" + +"Is Briggs ready?" "She's waiting, sir." + +"Go out and get in the carriage, both of you." + +"Yes, sir!" + +He stood in the hallway waiting for her. It was a quarter-past ten. In +another moment she rustled softly down to him. + +"I'm trusting so much to you, and you're trusting so much to me. It's +_such_ a rash step!" + +"Must I--" + +"No, I'm going. Couldn't we stop and take Aunt Cornelia?" + +"Aunt Cornelia won't have a chance to worry about this until it's all +over. We'll stop there then, if you like." + +"We'll try Doctor Prendle, then. He's almost sure to be in." + +"It won't make any difference if he isn't. We'll find one. Those horses +are rested. They can go all night if they must." + +"I have Grandmother Loekermann's wedding-ring--of course you didn't +fetch one. Trust a man to forget anything of importance." + +His grasp of her hand during the ride did not relax. + + + + +CHAPTER XLI. + +The New Argonauts + + +Mrs. van Geist came flustering out to the carriage. + +"You and Briggs may get out here, Jarvis. There, that's for you, and +that's for Briggs--and thank you both very much!" + +"Child, child! what does it mean?" + +"Mr. Bines is my husband, Mütterchen, and we're leaving for the West in +the morning." + +The excitement did not abate for ten minutes or so. "And do say +something cheerful, dear," pleaded Avice, at parting. + +"You mad child--I was always afraid you might do something like this; +but I _will_ say I'm not altogether _sure_ you've acted foolishly." + +"Thank you, you dear old Mütterchen! and you'll come to see us--you +shall see how happy I can be with this--this boy--this Lochinvar, +Junior--I'm sure Mrs. Lochinvar always lived happily ever after." + +Mrs. Van Geist kissed them both. + +"Back to Thirty-seventh Street, driver." + +"I shall want you at seven-thirty sharp, to-morrow morning," he said, +as they alighted. "Will you be here, sure?" + +"Sure, boss!" + +"You'll make another one of those if you're on time." + +The driver faced the bill toward the nearest street-light and scanned +it. Then he placed it tenderly in the lining of his hat, and said, +fervently: + +"I'll _be_ here, gent!" + +"My trunks," Avice reminded him. + +"And, driver, send an express wagon at seven sharp. Do you understand, +now?" + +"Sure, gent, I'll have it here at seven, and be here at seven-thirty." + +They went in. + +"You've sent Briggs off, and I've all that packing and unpacking to +do." + +"You have a husband who is handy at those things." + +They went up to her room where two trunks yawned open. + +Under her directions and with her help he took out the light summer +things and replaced them with heavier gowns, stout shoes, golf-capes, +and caps. + +"We'll be up on the Bitter Root ranch this summer, and you'll need +heavy things," he had told her. + +Sometimes he packed clumsily, and she was obliged to do his work over. +In these intervals he studied with interest the big old room and her +quaint old sampler worked in coloured worsteds that had faded to greys +and dull browns: _"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ + +"Grandma Loekermann did it at the convent, ages ago," she told him. + +"What a cautious young thing she must have been!" + +She leaned against his shoulder. + +"But she eloped with her true love, young Annekje Van Schoule; left the +home in Hickory Street one night, and went far away, away up beyond One +Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, somewhere, and then wrote them about +it." + +"And left the sampler?" + +"She had her husband--she didn't need any old sampler after that--_Le +mariage porte conseil, aussi, monsieur._ And now, you've married your +wife with her wedding-ring, that came from Holland years and years +ago." + +It was after midnight when they began to pack. When they finished it +was nearly four. + +She had laid out a dark dress for the journey, but he insisted that she +put it in a suit-case, and wear the one she had on. + +"I shouldn't know you in any other--and it's the colour of your eyes. I +want that colour all over the place." + +"But we shall be travelling." + +"In our own car. That car has been described in the public prints as a +'suite of palatial apartments with all modern conveniences.'" + +"I forgot." + +"We shall be going West like the old '49-ers, seeking adventure and +gold." + +"Did they go in their private cars?" + +"Some of them went in rolling six-horse Concords, and some walked, and +some of them pushed their baggage across in little hand-carts, but they +had fun at it--and we shall have to work as hard when we get there." + +"Dear me! And I'm so tired already. I feel quite done up." + +She threw herself on the wide divan, and he fixed pillows under her +head. + +"You boy! I'm glad it's all over. Let's rest a moment." + +He leaned back by her, and drew her head on to his arm. + +"I'm glad, too. It's the hardest day's work I ever did. Are you +comfortable? Rest." + +"It's so good," she murmured, nestling on his shoulder. + +"Uncle Peter took his honeymoon in a big wagon drawn by a mule team, +two hundred miles over the 'Placerville and Red Dog Trail--over the +mountains from California to Nevada. But he says he never had so happy +a time." + +"He's an old dear! I'll kiss him--how is it you say--'good and plenty.' +Did our Uncle Peter elope, too?" + +He chuckled. + +"Not exactly. It was more like abduction complicated with assault and +battery. Uncle Peter is pretty direct in his methods. The young lady's +family thought she could do better with a bloated capitalist who owned +three-eighths of a saw-mill. But Uncle Peter and she thought she +couldn't. So Uncle Peter had to lick her father and two brothers before +he could get her away. He would have licked the purse-proud rival, too, +but the rival ran into the saw-mill he owned the three-eighths of, and +barricaded the whole eight-eighths--the-five-eighths that didn't belong +to him at all, you understand--and then he threatened through a chink +to shoot somebody if Uncle Peter didn't go off about his business. So +Uncle Peter went, not wanting any unnecessary trouble. I've always +suspected he was a pretty ready scrapper in those days, but the poor +old fellow's getting a bit childish now, with all this trouble about +losing the money, and the hard time he had in the snow last winter. By +the way, I forgot to ask, and it's almost too late now, but do you like +cats?" + +"I adore them--aren't kittens the _dearest?"_ + +"Well--you're healthy--and your nose doesn't really fall below the +specifications, though it doesn't promise that you're any _too_ +sensible,--but if you can make up for it by your infatuation for cats, +perhaps it will be all right. Of course I couldn't keep you, you know, +if you weren't very fond of cats, because Uncle Peter'd raise a row--" + +She was quite still, and he noted from the change in her soft breathing +that she slept. With his free hand he carefully shook out a folded +steamer rug and drew it over her. + +For an hour he watched her, feeling the arm on which she lay growing +numb. He reviewed the day and the crowded night. He _could_ do +something after all. Among other things, now, he would drop a little +note to Higbee and add the news of his marriage as a postscript. She +was actually his wife. How quickly it had come. His heart was full of a +great love for her, but he could not quite repress the pride in his +achievement--and Shepler had not been sure until he was poor! + +He lost consciousness himself for a little while. + +When he awoke the cold light of the morning was stealing in. He was +painfully cramped, and chilled from the open window. From outside came +the loud chattering of sparrows, and far away he could hear wagons as +they rattled across a street of Belgian blocks from asphalt to asphalt. +The light had been late in coming, and he could see a sullen grey sky, +full of darker clouds. + +Above the chiffonier he could see the ancient sampler. + +_"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ It was true. + +In the cold, pitiless light of the morning a sudden sickness of +doubting seized him. She would awake and reproach him bitterly for +coercing her. She had been right, the night before,--it was madness. +They had talked afterward so feverishly, as if to forget their +situation. Now she would face it coldly after the sleep. + +_"La Nuit Porte Conseil."_ Had he not been a fool? And he loved her so. +He would have her anyway--no matter what she said, now. + +She stirred, and her wide-open eyes were staring up at him--staring +with hurt, troubled wonder. The amazement in them grew--she could not +understand. + +He stopped breathing. His embrace of her relaxed. + +And then he saw remembrance--recognition--welcome--and there blazed +into her eyes such a look of whole love as makes men thrill to all +good; such a look as makes them know they are men, and dare all great +deeds to show it. Like a sunrise, it flooded her face with dear, +wondrous beauties,--and still she looked, silent, motionless,--in an +ecstasy of pure realisation. Then her arms closed about his neck with a +swift little rushing, and he--still half-doubting, still curious--felt +himself strained to her. Still more closely she clung, putting out with +her intensity all his misgiving. + +She sought his lips with her own--eager, pressing. + +"Kiss me--kiss me--kiss me! Oh, it's all true--all true! My best-loved +dream has come all true! I have rested so in your arms. I never knew +rest before. I can't remember when I haven't awakened to doubt, and +worry, and heart-sickness. And now it's peace--dear, dear, dearest +dear, for ever and ever and ever." + +They sat up. + +"Now we shall go--get me away quickly." + +It was nearly seven. Outside the sky was still all gloom. + +In the rush of her reassurance he had forgotten his arm. It hung limp +from his shoulder. + +"It was cramped." + +"And you didn't move it?" + +They beat it and kneaded it gaily together, until the fingers were full +of the rushing blood and able again to close warmly over her own little +hand. + +"Now go, and let me get ready. I won't be long." + +He went below to the library, and in the dim grey light picked up a +book, "The Delights of Delicate Eating." He tried another, "101 +Sandwiches." The next was "Famous Epicures of the 17th Century." On the +floor was her diary. He placed it on the table. He heard her call him +from the stairs: + +"Bring me up that ring from the table, please!" + +He went up and handed it to her through the narrowly opened door. + +As he went down the stairs he heard the bell ring somewhere below, and +went to the door. + +"Baggage!" + +The two trunks were down and out. "They're to go on this car, attached +to the Chicago Express." He wrote the directions on one of his cards +and paid the man. + +At seven-thirty the bell rang again. The cabman was there. + +"Seven-thirty, gent!" + +"Avice!" + +"I'm coming. And there are two bags I wish you'd get from my room." He +let her pass him and went up for them. + +She went into the library and, taking up the diary, tore out a sheet, +marked heavily upon it with a pencil around the passage she had read +the evening before, and sealed it in an envelope. She addressed it to +her father, and laid it, with a paper-weight on it, upon "The Delights +of Delicate Eating," where he would be sure to find it. + +The book itself she placed on the wood laid ready in the grate to +light, touched a match to the crumpled paper underneath and put up the +blower. She stood waiting to see that the fire would burn. + +Over the mantel from its yellow canvas looked above her head the +humourously benignant eyes of old Annekje Van Schoule, who had once +removed from Maspeth Kill on Long Island to New Haarlem on the Island +of Manhattan, and carried there, against her father's will, the +yellow-haired girl he had loved. His face now seemed to be pretending +unconsciousness of the rashly acted scenes he had witnessed--lest, if +he betrayed his consciousness, he should be forced, in spite of +himself, to disclose his approval--a thing not fitting for an elderly, +dignified Dutch burgher to do. + +"Avice!" + +"Coming!" + +She took up a little package she had brought with her and went out to +meet him. + +"There's one errand to do," she said, as they entered the carriage, +"but it's on our way. Have him go up Madison Avenue and deliver this." + +She showed him the package addressed: "Mr. Rulon Shepler, Personal." + +"And this," she said, giving him an unsealed note. "Read it, please!" + +He read: + +"DEAR RULON SHEPLER:--I am sure you know women too well to have thought +I loved you as a wife should love her husband. And I know your bigness +too well to believe you will feel harshly toward me for deciding that I +could not marry you. I could of course consistently attribute my change +to consideration for you. I should have been very little comfort to +you. If I should tell you just the course I had mapped out for +myself--just what latitude I proposed to claim--I am certain you would +agree with me that I have done you an inestimable favour. + +"Yet I have not changed because I do not love you, but because I do +love some one else with all my heart; so that I claim no credit except +for an entirely consistent selfishness. But do try to believe, at the +same time, that my own selfishness has been a kindness to you. I send +you a package with this hasty letter, and beg you to believe that I +shall remain--and am now for the first time-- + +"Sincerely yours, + +"AVICE MILBREY BINES. + +"P.S. I should have preferred to wait and acquaint you with my change +of intention before marrying, but my husband's plans were made and he +would not let me delay." + +He sealed the envelope, placed it securely under the cord that bound +the package, and their driver delivered it to the man who opened +Shepler's door. As their train emerged from the cut at Spuyten Duyvil +and sped to the north along the Hudson, the sun blazed forth. + +"There, boy,--I knew the sun must shine to-day." + +They had finished their breakfast. One-half of the pink roses were on +the table, and one from the other half was in her hair. + +"I ordered the sun turned on at just this point," replied her husband, +with a large air. "I wanted you to see the last of that town under a +cloud, so you might not be homesick so soon." + +"You don't know me. You don't know what a good wife I shall be." + +"It takes nerve to reach up for a strange support and then kick your +environment out from under you--as Doctor von Herzlich would have said +if he'd happened to think of it." + +"But you shall see how I'll help you with your work; I was capable of +it all the time." + +"But I had to make you. I had to pick you up just as I did that first +time, and again down in the mine--and you were frightened because you +knew this time I wouldn't let you go." + +"Only half-afraid you wouldn't--the other half I was afraid you would. +They got all mixed up--I don't know which was worse." + +"Well, I admit I foozled my approach on that copper stock--but I won +you--really my winnings in Wall Street are pretty dazzling after all, +for a man who didn't know the ropes;--there's a mirror directly back of +you, Mrs. Bines, if you wish to look at them--with a pink rose over +that kissy place just at their temple." + +She turned and looked, pretending to be quite unimpressed. + +"I always was capable of it, I tell you,--boy!" + +"What hurt me worst that night, it showed you could love _some_ +one--you did have a heart--but you couldn't love me." + +She did not seem to hear at first, nor to comprehend when she went back +over his words. Then she stared at him in sudden amazement. + +He saw his blunder and looked foolish. + +"I see--thank you for saying what you did last night--and you didn't +mind--you came to me anyway, in spite of _that_." + +She arose, and would have gone around the table to him, but he met her +with open arms. + +"Oh, you boy! you do love me,--you do!" + +"I must buy you one of those nice, shiny black ear-trumpets at the +first stop. You can't have been hearing at all well.... See, +sweetheart,--out across the river. That's where our big West is, over +that way--isn't it fresh and green and beautiful?--and how fast you're +going to it--you and your husband. I believe it's going to be a good +game... for us both... my love..." + +THE END. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spenders, by Harry Leon Wilson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPENDERS *** + +This file should be named 8spnd10.txt or 8spnd10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8spnd11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8spnd10a.txt + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Steve Flynn, Virginia Paque, Peter Klumper, +Tonya Allen, Thierry Alberto and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Spenders + A Tale of the Third Generation + +Author: Harry Leon Wilson + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9981] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on November 5, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPENDERS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Steve Flynn, Virginia Paque, Peter Klumper, +Tonya Allen, Thierry Alberto and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="frontis.jpg"><img src="frontis_th.jpg" width="150" +alt="'<I>the Fair and Sometimes Uncertain Daughter of the House of Milbrey</I>.' (See Page 182.)"></a> +</p> + + + +<h1>THE SPENDERS</h1> + +<h2> +A TALE OF THE THIRD GENERATION +</h2> +<h2> +BY HARRY LEON WILSON</h2> +<h3> +<i>Illustrated by</i> O'NEILL LATHAM +</h3> +<h3> +1902 +</h3> +<h3> +To L. L. J. +</h3> + + +<br><br><br> + +<h2> + FOREWORD +</h2> + +<p class="ind"> +The wanderers of earth turned to her—outcast of the older lands— +<br> +With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying +hands; +<br> +And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main: +<br> +"Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again! +<br> +Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow, +<br> +Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow. +<br> +Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun, +<br> +Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won," +<br> +For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddled +crowd, +<br> +And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud; +<br> +For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track, +<br> +And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the trafficking +pack. +<br> +Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound; +<br> +The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground +<br> +Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth +<br> +That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth! +</p> + + +<p class="ctr"> +SHARLOT MABRIDTH HALL. +</p> + +<br><br><br> + +<hr> + +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH1">CHAPTER I. The Second Generation is Removed</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH2">CHAPTER II. How the First Generation Once Righted Itself</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH3">CHAPTER III. Billy Brue Finds His Man</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH4">CHAPTER IV. The West Against the East</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH5">CHAPTER V. Over the Hills</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH6">CHAPTER VI. A Meeting and a Clashing</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH7">CHAPTER VII. The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH8">CHAPTER VIII. Up Skiplap Canon</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH9">CHAPTER IX. Three Letters, Private and Confidential</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH10">CHAPTER X. The Price of Averting a Scandal</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH11">CHAPTER XI. How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH12">CHAPTER XII. Plans for the Journey East</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH13">CHAPTER XIII. The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH14">CHAPTER XIV. Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH15">CHAPTER XV. Some Light With a Few Side-lights</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH16">CHAPTER XVI. With the Barbaric Hosts</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH17">CHAPTER XVII. The Patricians Entertain</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH18">CHAPTER XVIII. The Course of True Love at a House Party</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH19">CHAPTER XIX. An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH20">CHAPTER XX. Doctor Von Herzlich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied +Phenomena</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH21">CHAPTER XXI. The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH22">CHAPTER XXII. The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH23">CHAPTER XXIII. The Summer Campaign Is Planned</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH24">CHAPTER XXIV. The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH25">CHAPTER XXV. Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH26">CHAPTER XXVI. A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH27">CHAPTER XXVII. A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH28">CHAPTER XXVIII. Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH29">CHAPTER XXIX. Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH30">CHAPTER XXX. Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH31">CHAPTER XXXI. Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH32">CHAPTER XXXII. Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH33">CHAPTER XXXIII. The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH34">CHAPTER XXXIV. How the Chinook Came to Wall Street</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH35">CHAPTER XXXV. The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH36">CHAPTER XXXVI. The God in the Machine</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH37">CHAPTER XXXVII. The Departure of Uncle Peter—And Some German Philosophy</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH38">CHAPTER XXXVIII. Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH39">CHAPTER XXXIX. An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH40">CHAPTER XL. Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty</a></p> +<p class="ctr"><a href="#CH41">CHAPTER XLI. The New Argonauts</a></p> + +<br> +<br> + +<h2> +ILLUSTRATIONS +</h2> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="frontis.jpg">"The fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey"</a> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp028.jpg">"'Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?'"</a> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp258.jpg">"The spell was broken"</a> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp373.jpg">"'Why, you'd be Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off their crowns to you'"</a> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp422.jpg">"'Remember that saying of your pa's, "it takes all kinds of fools to make a world"'"</a> +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp492.jpg">"'Say it that way--" Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't see you"'"</a> +</p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> + + + +<h1> + THE SPENDERS +</h1> + + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH1"><!-- CH1 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER I. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Second Generation is Removed +</h3> +<p> +When Daniel J. Bines died of apoplexy in his private car at Kaslo +Junction no one knew just where to reach either his old father or his +young son with the news of his death. Somewhere up the eastern slope of +the Sierras the old man would be leading, as he had long chosen to lead +each summer, the lonely life of a prospector. The young man, two years +out of Harvard, and but recently back from an extended European tour, +was at some point on the North Atlantic coast, beginning the season's +pursuit of happiness as he listed. +</p> +<p> +Only in a land so young that almost the present dwellers therein have +made it might we find individualities which so decisively failed to +blend. So little congruous was the family of Bines in root, branch, and +blossom, that it might, indeed, be taken to picture an epic of Western +life as the romancer would tell it. First of the line stands the figure +of Peter Bines, the pioneer, contemporary with the stirring days of +Frémont, of Kit Carson, of Harney, and Bridger; the fearless strivers +toward an ever-receding West, fascinating for its untried dangers as +for its fabled wealth,—the sturdy, grave men who fought and toiled and +hoped, and realised in varying measure, but who led in sober truth a +life such as the colours of no taleteller shall ever be high enough to +reproduce. +</p> +<p> +Next came Daniel J. Bines, a type of the builder and organiser who +followed the trail blazed by the earlier pioneer; the genius who, +finding the magic realm opened, forthwith became its exploiter to its +vast renown and his own large profit, coining its wealth of minerals, +lumber, cattle, and grain, and adventurously building the railroads +that must always be had to drain a new land of savagery. +</p> +<p> +Nor would there be wanting a third—a figure of this present day, +containing, in potency at least, the stanch qualities of his two rugged +forbears,—the venturesome spirit that set his restless grandsire to +roving westward, the power to group and coordinate, to "think three +moves ahead" which had made his father a man of affairs; and, further, +he had something modern of his own that neither of the others +possessed, and yet which came as the just fruit of the parent vine: a +disposition perhaps a bit less strenuous, turning back to the risen +rather than forward to the setting sun; a tendency to rest a little +from the toil and tumult; to cultivate some graces subtler than those +of adventure and commercialism; to make the most of what had been done +rather than strain to the doing of needless more; to live, in short, +like a philosopher and a gentleman who has more golden dollars a year +than either philosophers or gentlemen are wont to enjoy. +</p> +<p> +And now the central figure had gone suddenly at the age of fifty-two, +after the way of certain men who are quick, ardent, and generous in +their living. From his luxurious private car, lying on the side-track +at the dreary little station, Toler, private secretary to the +millionaire, had telegraphed to the headquarters of one important +railway company the death of its president, and to various mining, +milling, and lumbering companies the death of their president, +vice-president, or managing director as the case might be. For the +widow and only daughter word of the calamity had gone to a mountain +resort not far from the family home at Montana City. +</p> +<p> +There promised to be delay in reaching the other two. The son would +early read the news, Toler decided, unless perchance he were off at +sea, since the death of a figure like Bines would be told by every +daily newspaper in the country. He telegraphed, however, to the young +man's New York apartments and to a Newport address, on the chance of +finding him. +</p> +<p> +Locating old Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never +lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being now the +10th of June, it could be known with certainty only that in one of four +States he was prowling through some wooded canon, toiling over a windy +pass, or scaling a mountain sheerly, in his ancient and best loved +sport of prospecting. Knowing his habits, the rashest guesser would not +have attempted to say more definitely where the old man might be. +</p> +<p> +The most promising plan Toler could devise was to wire the +superintendent of the "One Girl" Mine at Skiplap. The elder Bines, he +knew, had passed through Skiplap about June 1st, and had left, perhaps, +some inkling of his proposed route; if it chanced, indeed, that he had +taken the trouble to propose one. +</p> +<p> +Pangburn, the mine superintendent, on receipt of the news, despatched +five men on the search in as many different directions. The old man was +now seventy-four, and Pangburn had noted when last they met that he +appeared to be somewhat less agile and vigorous than he had been twenty +years before; from which it was fair to reason that he might be playing +his solitary game at a leisurely pace, and would have tramped no great +distance in the ten days he had been gone. The searchers, therefore, +were directed to beat up the near-by country. To Billy Brue was +allotted the easiest as being the most probable route. He was to follow +up Paddle Creek to Four Forks, thence over the Bitter Root trail to +Eden, on to Oro Fino, and up over Little Pass to Hellandgone. He was to +proceed slowly, to be alert for signs along the way, and to make +inquiries of all he met. +</p> +<p> +"You're likely to get track of Uncle Peter," said Pangburn, "over along +the west side of Horseback Ridge, just beyond Eden. When he pulled out +he was talking about some likely float-rock he'd picked up over that +way last summer. You'd ought to make that by to-morrow, seeing you've +got a good horse and the trail's been mended this spring. Now you +spread yourself out, Billy, and when you get on to the Ridge make a +special look all around there." +</p> +<p> +Besides these directions and the telegram from Toler, Billy Brue took +with him a copy of the Skiplap <i>Weekly Ledge</i>, damp from the press and +containing the death notice of Daniel J. Bines, a notice sent out by +the News Association, which Billy Brue read with interest as he started +up the trail. The item concluded thus: +</p> +<p> +"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her +husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is +prostrated with grief at the shock of his sudden death." +</p> +<p> +Billy Brue mastered this piece of intelligence after six readings, but +he refrained from comment, beyond thanking God, in thought, that he +could mind his own business under excessive provocation to do +otherwise. He considered it no meddling, however, to remember that Mrs. +Daniel J. Bines, widow of his late employer, could appear neither young +nor beautiful to the most sanguine of newsgatherers; nor to remember +that he happened to know she had not accompanied her husband on his +last trip of inspection over the Kaslo Division of the Sierra Northern +Railway. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH2"><!-- CH2 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER II. +</h2> + +<h3> +How the First Generation Once Righted Itself +</h3> +<p> +By some philosophers unhappiness is believed—rather than coming from +deprivation or infliction—to result from the individual's failure to +select from a number of possible occupations one that would afford him +entire satisfaction with life and himself. To this perverse blindness +they attribute the dissatisfaction with great wealth traditional of men +who have it. The fault, they contend, is not with wealth inherently. +The most they will admit against money is that the possession of much +of it tends to destroy that judicial calm necessary to a wise choice of +recreations; to incline the possessor, perhaps, toward those that are +unsalutary. +</p> +<p> +Concerning the old man that Billy Brue now sought with his news of +death, a philosopher of this school would unhesitatingly declare that +he had sounded the last note of human wisdom. Far up in some mountain +solitude old Peter Bines, multimillionaire, with a lone pack-mule to +bear his meagre outfit, picked up float-rock, tapped and scanned +ledges, and chipped at boulders with the same ardour that had fired him +in his penniless youth. +</p> +<p> +Back in 1850, a young man of twenty-four, he had joined the rush to +California, working his passage as deck-hand on a vessel that doubled +the Horn. Landing without capital at San Francisco, the little seaport +settlement among the shifting yellow sand-dunes, he had worked six +weeks along the docks as roustabout for money to take him back into the +hills whence came the big fortunes and the bigger tales of fortunes. +For six years he worked over the gravelly benches of the California +creeks for vagrant particles of gold. Then, in the late fifties, he +joined a mad stampede to the Frazer River gold-fields in British +Columbia, still wild over its first knowledge of silver sulphurets, he +was drawn back by the wonder-tales of the Comstock lode. +</p> +<p> +Joining the bedraggled caravan over the Carson trail, he continued his +course of bitter hardship in the Washoe Valley. From a patch of barren +sun-baked rock and earth, three miles long and a third of a mile wide, +high up on the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, he beheld more millions +taken out than the wildest enthusiast had ever before ventured to dream +of. But Peter Bines was a luckless unit of the majority that had +perforce to live on the hope produced by others' findings. The time for +his strike had not come. +</p> +<p> +For ten years more, half-clad in flannel shirt and overalls, he lived +in flimsy tents, tattered canvas houses, and sometimes holes in the +ground. One abode of luxury, long cherished in memory, was a +ten-by-twelve redwood shanty on Feather River. It not only boasted a +window, but there was a round hole in the "shake" roof, fastidiously +cut to fit a stove-pipe. That he never possessed a stove-pipe had made +this feature of the architecture not less sumptuous and engaging. He +lived chiefly on salt pork and beans, cooked over smoky camp-fires. +</p> +<p> +Through it all he was the determined, eager, confident prospector, +never for an instant prey to even the suggestion of a doubt that he +would not shortly be rich. Whether he washed the golden specks from the +sand of a sage-brush plain, or sought the mother-ledge of some +wandering golden child, or dug with his pick to follow a promising +surface lead, he knew it to be only the matter of time when his day +should dawn. He was of the make that wears unbending hope as its +birthright. +</p> +<p> +Some day the inexhaustible placer would be found; or, on a mountainside +where the porphyry was stained, he would carelessly chip off a fragment +of rock, turn it up to the sun, and behold it rich in ruby silver; or, +some day, the vein instead of pinching out would widen; there would be +pay ore almost from the grass-roots—rich, yellow, free-milling gold, +so that he could put up a little arastra, beat out enough in a week to +buy a small stamp-mill, and then, in six months—ten years more of this +fruitless but nourishing certainty were his,—ten years of the awful +solitudes, shared sometimes by his hardy and equally confident wife, +and, at the last, by his boy, who had become old enough to endure with +his father the snow and ice of the mountain tops and the withering heat +of the alkali wastes. +</p> +<p> +Footsore, hungry most of the time, alternately burned and frozen, he +lived the life cheerfully and tirelessly, with an enthusiasm that never +faltered. +</p> +<p> +When his day came it brought no surprise, so freshly certain had he +kept of its coming through the twenty years of search. +</p> +<p> +At his feet, one July morning in 1870, he noticed a piece of +dark-stained rock in a mass of driftstones. So small was it that to +have gone a few feet to either side would have been to miss it. He +picked it up and examined it leisurely. It was rich in silver. +</p> +<p> +Somewhere, then, between him and the mountain top was the parent stock +from which this precious fragment had been broken. The sun beat hotly +upon him as it had on other days through all the hard years when +certainty, after all, was nothing more than a temperamental faith. All +day he climbed and searched methodically, stopping at noon to eat with +an appetite unaffected by his prospect. +</p> +<p> +At sunset he would have stopped for the day, camping on the spot. He +looked above to estimate the ground he could cover on the morrow. +Almost in front of him, a few yards up the mountainside, he looked +squarely at the mother of his float: a huge boulder of projecting +silicate. It was there. +</p> +<p> +During the following week he ascertained the dimensions of his vein of +silver ore, and located two claims. He named them "The Stars and +Stripes" and "The American Boy," paying thereby what he considered +tributes, equally deserved, to his native land and to his only son, +Daniel, in whom were centred his fondest hopes. +</p> +<p> +A year of European travel had followed for the family, a year of +spending the new money lavishly for strange, long-dreamed-of +luxuries—a year in which the money was joyously proved to be real. +Then came a year of tentative residence in the East. That year was less +satisfactory. The novelty of being sufficiently fed, clad, and +sheltered was losing its fine edge. +</p> +<p> +Penniless and constrained to a life of privation, Peter Bines had been +strangely happy. Rich and of consequence in a community where the ways +were all of pleasantness and peace, Peter Bines became restless, +discontented, and, at last, unmistakably miserable. +</p> +<p> +"It can't be because I'm rich," he argued; "it's a sure thing my money +can't keep me from doin' jest what I want to do." +</p> +<p> +Then a suspicion pricked him; for he had, in his years of solitude, +formed the habit of considering, in a leisurely and hospitable manner, +even the reverse sides of propositions that are commonly accepted by +men without question. +</p> +<p> +"The money <i>can't</i> prevent me from doin' what I jest want +to—certain—but, maybe, <i>don't</i> it? If I didn't have it I'd fur sure +be back in the hills and happy, and so would Evalina, that ain't had +hardly what you could call a good day since we made the strike." +</p> +<p> +On this line of reasoning it took Peter Bines no long time to conclude +that he ought now to enjoy as a luxury what he had once been +constrained to as a necessity. +</p> +<p> +"Even when I was poor and had to hit the trail I jest loved them hills, +so why ain't it crafty to pike back to 'em now when I don't have to?" +</p> +<p> +His triumphant finale was: +</p> +<p> +"When you come to think about it, a rich man ain't really got any more +excuse fur bein' mis'able than a poor man has!" +</p> +<p> +Back to the big hills that called him had he gone; away from the cities +where people lived "too close together and too far apart;" back to the +green, rough earth where the air was free and quick and a man could see +a hundred miles, and the people lived far enough apart to be +neighbourly. +</p> +<p> +There content had blessed him again; content not slothful but inciting; +a content that embraced his own beloved West, fashioning first in fancy +and then by deed, its own proud future. He had never ceased to plan and +stimulate its growth. He not only became one with its manifold +interests, but proudly dedicated the young Daniel to its further +making. He became an ardent and bigoted Westerner, with a scorn for the +East so profound that no Easterner's scorn for the West hath ever by +any chance equalled it. +</p> +<p> +Prospecting with the simple outfit of old became his relaxation, his +sport, and, as he aged, his hobby. It was said that he had exalted +prospecting to the dignity of an art, and no longer hunted gold as a +pot-hunter. He was even reputed to have valuable deposits "covered," +and certain it is that after Creede made his rich find on Mammoth +Mountain in 1890, Peter Bines met him in Denver and gave him +particulars about the vein which as yet Creede had divulged to no one. +Questioned later concerning this, Peter Bines evaded answering +directly, but suggested that a man who already had plenty of money +might have done wisely to cover up the find and be still about it; that +Nat Creede himself proved as much by going crazy over his wealth and +blowing out his brains. +</p> +<p> +To a tamely prosperous Easterner who, some years after his return to +the West, made the conventional remark, "And isn't it amazing that you +were happy through those hard years of toil when you were so poor?" +Peter Bines had replied, to his questioner's hopeless bewilderment: +"No. But it <i>is</i> surprisin' that I kept happy after I got rich—after I +got what I wanted. +</p> +<p> +"I reckon you'll find," he added, by way of explaining, "that the +proportion of happy rich to unhappy rich is a mighty sight smaller than +the proportion of happy poor to the unhappy poor. I'm one of the former +minority, all right,—but, by cripes! it's because I know how to be +rich and still enjoy all the little comforts of poverty!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH3"><!-- CH3 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER III. +</h2> + +<h3> +Billy Brue Finds His Man +</h3> +<p> +Each spring the old man grew restive and raw like an unbroken colt. And +when the distant mountain peaks began to swim in their summer haze, and +the little rushing rivers sang to him, pleading that he come once more +to follow them up, he became uncontrollable. Every year at this time he +alleged, with a show of irritation, that his health was being sapped by +the pernicious indulgence of sleeping on a bed inside a house. He +alleged, further, that stocks and bonds were but shadows of wealth, +that the old mines might any day become exhausted, and that security +for the future lay only in having one member of the family, at least, +looking up new pay-rock against the ever possible time of adversity. +</p> +<p> +"They ain't got to makin' calendars yet with the rainy day marked on +'em," he would say. "A'most any one of them innocent lookin' Mondays or +Tuesdays or Wednesdays is liable to be <i>it</i> when you get right up on to +it. I'll have to start my old bones out again, I see that. Things are +beginnin' to green up a'ready." When he did go it was always understood +to be positively for not more than two weeks. A list of his reasons for +extending the time each year to three or four months would constitute +the ideal monograph on human duplicity. When hard-pushed on his return, +he had once or twice been even brazen enough to assert that he had lost +his way in the mountain fastnesses. But, for all his protestations, no +one when he left in June expected to see him again before September at +the earliest. In these solitary tours he was busy and happy, working +and playing. "Work," he would say, "is something you want to get done; +play is something you jest like to be doin'. Snoopin' up these gulches +is both of 'em to me." +</p> +<p> +And so he loitered through the mountains, resting here, climbing there, +making always a shrewd, close reading of the rocks. +</p> +<p> +It was thus Billy Brue found him at the end of his second day's search. +A little off the trail, at the entrance to a pocket of the cañon, he +towered erect to peer down when he heard the noise of the messenger's +ascent. Standing beside a boulder of grey granite, before a background +of the gnarled dwarf-cedars, his hat off, his blue shirt open at the +neck, his bare forearms brown, hairy, and muscular, a hammer in his +right hand, his left resting lightly on his hip, he might have been the +Titan that had forged the boulder at his side, pausing now for breath +before another mighty task. Well over six feet tall, still straight as +any of the pines before him, his head and broad shoulders in the easy +poise of power, there was about him from a little distance no sign of +age. His lines were gracefully full, his bearing had still the +alertness of youth. One must have come as near as Billy Brue now came +to detect the marks of time in his face. Not of age—merely of time; +for here was no senility, no quavering or fretful lines. The grey eyes +shone bright and clear from far under the heavy, unbroken line of brow, +and the mouth was still straight and firmly held, a mouth under sure +control from corner to corner. A little had the years brought out the +rugged squareness of the chin and the deadly set of the jaws; a little +had they pressed in the cheeks to throw the high bones into broad +relief. But these were the utmost of their devastations. Otherwise +Peter Bines showed his seventy-four years only by the marks of a +well-ordered maturity. His eyes, it is true, had that look of <i>knowing</i> +which to the young seems always to betoken the futility of, and to warn +against the folly of, struggle against what must be; yet they were kind +eyes, and humourous, with many of the small lines of laughter at their +corners. Reading the eyes and mouth together one perceived gentleness +and sternness to be well matched, working to any given end in amiable +and effective compromise. "Uncle Peter" he had long been called by the +public that knew him, and his own grandchildren had come to call him by +the same term, finding him too young to meet their ideal of a +grandfather. Billy Brue, riding up the trail, halted, nodded, and was +silent. The old man returned his salutation as briefly. These things by +men who stay much alone come to be managed with verbal economy. They +would talk presently, but greetings were awkward. +</p> +<p> +Billy Brue took one foot from its stirrup and turned in his saddle, +pulling the leg up to a restful position. Then he spat, musingly, and +looked back down the cañon aimlessly, throwing his eyes from side to +side where the grey granite ledges showed through the tall spruce and +pine trees. +</p> +<p> +But the old man knew he had been sent for. +</p> +<p> +"Well, Billy Brue,—what's doin'?" +</p> +<p> +Billy Brue squirmed in the saddle, spat again, as with sudden resolve, +and said: +</p> +<p> +"Why,—uh—Dan'l J.—<i>he's</i> dead." +</p> +<p> +The old man repeated the words, dazedly. +</p> +<p> +"Dan'l J.—<i>he's</i> dead;—why, who else is dead, too?" +</p> +<p> +Billy Brue's emphasis, cunningly contrived by him to avoid giving +prominence to the word "dead," had suggested this inquiry in the first +moment of stupefaction. +</p> +<p> +"Nobody else dead—jest Dan'l J.—<i>he's</i> dead." +</p> +<p> +"Jest Dan'l J.—my boy—my boy Dan'l dead!" +</p> +<p> +His mighty shape was stricken with a curious rigidity, erected there as +if it were a part of the mountain, flung up of old from the earth's +inner tragedy, confounded, desolate, ancient. +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp028.jpg"><img src="illp028_th.jpg" width="150" +alt="'<I>Well, Billy Brue, What's Doin</I>'?'"></a> +</p> + +<p> +Billy Brue turned from the stony interrogation of his eyes and took a +few steps away, waiting. A little wind sprang up among the higher +trees, the moments passed, and still the great figure stood transfixed +in its curious silence. The leathers creaked as the horse turned. The +messenger, with an air of surveying the canon, stole an anxious glance +at the old face. The sorrowful old eyes were fixed on things that were +not; they looked vaguely as if in search. +</p> +<p> +"Dan'l!" he said. +</p> +<p> +It was not a cry; there was nothing plaintive in it. It was only the +old man calling his son: David calling upon Absalom. Then there was a +change. He came sternly forward. +</p> +<p> +"Who killed my boy?" +</p> +<p> +"Nobody, Uncle Peter; 'twas a stroke. He was goin' over the line and +they'd laid out at Kaslo fer a day so's Dan'l J. could see about a spur +the 'Lucky Cuss' people wanted—and maybe it was the climbin' brought +it on." +</p> +<p> +The old man looked his years. As he came nearer Billy Brue saw tears +tremble in his eyes and roll unnoted down his cheeks. Yet his voice was +unbroken and he was, indeed, unconscious of the tears. +</p> +<p> +"I was afraid of that. He lived too high. He et too much and he drank +too much and was too soft—was Dan'l.—too soft—" +</p> +<p> +The old voice trembled a bit and he stopped to look aside into the +little pocket he had been exploring. Billy Brue looked back down the +canon, where the swift stream brawled itself into white foam far below. +</p> +<p> +"He wouldn't use his legs; I prodded him about it constant—" +</p> +<p> +He stopped again to brace himself against the shock. Billy Brue still +looked away. +</p> +<p> +"I told him high altitudes and high livin' would do any man—" Again he +was silent. +</p> +<p> +"But all he'd ever say was that times had changed since my day, and I +wasn't to mind him." He had himself better in hand now. +</p> +<p> +"Why, I nursed that boy when he was a dear, funny little red baby with +big round eyes rollin' around to take notice; he took notice awful +quick—fur a baby. Oh, my! Oh, dear! Dan'l!" +</p> +<p> +Again he stopped. +</p> +<p> +"And it don't seem more'n yesterday that I was a-teachin' him to throw +the diamond hitch; he could throw the diamond hitch with his eyes shut +—I reckon by the time he was nine or ten. He had his faults, but they +didn't hurt him none; Dan'l J. was a man, now—" He halted once more. +</p> +<p> +"The dead millionaire," began Billy Brue, reading from the obituary in +the Skiplap <i>Weekly Ledge</i>, "was in his fifty-second year. Genial, +generous to a fault, quick to resent a wrong, but unfailing in his +loyalty to a friend, a man of large ideas, with a genius for large +operations, he was the type of indefatigable enterprise that has +builded this Western empire in a wilderness and given rich sustenance +and luxurious homes to millions of prosperous, happy American citizens. +Peace to his ashes! And a safe trip to his immortal soul over the +one-way trail!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, yes—it's Dan'l J. fur sure—they got my boy Dan'l that time. Is +that all it says, Billy? Any one with him?" +</p> +<p> +"Why, this here despatch is signed by young Toler—that's his +confidential man." +</p> +<p> +"Nobody else?" +</p> +<p> +The old man was peering at him sharply from under the grey protruding +brows. +</p> +<p> +"Well, if you must know, Uncle Peter, this is what the notice says that +come by wire to the <i>Ledge</i> office," and he read doggedly: +</p> +<p> +"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her +husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is +prostrated by the shock of his sudden death." +</p> +<p> +The old man became for the first time conscious of the tears in his +eyes, and, pulling down one of the blue woollen shirt sleeves, wiped +his wet cheeks. The slow, painful blush of age crept up across the iron +strength of his face, and passed. He looked away as he spoke. +</p> +<p> +"I knew it; I knew that. My Dan'l was like all that Frisco bunch. They +get tangled with women sooner or later. I taxed Dan'l with it. I +spleened against it and let him know it. But he was a man and his own +master—if you can rightly call a man his own master that does them +things. Do you know what-fur woman this one was, Billy?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, last time Dan'l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on +the car—kind of a coppery-lookin' blonde. Allie Ash, the brakeman on +No. 4, he tells me she used to be in Spokane, and now she'd got her +hooks on to some minin' property up in the Coeur d'Alene. Course, this +mightn't be the one." +</p> +<p> +The old man had ceased to listen. He was aroused to the need for +action. +</p> +<p> +"Get movin', Billy! We can get down to Eden to-night; we'll have the +moon fur two hours on the trail soon's the sun's gone. I can get 'em to +drive me over to Skiplap first thing to-morrow, and I can have 'em make +me up a train there fur Montana City. Was he—" +</p> +<p> +"Dan'l J. has been took home—the noozepaper says." +</p> +<p> +They turned back down the trail, the old man astride Billy Brue's +horse, followed by his pack-mule and preceded by Billy. +</p> +<p> +Already, such was his buoyance and habit of quick recovery and +readjustment under reverses, his thoughts were turning to his grandson. +Daniel's boy—there was the grandson of his grandfather—the son of his +father—fresh from college, and the instructions of European travel, +knowing many things his father had not known, ready to take up the work +of his father, and capable, perhaps, of giving it a better finish. His +beloved West had lost one of its valued builders, but another should +take his place. His boy should come to him and finish the tasks of his +father; and, in the years to come, make other mighty tasks of +empire-building for himself and the children of his children. +</p> +<p> +It did not occur to him that he and the boy might be as far apart in +sympathies and aims as at that moment they were in circumstance. For, +while the old man in the garb of a penniless prospector, toiled down +the steep mountain trail on a cheap horse, his grandson was reading the +first news of his father's death in one of the luxurious staterooms of +a large steam yacht that had just let down her anchor in Newport +Harbour. And each—but for the death—had been where most he wished to +be—one with his coarse fare and out-of-doors life, roughened and +seamed by the winds and browned by the sun to mahogany tints; aged but +playing with boyish zest at his primitive sport; the other, a +strong-limbed, well-marrowed, full-breathing youth of twenty-five, with +appetites all alert and sharpened, pink and pampered, loving luxury, +and prizing above all things else the atmosphere of wealth and its +refinements. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH4"><!-- CH4 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER IV. +</h2> + +<h3> +The West Against the East +</h3> +<p> +Two months later a sectional war was raging in the Bines home at +Montana City. The West and the East were met in conflict,—the old and +the new, the stale and the fresh. And, if the bitterness was dissembled +by the combatants, not less keenly was it felt, nor less determined was +either faction to be relentless. +</p> +<p> +A glance about the "sitting-room" in which the opposing forces were +lined up, and into the parlour through the opened folding-doors, may +help us to a better understanding of the issue involved. Both rooms +were large and furnished in a style that had been supremely luxurious +in 1878. The house, built in that year, of Oregon pine, had been quite +the most pretentious piece of architecture in that section of the West. +It had been erected in the first days of Montana City as a convincing +testimonial from the owner to his faith in the town's future. The +plush-upholstered sofas and chairs, with their backs and legs of carved +black walnut, had come direct from New York. For pictures there were +early art-chromos, among them the once-prized companion pieces, "Wide +Awake" and "Fast Asleep." Lithography was represented by "The +Fisherman's Pride" and "The Soldier's Dream of Home." In the +handicrafts there were a photographic reproduction of the Lord's +Prayer, illustrated originally by a penman with uncommon genius for +scroll-work; a group of water-lilies in wax, floating on a mirror-lake +and protected by a glass globe; a full-rigged schooner, built cunningly +inside a bottle by a matricide serving a life-sentence in the +penitentiary at San Quinten; and a mechanical canarybird in a gilded +cage, acquired at the Philadelphia Centennial,—a bird that had +carolled its death—lay in the early winter of 1877 when it was wound +up too hard and its little insides snapped. In the parlour a few +ornamental books were grouped with rare precision on the centre-table +with its oval top of white marble. On the walls of the "sitting-room" +were a steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln striking the shackles from a +kneeling slave, and a framed cardboard rebus worked in red zephyr, the +reading of which was "No Cross, No Crown." +</p> +<p> +Thus far nothing helpful has been found. +</p> +<p> +Let us examine, then, the what-not in the "sitting-room" and the choice +Empire cabinet that faces it from the opposite wall of the parlour. +</p> +<p> +The what-not as an American institution is obsolete. Indeed, it has +been rather long since writers referred to it even in terms of +opprobrious sarcasm. The what-not, once the cherished shrine of the +American home, sheltered the smaller household gods for which no other +resting-place could be found. The Empire cabinet, with its rounding +front of glass, its painted Watteau scenes, and its mirrored back, has +come to supplant the humbler creation in the fulfilment of all its +tender or mysterious offices. +</p> +<p> +Here, perchance, may be found a clue in symbol to the family strife. +</p> +<p> +The Bines what-not in the sitting-room was grimly orthodox in its +equipment. Here was an ancient box covered with shell-work, with a wavy +little mirror in its back; a tender motto worked with the hair of the +dead; a "Rock of Ages" in a glass case, with a garland of pink chenille +around the base; two dried pine cones brightly varnished; an old +daguerreotype in an ornamental case of hard rubber; a small old album; +two small China vases of the kind that came always in pairs, standing +on mats of crocheted worsted; three sea-shells; and the cup and saucer +that belonged to grandma, which no one must touch because they'd been +broken and were held together but weakly, owing to the imperfections of +home-made cement. +</p> +<p> +The new cabinet, haughty in its varnished elegance, with its Watteau +dames and courtiers, and perhaps the knowledge that it enjoys +widespread approval among the elect,—this is a different matter. In +every American home that is a home, to-day, it demands attention. The +visitor, after eyeing it with cautious side-glances, goes jauntily up +to it, affecting to have been stirred by the mere impulse of elegant +idleness. Under the affectedly careless scrutiny of the hostess he +falls dramatically into an attitude of awed entrancement. Reverently he +gazes upon the priceless bibelots within: the mother-of-pearl fan, half +open; the tiny cup and saucer of Sèvres on their brass easel; the +miniature Cupid and Psyche in marble; the Japanese wrestlers carved in +ivory; the ballet-dancer in bisque; the coral necklace; the souvenir +spoon from the Paris Exposition; the jade bracelet; and the silver +snuff-box that grandfather carried to the day of his death. If the +gazing visitor be a person of abandoned character he makes humourous +pretence that the householder has done wisely to turn a key upon these +treasures, against the ravishings of the overwhelmed and frenzied +connoisseur. He wears the look of one who is gnawed with envy, and he +heaves the sigh of despair. +</p> +<p> +But when he notes presently that he has ceased to be observed he sneaks +cheerfully to another part of the room. +</p> +<p> +The what-not is obsolete. The Empire cabinet is regnant. Yet, though +one is the lineal descendant of the other—its sophisticated +grandchild—they are hostile and irreconcilable. +</p> +<p> +Twenty years hence the cabinet will be proscribed and its contents +catalogued in those same terms of disparagement that the what-not +became long since too dead to incur. Both will then have attained the +state of honourable extinction now enjoyed by the dodo. +</p> +<p> +The what-not had curiously survived in the Bines home—survived unto +the coming of the princely cabinet—survived to give battle if it +might. +</p> +<p> +Here, perhaps, may be found the symbolic clue to the strife's cause. +</p> +<p> +The sole non-combatant was Mrs. Bines, the widow. A neutral was this +good woman, and a well-wisher to each faction. +</p> +<p> +"I tell you it's all the same to me," she declared, "Montana City or +Fifth Avenue in New York. I guess I can do well enough in either place +so long as the rest of you are satisfied." +</p> +<p> +It had been all the same to Mrs. Bines for as many years as a woman of +fifty can remember. It was the lot of wives in her day and environment +early to learn the supreme wisdom of abolishing preferences. Riches and +poverty, ease and hardship, mountain and plain, town and wilderness, +they followed in no ascertainable sequence, and a superiority of +indifference to each was the only protection against hurts from the +unexpected. +</p> +<p> +This trained neutrality of Mrs. Bines served her finely now. She had no +leading to ally herself against her children in their wish to go East, +nor against Uncle Peter Bines in his stubborn effort to keep them West. +She folded her hands to wait on the others. +</p> +<p> +And the battle raged. +</p> +<p> +The old man, sole defender of the virtuous and stalwart West against an +East that he alleged to be effete and depraved, had now resorted to +sarcasm,—a thing that Mr. Carlyle thought was as good as the language +of the devil. +</p> +<p> +"And here, now, how about this dog-luncheon?" he continued, glancing at +a New York newspaper clutched accusingly in his hand. "It was give, I +see, by one of your Newport cronies. Now, that's healthy doin's fur a +two-fisted Christian, ain't it? I want to know. Shappyronging a select +company of lady and gentlemen dogs from soup to coffee; pressing a +little more of the dog-biscuit on this one, and seein' that the other +don't misplay its finger-bowl no way. How I would love to read of a +Bines standin' up, all in purty velvet pants, most likely, to receive +at one of them bow-wow functions;—functions, I believe, is the name of +it?" he ended in polite inquiry. +</p> +<p> +"There, there, Uncle Peter!" the young man broke in, soothingly; "you +mustn't take those Sunday newspapers as gospel truth; those stories are +printed for just such rampant old tenderfoots as you are; and even if +there is one foolish freak, he doesn't represent all society in the +better sense of the term." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, and <i>you</i>!" Uncle Peter broke out again, reminded of another +grievance. "You know well enough your true name is Peter—Pete and +Petie when you was a baby and Peter when you left for college. And +you're ashamed of what you've done, too, for you tried to hide them +callin'-cards from me the other day, only you wa'n't quick enough. +Bring 'em out! I'm bound your mother and Pish shall see 'em. Out with +'em!" +</p> +<p> +The young man, not without embarrassment, drew forth a Russia leather +card-case which the old man took from him as one having authority. +</p> +<p> +"Here you are, Marthy Bines!" he exclaimed, handing her a card; "here +you are! read it! Mr. P. Percival Bines.' <i>Now</i> don't you feel proud of +havin' stuck out for Percival when you see it in cold print? You know +mighty well his pa and me agreed to Percival only fur a middle name, +jest to please you—and he wa'n't to be called by it;—only jest Peter +or 'Peter P.' at most; and now look at the way he's gone and garbled +his good name." +</p> +<p> +Mr. P. Percival Bines blushed furiously here, but rejoined, +nevertheless, with quiet dignity, that a man's name was something about +which he should have the ruling voice, especially where it was possible +for him to rectify or conceal the unhappy choice of his parents. +</p> +<p> +"And while we're on names," he continued, "do try to remember in case +you ever get among people, that Sis's name is Psyche and not Pish." +</p> +<p> +The blond and complacent Miss Bines here moved uneasily in her patent +blue plush rocker and spoke for the first time, with a grateful glance +at her brother. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Uncle Peter, for mercy's sake, <i>do</i> try! Don't make us a +laughing-stock!" "But your name is Pish. A person's name is what their +folks name 'em, ain't it? Your ma comes acrost a name in a book that +she likes the looks of, and she takes it to spell Pish, and she ups and +names you Pish, and we all calls you Pish and Pishy, and then when you +toddle off to public school and let 'em know how you spell it they tell +you it's something else—an outlandish name if spellin' means anything. +If it comes to that you ought to change the spellin' instead of the +name that your poor pa loved." +</p> +<p> +Yet the old man had come to know that he was fighting a lost +fight,—lost before it had ever begun. +</p> +<p> +"It will be a good chance," ventured Mrs. Bines, timidly, "for Pishy—I +mean Sike—Sicky—to meet the right sort of people." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I should <i>say</i>—and the wrong sort. The ingagin' host of them +lady and gentlemen dogs, fur instance." +</p> +<p> +"But Uncle Peter," broke in the young man, "you shouldn't expect a girl +of Psyche's beauty and fortune to vegetate in Montana City all her +life. Why, any sort of brilliant marriage is possible to her if she +goes among the right people. Don't you want the family to amount to +something socially? Is our money to do us no good? And do you think I'm +going to stay here and be a moss-back and raise chin whiskers and work +myself to death the way my father did?" +</p> +<p> +"No, no," replied the old man, with a glance at the mother; "not <i>jest</i> +the way your pa did; you might do some different and some better; but +all the same, you won't do any better'n he did any way you'll learn to +live in New York. Unless you was to go broke there," he added, +thoughtfully; "in that case you got the stuff in you and it'd come out; +but you got too much money to go broke." +</p> +<p> +"And you'll see that I lead a decent enough life. Times have changed +since my father was a young man." +</p> +<p> +"Yes; that's what your pa told me,—times had changed since I was a +young man; but I could 'a' done him good if he'd 'a' listened." +</p> +<p> +"Well, we'll try it. The tide is setting that way from all over the +country. Here, listen to this editorial in the <i>Sun</i>." And he read from +his own paper: +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"A GOOD PLACE TO MOVE TO. +</p> +<p> +"One of the most interesting evidences of the growth of New York is the +news that Mr. Anson Ledrick of the Consolidated Copper Company has +purchased an extensive building site on Riverside Drive and will +presently improve it with a costly residence. Mr. Ledrick's decision to +move his household effects to Manhattan Island is in accordance with a +very marked tendency of successful Americans. +</p> +<p> +"There are those who are fond of depreciating New York; of assailing it +with all sorts of cheap and sensational vituperation; of picturing it +as the one great canker spot of the Western hemisphere, as +irretrievably sunk in wickedness and shame. The fact remains, however, +that the city, as never before, is the great national centre of wealth, +culture, and distinction of every kind, and that here the citizen, +successful in art, literature, or practical achievement, instinctively +seeks his abiding-place. +</p> +<p> +"The restlessness of the average American millionaire while he remains +outside the city limits is frequently remarked upon. And even the +mighty overlords of Chicago, falling in with the prevailing fashion, +have forsaken the shores of the great inland sea and pitched their +tents with us; not to speak of the copper kings of Montana. Why is it +that these interesting men, after acquiring fortune and fame elsewhere, +are not content to remain upon the scene of their early triumphs? Why +is it that they immediately pack their carpet-bags, take the first +through train to our gates, and startle the investing public by the +manner in which they bull the price of New York building lots?" +</p> +<p> +The old man listened absently. +</p> +<p> +"And probably some day I'll read of you in that same centre of culture +and distinction as P. Percival Bines, a young man of obscure fam'ly, +that rose by his own efforts to be the dashin' young cotillion leader +and the well-known club-man, and that his pink teas fur dogs is barked +about by every fashionable canine on the island." +</p> +<p> +The young man continued to read: "These men are not vain fools; they +are shrewd, successful men of the world. They have surveyed New York +City from a distance and have discovered that, in spite of Tammany and +in spite of yellow journals, New York is a town of unequalled +attractiveness. And so they come; and their coming shows us what we +are. Not only millionaires; but also painters and novelists and men and +women of varied distinction. The city palpitates with life and ambition +and hope and promise; it attracts the great and the successful, and +those who admire greatness and success. The force of natural selection +is at work here as everywhere; and it is rapidly concentrating in our +small island whatever is finest, most progressive, and best in the +American character." +</p> +<p> +"Well, now do me a last favour before you pike off East," pleaded the +old man. "Make a trip with me over the properties. See 'em once anyway, +and see a little more of this country and these people. Mebbe they're +better'n you think. Give me about three weeks or a month, and then, by +Crimini, you can go off if you're set on it and be 'whatever is finest +and best in the American character' as that feller puts it. But some +day, son, you'll find out there's a whole lot of difference between a +great man of wealth and a man of great wealth. Them last is gettin' +terrible common." +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH5"><!-- CH5 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER V. +</h2> + +<h3> +Over the Hills +</h3> +<p> +So the old man and the young man made the round of the Bines +properties. The former nursed a forlorn little hope of exciting an +interest in the concerns most vital to him; to the latter the leisurely +tour in the private car was a sportive prelude to the serious business +of life, as it should be lived, in the East. Considering it as such he +endured it amiably, and indeed the long August days and the sharply +cool nights were not without real enjoyment for him. +</p> +<p> +To feel impartially a multitude of strong, fresh wants—the imperative +need to live life in all its fulness, this of itself makes the heart to +sing. And, above the full complement of wants, to have been dowered by +Heaven with a stanch disbelief in the unattainable,—this is a fortune +rather to be chosen than a good name or great riches; since the name +and riches and all things desired must come to the call of it. +</p> +<p> +Our Western-born youth of twenty-five had the wants and the sense of +power inherited from a line of men eager of initiative, the product of +an environment where only such could survive. Doubtless in him was the +soul and body hunger of his grandfather, cramping and denying through +hardship year after year, yet sustained by dreaming in the hardest +times of the soft material luxuries that should some day be his. +Doubtless marked in his character, too, was the slightly relaxed +tension of his father; the disposition to feast as well as the capacity +to fast; to take all, feel all, do all, with an avidity greater by +reason of the grinding abstinence and the later indulgence of his +forbears. A sage versed in the lore of heredity as modified by +environment may some day trace for us the progress across this +continent of an austere Puritan, showing how the strain emerges from +the wilderness at the Western ocean with a character so widely +differing from the one with which he began the adventurous +journey,—regarding, especially, a tolerance of the so-called good and +many of the bad things of life. Until this is done we may, perhaps, +consider the change to be without valid cause. +</p> +<p> +Young Bines, at all events, was the flower of a pioneer stock, and him +the gods of life cherished, so that all the forces of the young land +about him were as his own. Yet, though his pulses rhymed to theirs he +did not perceive his relation to them: neither he nor the land was yet +become introspective. So informed was he with the impetuous spirit of +youth that the least manifestation of life found its answering thrill +in him. And it was sufficient to feel this. There was no time barren +enough of sensation to reason about it. Uncle Peter's plan for an +inspection of the Bines properties had at first won him by touching his +sense of duty. He anticipated no interest or pleasure in the trip. Yet +from the beginning he enjoyed it to the full. Being what he was, the +constant movement pleased him, the out-of-doors life, the occasional +sorties from the railroad by horse to some remote mining camp, or to a +stock ranch or lumber-camp. He had been away for six years, and it +pleased him to note that he was treated by the people he met with a +genuine respect and liking as the son of his father. In the East he had +been accustomed to a certain deference from very uncertain people +because he was the son of a rich man. Here he had prestige because he +was the son of Daniel Bines, organiser and man of affairs. He felt +sometimes that the men at mine, mill, or ranch looked him over with +misgiving, and had their cautious liking compelled only by the +assurance that he was indeed the son of Daniel. They left him at these +times with the suspicion that this bare fact meant enough with them to +carry a man of infelicitous exterior. +</p> +<p> +He was pleased, moreover, to feel a new respect for Uncle Peter. He +observed that men of all degrees looked up to him, sought and relied +upon his judgment; the investing capitalist whom they met not less than +the mine foreman; the made man and the labourer. In the drawing-room at +home he had felt so agreeably superior to the old man; now he felt his +own inferiority in a new element, and began to view him with more +respect. He saw him to be the shrewd man of affairs, with a thorough +grasp of detail in every branch of their interests; and a deep man, as +well; a little narrow, perhaps, from his manner of life, but of +unfailing kindness, and with rather a young man's radicalism than an +old man's conservatism; one who, in an emergency, might be relied upon +to take the unexpected but effective course. +</p> +<p> +For his own part, old Peter Bines learned in the course of the trip to +understand and like his grandson better. At bottom he decided the young +man to be sound after all, and he began to make allowance for his +geographical heresies. The boy had been sent to an Eastern college; +that was clearly a mistake, putting him out of sympathy with the West; +and he had never been made to work, which was another and a graver +mistake, "but he'd do more'n his father ever did if 'twa'n't fur his +father's money," the old man concluded. For he saw in their talks that +the very Eastern experience which he derided had given the young fellow +a poise and a certain readiness to grasp details in the large that his +father had been a lifetime in acquiring. +</p> +<p> +For a month they loitered over the surrounding territory in the private +car, gliding through fertile valleys, over bleak passes, steaming up +narrow little canons along the down-rushing streams with their cool +shallow murmurs. +</p> +<p> +They would learn one day that a cross-cut was to be started on the Last +Chance, or that the concentrates of the True Grit would thereafter be +shipped to the Careless Creek smelter. Next they would learn that a new +herd of Galloways had done finely last season on the Bitter Root ranch; +that a big lot of ore was sacked at the Irish Boy, that an +eighteen-inch vein had been struck in the Old Crow; that a concentrator +was needed at Hellandgone, and that rich gold-bearing copper and sand +bearing free gold had been found over on Horseback Ridge. +</p> +<p> +Another day they would drive far into a forest of spruce and hemlock to +a camp where thousands of ties were being cut and floated down to the +line of the new railway. +</p> +<p> +Sometimes they spent a night in one of the smaller mining camps off the +railroad, whereof facetious notes would appear in the nearest weekly +paper, such as: +</p> +<p> +"The Hon. Peter Bines and his grandson, who is a chip of the old block, +spent Tuesday night at Rock Rip. Young Bines played the deal from soda +card to hock at Lem Tully's Turf Exchange, and showed Lem's dealer good +and plenty that there's no piker strain in him." +</p> +<p> +Or, it might be: +</p> +<p> +"Poker stacks continue to have a downward tendency. They were sold last +week as low as eighty chips for a dollar; It is sad to see this noble +game dragging along in the lower levels of prosperity, and we take as a +favourable omen the appearance of Uncle Peter Bines and his grandson +the other night. The prices went to par in a minute. Young Bines gave +signs of becoming as delicately intuitional in the matter of concealed +values as his father, the lamented Daniel J." +</p> +<p> +Again it was: +</p> +<p> +"Uncle Peter Bines reports from over Kettle Creek way that the +sagebrush whiskey they take a man's two bits for there would gnaw holes +in limestone. Peter is likelier to find a ledge of dollar bills than he +is good whiskey this far off the main trail. The late Daniel J. could +have told him as much, and Daniel J.'s boy, who accompanies Uncle +Peter, will know it hereafter." +</p> +<p> +The young man felt wholesomely insignificant at these and other signs +that he was taken on sufferance as a son and a grandson. +</p> +<p> +He was content that it should be so. Indeed there was little wherewith +he was not content. That he was habitually preoccupied, even when there +was most movement about them, early became apparent to Uncle Peter. +That he was constantly cheerful proved the matter of his musings to be +pleasant. That he was proner than most youths to serious meditation +Uncle Peter did not believe. Therefore he attributed the moods of +abstraction to some matter probably connected with his project of +removing the family East. It was not permitted Uncle Peter to know, nor +was his own youth recent enough for him to suspect, the truth. And the +mystery stayed inviolate until a day came and went that laid it bare +even to the old man's eyes. +</p> +<p> +They awoke one morning to find the car on a siding at the One Girl +mine. Coupled to it was another car from an Eastern road that their +train had taken on sometime in the night. Percival noted the car with +interest as he paced beside the track in the cool clear air before +breakfast. The curtains were drawn, and the only signs of life to be +observed were at the kitchen end, where the white-clad cook could be +seen astir. Grant, porter on the Bines car, told him the other car had +been taken on at Kaslo Junction, and that it belonged to Rulon Shepler, +the New York financier, who was aboard with a party of friends. +</p> +<p> +As Percival and Uncle Peter left their car for the shaft-house after +breakfast, the occupants of the other car were bestirring themselves. +</p> +<p> +From one of the open windows a low but impassioned voice was exhausting +the current idioms of damnation in sweeping dispraise of all land-areas +north and west of Fifty-ninth Street, New York. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter smiled grimly. Percival flushed, for the hidden protestant +had uttered what were his own sentiments a month before. +</p> +<p> +Reaching the shaft-house they chatted with Pangburn, the +superintendent, and then went to the store-room to don blouses and +overalls for a descent into the mine. +</p> +<p> +For an hour they stayed underground, traversing the various levels and +drifts, while Pangburn explained the later developments of the vein and +showed them where the new stoping had been begun. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH6"><!-- CH6 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER VI. +</h2> + +<h3> +A Meeting and a Clashing +</h3> +<p> +As they stepped from the cage at the surface Percival became aware of a +group of strangers between him and the open door of the +shaft-house,—people displaying in dress and manner the unmistakable +stamp of New York. For part of a minute, while the pupils of his eyes +were contracting to the light, he saw them but vaguely. Then, as his +sight cleared, he beheld foremost in the group, beaming upon him with +an expression of pleased and surprised recognition, the girl whose face +and voice had for nearly half a year peopled his lover's solitude with +fair visions and made its silence to be all melody. +</p> +<p> +Had the encounter been anticipated his composure would perhaps have +failed him. Not a few of his waking dreams had sketched this, their +second meeting, and any one of the ways it had pleased him to plan it +would assuredly have found him nervously embarrassed. But so wildly +improbable was this reality that not the daringest of his imagined +happenings had approached it. His thoughts for the moment had been not +of her; then, all at once, she stood before him in the flesh, and he +was cool, almost unmoved. He suspected at once that her father was the +trim, fastidiously dressed man who looked as if he had been abducted +from a morning stroll down the avenue to his club; that the plump, +ruddy, high-bred woman, surveying the West disapprovingly through a +lorgnon, would be her mother. Shepler he knew by sight, with his big +head, massive shoulders, and curiously short, tapering body. Some other +men and a woman were scanning the hoisting machinery with superior +looks. +</p> +<p> +The girl, before starting toward him, had waited hardly longer than it +took him to eye the group. And then came an awkward two seconds upon +her whose tact in avoiding the awkward was reputed to be more than +common. +</p> +<p> +With her hand extended she had uttered, "Why, Mr.—" before it flashed +upon her that she did not know the name of the young man she was +greeting. +</p> +<p> +The "Mister" was threatening to prolong itself into an "r" of +excruciating length and disgraceful finality, an "r" that is terminated +neatly by no one but hardened hotel-clerks. Then a miner saved the day. +"Mr. Bines," he said, coming up hurriedly behind Percival with several +specimens of ore, "you forgot these." +</p> +<p> +"-r-r-r. Bines, how <i>do</i> you do!" concluded the girl with an eye-flash +of gratitude at the humble instrument that had prevented an undue +hiatus in her salutation. They were apart from the others and for the +moment unnoticed. +</p> +<p> +The young man took the hand so cordially offered, and because of all +the things he wished and had so long waited to say, he said nothing. +</p> +<p> +"Isn't it jolly! I am Miss Milbrey," she added in a lower tone, and +then, raising her voice, "Mamma, Mr. Bines—and papa," and there +followed a hurried and but half-acknowledged introduction to the other +members of the party. And, behold! in that moment the young man had +schemed the edifice of all his formless dreams. For six months he had +known the unsurpassable luxury of wanting and of knowing what he +wanted. Now, all at once, he saw this to be a world in which dreams +come more than true. +</p> +<p> +Shepler and the party were to go through the mine as a matter of +sight-seeing. They were putting on outer clothes from the store-room to +protect them from the dirt and damp. +</p> +<p> +Presently Percival found himself again at the bottom of the shaft. +During the descent of twelve hundred feet he had reflected upon the +curious and interesting fact that her name should be Milbrey. He felt +dimly that this circumstance should be ranked among the most +interesting of natural phenomena,—that she should have a name, as the +run of mortals, and that it should be one name more than another. When +he discovered further that her Christian name was Avice the phenomenon +became stupendously bewildering. They two were in the last of the party +to descend. On reaching bottom he separated her with promptness and +guile from two solemn young men, copies of each other, and they were +presently alone. In the distance they could see the others following +ghostly lamps. From far off mysterious recesses came the muffled +musical clink of the sledges on the drills. An employee who had come +down with them started to be their guide. Percival sent him back. +</p> +<p> +"I've just been through; I can find my way again." +</p> +<p> +"Ver' well," said the man, "with the exception that it don't happen +something,—yes?" And he stayed where he was. +</p> +<p> +Down one of the cross-cuts they started, stepping aside to let a car of +ore be pushed along to the shaft. +</p> +<p> +"Do you know," began the girl, "I am so glad to be able to thank you +for what you did that night." +</p> +<p> +"I'm glad you <i>are</i> able. I was beginning to think I should always have +those thanks owing to me." +</p> +<p> +"I might have paid them at the time, but it was all so unexpected and +so sudden,—it rattled me, quite." +</p> +<p> +"I thought you were horribly cool-headed." +</p> +<p> +"I wasn't." +</p> +<p> +"Your manner reduced me to a groom who opened your carriage door." +</p> +<p> +"But grooms don't often pick strange ladies up bodily and bear them out +of a pandemonium of waltzing cab-horses. I'd never noticed before that +cab-horses are so frivolous and hysterical." +</p> +<p> +"And grooms know where to look for their pay." +</p> +<p> +They were interrupting nervously, and bestowing furtive side-looks upon +each other. +</p> +<p> +"If I'd not seen you," said the girl, "glanced at you—before—that +evening, I shouldn't have remembered so well; doubtless I'd not have +recognised you to-day." +</p> +<p> +"I didn't know you did glance at me, and yet I watched you every moment +of the evening. You didn't know that, did you?" +</p> +<p> +She laughed. +</p> +<p> +"Of course I knew it. A woman has to note such things without letting +it be seen that she sees." +</p> +<p> +"And I'd have sworn you never once so much as looked my way." +</p> +<p> +"Don't we do it well, though?" +</p> +<p> +"And in spite of all the time I gave to a study of your face I lost the +detail of it. I could keep only the effect of its expression and the +few tones of your voice I heard. You know I took those on a record so I +could make 'em play over any time I wanted to listen. Do you know, that +has all been very sweet to me, my helping you and the memory of it,—so +vague and sweet." +</p> +<p> +"Aren't you afraid we're losing the others?" +</p> +<p> +She halted and looked back. +</p> +<p> +"No; I'm afraid we won't lose them; come on; you can't turn back now. +And you don't want to hear anything about mines; it wouldn't be at all +good for you, I'm sure. Quick, down this way, or you'll hear Pangburn +telling some one what a stope is, and think what a thing that would be +to carry in your head." +</p> +<p> +"Really, a stope sounds like something that would 'get you' in the +night! I'm afraid!" +</p> +<p> +Half in his spirit she fled with him down a dimly lighted incline where +men were working at the rocky wall with sledge and drill. There was +that in his manner which compelled her quite as literally as when at +their first meeting he had picked her up in his arms. +</p> +<p> +As they walked single-file through the narrowing of a drift, she +wondered about him. He was Western, plainly. An employee in the mine, +probably a manager or director or whatever it was they called those in +authority in mines. Plainly, too, he was a man of action and a man who +engaged all her instinctive liking. Something in him at once coerced +her friendliest confidence. These were the admissions she made to +herself. She divined him, moreover, to be a blend of boldness and +timidity. He was bold to the point of telling her things +unconventionally, of beguiling her into remote underground passages +away from the party; yet she understood; she knew at once that he was a +determined but unspoiled gentleman; that under no provocation could he +make a mistake. In any situation of loneliness she would have felt safe +with him—"as with a brother"—she thought. Then, feeling her cheeks +burn, she turned back and said: +</p> +<p> +"I must tell you he was my brother—that man—that night." +</p> +<p> +He was sorry and glad all at once. The sorrow being the lesser and more +conventional emotion, he started upon an awkward expression of it, +which she interrupted. +</p> +<p> +"Never mind saying that, thank you. Tell me something about yourself, +now. I really would like to know you. What do you see and hear and do +in this strange life?" +</p> +<p> +"There's not much variety," he answered, with a convincing droop of +depression. "For six months I've been seeing you and hearing +you—seeing you and hearing you; not much variety in that—nothing +worth telling you about." +</p> +<p> +Despite her natural caution, intensified by training, she felt herself +thrill to the very evident sincerity of his tones, so that she had to +affect mirth to seem at ease. +</p> +<p> +"Dear, dear, what painful monotony; and how many men have said it since +these rocks were made; and now you say it,—well, I admit—" +</p> +<p> +"But there's nothing new under the sun, you know." +</p> +<p> +"No; not even a new excuse for plagiarism, is there?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, you see as long as the same old thing keeps true the same old +way of telling it will be more or less depended upon. After a few +hundred years of experiment, you know, they hit on the fewest words +that tell the most, and everybody uses them because no one can improve +them. Maybe the prehistoric cave-gentleman, who proposed to his loved +one with a war club just back of her left ear, had some variation of +the formula suiting his simple needs, after he'd gotten her home and +brought her to and she said it was 'all so sudden;' and a man can work +in little variations of his own to-day. For example—" +</p> +<p> +"I'm sure we'd best be returning." +</p> +<p> +"For example, I could say, you know, that for keeping the mind active +and the heart working overtime the memory of you surpasses any tonic +advertised in the backs of the magazines. Or, that—" +</p> +<p> +"I think that's enough; I see you <i>could</i> vary the formula, in case—" +</p> +<p> +"—<i>have</i> varied it—but don't forget I prefer the original unvaried. +After all, there are certain things that you can't tell in too few +words. Now, you—" +</p> +<p> +"You stubborn person. Really, I know all about myself. I asked you to +tell me about yourself." +</p> +<p> +"And I began at once to tell you everything about myself—everything of +interest—which is yourself." +</p> +<p> +"I see your sense of values is gone, poor man. I shall question you. +Now you are a miner, and I like men of action, men who do things; I've +often wondered about you, and seriously, I'm glad to find you here +doing something. I remembered you kindly, with real gratitude, indeed. +You didn't seem like a New York man either, and I decided you weren't. +Honestly, I am glad to find you here at your work in your miner's +clothes. You mustn't think we forget how to value men that work." +</p> +<p> +On the point of saying thoughtlessly, "But I'm not working here—I own +the mine," he checked himself. Instead he began a defence of the man +who doesn't work, but who could if he had to. "For example," he +continued, "here we are at a place that you must be carried over; +otherwise you'd have to wade through a foot of water or go around that +long way we've come. I've rubber boots on, and so I pick you up this +way—" He held her lightly on his arm and she steadied herself with a +hand between his shoulders. +</p> +<p> +"And staggering painfully under my burden, I wade out to the middle of +this subterranean lake." He stopped. +</p> +<p> +"You see, I've learned to do things. I could pick you from that +slippery street and put you in your carriage, and I can pick you up now +without wasting words about it—" +</p> +<p> +"But you're wasting time—hurry, please—and, anyway, you're a miner +and used to such things." +</p> +<p> +He remained standing. +</p> +<p> +"But I'm <i>not</i> wasting time, and I'm not a miner in the sense you mean. +I own this mine, and I suppose for the most part I'm the sort of man +you seem to have gotten tired of; the man who doesn't have to do +anything. Even now I'm this close to work only because my grandfather +wanted me to look over the properties my father left." +</p> +<p> +"But, hurry, please, and set me down." +</p> +<p> +"Not until I warn you that I'm just as apt to do things as the kind of +man you thought I was. This is twice I've picked you up now. Look out +for me;—next time I may not put you down at all." +</p> +<p> +She gave a low little laugh, denoting unruffled serenity. She was +glorying secretly in his strength, and she knew his boldness and +timidity were still justly balanced. And there was the rather +astonishing bit of news he had just given her. That needed a lot of +consideration. +</p> +<p> +With slow, sure-footed steps he reached the farther side of the water +and put her on her feet. +</p> +<p> +"There, I thought I'd reveal the distressing truth about myself while I +had you at my mercy." +</p> +<p> +"I might have suspected, but I gave the name no thought. Bines, to be +sure. You are the son of the Bines who died some months ago. I heard +Mr. Shepler and my father talking about some of your mining properties. +Mr. Shepler thought the 'One Girl' was such a funny name for your +father to give a mine." +</p> +<p> +Now they neared the foot of the shaft where the rest of the party +seemed to await them. As they came up Percival felt himself raked by a +broadside from the maternal lorgnon that left him all but disabled. The +father glowered at him and asked questions in the high key we are apt +to adopt in addressing foreigners, in the instinctive fallacy that any +language can be understood by any one if it be spoken loudly enough. +The mother's manner was a crushing rebuke to the young man for his +audacity. The father's manner was meant to intimate that natives of the +region in which they were then adventuring were not worthy of rebuke, +save such general rebukes as may be conveyed by displaying one's +natural superiority of manner. The other members of the party, +excepting Shepler, who talked with Pangburn at a little distance, took +cue from the Milbreys and aggressively ignored the abductor of an only +daughter. They talked over, around, and through him, as only may those +mortals whom it hath pleased heaven to have born within certain areas +on Manhattan Island. +</p> +<p> +The young man felt like a social outcast until he caught a glance from +Miss Milbrey. That young woman was still friendly, which he could +understand, and highly amused, which he could not understand. While the +temperature was at its lowest the first load ascended, including Miss +Milbrey and her parents, a chatty blonde, and an uncomfortable little +man who, despite his being twelve hundred feet toward the centre +thereof, had three times referred bitterly to the fact that he was "out +of the world." "I shall see you soon above ground, shall I not?" Miss +Milbrey had asked, at which her mother shot Percival a parting volley +from her rapid-fire lorgnon, while her father turned upon him a back +whose sidelines were really admirable, considering his age and feeding +habits. The behaviour of these people appeared to intensify the +amusement of their child. The two solemn young men who remained +continued to chat before Percival as they would have chatted before the +valet of either. He began to sound the spiritual anguish of a pariah. +Also to feel truculent and, in his own phrase, "Westy." With him +"Westy" meant that you were as good as any one else "and a shade better +than a whole lot if it came to a show-down." He was not a little +mortified to find how easy it was for him to fall back upon that old +cushion of provincial arrogance. It was all right for Uncle Peter, but +for himself,—well, it proved that he was less finely Eastern than he +had imagined. +</p> +<p> +As the cage came down for another ascent, he let the two solemn young +men go up with Shepler and Pangburn, and went to search for Uncle +Peter. +</p> +<p> +"There, thank God, is a man!" he reflected. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH7"><!-- CH7 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER VII. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked +</h3> +<p> +He found Uncle Peter in the cross-cut, studying a bit of ore through a +glass, and they went back to ascend. +</p> +<p> +"Them folks," said the old man, "must be the kind that newspaper meant, +that had done something in practical achievement. I bet that girl's +mother will achieve something practical with you fur cuttin' the girl +out of the bunch; she was awful tormented; talked two or three times +about the people in the humbler walks of life bein' strangely something +or other. You ain't such a humble walker now, are you, son? But say, +that yellow-haired woman, she ain't a bit diffident, is she? She's a +very hearty lady, I <i>must</i> say!" +</p> +<p> +"But did you see Miss Milbrey?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that's her name is it, the one that her mother was so worried +about and you? Yes, I saw her. Peart and cunnin', but a heap too wise +fur you, son; take my steer on that. Say, she'd have your pelt nailed +to the barn while you was wonderin' which way you'd jump." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I know I'm only a tender, teething infant," the young man +answered, with masterly satire. "Well, now, as long's you got that bank +roll you jest look out fur cupboard love—the kind the old cat has when +she comes rubbin' up against your leg and purrin' like you was the +whole thing." +</p> +<p> +The young man smiled, as they went up, with youth's godlike faith in +its own sufficiency, albeit he smarted from the slights put upon him. +</p> +<p> +At the surface a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the +formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey, +the pleasing model of all a city's refinements, awaiting the boon of a +hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty +blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more +manner than manners. Percival felt they were all regarding him now with +affectionate concern. They pressed forward effusively. +</p> +<p> +"So good of you, Mr. Bines, to take an interest in us—my daughter has +been so anxious to see one of these fascinating mines." "Awfully +obliged, Mr. Bines." "Charmed, old man; deuced pally of you to stay by +us down in that hole, you know." "So clever of you to know where to +find the gold—" +</p> +<p> +He lost track of the speakers. Their speeches became one concerted +effusion of affability that was music to his ears. +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, +she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously +potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their +normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look +Percival had noted below. +</p> +<p> +"And, Mr. Bines, do come in with that quaint old grandfather of yours +and lunch with us," urged Mrs. Milbrey, who had, as it were, spiked her +lorgnon. "Here's Mr. Shepler to second the invitation—and then we +shall chat about this very interesting West." +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey nodded encouragement, seeming to chuckle inwardly. +</p> +<p> +In the spacious dining compartment of the Shepler car the party was +presently at lunch. +</p> +<p> +"You seem so little like a Western man," Mrs. Milbrey confided +graciously to Percival on her right. +</p> +<p> +"We cal'late he'll fetch out all straight, though, in a year or so," +put in Uncle Peter, from over his chop, with guileless intent to defend +his grandson from what he believed to be an attack. "Of course a young +man's bound to get some foolishness into him in an Eastern college like +this boy went to." +</p> +<p> +Percival had flushed at the compliment to himself; also at the old +man's failure to identify it as such. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Milbrey caressed his glass of claret with ardent eyes and took the +situation in hand with the easy confidence of a master. +</p> +<p> +"The West," said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In +truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all +the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for +deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but +so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not +suspect their—er—humble origin." +</p> +<p> +"Meaning their Western origin?" inquired Shepler, blandly, with secret +intent to brew strife. +</p> +<p> +"Well—er—to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble,—of +course—perhaps I should have said—" +</p> +<p> +"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey," +interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap +in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was +twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"—he lowered his voice to +the pitch of impressiveness—"has over eighty pairs of trousers and +complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston." +</p> +<p> +"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked +slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that +Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his +lines under the surface. +</p> +<p> +"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men, +"he must still talk like a banjo." +</p> +<p> +"And gargle all his 'r's,'" added the other, very earnestly. "They +never get over that, you know." +</p> +<p> +"Instead of losin' 'em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself +feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it 'Ne' +Yawk,' and prob'ly he don't like it in Boston because they always call +'em 'rawroystahs.'" +</p> +<p> +"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It <i>is</i> +hard for the West and the East to forgive each other's dialects. The +inflated 'r' and the smothered 'r' never quite harmonise." +</p> +<p> +"Western money talks good straight New York talk," ventured Miss +Milbrey, with the air of one who had observed in her time. +</p> +<p> +Shepler grinned, and the parents of the young woman resisted with +indifferent success their twin impulses to frown. +</p> +<p> +"But the service is so wretched in the West," suggested Oldaker, the +carefully dressed little man with the tired, troubled eyes, whom the +world had been deprived of. "I fancy, now, there's not a good waiter +this side of New York." +</p> +<p> +"An American," said Percival, "never <i>can</i> make a good waiter or a good +valet. It takes a Latin, or, still better, a Briton, to feel the +servility required for good service of that sort. An American, now, +always fails at it because he knows he is as good as you are, and he +knows that you know it, and you know that he knows you know it, and +there you are, two mirrors of American equality face to face and +reflecting each other endlessly, and neither is comfortable. The +American is as uncomfortable at having certain services performed for +him by another American as the other is in performing them. Give him a +Frenchman or an Italian or a fellow born within the sound of Bow Bells +to clean his boots and lay out his things and serve his dinner and he's +all right enough." +</p> +<p> +"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter. +</p> +<p> +"Fancy, now," said Mrs. Drelmer, "a creature in a waiter's jacket +having emotions of that sort!" +</p> +<p> +"Our excellent country," said Mr. Milbrey, "is perhaps not yet what it +will be; there is undeniably a most distressing rawness where we might +expect finish. Now in Chicago," he continued in a tone suitably hushed +for the relation of occult phenomena, "we dined with a person who +served champagne with the oysters, soup, fish, and <i>entrée</i>, and for +the remainder of the dinner—you may credit me or not—he proffered a +claret of 1875—. I need hardly remind you, the most delicate vintage +of the latter half of the century—and it was served <i>frappé</i>." There +was genuine emotion in the speaker's voice. +</p> +<p> +"And papa nearly swooned when our host put cracked ice and two lumps of +sugar into his own glass—" +</p> +<p> +"<i>Avice, dear!</i>" remonstrated the father in a tone implying that some +things positively must not be mentioned at table. +</p> +<p> +"Well, you shouldn't expect too much of those self-made men in +Chicago," said Shepler. +</p> +<p> +"If they'd only make themselves as well as they make their sausages and +things," sighed Mr. Milbrey. +</p> +<p> +"And the self-made man <i>will</i> talk shop," suggested Oldaker. "He thinks +you're dying to hear how he made the first thousand of himself." +</p> +<p> +"Still, those Chicago chaps learn quickly enough when they settle in +New York," ventured one of the young men. +</p> +<p> +"I knew a Chicago chap who lived East two years and went back not a +half bad sort," said the other. "God help him now, though; his father +made him go back to work in a butcher shop or something of the sort." +</p> +<p> +"Best thing I ever heard about Chicago," said Uncle Peter, "a man from +your town told me once he had to stay in Chicago a year, and, says he, +'I went out there a New Yorker, and I went home an American,' he says." +The old man completed this anecdote in tones that were slightly +inflamed. +</p> +<p> +"How extremely typical!" said Mrs. Milbrey. "Truly the West is the +place of unspoiled Americanism and the great unspent forces; you are +quite right, Mr. Bines." +</p> +<p> +"Think of all the unspent forces back in that silver mine," remarked +Miss Milbrey, with a patent effort to be significant. +</p> +<p> +"My perverse child delights to pose as a sordid young woman," the fond +mother explained to Percival, "yet no one can be less so, and you, Mr. +Bines, I am sure, would be the last to suspect her of it. I saw in you +at once those sterling qualities—" +</p> +<p> +"Isn't it dreadfully dark down in that sterling silver mine?" observed +Miss Milbrey, apropos of nothing, apparently, while her mother attacked +a second chop that she had meant not to touch. +</p> +<p> +"Here's hoping we'll soon be back in God's own country," said Oldaker, +raising his glass. +</p> +<p> +"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter, and drained his glass eagerly as they +drank the toast. Whereat they all laughed and Mrs. Drelmer said, "What +a dear, lively wit, for an old gentleman." +</p> +<p> +"Oldaker," said Shepler, "has really been the worst sufferer. This is +his first trip West." +</p> +<p> +"Beg pardon, Shepler! I was West as far as Buffalo—let me see—in 1878 +or '79." +</p> +<p> +"Dear me! is that so?" queried Uncle Peter. "I got East as fur as +Cheyenne that same year. We nearly run into each other, didn't we?" +</p> +<p> +Shepler grinned again. +</p> +<p> +"Oldaker found a man from New York on the train the other day, up in +one of the emigrant cars. He was a truck driver, and he looked it and +talked it, but Oldaker stuck by him all the afternoon." +</p> +<p> +"Well, he'd left the old town three weeks after I had, and he'd been +born there the same year I was—in the Ninth ward—and he remembered as +well as I did the day Barnum's museum burned at Broadway and Ann. I +liked to hear him talk. Why, it was a treat just to hear him say +Broadway and Twenty-third Street, or Madison Square or City Hall Park. +The poor devil had consumption, too, and probably he'll never see them +again. I don't know if I shall ever have it, but I'd never leave the +old town as he was doing." +</p> +<p> +"That's like Billy Brue," said Uncle Peter. "Billy loves faro bank jest +as this gentleman loves New York. When he gets a roll he <i>has</i> to play. +One time he landed in Pocatello when there wa'n't but one game in town. +Billy found it and started in. A friend saw him there and called him +out. 'Billy,' says he, 'cash in and come out; that's a brace game.' +'Sure?' says Billy. 'Sure,' says the feller. 'All right,' says Billy, +'much obliged fur puttin' me on.' And he started out lookin' fur +another game. About two hours later the feller saw Billy comin' out of +the same place and Billy owned up he'd gone back there and blowed in +every cent. 'Why, you geezer,' says his friend, 'didn't I put you on +that they was dealin' brace there?' 'Sure,' says Billy, 'sure you did. +But what could I do? It was the only game in town!'" +</p> +<p> +"That New York mania is the same sort," said Shepler, laughing, while +Mrs. Drelmer requested everybody to fancy immediately. +</p> +<p> +"Your grandfather is so dear and quaint," said Mrs. Milbrey; "you must +certainly bring him to New York with you, for of course a young man of +your capacity and graces will never be satisfied out of New York." +</p> +<p> +"Young men like yourself are assuredly needed there," remarked Mr. +Milbrey, warmly. +</p> +<p> +"Surely they are," agreed Miss Milbrey, and yet with a manner that +seemed almost to annoy both parents. They were sparing no opportunity +to make the young man conscious of his real oneness with those about +him, and yet subtly to intimate that people of just the Milbreys' +perception were required to divine it at present. "These Westerners +fancy you one of themselves, I dare say," Mrs. Milbrey had said, and +the young man purred under the strokings. His fever for the East was +back upon him. His weeks with Uncle Peter going over the fields where +his father had prevailed had made him convalescent, but these New +Yorkers—the very manner and atmosphere of them—undid the work. He +envied them their easier speech, their matter-of-fact air of +omniscience, the elaborate and cultivated simplicity of their dress, +their sureness and sufficiency in all that they thought and said and +did. He was homesick again for the life he had glimpsed. The West was +rude, desolate, and depressing. Even Uncle Peter, whom he had come +warmly to admire, jarred upon him with his crudity and his Western +assertiveness. +</p> +<p> +And there was the woman of the East, whose presence had made the day to +seem dream-like; and she was kind, which was more than he would have +dared to hope, and her people, after their first curious chill of +indifference, seemed actually to be courting him. She, the fleeting and +impalpable dream-love, whom the thought of seeing ever again had been +wildly absurd, was now a human creature with a local habitation, the +most beautiful name in the world, and two parents whose complaisance +was obvious even through the lover's timidity. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH8"><!-- CH8 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER VIII. +</h2> + +<h3> +Up Skiplap Canon +</h3> +<p> +The meal was ending in smoke, the women, excepting Miss Milbrey, having +lighted cigarettes with the men. The talk had grown less truculently +</p> +<p> +Mr. Milbrey described with minute and loving particularity the +preparation of <i>oeufs de Faisan, avec beurre au champagne.</i> +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Milbrey related an anecdote of New York society, not much in +itself, but which permitted the disclosure that she habitually +addressed by their first names three of the foremost society leaders, +and that each of these personages adopted a like familiarity toward +her. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Drelmer declared that she meant to have Uncle Peter Bines at one +of her evenings the very first time he should come to New York, and +that, if he didn't let her know of his coming, she would be offended. +Oldaker related an incident of the ball given to the Prince of Wales, +travelling as Baron Renfrew, on the evening of October 12, 1860, in +which his father had figured briefly before the royal guest to the +abiding credit of American tact and gentility. +</p> +<p> +Shepler was amused until he became sleepy, whereupon he extended the +freedom of his castle to his guests, and retired to his stateroom. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter took a final shot at Oldaker. He was observed to be +laughing, and inquiry brought this: +</p> +<p> +"I jest couldn't help snickerin' over his idee of God's own country. He +thinks God's own country is a little strip of an island with a row of +well-fed folks up and down the middle, and a lot of hungry folks on +each side. Mebbe he's right. I'll be bound, it needs the love of God. +But if it is His own country, it don't make Him any connysoor of +countries with me. I'll tell you that." +</p> +<p> +Oldaker smiled at this assault, the well-bred, tolerant smile that +loyal New Yorkers reserve for all such barbaric belittling of their +empire. Then he politely asked Uncle Peter to show Mrs. Drelmer and +himself through the stamp mill. +</p> +<p> +At Percival's suggestion of a walk, Miss Milbrey was delighted. +</p> +<p> +After an inspection of the Bines car, in which Oldaker declared he +would be willing to live for ever, if it could be anchored firmly in +Madison Square, the party separated. Out into the clear air, already +cooling under the slanting rays of the sun, the young man and the girl +went together. Behind them lay the one street of the little mining +camp, with its wooden shanties on either side of the railroad track. +Down this street Uncle Peter had gone, leading his charges toward the +busy ant-hill on the mountainside. Ahead the track wound up the canon, +cunningly following the tortuous course of the little river to be sure +of practicable grades. On the farther side of the river a mountain road +paralleled the railway. Up this road the two went, followed by a +playful admonition from Mrs. Milbrey: "Remember, Mr. Bines, I place my +child in your keeping." +</p> +<p> +Percival waxed conscientious about his charge and insisted at once upon +being assured that Miss Milbrey would be warm enough with the scarlet +golf-cape about her shoulders; that she was used to walking long +distances; that her boots were stoutly soled; and that she didn't mind +the sun in their faces. The girl laughed at him. +</p> +<p> +Looking up the canon with its wooded sides, cool and green, they could +see a grey, dim mountain, with patches of snow near its top, in the far +distance, and ranges of lesser eminences stepping up to it. "It's a +hundred miles away," he told her. +</p> +<p> +Down the canon the little river flickered toward them, like a billowy +silver ribbon "trimmed with white chiffon around the rocks," declared +the girl. In the blue depths of the sky, an immense height above, +lolled an eagle, lazy of wing, in lordly indolence. The suggestions to +the eye were all of spacious distances and large masses—of the room +and stuff for unbounded action. +</p> +<p> +"Your West is the breathingest place," she said, as they crossed a +foot-bridge over the noisy little stream and turned up the road. "I +don't believe I ever drew a full breath until I came to these +altitudes." +</p> +<p> +"One <i>has</i> to breathe more air here—there's less oxygen in it, and you +must breathe more to get your share, and so after awhile one becomes +robust. Your cheeks are already glowing, and we've hardly started. +There, now, there are your colours, see—" +</p> +<p> +Along the edge of the green pines and spruce were lavender asters. A +little way in the woods they could see the blue columbines and the +mountain phlox, pink and red. +</p> +<p> +"There are your eyes and your cheeks." +</p> +<p> +"What a dangerous character you'd be if you were sent to match silks!" +</p> +<p> +On the dry barren slopes of gravel across the river, full in the sun's +glare, grew the Spanish bayonet, with its spikes of creamy white +flowers. +</p> +<p> +"There I am, more nearly," she pointed to them; "they're ever so much +nearer my disposition. But about this thin air; it must make men work +harder for what comes easier back in our country, so that they may +become able to do more—more capable. I am thinking of your +grandfather. You don't know how much I admire him. He is so stanch and +strong and fresh. There's more fire in him now than in my father or +Launton Oldaker, and I dare say he's a score of years older than either +of them. I don't think you quite appreciate what a great old fellow he +is." +</p> +<p> +"I admire Uncle Peter much more, I'm sure, than he admires me. He's +afraid I'm not strong enough to admire that Eastern climate of +yours—social and moral." +</p> +<p> +"I suppose it's natural for you to wish to go. You'd be bored here, +would you not? You couldn't stay in these mountains and be such a man +as your grandfather. And yet there ought to be so much to do here; it's +all so fresh and roomy and jolly. Really I've grown enthusiastic about +it." +</p> +<p> +"Ah, but think of what there is in the East—and you are there. To +think that for six months I've treasured every little memory of +you—such a funny little lot as they were—to think that this morning I +awoke thinking of you, yet hardly hoping ever to see you, and to think +that for half the night we had ridden so near each other in sleep, and +there was no sign or signal or good omen. And then to think you should +burst upon me like some new sunrise that the stupid astronomers hadn't +predicted. +</p> +<p> +"You see," he went on, after a moment, "I don't ask what you think of +me. You couldn't think anything much as yet, but there's something +about this whole affair, our meeting and all, that makes me think it's +going to be symmetrical in the end. I know it won't end here. I'll tell +you one way Western men learn. They learn not to be afraid to want +things out of their reach, and they believe devoutly—because they've +proved it so often—that if you want a thing hard enough and keep +wanting it, nothing can keep it away from you." +</p> +<p> +A bell had been tinkling nearer and nearer on the road ahead. Now a +heavy wagon, filled with sacks of ore, came into view, drawn by four +mules. As they stood aside to let it pass he scanned her face for any +sign it might show, but he could see no more than a look of interest +for the brawny driver of the wagon, shouting musically to his straining +team. +</p> +<p> +"You are rather inscrutable," he said, as they resumed the road. +</p> +<p> +She turned and smiled into his eyes with utter frankness. +</p> +<p> +"At least you must be sure that I like you; that I am very friendly; +that I want to know you better, and want you to know me better. You +don't know me at all, you know. You Westerners have another way, of +accepting people too readily. It may work no harm among yourselves, but +perhaps Easterners are a bit more perilous. Sometimes, now, a <i>very</i> +Eastern person doesn't even accept herself—himself—very trustingly; +she—he—finds it so hard to get acquainted with himself." +</p> +<p> +The young man provided one of those silences of which a few discerning +men are instinctively capable and for which women thank them. +</p> +<p> +"This road," she said, after a little time of rapid walking, "leads +right up to the end of the world, doesn't it? See, it ends squarely in +the sun." They stopped where the turn had opened to the west a long +vista of grey and purple hills far and high. They stood on a ridge of +broken quartz and gneiss, thrown up in a bygone age. To their left a +few dwarf Scotch firs threw shadows back toward the town. The ball of +red fire in the west was half below the rim of the distant peak. +</p> +<p> +"Stand so,"—she spoke in a slightly hushed tone that moved him a step +nearer almost to touch her arm,—"and feel the round little earth +turning with us. We always think the sun drops down away from us, but +it stays still. Now remember your astronomy and feel the earth turn. +See—you can actually <i>see</i> it move—whirling along like a child's ball +because it can't help itself, and then there's the other motion around +the sun, and the other, the rushing of everything through space, and +who knows how many others, and yet we plan our futures and think we +shall do finely this way or that, and always forget that we're taken +along in spite of ourselves. Sometimes I think I shall give up trying; +and then I see later that even that feeling was one of the unknown +motions that I couldn't control. The only thing we know is that we are +moved in spite of ourselves, so what is the use of bothering about how +many ways, or where they shall fetch us?" +</p> +<p> +"Ah, Miss Khayyam, I've often read your father's verses." +</p> +<p> +"No relation whatever; we're the same person—he was I." +</p> +<p> +"But don't forget you can see the earth moving by a rising as well as +by a setting star, by watching a sun rise—" +</p> +<p> +"A rising star if you wish," she said, smiling once more with perfect +candour and friendliness. +</p> +<p> +They turned to go back in the quick-coming mountain dusk. +</p> +<p> +As they started downward she sang from the "Persian Garden," and he +blended his voice with hers: +</p> +<pre> + "Myself when young did eagerly frequent + Doctor and Saint and heard great argument + About it and about: but evermore + Came out by the same door where in I went." + + "With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow, + And with my own hand wrought to make it grow; + And this was all the Harvest that I reaped—' + I came like Water and like Wind I go.'" +</pre> +<p> +"I shall look forward to seeing you—and your mother and sister?—in +New York," she said, when they parted, "and I am sure I shall have more +to say when we're better known to each other." +</p> +<p> +"If you were the one woman before, if the thought of you was more than +the substance of any other to me,—you must know how it will be now, +when the dream has come true. It's no small thing for your best dream +to come true." +</p> +<p> +"Dear me! haven't we been sentimental and philosophic? I'm never like +this at home, I assure you. I've really been thoughtful." +</p> +<p> +From up the cañon came the sound of a puffing locomotive that presently +steamed by them with its three dingy little coaches, and, after a stop +for water and the throwing of a switch, pushed back to connect with the +Shepler car. +</p> +<p> +The others of the party crowded out on to the rear platform as Percival +helped Miss Milbrey up the steps. Uncle Peter had evidently been +chatting with Shepler, for as they came out the old man was saying, +"'Get action' is my motto. Do things. Don't fritter. Be something and +be it good and hard. Get action early and often." +</p> +<p> +Shepler nodded. "But men like us are apt to be unreasonable with the +young. We expect them to have their own vigour and our wisdom, and the +infirmities of neither." +</p> +<p> +The good-byes were hastily said, and the little train rattled down the +cañon. Miss Milbrey stood in the door of the car, and Percival watched +her while the glistening rails that seemed to be pushing her away +narrowed in perspective. She stood motionless and inscrutable to the +last, but still looking steadily toward him—almost wistfully, it +seemed to him once. +</p> +<p> +"Well," he said cheerfully to Uncle Peter. +</p> +<p> +"You know, son, I don't like to cuss, but except one or two of them +folks I'd sooner live in the middle kittle of hell than in the place +that turns 'em out. They rile me—that talk about 'people in the +humbler walks of life.' Of course I <i>am</i> humble, but then, son, if you +come right down to it, as the feller said, I ain't so <i>damned</i> humble!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH9"><!-- CH9 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER IX. +</h2> + +<h3> +Three Letters, Private and Confidential +</h3> +<p> +From Mr. Percival Bines to Miss Psyche Bines, Montana City. +</p> +<p> +On car at Skiplap, Tuesday Night. +</p> +<p> +Dear Sis:—When you kept nagging me about "Who is the girl?" and I said +you could search me, you wouldn't have it that way. But, honestly, +until this morning I didn't know her myself. Now that I can put you +next, here goes. +</p> +<p> +One night last March, after I'd come back from the other side, I +happened into a little theatre on Broadway where a burlesque was +running. It's a rowdy little place—a music hall—but nice people go +there because, though it's stuffy, it's kept decent. +</p> +<p> +<i>She</i> was in a box with two men—one old and one young—and an older +woman. As soon as I saw her she had me lashed to the mast in a high +sea, with the great salt waves dashing over me. I never took much stock +in the tales about its happening at first sight, but they're as +matter-of-fact as market reports. Soon as I looked at her it seemed to +me I'd known her always. I was sure we knew each other better than any +two people between the Battery and Yonkers, and that I wasn't acting +sociable to sit down there away from her and pretend we were Strangers +Yet. Actually, it rattled me so I had to take the full count. If I +hadn't been wedged in between a couple of people that filled all the +space, and then some, it isn't any twenty to one that I wouldn't have +gone right up to her and asked her what she meant by cutting me. I was +udgy enough for it. But I kept looking and after awhile I was able to +sit up and ask what hit me. +</p> +<p> +She was dressed in something black and kind of shiny and wore a big +black hat fussed up with little red roses, and her face did more things +to me in a minute than all the rest I've ever seen. It was <i>full</i> of +little kissy places. Her lips were very red and her teeth were very +white, and I couldn't tell about her eyes. But she was bred up to the +last notch, I could see that. +</p> +<p> +Well, I watched her through the tobacco smoke until the last curtain +fell. They were putting on wraps for a minute or so, and I noticed that +the young fellow in the party, who'd been drinking all through the +show, wasn't a bit too steady to do an act on the high-wire. They left +the box and came down the stairs and I bunched into the crowd and let +myself ooze out with them, wondering if I'd ever see her again. +</p> +<p> +I fetched up at an exit on the side street, and there they were +directly in front of me. I just naturally drifted to one side and +continued my little private corner in crude rubber. It was drizzling in +a beastly way, the street was full of carriages, numbers were being +called, cab-drivers were insulting each other hoarsely, people dashing +out to see if their carriages weren't coming—everything in a whirl of +drizzle and dark and yells, with the horses' hoofs on the pavement +sounding like castanets. The two older people got into a carriage and +were driven off, while she and the young fellow waited for theirs. I +could see then that he was good and soused. He was the same lad they +throw on the screen when the "Old Homestead" Quartet sings "Where Is My +Wandering Boy To-night?" I could see she was annoyed and a little +worried, because he was past taking notice. +</p> +<p> +The man kept yelling the number of their carriage from time to time, +while the others he'd called were driving up—it was 249 if any one +ever tries to worm it out of you—and then I saw from her face that 249 +had wriggled pretty near to the curb, but was still kept away by +another carriage. She said something to the drunken cub and started to +reach the carriage by going out into the street behind the one in its +way. At the same time their carriage started forward, and the +inebriate, instead of going with her, started the other way to meet it, +and so, there she was alone on the slippery pavement in this muddle of +prancing horses and yelling terriers. If you can get any bets that I +was more than two seconds getting out there to her, take them all, and +give better than track odds if necessary. Then I guess she got rattled, +for when I would have led her back to the curb she made a dash the +other way and all but slipped under a team of bays that were just +aching to claw the roses off her hat. I saw she was helpless and +"turned around," so I just naturally grabbed her and she was so +frightened by this time that she grabbed me, and the result was that I +carried her to the sidewalk and set her down. Their carriage still +stood there with little Georgie Rumlets screaming to the driver to go +on. I had her inside in a jiffy, and they were off. Not a word about +"My Preserver!" though, of course, with the fright and noise and her +mortification, that was natural. +</p> +<p> +After that, you can believe it or not, she was the girl. And I never +dreamed of seeing her any place but New York again. +</p> +<p> +Well, this morning when I came up from below at the mine <i>she</i> was +standing there as if she had been waiting for me. She is Miss Avice +Milbrey, of New York. Her father and mother—fine people, the real +thing, I judge—were with her, members of a party Rulon Shepler has +with him on his car. They've been here all day; went through the mine; +had lunch with them, and later a walk with <i>her</i>, they leaving at 5.30 +for the East. We got on fairly well, considering. She is a wonder, if +anybody cross-examines you. She is about your height, I should judge, +about five feet four, though not so plump as you; still her look of +slenderness is deceptive. She's one of the build that aren't so big as +they look, nor yet so small as they look. Thoroughbred is the word for +her, style and action, as the horse people say, perfect. The poise of +her head, her mettlesome manner, her walk, show that she's been bred up +like a Derby winner. Her face is the one all the aristocrats are copied +from, finely cut nose, chin firm but dainty, lips just delicately full +and the reddest ever, and her colour when she has any a rose-pink. I +don't know that I can give you her eyes. You only see first that +they're deep and clear, but as near as anything they are the warm +slatish lavender blue you see in the little fall asters. She has so +much hair it makes her head look small, a sort of light chestnut, with +warmish streaks in it. Transparent is another word for her. You can +look right through her—eyes and skin are so clear. Her nature too is +the frank, open kind, "step in and examine our stock; no trouble to +show goods" and all that, and she is so beautifully unconscious of her +beauty that it goes double. At times she gave me a queer little +impression of being older at the game than I am, though she can't be a +day over twenty, but I guess that's because she's been around in +society so much. Probably she'd be called the typical New York girl, if +you wanted to talk talky talk. +</p> +<p> +Now I've told you everything, except that the people all asked kindly +after you, especially her mother and a Mrs. Drelmer, who's a four-horse +team all by herself. Oh, yes! No, I can't remember very well; some kind +of a brown walking skirt, short, and high boots and one of those blue +striped shirt-waists, the squeezy looking kind, and when we went to +walk, a red plaid golf cape; and for general all-around dearness—say, +the other entries would all turn green and have to be withdrawn. If any +one thinks this thing is going to end here you make a book on it right +away; take all you can get. Little Willie Lushlets was her brother—a +lovely boy if you get to talking reckless. With love to Lady +Abercrombie, and trusting, my dear Countess, to have the pleasure of +meeting you at Henley a fortnight hence, I remain, +</p> +<p> +Most cordially yours, +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +E. MALVERN DEVYR ST. TREVORS, +</p> +<p> +<i>Bart. & Notary Public.</i> +</p> +<p> +<i>From Mrs. Joseph Drelmer to the Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, New York.</i> +</p> +<p> +EN ROUTE, August 28th. +</p> +<p> +MY DEAR MAUBURN:—Ever hear of the tribe of Bines? If not, you need to. +The father, immensely wealthy, died a bit ago, leaving a widow and two +children, one of the latter being a marriageable daughter in more than +the merely technical sense. There is also a grandfather, now a little +descended into the vale of years, who, they tell me, has almost as many +dollars as you or I would know what to do with, a queer old chap who +lounges about the mountains and looks as if he might have anything but +money. We met the son and the old man at one of their mines yesterday. +They have a private car as large as Shepler's and even more sybaritic, +and they'd been making a tour of inspection over their properties. They +lunched with us. Knowing the Milbreys, you will divine the warmth of +their behaviour toward the son. It was too funny at first. Avice was +the only one to suspect at once that he was the very considerable +personage he is, and so she promptly sequestered him, with a skill born +of her long practice, in the depths of the earth, somewhere near China, +I fancy. Her dear parents were furious. Dressed as one of the miners +they took him to be an employee. The whole party, taking the cue from +outraged parenthood, treated him icily when he emerged from one of +those subterranean galleries with that tender sprig of girlishness. +That is, we were icy until, on the way up, he remaining in the depths, +Avice's dear mother began to rebuke the thoughtless minx for her +indiscretion of strolling through the earth with a working person. Then +Avice, sweet chatterbox, with joyful malice revealed that the young +man, whose name none of us had caught, was Bines, and that he owned the +mine we were in, and she didn't know how many others, nor did she +believe he knew himself. You should have felt the temperature rise. It +went up faster than we were going. +</p> +<p> +By the time we reached the surface the two Milbreys wore looks that +would have made the angel of peace and good-will look full of hatred +and distrust. Nothing would satisfy them but that we wait to thank the +young Croesus for his courtesy. I waited because I remembered the +daughter, and Oldaker and the Angstead twins waited out of decency. And +when the genius of the mine appeared from out his golden catacombs we +fell upon him in desperate kindness. +</p> +<p> +Later in the day I learned from him that he expects to bring his mother +and sister to New York this fall, and that they mean to make their home +there hereafter. Of course that means that the girl has notions of +marriage. What made me think so quickly of her is that in San +Francisco, at a theatre last winter, she was pointed out to me, and +while I do you not the injustice of supposing it would make the least +difference to you, she is rather a beauty, you'll find; figure fullish, +yellow hair, and a good-natured, well-featured, pleasing sort of face; +a bit rococo in manner, I suspect; a little too San Francisco, as so +many of these Western beauties are, but you'd not mind that, and a year +in New York will tone her down anyway. +</p> +<p> +Now if your dear uncle will only confer a lasting benefit upon the +world and his title upon you, by paying the only debt he is ever liable +to pay, I am persuaded you could be the man here. I know nothing of how +the fortune was left, nor of its extent, except that it's said to be +stiffish, and out here that means a big, round sum. The reason I write +promptly is that you may not go out of the country just now. That sweet +little Milbrey chit—really, Avice is far too old now for ingenue +parts—has not only grappled the son with hooks of steel, but from +remarks the good mother dropped concerning the fine qualities of her +son, she means to convert the daughter's <i>dot</i> into Milbrey prestige, +also. What a glorious double stroke it would be, after all their years +of trying. However, with your title, even in prospective, Fred Milbrey +is no rival for you to fear, providing you are on the ground as soon as +he, which is why I wish you to stay in New York. +</p> +<p> +I am indeed gratified that you have broken off whatever affair there +may have been between you and that music-hall person. Really, you know, +though they talk so about us, a young man can't mess about with that +sort of thing in New York as he can in London. So I'm glad she's gone +back, and as she is in no position to harm you I should pay no +attention to her threats. What under heaven did the creature expect? +Why <i>should</i> she have wanted to marry you? +</p> +<p> +I shall see you probably in another fortnight. +</p> +<p> +You know that Milbrey girl must get her effrontery direct from where +they make it. She pretended that at first she took young Bines for what +we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them +winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such +beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is <i>so</i> impulsively democratic." +Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge +our train has just rattled over. Sincerely, +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +JOSEPHINE PRESTON DRELMER. +</p> +<p> +<i>From Miss Avice Milbrey to Mrs. Cornelia Van Geist, New York.</i> +</p> +<p> +Mütterchen, dearest, I feel like that green hunter you had to sell last +spring—the one that would go at a fence with the most perfect display +of serious intentions, and then balk and bolt when it came to jumping. +Can it be that I, who have been trained from the cradle to the idea of +marrying for money, will bolt the gate after all the expense and pains +lavished upon my education to this end; after the years spent in +learning how to enchant, subdue, and exploit the most useful of all +animals, and the most agreeable, barring a few? And yet, right when I'm +the fittest—twenty-four years old, knowing all my good points and just +how to coerce the most admiration for each, able nicely to calculate +the exact disturbing effect of the <i>ensemble</i> upon any poor male, and +feeling confident of my excessively eligible <i>parti</i> when I decide for +him—in this situation, striven for so earnestly, I feel like bolting +the bars. How my trainer and jockey would weep tears of rage and +despair if they guessed it! +</p> +<p> +There, there—I know your shrewd grey eyes are crackling with curiosity +and, you want to know what it's all about, whether to scold me or +mother me, and will I please omit the <i>entrées</i> and get to the roast +mutton. But you dear, dear old aunt, you, there is more vagueness than +detail, and I know I'll strain your patience before I've done. But, to +relieve your mind, nothing at all has really happened. After all, it's +mostly a <i>troublesome state of mind</i>, that I shall doubtless find gone +when we reach Jersey City,—and in two ways this Western trip is +responsible for it. Do you know the journey itself has been +fascinating. Too bad so many of us cross the ocean twenty times before +we know anything of this country. We loiter in Paris, do the stupid +German watering-places, the Norway fjords, down to Italy for the +museums, see the <i>chateaux</i> of the Loire, or do the English +race-tracks, thinking we're 'mused; and all the time out here where the +sun goes down is an intensely interesting and beautiful country of our +own that we overlook. You know I'd never before been even as far as +Chicago. Now for the first time I can appreciate lots of those things +in Whitman, that— +</p> +<p> +"I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and free +poems, also. Now I see the secret of making the best persons: It is +to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth." +</p> +<p> +I mayn't have quoted correctly, but you know the sort of thing I mean, +that sounds so <i>breezy</i> and <i>stimulating</i>. And they've helped me +understand the immensity of the landscapes and the ideas out here, the +big, throbbing, rough young life, and under it all, as Whitman says, "a +meaning—Democracy, <i>American</i> Democracy." Really it's been +interesting, <i>the jolliest time of my life,</i> and it's got me all +unsettled. More than once in watching some scene typical of the region, +the plain, busy, earnest people, I've actually thrilled to think that +this was <i>my country</i>—felt that queer little tickling tingle that +locates your spine for you. I'm sure there's no <i>ennui</i> here. Some one +said the other day, "<i>Ennui</i> is a disease that comes from living on +other people's money." I said no, that I'd often had as fine an attack +as if I'd been left a billion, that <i>ennui</i> is when you don't know what +to do next and wouldn't do it if you did. Well, here they always <i>do</i> +know what to do next, and as one of them told me, "<i>We always get up +early the day before to do it</i>." +</p> +<p> +Auntie, dear, the trip has made me <i>more restless and dissatisfied</i> +than ever. It makes me want to <i>do</i> something—to <i>risk</i> something, to +want to <i>want</i> something more than I've ever learned to want. +</p> +<p> +That's one reason I'm acting badly. The other will interest you more. +</p> +<p> +It's no less a reason than <i>the athletic young Bayard</i> who cheated +those cab-horses of their prey that night Fred didn't drink all the +Scotch whiskey in New York. Our meeting, and the mater's treatment of +him before she discovered who he was, are too delicious to write. I +must wait to tell you. +</p> +<p> +It is enough to say that now I heard his name it recalled nothing to +me, and I took him from his dress to be a <i>workingman</i> in the mine we +visiting, though from his speech and manner of a gentleman, someone in +authority. Dear, he was <i>so</i> dear and so Westernly breezy and +progressive and enterprising and so <i>appallingly candid</i>. I've been the +"one woman", the "unknown but remembered ideal" since that encounter. +Of course, that was to be said, but strangely enough he meant it. He +was actually and unaffectedly making love to me. He's not so large or +tall, but quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not +beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad +high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest +quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever +saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would <i>eat it off +even</i> clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, +or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not +used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating +eyes, to show if I'm worth the <i>asking price</i>. But here was real love +being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others because +I <i>liked him at once</i>). I don't mind telling you he moved me, partly +because I had wondered about him from that night, and partly because of +all I had come to feel about this new place and the new people, and +because he seemed such a fine, active specimen of Western manhood. I +won't tell you all the wild, lawless thoughts that scurried and +<i>sneaked</i> through my mind—they don't matter now—for all at once it +came out that he was the only son of that wealthy Bines who died awhile +ago—you remember the name was mentioned that night at your house when +they were discussing the exodus of Western millionaires to New York; +some one named the father as one who liked coming to New York to +dissipate occasionally, but who was still rooted in the soil where his +millions grew. +</p> +<p> +There was the son before me, just <i>an ordinary man of millions</i>, after +all—and my little toy balloon of romance that I'd been floating so +gaily on a string of sentiment was pricked to nothing in an instant. I +felt my nostrils expand with the excitement of the chase, and +thereafter I was my <i>coldly professional self</i>. If that young man has +not now a high estimate of my charms of person and mind, then have my +ways forgot their cunning and I be no longer the daughter of Margaret +Milbrey, <i>née</i> van Schoule. +</p> +<p> +But, Mütterchen, now comes the disgraceful part. I'm afraid of myself, +even in spite of our affairs being so bad. Dad has doubtless told you +something must be done very soon, and I seem to be the only one to do +it. And yet I am shying at the gate. This trip has unsettled me, I tell +you, letting me, among other things, see my old self. Before I always +rather liked the idea of marriage, that is, after I'd been out a couple +of years—not too well, but well enough—and now some way I rebel, not +from scruples, but from pure selfishness. I'm beginning to find that I +want to <i>enjoy myself</i> and to find, further, that I'm not indisposed to +<i>take chances</i>—as they say out here. Will you understand, I wonder? +And do women who sell themselves ever find any real pleasure in the +bargain? The most eloquent examples, the ones that sell themselves to +<i>many men,</i> lead wretched lives. But does the woman who sells herself +to <i>but one</i> enjoy life any more? She's surely as bad, from any +standpoint of morals, and I imagine sometimes she is less happy. At any +rate, she has less <i>freedom</i> and more <i>obligations</i> under her contract. +You see I am philosophising pretty coldly. Now be <i>horrified</i> if you +will. +</p> +<p> +I am selfish by good right, though. "Haven't we spent all our surplus +in keeping you up for a good marriage?" says the mater, meaning by a +good marriage that I shall bring enough money into the family to <i>"keep +up its traditions."</i> I am, in other words, an investment from which +they expect large returns. I told her I hoped she could trace her +selfishness to its source as clearly as I could mine, and as for the +family traditions, Fred was preserving those in an excellent medium. +Which was very ugly in me, and I cried afterwards and told her how +sorry I was. +</p> +<p> +Are you shocked by my cold calculations? Well, I am trying to let you +understand me, and I-- +</p> +<p> +"...have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth." +</p> +<p> +I am cursed not only with consistent feminine longings and desires, +but, in spite of my training and the examples around me, with a +disinclination to be wholly vicious. Awhile ago marriage meant only +more luxury and less worry about money. I never gave any thought to the +husband, certainly never concerned myself with any notions of duty or +obligation toward him. The girls I know are taught painstakingly how to +get a husband, but nothing of how to be a wife. The husband in my case +was to be an inconvenience, but doubtless an amusing one. For all his +oppression, if there were that, and even for <i>the mere offence of his +existence,</i> I should wreak my spite merrily on his vulgar dollars. +</p> +<p> +But you are saying that I like the present eligible. That's the +trouble. I like him so well I haven't the heart to marry him. When I +was twenty I could have loved him devotedly, I believe. Now something +seems to be gone, some freshness or fondness. I can still love—I know +it only too well night and day—but it must be a different kind of man. +He is so very young and reverent and tender, and in a way so +unsophisticated. He is so afraid of me, for all his pretence of +boldness. +</p> +<p> +Is it because I must be taken by sheer force? I'll not be surprised if +it is. Do we not in our secret soul of souls nourish this beatitude: +"Blessed is the man who <i>destroys all barriers"?</i> Florence Akemit said +as much one day, and Florence, poor soul, knows something of the +matter. Do we not sit defiantly behind the barriers, insolently +challenging—threatening capital punishment for any assault, relaxing +not one severity, yet falling meek and submissive and glad, to the man +who brutally and honestly beats them down, and <i>destroys them utterly?</i> +So many fail by merely beating them down. Of course if an <i>untidy +litter</i> is left we make a row. We reconstruct the barrier and that +particular assailant is thenceforth deprived of a combatant's rights. +What a dear you are that I can say these things to you! Were girls so +frank in your time? +</p> +<p> +Well, my knight of the "golden cross" (<i>joke; laughter and loud +applause, and cries of "Go on!"</i>) has a little, much indeed, of the +impetuous in him, but, alas! not enough. He has a pretty talent for it, +but no genius. If I were married to him to-morrow, as surely as I am a +woman I should be made to inflict pain upon him the next day, with an +insane stress to show him, perhaps, I was not the ideal woman he had +thought me—perhaps out of a jealousy of that very ideal I had +inspired—rational creatures, aren't we?—beg pardon—not we, then, but +I. Now he, being a real likable man of a man, can I do that—for money? +Do I want the money <i>badly enough?</i> Would I not even rather be +penniless with the man who coerced every great passion and littlest +impulse, body and soul—<i>perhaps with a very hateful insolence of power +over me?</i> Do you know, I suspect sometimes that I've been trained down +too fine, as to my nerves, I mean. I doubt if it's safe to pamper and +trim and stimulate and refine a woman in that hothouse atmosphere—at +least <i>if she's a healthy woman</i>. She's too apt sometime to break her +gait, get the bit of tradition between her teeth, and then let her +impulses run away with her. +</p> +<p> +Oh, Mütterchen, I am so sick and sore, and yet filled with a strange +new zest for this old puzzle of life. Will I ever be the same again? +This man is going to ask me to marry him the moment I am ready for him +to. Shall I be kind enough to tell him no, or shall I steel myself to +go in and hurt him—<i>make him writhe?</i> +</p> +<p> +And yet do you know what he gave me while I was with him? I wonder if +women feel it commonly? It was a desire for <i>motherhood</i>—a curiously +vivid and very definite longing—entirely irrespective of him, you +understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all +moved toward him, he made me sheerly <i>want</i> to be a mother! Or is it +only that men we don't love make us feel motherly? +</p> +<p> +Am I wholly irrational and selfish and bad, or what am I? I know you'll +love me, whatever it is, and I wish now I could snuggle on that soft, +cushiony shoulder of yours and go to sleep. +</p> +<p> +Can anything be more pitiful than "a fine old family" afflicted with +<i>dry-rot</i> like ours? I'm always amused when I read about the suffering +in the tenements. The real anguish is up in the homes like ours. We +have <i>to do without so very many more things,</i> and mere hunger and cold +are easy compared to the suffering we feel. +</p> +<p> +Perhaps when I'm back to that struggle for appearances, I'll relent and +"barter my charms" as the old novels used to say, sanely and decently +like a well brought-up New York girl—<i>with certain reservations,</i> to a +man who can support the family in the style to which it wants to become +accustomed. Yet there may be a way out. There is a Bines daughter, for +example, and mamma, who never does one half where she can as well do +two, will marry her to Fred if she can. On the other hand, Joe Drelmer +was putting in words for young Mauburn, who will be Lord Casselthorpe +when his disreputable old uncle dies. +</p> +<p> +She hasn't yet spent what she got for introducing the Canovass prince +to that oldest Elarton girl, so if she secures this prize for Mauburn, +she'll be comfortable for a couple of more years. Perhaps I could turn +my hand to something like that. I know the ropes as well as she does. +</p> +<p> +There, it <i>is</i> a punishment of a letter, isn't it, dear? But I've known +<i>every bad place in it,</i> and I've religiously put in your "Come, come, +child!" every time it belonged, so you've not still to scold me, for +which be comforted a little; and give me only a few words of cheerful +approval if your conscience will let you. I need that, after all, more +than advice. Look for us in a week. With a bear-hug for you, +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +AVICE. +</p> +<p> +P.S. Is it true that Ned Ristine and his wife have fixed it up and are +together again since his return? Not that I'm interested especially, +but I chanced to hear it gossiped the other day here on the car. +Indeed, I hope you know <i>how thoroughly I detest that man</i>! +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH10"><!-- CH10 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER X. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Price of Averting a Scandal +</h3> +<p> +As the train resumed speed after stopping at a station, Grant, the +porter, came back to the observation room of the Bines car with a +telegram for Uncle Peter. The old man read it and for a time mused +himself into seeming oblivion. Across the car, near by, Percival +lounged in a wicker arm-chair and stared cheerfully out into the +gathering night. He, too, was musing, his thoughts keeping pleasantly +in time with the rhythmic click of the wheels over the rail-joints. +After a day in the open air he was growing sleepy. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter aroused him by making his way back to the desk, the +roll-top of which he lifted with a sudden rattle. He called to +Percival. Sitting down at the desk he read the telegram again and +handed it to the young man, who read: +</p> +<p> +"Party will try to make good; no bluff. Won't compromise inside limit +set. Have seen paper and wish another interview before following +original instructions. Party will wait forty-eight hours before acting. +Where can you be seen? Wire office to-night. +</p> +<p> +"TAFE & COPLEN." +</p> +<p> +The young man looked up with mild interest. Uncle Peter was writing on +a telegraph blank. +</p> +<p> +"TAFE & COPLEN, Butte, Montana. +</p> +<p> +"Due Butte 7.30 A.M. to-morrow. Join me on car nought sixteen, go to +Montana City. +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"PETER BINES. +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"D.H.F. 742." +</p> +<p> +To the porter who answered his ring he handed the message to be put off +at the first stop. +</p> +<p> +"But what's it all about?" asked Percival, seeing by Uncle Peter's +manner that he was expected to show concern. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter closed the desk, lighted one of his best cigars, and +dropped into a capacious chair. The young man seated himself opposite. +</p> +<p> +"Well, son, it's a matter I cal'lated first off to handle myself, but +it looks now as if you better be in on it. I don't know just how much +you knew about your pa's ways, but, anyhow, you wouldn't play him to +grade much higher above standard than the run of 'em out here that has +had things comin' too easy for 'em. He was all right, Dan'l J. was. God +knows I ain't discountin' the comfort I've always took in him. He'd +stand acid all right, at any stage of the game. Don't forget that about +your pa." +</p> +<p> +The young man reflected. +</p> +<p> +"The worst story I ever heard of pa was about the time he wanted to +draw twenty thousand dollars from the bank in Tacoma. They telegraphed +the Butte National to wire his description, and the answer was 'tall +and drunk.'" +</p> +<p> +"Well, son, his periodicals wa'n't all. Seems as if this crowd has a +way fur women, and they generally get the gaff because they're so +blamed easy. You don't hear of them Eastern big men gettin' it so +often, but I've seen enough of 'em to know it ain't because they're any +straighter. They're jest a little keener on business propositions. They +draw a fine sight when it comes to splittin' pennies, while men out +here like your pa is lavish and careless. You know about lots of the +others. +</p> +<p> +"There's Sooley Pentz, good-hearted a man as ever sacked ore, and +plenty long-headed enough for the place he's bought in the Senate, but +Sooley is restless until he's bought up one end of every town he goes +into, from Eden plumb over to Washington, D. C.,—and 'tain't ever the +Sunday-school end Sooley buys either. If he was makin' two million a +month instead of one Sooley'd grieve himself to death because they +don't make that five-dollar kind of wine fast enough. +</p> +<p> +"Then there was Seth Larby. We're jest gettin' to the details of Seth's +expense account after he found the Lucky Cuss. I see the courts have +decided against the widow and children, and so they'll have to worry +off about five or six millions for the poor lady he duped so +outrageously—with a checker on the chips. +</p> +<p> +"As fur old Nate Kranil, a lawyer from Cheyenne was tellin' me his +numerous widows by courtesy was goin' to form an association and share +his leavin's pro raty. Said they'd all got kind of acquainted and made +up their minds they was such a reg'lar band of wolves that none of 'em +was able to do any of the others in the long run, so they'd divide +even. +</p> +<p> +"Then there was Dave Kisber, and—" +</p> +<p> +"Never mind any more—" Percival broke in. "Do you mean that my father +was mixed up like those old Indians?" +</p> +<p> +"Looks now as if he was. That telegram from Coplen is concernin' of a +lady—a party that was with him when he died. The press report sent out +that the young and beautiful Mrs. Bines was with her husband, and was +prostrated with grief. Your ma and Pishy was up to Steamin' Springs at +the time, and I kep' it from them all right." +</p> +<p> +"But <i>how</i> was he entangled?—to what extent?" +</p> +<p> +"That's what we'll get more light on in the morning. She made a play +right after the will was filed fur probate, and I told Coplen to see +jest what grounds she had, and I'd settle myself if she really had any +and wa'n't unreasonable." +</p> +<p> +"It's just a question of blackmail, isn't it? What did you offer?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, she has a slew of letters—gettin' them is a matter of sentiment +and keepin' the thing quiet. Then she claims to have a will made last +December and duly witnessed, givin' her the One Girl outright, and a +million cash. So you can see she ain't anything ordinary. I told Coplen +to offer her a million cash for everything rather'n have any fuss. I +was goin' to fix it up myself and keep quiet about it." +</p> +<p> +"And this telegram looks as if she wanted to fight." +</p> +<p> +"Well, mebbe that and mebbe it means that she knows we <i>don't</i> want to +fight considerable more than a million dollars' worth." +</p> +<p> +"How much do you think she'll hold out for?" +</p> +<p> +"Can't tell; you don't know how big pills she's been smokin'." +</p> +<p> +"But, damn it all, that's robbery!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes—but it's her deal. You remember when Billy Brue was playin' +seven-up with a stranger in the Two-Hump saloon over to Eden, and +Chiddie Fogle the bartender called him up front and whispered that he'd +jest seen the feller turn a jack from the bottom. 'Well,' says Billie, +looking kind of reprovin' at Chiddie, 'it was <i>his deal,</i> wa'n't it?' +Now it's sure this blond party's deal, and we better reckon ahead a +mite before we start any roughhouse with her. You're due to find out if +you hadn't better let her turn her jack and trust to gettin' even on +your deal. You got a claim staked out in New York, and a scandal like +this might handicap you in workin' it. And 'tain't as if hushin' her up +was something we couldn't well afford. And think of how it would +torment your ma to know of them doin's, and how 'twould shame Pish in +company. Of course, rob'ry is rob'ry, but mebbe it's our play to be +sporty like Billy Brue was." +</p> +<p> +"Pretty bad, isn't it? I never suspected pa was in anything of this +sort." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I knew Dan'l J. purty well, and I spleened against some of his +ways, but that's done fur. Now the folks out in this part of the +country have come to expect it from a man like him. They don't mind so +much. But them New York folks—well, I thought mebbe you'd like to take +a clean bill of health when you settle in that centre of culture and +enlightenment,—and remember your ma and Pish." +</p> +<p> +"Of course the exposure would mean a lot of cheap notoriety—" +</p> +<p> +"Well, and not so all-fired cheap at that, even if we beat. I've heard +that lawyers are threatenin' to stop this thing of workin' entirely fur +their health. There's that to weigh up." +</p> +<p> +"But I hate to be done." +</p> +<p> +"Well, wouldn't you be worse done if you let a matter of money, when +you're reekin' with it, keep you from protectin' your pa's name? Do you +want folks to snicker when they read that 'lovin' husband and father' +business on his gravestone? My! I guess that young woman and her folks +we met the other day'd be tickled to death to think they knew you after +they'd read one of them Sunday newspaper stories with pictures of us +all, and an extry fine one of the millionaire's dupe, basely enticed +from her poor but honest millinery business in Spokane." +</p> +<p> +Percival shuddered. +</p> +<p> +"Well, let's see what Coplen has to say in the morning. If it can be +settled within reason I suppose we better give up." +</p> +<p> +"That's my view now, and the estate bein' left as simply as it was, we +can make in the payments unbeknownst to the folks." +</p> +<p> +They said good-night, and Percival went off to dream that a cab-horse +of mammoth size was threatening to eat Miss Milbrey unless he drove it +to Spokane Falls and bought two million millinery shops. +</p> +<p> +When he was jolted to consciousness they were in the switching yard at +Butte, and the car was being coupled to the rear of the train made up +for Montana City. He took advantage of the stop to shave. By the time +he was dressed they were under way again, steaming out past the big +smelters that palled the sky with heavy black smoke. +</p> +<p> +At the breakfast-table he found Uncle Peter and Coplen. +</p> +<p> +"I'm inclined," said the lawyer, as Percival peeled a peach, "to agree +with your grandfather. This woman—if I may use the term—is one of the +nerviest leg-pullers you're ever likely to strike." +</p> +<p> +"Lord! I should hope so," said Percival, with hearty emphasis. +</p> +<p> +"She studied your father and she knew him better than any of us, I +judge. She certainly knew he was liable to go at any time, in exactly +the way he did go. Why, she even had a doctor down from 'Frisco to +Monterey when they were there about a year ago—introduced him as an +old friend and had him stay around three days—just to give her a +private professional opinion on his chances. As to this will, the +signature is undoubtedly genuine, but my judgment is she procured it in +some way on a blank sheet of paper and had the will written above on +sheets like it. As it conforms to the real will word for word, +excepting the bequests to her, she must have had access to that before +having this one written. Of course that helps to make it look as if the +testator had changed his mind only as to the one legatee—makes it look +plausible and genuine. The witnesses were of course parties to the +fraud, but I seriously question our ability to prove there was fraud. +We think they procured a copy of the will we kept in our safe at Butte +through the clerk that Tafe fired awhile back because of his drinking +habits and because he was generally suspicious of him. Of course that's +only surmise." +</p> +<p> +"But can't we fight it?" demanded Percival, hungrily attacking the +crisp, brown little trout. +</p> +<p> +"Well, if we allowed it to come to a contest, we might expose the whole +thing, and then again we might not. I tell you she's clever. She's +shown it at every step. Now then, if you do fight," and the lawyer +bristled, as if his fighting spirit were not too far under the control +of his experience-born caution, "why, you have litigation that's bound +to last for years, and it would be pretty expensive. I admit the case +is tempting to a lawyer, but in the end you don't know what you'll get, +especially with this woman. Why, do you know she's already, we've +found, made up to two different judges that might be interested in any +litigation she'd have, and she's cultivating others. The role of +Joseph," he continued, "has never, to the best of my belief, been +gracefully played in the world's history, and you may have noticed that +the members of the Montana judiciary seem to be particularly awkward in +their essays at it. In the end, then, you'll be out a lot of money even +if you win. On the other hand, you have a chance to settle it for good +and all, getting back everything—excepting the will, which, of course, +we couldn't touch or even concede the existence of, but which would, if +such an instrument <i>were</i> extant, be destroyed in the presence of a +witness whose integrity I could rely upon—well—as upon my own. The +letters which she has, and which I have seen, are also such as would +tend to substantiate her claims and make the large bequests to her seem +plausible—and they're also such letters as—I should infer—the family +would rather wish not to be made public, as they would be if it came to +trial." +</p> +<p> +"Jest what I told him," remarked Uncle Peter. +</p> +<p> +"What she'll hold out for I don't know, but I'd suggest this, that I +meet her attorney and put the case exactly as I've found it out as to +the will, letting them suspect, perhaps, that we have admissions of +some sort from Hornby, the clerk, that might damage them. Then I can +put it that, while we have no doubt of our ability to dispose of the +will, we do wish to avoid the scandal that would ensue upon a +publication of the letters they hold and the exposure of her relations +with the testator, and that upon this purely sentimental ground we are +willing to be bled to a reasonable extent. The One Girl is a valuable +mine, but my opinion is she'll be glad to get two million if we seem +reluctant to pay that much." +</p> +<p> +With that gusto of breakfast-appetite which arouses the envy of persons +whose alimentation is not what it used to be, Percival had devoured +ruddy peaches and purple grapes, trout that had breasted their swift +native currents that very morning, crisp little curls of bacon, muffins +that were mere flecks of golden foam, honey with the sweetness of a +thousand fragrant blossoms, and coffee that was oily with richness. For +a time he had seemed to make no headway against his hill-born appetite. +The lawyer, who had broken his fast with a strip of dry toast and a cup +of weak tea, had watched him with unfeigned and reminiscent interest. +Grant, who stood watchful to replenish his plate, and whose pleasure it +was to see him eat, regarded him with eyes fairly dewy from sympathy. +To A. L. Jackson, the cook, on a trip for hot muffins, he observed, "He +eats jes' like th' ole man. I suttin'y do love t' see that boy behave +when he got his fresh moral appetite on him. He suttin'y do ca'y +hisse'f mighty handsome." +</p> +<p> +With Coplen's final recommendation to settle Percival concluded his +meal, and after surveying with fondly pleasant regret the devastation +he had wrought, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigar. He was +no longer in a mood to counsel fight, even though he disliked to +submit. +</p> +<p> +"You know," he reminded Uncle Peter, "what that editorial in the Rock +Rip <i>Champion</i> said about me when we were over there: 'We opine that +the Junior Bines will become a warm piece of human force if he isn't +ground-sluiced too early in the game.' Well—and here I'm +ground-sluiced the first rattle out of the box." +</p> +<p> +But the lawyer went over the case again point by point, and Percival +finally authorised him to make the best settlement possible. He cared +as little for the money as Uncle Peter did, large sum though it was. +And then his mother and sister would be spared a great humiliation, and +his own standing where most he prized it would not be jeopardised. +</p> +<p> +"Settle the best you can," was his final direction to Coplen. The +lawyer left them at the next station to wait for a train back to Butte. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH11"><!-- CH11 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XI. +</h2> + +<h3> +How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose +</h3> +<p> +As the train moved on after leaving Coplen, Percival fell to thinking +of the type of man his father had been. +</p> +<p> +"Uncle Peter," he said, suddenly, "they don't <i>all</i> cut loose, do they? +Now <i>you</i> never did?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I did, son. I yanked away from all the hitchin' straps of decency +when I first struck it, jest like all the rest of 'em. Oh, I was an +Indian in my time—a reg'ler measly hop-pickin' Siwash at that. +</p> +<p> +"You don't know, of course, what livin' out in the open on bacon and +beans does fur a healthy man's cravin's. He gets so he has visions day +and night of high-livin'—nice broiled steaks with plenty of fat on +'em, and 'specially cake and preserves and pies like mother used to +make—fat, juicy mince pies that would assay at least eight hundred +dollars a ton in raisins alone, say nothing of the baser metals. He +sees the crimp around the edges made with a fork, and the picture of a +leaf pricked in the middle to vent the steam, and he gets to smellin' +'em when they're pulled smokin' hot out of the oven. And frosted cake, +the layer kind—about five layers, with stratas of jelly and custard +and figs and raisins and whatever it might be. I saw 'em fur years, +with a big cuttin' out to show the cross-section. +</p> +<p> +"But a man that has to work by the day fur enough to take him through +the prospectin' season can't blow any of his dust on frivolous things +like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I +never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either. +</p> +<p> +"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to +them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a +stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into +the bake-shop windows and just gloat.—'rubber' they call it now'days. +My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed +that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest +kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin' +was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights. +</p> +<p> +"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The +bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did +torment a body so! It was kep' by a Chink, and the star play in the +window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the +place—on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it +looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that +concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with—and +a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much—showin' a +cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that +jest made a man want to give up. +</p> +<p> +"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window +and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The Chink was +standin' in the door the first day. +</p> +<p> +"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me. +</p> +<p> +"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head. +</p> +<p> +"Next day I was there again, yearnin'. The Chink see me and come out. +</p> +<p> +"'One doll' li'l piece", he says. +</p> +<p> +"I says, 'No, you slant-eyed heathen,' or some such name as that. But +when you're looking fur tests of character, son, don't let that one +hide away from you. I'd play that fur the heftiest moral courage <i>I've</i> +ever showed, anyway. +</p> +<p> +"The third day it was gone and a lemon pie was there, all with nice +kind of brownish snow on top. I was on my way out then, pushin' the +mule. I took one lingerin' last look and felt proud of myself when I +saw the hump in the pack made by my bag of beans. +</p> +<p> +"'That-like flummery food's no kind of diet to be trackin' up pay-rock +on,' I says to kind of cheer myself. +</p> +<p> +"Four weeks later I struck it. And six weeks after that I had things in +shape so't I was able to leave. I was nearer to other places 'twas +bigger, but I made fur Grand Bar, lettin' on't I wanted to see about a +claim there. I'd 'a' felt foolish to have anyone know jest why I was +makin' the trip. +</p> +<p> +"On the way I got to havin' night-mares, 'fear that Chink would be +gone. I knew if he was I'd go down to my grave with something comin' to +me because I'd never found jest that identical cake I'd been famishin' +fur. +</p> +<p> +"When I got up front of the window, you can believe it or not, but that +Chink was jest settin' down another like it. Now you know how that +Monte Cristo carried on after he'd proved up. Well, I got into his +class, all right. I walked in past a counter where the Chink had +crullers and gingerbread and a lot of low-grade stuff like that, and I +set down to a little table with this here marble oil-cloth on it. +</p> +<p> +"'Bring her back,' I says, kind of tremblin', and pointin' to the +window. +</p> +<p> +"The Chink pattered up and come back with a little slab of it on a tin +plate. I jest let it set there. +</p> +<p> +"'Bring it all,' I says; 'I want the hull ball of wax.' +</p> +<p> +"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of cautious. +</p> +<p> +"I pulled out my buckskin pouch. 'Bring her back and take it out of +that,' I says—'when I get through,' I says. +</p> +<p> +"He grinned and hurried back with it. Well, son, nothing had ever +tasted so good to me, and I ain't say'n' that wa'n't the biggest worth +of all my money't I ever got. I'd been trainin' fur that cake fur +twenty odd year, and proddin' my imagination up fur the last ten weeks. +</p> +<p> +"I et that all, and I et another one with jelly, and a bunch of little +round ones with frostin' and raisins, and a bottle of brandied peaches, +and about a dozen cream puffs, and half a lemon pie with frostin' on +top, and four or five Charlotte rushes. The Chink had learned to make +'em all in 'Frisco. +</p> +<p> +"That meal set me back $34.75. When I went out I noticed the plain +sponge cakes and fruit cakes and dried-apple pies—things that had been +out of my reach fur twenty years, and—My! but they did look common and +unappetisin'. I kind of shivered at the sight of 'em. +</p> +<p> +"I ordered another one of the big cakes and two more lemon pies fur the +next day. +</p> +<p> +"Fur four days I led a life of what they call 'unbridled +licentiousness' while that Chink pandered to me. I never was any hand +fur drink, but I cut loose in that fancy-food joint, now I tell you. +</p> +<p> +"The fifth day I begun to taper off. I begun to have a suspicion the +stuff was made of sawdust with plasty of Paris fur frostin'. The sixth +day I was sure it was sawdust, and my shameful debauch comes to an end +right there. I remembered the story about the feller that cal'lated his +chickens wouldn't tell any different, so he fed 'em sawdust instead of +corn-meal, and by-and-bye a settin' of eggs hatched out—twelve of the +chickens had wooden legs and the thirteenth was a woodpecker. Say, I +felt so much like two cords of four-foot stove wood that it made me +plumb nervous to ketch sight of a saw-buck. +</p> +<p> +"It took jest three weeks fur me to get right inside again. My, but +meat victuals and all like that did taste mighty scrumptious when I +could handle 'em again. +</p> +<p> +"After that when I'd been out in the hills fur a season I'd get that +hankerin' back, and when I come in I'd have a little frosted-cake orgy +now and then. But I kep' myself purty well in hand. I never overdone it +like that again, fur you see I'd learned something. First off, there +was the appetite. I soon see the gist of my fun had been the <i>wantin'</i> +the stuff, the appetite fur it, and if you nursed an appetite along and +deluded it with promises it would stay by you like one of them meachin' +yellow dogs. But as soon as you tried to do the good-fairy act by it, +and give it all it hankered fur, you killed it off, and then you +wouldn't be entertained by it no more, and kep' stirred up and busy. +</p> +<p> +"And so I layed out to nurse my appetite, and aggravate it by never +givin' it quite all it wanted. When I was in the hills after a day's +tramp I'd let it have its fling on such delicacies as I could turn out +of the fryin'-pan myself, but when I got in again I'd begin to act +bossy with it. It's <i>wantin'</i> reasonably that keeps folks alive, I +reckon. The mis-a-blest folks I've ever saw was them that had killed +all their wants by overfeedin' 'em. +</p> +<p> +"Then again, son, in this world of human failin's there ain't anything +ever <i>can</i> be as pure and blameless and satisfyin' as the stuff in a +bake-shop window looks like it is. Don't ever furget that. It's jest +too good to be true. And in the next place—pastry's good in its way, +but the best you can ever get is what's made fur you at home—I'm +talkin' about a lot of things now that you don't probably know any too +much about. Sometimes the boys out in the hills spends their time +dreamin' fur other things besides pies and cakes, but that system of +mine holds good all through the deal—you can play it from soda to hock +and not lose out. And that's why I'm outlastin' a lot of the boys and +still gettin' my fun out of the game. +</p> +<p> +"It's a good system fur you, son, while you're learnin' to use your +head. Your pa played it at first, then he cut loose. And you need it +worse'n ever he did, if I got you sized up right. He touched me on one +side, and touched you on the other. But you can last longer if you jest +keep the system in mind a little. Remember what I say about the window +stuff." +</p> +<p> +Percival had listened to the old man's story with proper amusement, and +to the didactics with that feeling inevitable to youth which says +secretly, as it affects to listen to one whom it does not wish to +wound, "Yes, yes, I know, but you were living in another day, long ago, +and you are not <i>me!</i>" +</p> +<p> +He went over to the desk and began to scribble a name on the pad of +paper. +</p> +<p> +"If a man really loves one woman he'll behave all right," he observed +to Uncle Peter. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I ain't preachin' like some do. Havin' a good time is all right; +it's the only thing, I reckon, sometimes, that justifies the misery of +livin'. But cuttin' loose is bad jedgment. A man wakes up to find that +his natural promptin's has cold-decked him. If I smoked the best +see-gars now all the time, purty soon I'd get so't I wouldn't +appreciate 'em. That's why I always keep some of these out-door +free-burners on hand. One of them now and then makes the others taste +better." +</p> +<p> +The young man had become deaf to the musical old voice. +</p> +<p> +He was writing: +</p> +<p> +"MY DEAR MISS MILBREY:—I send you the first and only poem I ever +wrote. I may of course be a prejudiced critic, but it seems to me to +possess in abundance those graces of metre, rhyme, high thought in +poetic form, and perfection of finish which the critics unite in +demanding. To be honest with you—and why should I conceal that conceit +which every artist is said secretly to feel in his own production?—I +have encountered no other poem in our noble tongue which has so moved +and captivated me. +</p> +<p> +"It is but fair to warn you that this is only the first of a volume of +similar poems which I contemplate writing. And as the theme appears now +to be inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the +number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this +author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has +been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady <i>Lyre,</i> in the hope that +he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and +ideal perfection for which the humbler bards have hitherto striven in +vain. +</p> +<p> +"Sincerely and seriously yours, +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"P. PERCIVAL BINES" +</p> +<p> +Thus ran the exalted poem on a sheet of note-paper: +</p> +<pre> + "AVICE MILBREY. + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, + Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey, Avice Milbrey. + And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it." +</pre> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH12"><!-- CH12 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XII. +</h2> + +<h3> +Plans for the Journey East +</h3> +<p> +Until late in the afternoon they rode through a land that was bleak and +barren of all grace or cheer. The dull browns and greys of the +landscape were unrelieved by any green or freshness save close by the +banks of an occasional stream. The vivid blue of a cloudless sky served +only to light up its desolation to greater disadvantage. It was a grim +unsmiling land, hard to like. +</p> +<p> +"This may be God's own country," said Percival once, looking out over a +stretch of grey sage-brush to a mass of red sandstone jutting up, high, +sharp, and ragged, in the distance—"but it looks to me as if He got +tired of it Himself and gave up before it was half finished." +</p> +<p> +"A man has to work here a few years to love it," said Uncle Peter, +shortly. +</p> +<p> +As they left the car at Montana City in the early dusk, that thriving +metropolis had never seemed so unattractive to Percival; so rough, new, +garish, and wanting so many of the softening charms of the East. +Through the wide, unpaved streets, lined with their low wooden +buildings, they drove to the Bines mansion, a landmark in the oldest +and most fashionable part of the town. For such distinctions are made +in Western towns as soon as the first two shanties are built. The Bines +house had been a monument to new wealth from the earliest days of the +town, which was a fairly decent antiquity for the region. But the house +and the town grated harshly now upon the young man. He burned with a +fever of haste to be off toward the East—over the far rim of hills, +and the farther higher mountain range, to a land that had warmed +genially under three hundred years of civilised occupancy—where people +had lived and fraternised long enough to create the atmosphere he +craved so ardently. +</p> +<p> +While Chinese Wung lighted the hall gas and busied himself with their +hats and bags, Psyche Bines came down the stairs to greet them. Never +had her youthful freshness so appealed to her brother. The black gown +she wore emphasised her blond beauty. As to give her the aspect of +mourning one might have tried as reasonably to hide the radiance of the +earth in springtime with that trifling pall. +</p> +<p> +Her brother kissed her with more than his usual warmth. Here was one to +feel what he felt, to sympathise warmly with all those new yearnings +that were to take him out of the crude West. She wanted, for his own +reasons, all that he wanted. She understood him; and she was his ally +against the aged and narrow man who would have held them to life in +that physical and social desert. +</p> +<p> +"Well, sis, here we are!" he began. "How fine you're looking! And how +is Mrs. Throckmorton? Give her my love and ask her if she can be ready +to start for the effete East in twenty minutes." +</p> +<p> +It was his habit to affect that he constantly forgot his mother's name. +He had discovered years before that he was sometimes able thus to +puzzle her momentarily. +</p> +<p> +"Why, Percival!" exclaimed this excellent lady, coming hurriedly from +the kitchen regions, "I haven't a thing packed. Twenty minutes! +Goodness! I do declare!" +</p> +<p> +It was an infirmity of Mrs. Bines that she was unable to take otherwise +than literally whatever might be said to her; an infirmity known and +played upon relentlessly by her son. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, with a show of irritation. "I suppose we'll +be delayed then. That's like a woman. Never ready on time. Probably we +can't start now till after dinner. Now hurry! You know that boat leaves +the dock for Tonsilitis at 8.23—I hope you won't be seasick." +</p> +<p> +"Boat—dock—" Mrs. Bines stopped to convince herself beyond a +certainty that no dock nor boat could be within many hundred miles of +her by any possible chance. +</p> +<p> +"Never mind," said Psyche; "give ma half an hour's notice and she can +start for any old place." +</p> +<p> +"Can't she though!" and Percival, seizing his astounded mother, waltzed +with her down the hall, leaving her at the far end with profusely +polite assurances that he would bring her immediately a lemon-ice, an +ice-pick, and a cold roast turkey with pink stockings on. +</p> +<p> +"Never mind, Mrs. Cartwright," he called back to her—"oh, beg +pardon—Bines? yes, yes, to be sure—well, never mind, Mrs. Brennings. +We'll give you time to put your gloves and a bottle of horse-radish and +a nail-file and hammer into that neat travelling-bag of yours. +</p> +<p> +"Now let me go up and get clean again. That lovely alkali dust has +worked clear into my bearings so I'm liable to have a hot box just as +we get the line open ninety miles ahead." +</p> +<p> +At dinner and afterwards the new West and the old aligned themselves +into hostile camps, as of yore. The young people chatted with lively +interest of the coming change, of the New York people who had visited +the mine, of the attractions and advantages of life in New York. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter, though he had long since recognised his cause as lost, +remained doggedly inimical to the migration. The home was being broken +up and he was depressed. +</p> +<p> +"Anyhow, you'll soon be back," he warned them. "You won't like it a +mite. I tried it myself thirty years ago. I'll jest camp here until you +do come back. My! but you'll be glad to get here again." +</p> +<p> +"Why not have Billy Brue come stay with you," suggested Mrs. Bines, who +was hurting herself with pictures of the old man's loneliness, "in case +you should want a plaster on your back or some nutmeg tea brewed, or +anything? That Wung is so trifling." +</p> +<p> +"Maybe I might," replied the old man, "but Billy Brue ain't exactly +broke to a shack like this. I know just what he'd do all his spare +time; he'd set down to that new-fangled horseless piano and play it to +death." +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter meant the new automatic piano in the parlour. As far as the +new cabinet was from the what-not this modern bit of mechanism was from +the old cottage organ—the latter with its "Casket of Household +Melodies" and the former with its perforated paper repertoire of "The +World's Best Music," ranging without prejudice from Beethoven's Fifth +Symphony to "I Never Did Like a Nigger Nohow," by a composer who shall +be unnamed on this page. +</p> +<p> +"And Uncle Peter won't have any one to bother him when he makes a +litter with all those old plans and estimates and maps of his," said +Psyche; "you'll be able to do a lot more work, Uncle Peter, this +winter." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, only I ain't got any more work to do than I ever had, and I +always managed to do that, no matter how you did clean up after me and +mix up my papers. I'm like old Nigger Pomeroy. He was doin' a job of +whitewashin' one day, and he had an old whitewash brush with most of +the hair gone out of it. I says to him, 'Pomeroy, why don't you get you +a new brush? you could do twice as much work.' And Pomeroy says, +'That's right, Mr. Bines, but the trouble is I ain't got twice as much +work to do.' So don't you folks get out on <i>my</i> account," he concluded, +politely. +</p> +<p> +"And you know we shall be in mourning," said Psyche to her brother. +</p> +<p> +"I've thought of that. We can't do any entertaining, except of the most +informal kind, and we can't go out, except very informally; but, then, +you know, there aren't many people that have us on their lists, and +while we're keeping quiet we shall have a chance to get acquainted a +little." +</p> +<p> +"I hear they do have dreadful times with help in New York," said Mrs. +Bines. +</p> +<p> +"Don't let that bother you, ma," her son reassured her. "We'll go to +the Hightower Hotel, first. You remember you and pa were there when it +first opened. It's twice as large now, and we'll take a suite, have our +meals served privately, our own servants provided by the hotel, and you +won't have a thing to worry you. We'll be snug there for the winter. +Then for the summer we'll go to Newport, and when we come back from +there we'll take a house. Meantime, after we've looked around a bit, +we'll build, maybe up on one of those fine corners east of the Park." +</p> +<p> +"I almost dread it," his mother rejoined. "I never <i>did</i> see how they +kept track of all the help in that hotel, and if it's twice as +monstrous now, however <i>do</i> they do it—and have the beds all made +every day and the meals always on time?" +</p> +<p> +"And you can <i>get</i> meals there," said Percival. +</p> +<p> +"I've been needing a broiled lobster all summer—and now the oysters +will be due—fine fat Buzzard's Bays—and oyster crabs." +</p> +<p> +"He ain't been able to touch a morsel out here," observed Uncle Peter, +with a palpably false air of concern. "I got all worried up about him, +barely peckin' at a crumb or two." +</p> +<p> +"I never could learn to eat those oysters out of their shells," Mrs. +Bines confessed. "They taste so much better out of the can. Once we had +them raw and on two of mine were those horrid little green crabs, +actually squirming. I was going to send them back, but your pa laughed +and ate them himself—ate them alive and kicking." +</p> +<p> +"And terrapin!" exclaimed Percival, with anticipatory relish. +</p> +<p> +"That terrapin stew does taste kind of good," his mother admitted, +"but, land's sakes! it has so many little bits of bones in it I always +get nervous eating it. It makes me feel as if all my teeth was coming +out." +</p> +<p> +"You'll soon learn all those things, ma," said her daughter—"and not +to talk to the waiters, and everything like that. She always asks them +how much they earn, and if they have a family, and how many children, +and if any of them are sick, you know," she explained to Percival. +</p> +<p> +"And I s'pose you ain't much of a hand fur smokin' cigarettes, are you, +ma?" inquired Uncle Peter, casually. +</p> +<p> +"Me!" exclaimed Mrs. Bines, in horror; "I never smoked one of the nasty +little things in my life." +</p> +<p> +"Son," said the old man to Percival, reproachfully, "is that any way to +treat your own mother? Here she's had all this summer to learn +cigarette smokin', and you ain't put her at it—all that time wasted, +when you <i>know</i> she's got to learn. Get her one now so she can light +up." +</p> +<p> +"Why, Uncle Peter Bines, how absurd!" exclaimed his granddaughter. +</p> +<p> +"Well, them ladies smoked the other day, and they was some of the +reg'ler original van Vanvans. You don't want your poor ma kep' out of +the game, do you? Goin' to let her set around and toy with the coppers, +or maybe keep cases now and then, are you? Or, you goin' to get her a +stack of every colour and let her play with you? Pish, now, havin' been +to a 'Frisco seminary—she can pick it up, prob'ly in no time; but ma +ought to have practice here at home, so she can find out what brand she +likes best. Now, Marthy, them Turkish cigarettes, in a nice silver box +with some naked ladies painted on the outside, and your own monogram +'M.B.' in gold letters on every cigarette—" +</p> +<p> +"Don't let him scare you, ma," Percival interrupted. "You'll get into +the game all right, and I'll see that you have a good time." +</p> +<p> +"Only I hope the First M.E. Church of Montana City never hears of her +outrageous cuttin's-up," said Uncle Peter, as if to himself. "They'd +have her up and church her, sure—smokin' cigarettes with her gold +monogram on, at <i>her</i> age!" "And of course we must go to the Episcopal +church there," said Psyche. "I think those Episcopal ministers are just +the smartest looking men ever. So swell looking, and anyway it's the +only church the right sort of people go to. We must be awfully high +church, too. It's the very best way to know nice people." +</p> +<p> +"I s'pose if every day'd be Sunday by-and-bye, like the old song says, +it'd be easier fur you, wouldn't it?" asked the old man. "You and Petie +would be 401 and 402 in jest no time at all." +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter continued to be perversely frivolous about the most +exclusive metropolitan society in the world. But Uncle Peter was a +crabbed old man, lingering past his generation, and the young people +made generous allowance for his infirmities. +</p> +<p> +"Only there's one thing," said his sister to Percival, when later they +were alone, "we must be careful about ma; she <i>will</i> persist in making +such dreadful breaks, in spite of everything I can do. In San Francisco +last June, just before we went to Steaming Springs, there was one hot +day, and of course everybody was complaining. Mrs. Beale remarked that +it wasn't the heat that bothered us so, but the humidity. It was so +damp, you know. Ma spoke right up so everybody could hear her, and +said, 'Yes; isn't the humidity dreadful? Why, it's just running off me +from every pore!'" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH13"><!-- CH13 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XIII. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun +</h3> +<p> +It was mid-October. The two saddle-horses and a team for carriage use +had been shipped ahead. In the private car the little party was +beginning its own journey Eastward. From the rear platform they had +watched the tall figure of Uncle Peter Bines standing in the bright +autumn sun, aloof from the band of kerchief-waving friends, the droop +of his head and shoulders showing the dejection he felt at seeing them +go. He had resisted all entreaties to accompany them. +</p> +<p> +His last injunction to Percival had been to marry early. +</p> +<p> +"I know your stock and I know <i>you</i>" he said; "and you got no call to +be rangin' them pastures without a brand. You never was meant fur a +maverick. Only don't let the first woman that comes ridin' herd get her +iron on you. No man knows much about the critters, of course, but I've +noticed a few things in my time. You pick one that's full-chested, +that's got a fairish-sized nose, and that likes cats. The full chest +means she's healthy, the nose means she ain't finicky, and likin' cats +means she's kind and honest and unselfish. Ever notice some women when +a cat's around? They pretend to like 'em and say 'Nice kitty!' but you +can see they're viewin' 'em with bitter hate and suspicion. If they +have to stroke 'em they do it plenty gingerly and you can see 'em +shudderin' inside like. It means they're catty themselves. But when one +grabs a cat up as if she was goin' to eat it and cuddles it in her neck +and talks baby-talk to it, you play her fur bein' sound and true. Pass +up the others, son. +</p> +<p> +"And speakin' of the fair sex," he added, as he and Percival were alone +for a moment, "that enterprisin' lady we settled with is goin' to do +one thing you'll approve of. +</p> +<p> +"She's goin'," he continued, in answer to Percival's look of inquiry, +"to take her bank-roll to New York. She says it's the only place fur +folks with money, jest like you say. She tells Coplen that there wa'n't +any fit society out here at all,—no advantages fur a lady of capacity +and ambitions. I reckon she's goin' to be 403 all right." +</p> +<p> +"Seems to me she did pretty well here; I don't see any kicks due her." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, but she's like all the rest. The West was good enough to make her +money in, but the East gets her when spendin' time comes." +</p> +<p> +As the train started he swung himself off with a sad little "Be good to +yourself!" +</p> +<p> +"Thank the Lord we're under way at last!" cried Percival, fervently, +when the group at the station had been shut from view. "Isn't it just +heavenly!" exclaimed his sister. +</p> +<p> +"Think of having all of New York you want—being at home there—and not +having to look forward to this desolation of a place." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines was neither depressed nor elated. She was maintaining that +calm level of submission to fate which had been her lifelong habit. The +journey and the new life were to be undertaken because they formed for +her the line of least resistance along which all energy must flow. Had +her children elected to camp for the remainder of their days in the +centre of the desert of Gobi, she would have faced that life with as +little sense of personal concern and with no more misgivings. +</p> +<p> +Down out of the maze of hills the train wound; and then by easy grades +after two days of travel down off the great plateau to where the plains +of Nebraska lay away to a far horizon in brown billows of withered +grass. +</p> +<p> +Then came the crossing of the sullen, sluggish Missouri, that highway +of an earlier day to the great Northwest; and after that the better +wooded and better settled lands of Iowa and Illinois. +</p> +<p> +"Now we're getting where Christians live," said Percival, with warm +appreciation. +</p> +<p> +"Why, Percival," exclaimed his mother, reprovingly, "do you mean to say +there aren't any Christians in Montana City? How you talk! There are +lots of good Christian people there, though I must say I have my doubts +about that new Christian Science church they started last spring." "The +term, Mrs. Thorndike, was used in its social rather than its +theological significance," replied her son, urbanely. "Far be it from +me to impugn the religion of that community of which we are ceasing to +be integers at the pleasing rate of sixty miles an hour. God knows they +need their faith in a different kind of land hereafter!" +</p> +<p> +And even Mrs. Bines was not without a sense of quiet and rest induced +by the gentler contours of the landscape through which they now sped. +</p> +<p> +"The country here does seem a lot cosier," she admitted. +</p> +<p> +The hills rolled away amiably and reassuringly; the wooded slopes in +their gay colouring of autumn invited confidence. Here were no +forbidding stretches of the grey alkali desert, no grim bare mountains, +no solitude of desolation. It was a kind land, fat with riches. The +shorn yellow fields, the capacious red barns, the well-conditioned +homes, all told eloquently of peace and plenty. So, too, did the +villages—those lively little clearing-houses for immense farming +districts. To the adventurer from New York they seem always new and +crude. To our travellers from a newer, cruder region they were actually +aesthetic in their suggestions of an old and well-established +civilisation. +</p> +<p> +In due time they were rattling over a tangled maze of switches, dodging +interminable processions of freight-cars, barely missing crowded +passenger trains whose bells struck clear and then flatted as the +trains flew by; defiling by narrow water-ways, crowded with small +shipping; winding through streets lined with high, gloomy warehouses, +amid the clang and clatter, the strangely-sounding bells and whistles +of a thousand industries, each sending up its just contribution of +black smoke to the pall that lay always spread above; and steaming at +last into a great roomy shed where all was system, and where the big +engine trembled and panted as if in relief at having run in safety a +gantlet so hazardous. +</p> +<p> +"Anyway, I'd rather live in Montana City than Chicago," ventured Mrs. +Bines. +</p> +<p> +"Whatever pride you may feel in your discernment, Mrs. Cadwallader, is +amply justified," replied her son, performing before the amazed lady a +bow that indicated the lowest depths of slavish deference. +</p> +<p> +"I am now," he continued, "going out to pace the floor of this +locomotive-boudoir for a few exhilarating breaths of smoke, and pretend +to myself that I've got to live in Chicago for ever. A little +discipline like that is salutary to keep one from forgetting the great +blessing which a merciful Providence has conferred upon one." +</p> +<p> +"I'll walk a bit with you," said his sister, donning her jacket and a +cap. +</p> +<p> +"Lest my remarks have seemed indeterminate, madam," sternly continued +Percival at the door of the car, "permit me to add that if Chicago were +heaven I should at once enter upon a life of crime. Do not affect to +misunderstand me, I beg of you. I should leave no avenue of salvation +open to my precious soul. I should incur no risk of being numbered +among the saved. I should be <i>b-a-d</i>, and I should sit up nights to +invent new ways of evil. If I had any leisure left from being as wicked +as I could be, I should devote it to teaching those I loved how to +become abandoned. I should doubtless issue a pamphlet, 'How to Merit +Perdition Without a Master. Learn to be Wicked in your Own Home in Ten +Lessons. Instructions Sent Securely Sealed from Observation. Thousands +of Testimonials from the Most Accomplished Reprobates of the Day.' I +trust Mrs. Llewellen Leffingwell-Thompson, that you will never again so +far forget yourself as to utter that word 'Chicago' in my presence. If +you feel that you must give way to the evil impulse, go off by yourself +and utter the name behind the protection of closed doors—where this +innocent girl cannot hear you. Come, sister. Otherwise I may behave in +a manner to be regretted in my calmer moments. Let us leave the woman +alone, now. Besides, I've got to go out and help the hands make up that +New York train. You never can tell. Some horrible accident might happen +to delay us here thirty minutes. Cheer up, ma; it's always darkest just +before leaving Chicago, you know." +</p> +<p> +Thus flippantly do some of the younger sons of men blaspheme this +metropolis of the mid-West—a city the creation of which is, by many +persons of discrimination, held to be the chief romance and abiding +miracle of the nineteenth century. Let us rejoice that one such +partisan was now at hand to stem the torrent of abuse. As Percival held +back the door for his sister to pass out, a stout little ruddy-faced +man with trim grey sidewhiskers came quickly up the steps and barred +their way with cheery aggressiveness. +</p> +<p> +"Ah! Mr. Higbee—well, well!" exclaimed Percival, cordially. +</p> +<p> +"Thought it might be some of you folks when I saw the car," said +Higbee, shaking hands all around. +</p> +<p> +"And Mrs. Bines, too! and the girl, looking like a Delaware peach when +the crop's 'failed.' How's everybody, and how long you going to be in +the good old town?" +</p> +<p> +"Ah! we were just speaking of Chicago as you came in," said Percival, +blandly. "<i>Isn't</i> she a great old town, though—a wonder!" +</p> +<p> +"My boy," said Higbee, in low, solemn tones that came straight from his +heart, "she gets greater every day you live. You can see her at it, +fairly. How long since you been here?" +</p> +<p> +"I came through last June, you know, after I left your yacht at +Newport." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, yes; to be sure; so you did—poor Daniel J.—but say, you +wouldn't know the town now if you haven't seen it since then. Why, I +run over from New York every thirty days or so and she grows out of my +ken every time, like a five-year-old boy. Say, I've got Mrs. Higbee up +in the New York sleeper, but if you're going to be here a spell we'll +stop a few days longer and I'll drive you around—what say?—packing +houses—Lake Shore Drive—Lincoln Park—" +</p> +<p> +He waited, glowing confidently, as one submitting irresistible +temptations. +</p> +<p> +Percival beamed upon him with moist eyes. +</p> +<p> +"By Jove, Mr. Higbee! that's clever of you—it's royal! Sis and I would +like nothing better—but you see my poor mother here is almost down +with nervous prostration and we've got to hurry her to New York without +an hour's delay to consult a specialist. We're afraid"—he glanced +anxiously at the astounded Mrs. Bines, and lowered his voice—"we're +afraid she may not be with us long." +</p> +<p> +"Why, Percival," began Mrs. Bines, dazedly, "you was just saying—" +</p> +<p> +"Now don't fly all to pieces, ma!—take it easy—you're with friends, +be sure of that. You needn't beg us to go on. You know we wouldn't +think of stopping when it may mean life or death to you. You see just +the way she is," he continued to the sympathetic Higbee—"we're afraid +she may collapse any moment. So we must wait for another time; but I'll +tell you what you do; go get Mrs. Higbee and your traps and come let us +put you up to New York. We've got lots of room—run along now—and +we'll have some of that ham, 'the kind you have always bought,' for +lunch. A.L. Jackson is a miserable cook, too, if I don't know the +truth." Gently urging Higbee through the door, he stifled a systematic +inquiry into the details of Mrs. Bines's affliction. +</p> +<p> +"Come along quick! I'll go help you and we'll have Mrs. Higbee back +before the train starts." +</p> +<p> +"Do you know," Mrs. Bines thoughtfully observed to her daughter, "I +sometimes mistrust Percival ain't just right in his head; you remember +he did have a bad fall on it when he was two years and five months +old—two years, five months, and eighteen days. The way he carries on +right before folks' faces! That time I went through the asylum at Butte +there was a young man kept going on with the same outlandish rigmarole +just like Percival. The idea of Percival telling me to eat a lemon-ice +with an ice-pick, and 'Oh, why don't the flesh-brushes wear nice, +proper clothes-brushes!' and be sure and hammer my nails good and hard +after I get them manicured. And back home he was always wanting to know +where the meat-augers were, saying he'd just bought nine hundred new +ones and he'd have to order a ton more if they were all lost. I don't +believe there is such a thing as a meat-auger. I don't know what on +earth a body could do with one. And that other young man," she +concluded, significantly, "they had him in a little bit of a room with +an iron-barred door to it like a prison-cell." +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH14"><!-- CH14 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XIV. +</h2> + +<h3> +Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information +</h3> +<p> +The Higbees were presently at home in the Bines car. Mrs. Higbee was a +pleasant, bustling, plump little woman, sparkling-eyed and sprightly. +Prominent in her manner was a helpless little confession of inadequacy +to her ambitions that made her personality engaging. To be energetic +and friendly, and deeply absorbed in people who were bold and +confident, was her attitude. +</p> +<p> +She began bubbling at once to Mrs. Bines and Psyche of the latest +fashions for mourners. Crepe was more swagger than ever before, both as +trimming and for entire costumes. +</p> +<p> +"House gowns, my dear, and dinner gowns, made entirely of crepe in the +Princesse style, will exactly suit your daughter—and on the dinner +gowns she can wear a trimming of that dull jet passementerie." +</p> +<p> +From gowns she went naturally to the difficulty of knowing whom to meet +in a city like New York—and how to meet them—and the watchfulness +required to keep daughter Millie from becoming entangled with leading +theatrical gentlemen. Amid Percival's lamentations that he must so soon +leave Chicago, the train moved slowly out of the big shed to search in +the interwoven puzzle of tracks for one that led to the East. +</p> +<p> +As they left the centre of the city Higbee drew Percival to one of the +broad side windows. +</p> +<p> +"Pull up your chair and sit here a minute," he said, with a mysterious +little air of importance. "There's a thing this train's going to pass +right along here that I want you to look at. Maybe you've seen better +ones, of course—and then again—" +</p> +<p> +It proved to be a sign some twenty feet high and a whole block long. +Emblazoned upon its broad surface was "Higbee's Hams." At one end and +towering another ten feet or so above the mammoth letters was a +white-capped and aproned chef abandoning his mercurial French +temperament to an utter frenzy of delight over a "Higbee's Ham" which +had apparently just been vouchsafed to him by an invisible benefactor. +</p> +<p> +"There, now!" exclaimed Higbee; "what do you call that—I want to +know—hey?" +</p> +<p> +"Great! Magnificent!" cried Percival, with the automatic and ready +hypocrisy of a sympathetic nature. "That certainly is great." +</p> +<p> +"Notice the size of it?" queried Higbee, when they had flitted by. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Did</i> I!" exclaimed the young man, reproachfully. +</p> +<p> +"We went by pretty fast—you couldn't see it well. I tell you the way +they're allowed to run trains so fast right here in this crowded city +is an outrage. I'm blamed if I don't have my lawyer take it up with the +Board of Aldermen—slaughtering people on their tracks right and +left—you'd think these railroad companies owned the earth—But that +sign, now. Did you notice you could read every letter in the label on +that ham? You wouldn't think it was a hundred yards back from the +track, would you? Why, that label by actual measure is six feet, four +inches across—and yet it looks as small—and everything all in the +right proportion, it's wonderful. It's what I call art," he concluded, +in a slightly dogmatic tone. +</p> +<p> +"Of course it's art," Percival agreed; "er—all—hand-painted, I +suppose?" +</p> +<p> +"Sure! that painting alone, letters and all, cost four hundred and +fifty dollars. I've just had it put up. I've been after that place for +years, but it was held on a long lease by Max, the Square Tailor—you +know. You probably remember the sign he had there—'Peerless Pants Worn +by Chicago's Best Dressers' with a man in his shirt sleeves looking at +a new pair. Well, finally, I got a chance to buy those two back lots, +and that give me the site, and there she is, all finished and up. +That's partly what I come on this time to see about. How'd you like the +wording of that sign?" +</p> +<p> +"Fine—simple and effective," replied Percival. +</p> +<p> +"That's it—simple and effective. It goes right to the point and it +don't slop over beyond any, after it gets there. We studied a good deal +over that sign. The other man, the tailor, had too many words for the +board space. My advertisin' man wanted it to be, first, 'Higbee's Hams, +That's All.' But, I don't know—for so big a space that seemed to me +kind of—well—kind of flippant and undignified. Then I got it down to +'Eat Higbee's Hams.' That seemed short enough—but after studying it, I +says, What's the use of saying 'eat'? No one would think, I says, that +a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa-cushions with—so off +comes 'eat' as being superfluous, and leaving it simple and +dignified—'Higbee's Hams.'" +</p> +<p> +"By the way," said Percival, when they were sitting together again, +later in the day, "where is Henry, now?" +</p> +<p> +Higbee chuckled. +</p> +<p> +"That's the other thing took me back this time—the new sign and +getting Hank started. Henry is now working ten hours a day out to the +packinghouse. After a year of that, he'll be taken into the office and +his hours will be cut down to eight. Eight hours a day will seem like +sinful idleness to Henry by that time." +</p> +<p> +Percival whistled in amazement. +</p> +<p> +"I thought you'd be surprised. But the short of it is, Henry found +himself facing work or starvation. He didn't want to starve a little +bit, and he finally concluded he'd rather work for his dad than any one +else. +</p> +<p> +"You see Henry was doing the Rake's Progress act there in New +York—being a gilded youth and such like. Now being a gilded youth and +'a well-known man about town' is something that wants to be done in +moderation, and Henry didn't seem to know the meaning of the word. I +put up something like a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for Hank's +gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't +doing him any good. He was making a monkey of himself with it, Henry +was. A good bit of that hundred and eighty went into a comic opera +company that was one of the worst I ever <i>did</i> see. Henry had no +judgment. He was <i>too</i> easy. Well, along this summer he was on the +point of making a break that would—well, I says to him, says I, 'Hank, +I'm no penny-squeezer; I like good stretchy legs myself,' I says; 'I +like to see them elastic so they'll give a plenty when they're pulled; +but,' I says, 'if you take that step,' I says, 'if you declare +yourself, then the rubber in your legs,' I says, 'will just naturally +snap; you'll find you've overplayed the tension,' I says, 'and there +won't be any more stretch left in them.' +</p> +<p> +"The secret is, Hank was being chased by a whole family of +wolves—that's the gist of it—fortune-hunters—with tushes like the +ravening lion in Afric's gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone +broke, mind you, but hyenas into the bargain—the father and the mother +and the girl, too. +</p> +<p> +"They'd got their minds made up to marry the girl to a good wad of +money—and they'll do it, too, sooner or later, because she's a corker +for looks, all right—and they'd all made a dead set for Hank; so, +quick as I saw how it was, I says, 'Here,' I says, 'is where I save my +son and heir from a passel of butchers,' I says, 'before they have him +scalded and dressed and hung up outside the shop for the holiday +trade,' I says, 'with the red paper rosettes stuck in Henry's chest,' I +says." +</p> +<p> +"Are the New York girls so designing?" asked Percival. +</p> +<p> +"Is Higbee's ham good to eat?" replied Higbee, oracularly. +</p> +<p> +"So," he continued, "when I made up my mind to put my foot down I just +casually mentioned to the old lady—say, she's got an eye that would +make liquid air shiver—that cold blue like an army overcoat—well, I +mentioned to her that Henry was a spendthrift and that he wasn't ever +going to get another cent from me that he didn't earn just the same as +if he wasn't any relation of mine. I made it plain, you bet; she found +just where little Henry-boy stood with his kind-hearted, liberal old +father. +</p> +<p> +"Say, maybe Henry wasn't in cold storage with the whole family from +that moment. I see those fellows in the laboratories are puttering +around just now trying to get the absolute zero of temperature—say, +Henry got it, and he don't know a thing about chemistry. +</p> +<p> +"Then I jounced Hank. I proceeded to let him know he was up against +it—right close up against it, so you couldn't see daylight between +'em. 'You're twenty-five,' I says, 'and you play the best game of pool, +I'm told, of any of the chappies in that Father-Made-the-Money club you +got into,' I says; 'but I've looked it up,' I says, 'and there ain't +really what you could call any great future for a pool champion,' I +says, 'and if you're ever going to learn anything else, it's time you +was at it,' I says. 'Now you go back home and tell the manager to set +you to work,' I says, 'and your wages won't be big enough to make you +interesting to any skirt-dancer, either,' I says. 'And you make a study +of the hog from the ground up. Exhaust his possibilities just like your +father done, and make a man of yourself, and then sometime,' I says, +'you'll be able to give good medicine to a cub of your own when he +needs it.'" +</p> +<p> +"And how did poor Henry take all that?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, Hank squealed at first like he was getting the knife; but +finally when he see he was up against it, and especially when he see +how this girl and her family throwed him down the elevator-shaft from +the tenth story, why, he come around beautifully. He's really got +sense, though he doesn't look it—Henry has—though Lord knows I didn't +pull him up a bit too quick. But he come out and went to work like I +told him. It's the greatest thing ever happened to him. He ain't so +fat-headed as he was, already. Henry'll be a man before his dad's +through with him." +</p> +<p> +"But weren't the young people disappointed?" asked Percival; "weren't +they in love with each other?" +</p> +<p> +"In <i>love?</i>" In an effort to express scorn adequately Mr. Higbee came +perilously near to snorting. "What do you suppose a girl like that +cares for love? She was dead in love with the nice long yellow-backs +that I've piled up because the public knows good ham when they taste +it. As for being in love with Henry or with any man—say, young fellow, +you've got something to learn about those New York girls. And this one, +especially. Why, it's been known for the three years we've been there +that she's simply hunting night and day for a rich husband. She tries +for 'em all as fast as they get in line." +</p> +<p> +"Henry was unlucky in finding that kind. They're not all like +that—those New York girls are not," and he had the air of being able +if he chose to name one or two luminous exceptions. +</p> +<p> +"Silas," called Mrs. Higbee, "are you telling Mr. Bines about our Henry +and that Milbrey girl?" +</p> +<p> +"Yep," answered Higbee, "I told him." +</p> +<p> +"About what girl?—what was her name?" asked Percival, in a lower tone. +</p> +<p> +"Milbrey's that family's name—Horace Milbrey—" +</p> +<p> +"Why," Percival interrupted, somewhat awkwardly, "I know the +family—the young lady—we met the family out in Montana a few weeks +ago." +</p> +<p> +"Sure enough—they were in Chicago and had dinner with us on their way +out." "I remember Mr. Milbrey spoke of what fine claret you gave him." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, and I wasn't stingy with ice, either, the way those New York +people always are. Why, at that fellow's house he gives you that claret +wine as warm as soup. +</p> +<p> +"But as for that girl," he added, "say, she'd marry me in a minute if I +wasn't tied up with the little lady over there. Of course she'd rather +marry a sub-treasury; she's got about that much heart in +her—cold-blooded as a German carp. She'd marry me—she'd marry <i>you</i>, +if you was the best thing in sight. But say, if you was broke, she'd +have about as much use for you as Chicago's got for St. Louis." +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH15"><!-- CH15 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XV. +</h2> + +<h3> +Some Light With a Few Side-lights +</h3> +<p> +The real spring in New York comes when blundering nature has painted +the outer wilderness for autumn. What is called "spring" in the city by +unreflecting users of the word is a tame, insipid season yawning into +not more than half-wakefulness at best. The trees in the gas-poisoned +soil are slow in their greening, the grass has but a pallid city +vitality, and the rows of gaudy tulips set out primly about the +fountains in the squares are palpably forced and alien. +</p> +<p> +For the sumptuous blending and flaunt of colour, the spontaneous +awakening of warm, throbbing new life, and all those inspiring miracles +of regeneration which are performed elsewhere in April and May, the +city-pent must wait until mid-October. +</p> +<p> +This is the spring of the city's year. There be those to hint +captiously that they find it an affair of false seeming; that the +gorgeous colouring is a mere trick of shop-window cunning; that the +time is juiceless and devoid of all but the specious delights of +surface. Yet these, perhaps, are unduly imaginative for a world where +any satisfaction is held by a tenure precarious at best. And even these +carpers, be they never so analytical, can at least find no lack of +springtime fervour in the eager throngs that pass entranced before the +window show. They, the free-swinging, quick-moving men and women—the +best dressed of all throngs in this young world—sun-browned, +sun-enlivened, recreated to a fine mettle for enjoyment by their months +of mountain or ocean sport—these are, indeed, the ones for whom this +afterspring is made to bloom. And, since they find it to be a shifting +miracle of perfections, how are they to be quarrelled with? +</p> +<p> +In the big polished windows waxen effigies of fine ladies, gracefully +patient, display the latest dinner-gown from Paris, or the creamiest of +be-ribboned tea-gowns. Or they pose in attitudes of polite adieux and +greeting, all but smothered in a king's ransom of sable and ermine. Or, +to the other extreme, they complacently permit themselves to be +observed in the intimate revelations of Parisian lingerie, with its +misty froth of embroideries, its fine-spun webs of foamy lace. +</p> +<p> +In another window, behold a sprightly and enlivening ballet of shapely +silken hosiery, fitting its sculptured models to perfection, ranging in +tints from the first tender green of spring foliage to the rose-pink of +the spring sun's after-glow. +</p> +<p> +A few steps beyond we may study a window where the waxen ladies have +been dismembered. Yet a second glance shows the retained portions to be +all that woman herself considers important when she tries on the +bird-toque or the picture hat, or the gauze confection for afternoons. +The satisfied smiles of these waxen counterfeits show them to have been +amply recompensed, with the headgear, for their physical +incompleteness. +</p> +<p> +But if these terraces of colour and grace that line the sides of this +narrow spring valley be said to contain only the dry husks of +adornment, surely there may be found others more technically +springlike. +</p> +<p> +Here in this broad window, foregathered in a congress of colours +designed to appetise, are the ripe fruits of every clime and every +season: the Southern pomegranate beside the hardy Northern apple, +scarlet and yellow; the early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs +from the Orient and pines from the Antilles; dates from Tunis and tawny +persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from the +hothouse—tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and +royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow +blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable +stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas—of more +integrity, perhaps, than the same colourings simulated by the +confectioner's craft, in the near-by window-display of impossible +sweets. +</p> +<p> +And still more of this belated spring will gladden the eye in the +florist's window. In June the florist's shop is a poor place, +sedulously to be shunned. Nothing of note blooms there then. The +florist himself is patently ashamed of himself. The burden of +sustaining his traditions he puts upon a few dejected shrubs called +"hardy perennials" that have to labour the year around. All summer it +is as if the place feared to compete with nature when colour and grace +flower so cheaply on every southern hillside. But now its glories bloom +anew, and its superiority over nature becomes again manifest. Now it +assembles the blossoms of a whole long year to bewilder and allure. Its +windows are shaded glens, vine-embowered, where spring, summer, and +autumn blend in all their regal and diverse abundance; and the closing +door of the shop fans out odours as from a thousand Persian gardens. +</p> +<p> +But spring is not all of life, nor what at once chiefly concerns us. +There are people to be noted: a little series of more or less related +phenomena to be observed. +</p> +<p> +One of the people, a young man, stands conveniently before this same +florist's window, at that hour when the sun briefly flushes this narrow +canon of Broadway from wall to wall. +</p> +<p> +He had loitered along the lively highway an hour or more, his nerves +tingling responsively to all its stimuli. And now he mused as he stared +at the tangled tracery of ferns against the high bank of wine-red +autumn foliage, the royal cluster of white chrysanthemums and the big +jar of American Beauties. +</p> +<p> +He had looked forward to this moment, too—when he should enter that +same door and order at least an armful of those same haughty roses sent +to an address his memory cherished. Yet now, the time having come, the +zest for the feat was gone. It would be done; it were ungraceful not to +do it, after certain expressions; but it would be done with no heart +because of the certain knowledge that no one—at least no one to be +desired—could possibly care for him, or consider him even with +interest for anything but his money—the same kind of money Higbee made +by purveying hams—"and she wouldn't care in the least whether it was +mine or Higbee's, so there was a lot of it." +</p> +<p> +Yet he stepped in and ordered the roses, nor did the florist once +suspect that so lavish a buyer of flowers could be a prey to emotions +of corroding cynicism toward the person for whom they were meant. +</p> +<p> +From the florist's he returned directly to the hotel to find his mother +and Psyche making homelike the suite to which they had been assigned. A +maid was unpacking trunks under his sister's supervision. Mrs. Bines +was in converse with a person of authoritative manner regarding the +service to be supplied them. Two maids would be required, and madame +would of course wish a butler— +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines looked helplessly at her son who had just entered. +</p> +<p> +"I think—we've—we've always did our own buttling," she faltered. +</p> +<p> +The person was politely interested. +</p> +<p> +"I'll attend to these things, ma," said Percival, rather suddenly. +"Yes, we'll want a butler and the two maids, and see that the butler +knows his business, please, and—here—take this, and see that we're +properly looked after, will you?" +</p> +<p> +As the bill bore a large "C" on its face, and the person was rather a +gentleman anyway, this unfortunate essay at irregular conjugation never +fell into a certain class of anecdotes which Mrs. Bines's best friends +could now and then bring themselves to relate of her. +</p> +<p> +But other matters are forward. We may next overtake two people who +loiter on this bracing October day down a leaf-strewn aisle in Central +Park. +</p> +<p> +"You," said the girl of the pair, "least of all men can accuse me of +lacking heart." +</p> +<p> +"You are cold to me now." +</p> +<p> +"But look, think—what did I offer—you've had my trust,—everything I +could bring myself to give you. Look what I would have sacrificed at +your call. Think how I waited and longed for that call." +</p> +<p> +"You know how helpless I was." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, if you wanted more than my bare self. I should have been +helpless, too, if I had wanted more than—than you." +</p> +<p> +"It would have been folly—madness—that way." +</p> +<p> +"Folly—madness? Do you remember the 'Sonnet of Revolt' you sent me? +Sit on this bench; I wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want +you to hear it while you keep your later attitude in mind. +</p> +<p> +"Life—what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of +every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the +hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the +self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights, +eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale—'" +</p> +<p> +"But I know the verse." +</p> +<p> +"No; hear it out;—hear what you sent me: +</p> +<pre> + "'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see + The man who sells his soul in some wild cause: + The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss, + All that he was and all he thought to be: + The rebel stark against his country's laws: + God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'" +</pre> +<p> +She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving +you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here +never really forget those things—and we'd have been helpless—some day +you'll thank me for thinking for you." +</p> +<p> +"Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?" +</p> +<p> +"Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you." +"And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a +woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready. +Surely that showed my spirit—and you haven't known me these years +without knowing it would have to be that or nothing." +</p> +<p> +"Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're +not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?" +</p> +<p> +Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn. +</p> +<p> +"No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind +so little; there's been so little depth to it all; you couldn't dare. +It was foolish to think I could show you my mind." +</p> +<p> +"But you still care for me?" +</p> +<p> +"No; no, I don't. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When +I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let +us go back. No, no, please don't touch me—ever again." +</p> +<p> +Farther down-town in the cosy drawing-room of a house in a side street +east of the Avenue, two other persons were talking. A florid and +profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the +hearth-rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better. +</p> +<p> +"But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can't take a curate +with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come +downstairs and marry me directly—not when I've not seen her, you +know!" "Nonsense!" replied the lady, unimpressed. "You can do it +nearly that way, if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite +in that manner, I assure you. They call it 'hustling.'" +</p> +<p> +"<i>Dear</i> me!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, indeed, 'dear you.' And another thing, I want you to forestall +that Milbrey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away than +Tuxedo or Meadowbrook. Now, they arrived yesterday; they'll be +unpacking to-day and settling to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and +you shall be with me." +</p> +<p> +"And you forget that—that devil—suppose she's as good as her threat?" +</p> +<p> +"Absurd! how could she be?" +</p> +<p> +"You don't know her, you know, nor the old beggar either, by Jove!" +</p> +<p> +"All the more reason for haste. We'll call to-morrow. Wait. Better +still, perhaps I can enlist the Gwilt-Athelston; I'm to meet her +to-morrow. I'll let you know. Now I must get into my teaharness, so run +along." +</p> +<p> +We are next constrained to glance at a strong man bowed in the hurt of +a great grief. Horace Milbrey sits alone in his gloomy, high-ceilinged +library. His attire is immaculate. His slender, delicate hands are +beautifully white. The sensitive lines of his fine face tell of the +strain under which he labours. What dire tragedies are those we must +face wholly alone—where we must hide the wound, perforce, because no +comprehending sympathy flows out to us; because instinct warns that no +help may come save from the soul's own well of divine fortitude. Some +hope, tenderly, almost fearfully, held and guarded, had perished on the +day that should have seen its triumphant fruition. He raised his +handsome head from the antique, claw-footed desk, sat up in his chair, +and stared tensely before him. His emotion was not to be suppressed. Do +tears tremble in the eyes of the strong man? Let us not inquire too +curiously. If they tremble down the fine-skinned cheek, let us avert +our gaze. For grief in men is no thing to make a show of. +</p> +<p> +A servant passed the open door bearing an immense pasteboard box with +one end cut out to accommodate the long stems of many roses. +</p> +<p> +"Jarvis!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir!" +</p> +<p> +"What is it?" +</p> +<p> +"Flowers, sir, for Miss Avice." +</p> +<p> +"Let me see—and the card?" +</p> +<p> +He took the card from the florist's envelope and glanced at the name. +</p> +<p> +"Take them away." +</p> +<p> +The stricken man was once more alone; yet now it was as if the tender +beauty of the flowers had balmed his hurt—taught him to hope anew. Let +us in all sympathy and hope retire. +</p> +<p> +For cheerfuller sights we might observe Launton Oldaker in a musty +curio-shop, delighted over a pair of silver candlesticks with square +bases and fluted columns, fabricated in the reign of that fortuitous +monarch, Charles the Second; or we might glance in upon the Higbees in +their section of a French chateau, reproduced up on the stately +Riverside Drive, where they complete the details of a dinner to be +given on the morrow. +</p> +<p> +Or perhaps it were better to be concerned with a matter more weighty +than dinners and antique candlesticks. The search need never be vain, +even in this world of persistent frivolity. As, for example: +</p> +<p> +"Tell Mrs. Van Geist if she can't come down, I'll run up to her." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Miss Milbrey." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Van Geist entered a moment later. +</p> +<p> +"Why, Avice, child, you're glowing, aren't you?" +</p> +<p> +"I must be, I suppose—I've just walked down from 59th Street, and +before that I walked in the Park. Feel how cold my cheeks +are,—Mütterchen." +</p> +<p> +"It's good for you. Now we shall have some tea, and talk." +</p> +<p> +"Yes—I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes." +</p> +<p> +"Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought. +There, take the big chair." +</p> +<p> +"It always feels like you—like your arms, Mütterchen—and I am tired." +</p> +<p> +"And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afraid of +cream." +</p> +<p> +"I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream." +</p> +<p> +"You told me you weren't afraid of that—that cad—any more." +</p> +<p> +"I'm not—I just told him so. But I'm afraid of it all; I'm tired +trying not to drift—tired trying not to try, and tired trying to +try—Oh, dear—sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it? Have you any +one to-night? No? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some +one home to say I'll be here. I can always think so much better +here—and you, dear old thing, to mother me!" +</p> +<p> +"Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly." +</p> +<p> +"He will go to the house of mourning." +</p> +<p> +"What's the latest?" +</p> +<p> +"Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was +striving so bravely and nobly to bear up. No one knows what that man +suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about everything. Just before +I left, he was saying that, when one considers the number of American +homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are +you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it." +</p> +<p> +"Nothing has happened?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, there'll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but a +very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the +cruellest blows of his life. I fancy he didn't sleep at all last night, +and he looked thoroughly bowled over this morning." +</p> +<p> +"But what is it?" +</p> +<p> +"Well—oh, it's awful!—first of all there were six dozen of +early-bottled, 1875 Château Lafitte—that was the bitterest—but he had +to see the rest go, too—Château Margeaux of '80—some terribly ancient +port and Madeira—the dryest kind of sherry—a lot of fine, full +clarets of '77 and '78—oh, you can't know how agonising it was to +him—I've heard them so often I know them all myself." +</p> +<p> +"But what on earth about them?" +</p> +<p> +"Nothing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar—auctioned off, you +know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every +bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it. +Sometimes he sounded like a French lesson—and he's been under a +fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great +day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn't bid in a single +drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully +all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that +Château Lafitte go—and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of +that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar +<i>nouveaux riches</i> when he came home—he talked quite like an anarchist. +But by to-night he'll be blaming me for his misfortunes. That's why I +chose to stay here with you." +</p> +<p> +"Poor Horace. Whatever are you going to do?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could do anything but +one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West." +</p> +<p> +"You called him your 'athletic Bayard' once." +</p> +<p> +"The other's more to the point at present. And what else can I do? Oh, +if some one would just be brave enough to live the raw, quivering life +with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go +by the board—but I am so alone and so helpless and no man is equal to +it, nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a 'half +portion' of life." +</p> +<p> +"Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those +flying-machines that are constantly being tested by the credulous +inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things +come tumbling." +</p> +<p> +"Very well; then I shall be wise—I suppose I shall be—and I'll do it +quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at +once, and be accepted—so that I shall be able to look my dear old +father in the face again—and then, after I'm married—well, don't +blame me for anything that happens." +</p> +<p> +"I'm sure you'll be happy with him—it's only your silly notions. He's +in love with you." +</p> +<p> +"That makes me hesitate. He really is a man—I like him—see this +letter—a long review from the Arcady <i>Lyre</i> of the 'poem' he wrote, a +poem consisting of 'Avice Milbrey.' The reviewer has been quite +enthusiastic over it, too,—written from some awful place in Montana." +</p> +<p> +"What more could you ask? He'll be kind." +</p> +<p> +"You don't understand, Mütterchen. He seems too decent to marry that +way—and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me +out—oh, think of what marriage <i>is</i>—he'd <i>have</i> to find it out—I +couldn't <i>act</i> long—doubtless he wouldn't even be kind to me then." +</p> +<p> +"You are morbid, child." +</p> +<p> +"But I will do it; I shall; I will be a credit to my training—and I +shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn—well, a great deal +that he doesn't know about women." +</p> +<p> +She stared into the fire and added, after a moment's silence: +</p> +<p> +"Oh, if a man only <i>could</i> live up to the verses he cuts out of +magazines!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH16"><!-- CH16 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XVI. +</h2> + +<h3> +With the Barbaric Hosts +</h3> +<p> +History repeats itself so cleverly, with a variance of stage-settings +and accessories so cunning, that the repetition seldom bores, and is, +indeed, frequently undetected. Thus, the descent of the Barbarians upon +a decadent people is a little <i>tour de force</i> that has been performed +again and again since the oldest day. But because the assault nowadays +is made not with force of arms we are prone to believe it is no longer +made at all;—as if human ways had changed a bit since those ugly, +hairy tribes from the Northern forests descended upon the Roman empire. +And yet the mere difference that the assault is now made with force of +money in no way alters the process nor does it permit the result to +vary. On the surface all is cordiality and peaceful negotiation. +Beneath is the same immemorial strife, the life-and-death +struggle,—pitiless, inexorable. +</p> +<p> +What would have been a hostile bivouac within the city's gates, but for +the matter of a few centuries, is now, to select an example which +remotely concerns us, a noble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the +lordly Hudson and the majestic Palisades that form its farther wall. +And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly +reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes, +fighting for captive vestals, and bickering in uncouth tongues over the +golden spoils, what have we now to make the parallel convince? Why, the +same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined, +all-conquering, animal force; a red-faced, big-handed lot, imbued with +hearty good nature and an easy tolerance for the ways of those upon +whom they have descended. +</p> +<p> +Here are chiefs of renown from the farthest fastnesses; they and their +curious households: the ironmonger from Pittsburg, the gold-miner from +Dawson, the copper chief from Butte, the silver chief from Denver, the +cattle chief from Oklahoma, lord of three hundred thousand good acres +and thirty thousand cattle, the lumber prince from Michigan, the +founder of a later dynasty in oil, from Texas. And, for the unaesthetic +but effective Attila, an able fashioner of pork products from Chicago. +</p> +<p> +Here they make festival, carelessly, unafraid, unmolested. For, in the +lapse of time, the older peoples have learned not only the folly of +resisting inevitables, but that the huge and hairy invaders may be +treated and bartered with not unprofitably. Doubtless it often results +from this amity that the patrician strain is corrupted by the alien +admixture,—but business has been business since as many as two persons +met on the face of the new earth. +</p> +<p> +For example, this particular shelter is builded upon land which one of +the patrician families had held for a century solely because it could +not be disposed of. Yet the tribesmen came, clamouring for palaces, and +now this same land, with some adjoining areas of trifling extent, +produces an income that will suffice to maintain that family almost in +its ancient and befitting estate. +</p> +<p> +In this mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand +dollars a year, many tribes of the invaders have found shelter and +entertainment in apartments of many rooms. Outwardly, in details of +ornamentation, the building is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blois, +those splendid palaces of Francis I. Inside are all the line and colour +and device of elegant opulence, modern to the last note. +</p> +<p> +To this palace of an October evening comes the tribe of Bines, and many +another such, for a triumphal feast in the abode of Barbarian Silas +Higbee. The carriages pass through a pair of lordly iron gates, swung +from massive stone pillars, under an arch of wrought iron with its +antique lamp, and into the echoing courtyard flanked by trim hedges of +box. +</p> +<p> +Alighting, the barbaric guests of Higbee are ushered through a +marble-walled vestibule, from which a wrought-iron and bronze screen +gives way to the main entrance-hall. The ceiling here reproduces that +of a feudal castle in Rouen, with some trifling and effective touches +of decoration in blue, scarlet, and gold. The walls are of white Caen +stone, with ornate windows and balconies jutting out above. In one +corner is a stately stone mantel with richly carved hood, bearing in +its central panel the escutcheon of the gallant French monarch. Up a +little flight of marble steps, guarded by its hand-rail of heavy metal, +shod with crimson velvet, one reaches the elevator. This pretty +enclosure of iron and glass, of classic detail in the period of Henry +II., of Circassian walnut trim, with crotch panels, has more the aspect +of boudoir than elevator. The deep seat is of walnut, upholstered with +fat cushions of crimson velvet edged in dull gold galloon. Over the +seat is a mirror cut into small squares by wooden muntins. At each side +are electric candles softened by red silk shades. One's last view +before the door closes noiselessly is of a bay-window opposite, set +with cathedral glass casement-lights, which sheds soft colours upon the +hall-bench of carven stone and upon the tessellated floor. +</p> +<p> +The door to the Higbee domain is of polished mahogany, set between +lights of antique verte Italian glass, and bearing an ancient brass +knocker. From the reception-room, with its walls of green empire silk, +one passes through a foyer hall, of Cordova leather hangings, to the +drawing-room with its three broad windows. Opposite the entrance to +this superb room is a mantel of carved Caen stone, faced with golden +Pavanazza marble, with old Roman andirons of gold ending in the +fleur-de-lis. The walls are hung with blue Florentine silk, embossed in +silver. Beyond a bronze grill is the music-room, a library done in +Austrian oak with stained burlap panelled by dull-forged nails, a +conservatory, a billiard-room, a smoking-room. This latter has walls of +red damask and a mantel with "<i>Post Tenebras Lux</i>" cut into one of its +marble panels,—a legend at which the worthy lessee of all this +splendour is wont often to glance with respectful interest. +</p> +<p> +The admirable host—if one be broad-minded—is now in the drawing-room, +seconding his worthy wife and pretty daughter who welcome the +dinner-guests. +</p> +<p> +For a man who has a fad for ham and doesn't care who knows it, his +bearing is all we have a right to expect that it should be. Among the +group of arrivals, men of his own sort, he is speaking of the +ever-shifting fashion in beards, to the evangel of a Texas oil-field +who flaunts to the world one of those heavy moustaches spuriously +extended below the corners of the mouth by means of the chin-growth of +hair. Another, a worthy tribesman from Snohomish, Washington, wears a +beard which, for a score of years, has been let to be its own true +self; to express, fearlessly, its own unique capacity for variation +from type. These two have rallied their host upon his modishly trimmed +side-whiskers. +</p> +<p> +"You're right," says Mr. Higbee, amiably, "I ain't stuck any myself on +this way of trimming up a man's face, but the madam will have it this +way—says it looks more refined and New Yorky. And now, do you know, +ever since I've wore 'em this way—ever since I had 'em scraped from +around under my neck here—I have to go to Florida every winter. Come +January or February, I get bronchitis every blamed year!" +</p> +<p> +Two of the guests only are alien to the barbaric throng. +</p> +<p> +There is the noble Baron Ronault de Palliac, decorated, reserved, +observant,—almost wistful. For the moment he is picturing dutifully +the luxuries a certain marriage would enable him to procure for his +noble father and his aged mother, who eagerly await the news of his +quest for the golden fleece. For the baron contemplates, after the +fashion of many conscientious explorers, a marriage with a native +woman; though he permits himself to cherish the hope that it may not be +conditioned upon his adopting the manners and customs of the particular +tribe that he means to honour. Monsieur the Baron has long since been +obliged to confess that a suitable <i>mesalliance</i> is none too easy of +achievement, and, in testimony of his vicissitudes, he has written for +a Paris comic paper a series of grimly satiric essays upon New York +society. Recently, moreover, he has been upon the verge of accepting +employment in the candy factory of a bourgeois compatriot. But hope has +a little revived in the noble breast since chance brought him and his +title under the scrutiny of the bewitching Miss Millicent Higbee and +her appreciative mother. +</p> +<p> +And to-night there is not only the pretty Miss Higbee, but the winning +Miss Bines, whose <i>dot</i>, the baron has been led to understand, would +permit his beloved father unlimited piquet at his club, to say nothing +of regenerating the family chateau. Yet these are hardly matters to be +gossiped of. It is enough to know that the Baron Ronault de Palliac +when he discovers himself at table between Miss Bines and the adorable +Miss Higbee, becomes less saturnine than has for some time been his +wont. He does not forget previous disappointments, but desperately +snaps his swarthy jaws in commendable superiority to any adverse fate. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Je ne donne pas un damn</i>," he says to himself, and translates, as was +his practice, to better his English—"I do not present a damn. I shall +take what it is that it may be." +</p> +<p> +The noble Baron de Palliac at this feast of the tribesmen was like the +captive patrician of old led in chains that galled. The other alien, +Launton Oldaker, was present under terms of honourable truce, willingly +and without ulterior motive saving—as he confessed to himself—a +consuming desire to see "how the other half lives." He was no longer +the hunted and dismayed being Percival had met in that far-off and +impossible Montana; but was now untroubled, remembering, it is true, +that this "slumming expedition," as he termed it, had taken him beyond +the recognised bounds of his beloved New York, but serene in the +consciousness that half an hour's drive would land him safely back at +his club. +</p> +<p> +Oldaker observed Miss Psyche Bines approvingly. +</p> +<p> +"We are so glad to be in New York!" she had confided to him, sitting at +her right. +</p> +<p> +"My dear young woman," he warned her, "you haven't reached New York +yet." The talk being general and loud, he ventured further. +</p> +<p> +"This is Pittsburg, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver—almost anything but +New York." +</p> +<p> +"Of course I know these are not the swell old families." +</p> +<p> +Oldaker sipped his glass of old Oloroso sherry and discoursed. +</p> +<p> +"And our prominent families, the ones whose names you read, are not New +York any more, either. They are rather London and Paris. Their +furniture, clothing, plate, pictures, and servants come from one or the +other. Yes, and their manners, too, their interests and sympathies and +concerns, their fashions—and—sometimes, their—er—morals. They are +assuredly not New York any more than Gobelin tapestries and Fortuny +pictures and Louis Seize chairs are New York." +</p> +<p> +"How queerly you talk. Where is New York, then?" +</p> +<p> +Oldaker sighed thoughtfully between two spoonfuls of <i>tortue verte, +claire</i>. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I suppose the truth is that there isn't much of New York left in +New York. As a matter of fact I think it died with the old Volunteer +Fire Department. Anyway the surviving remnant is coy. Real old New +Yorkers like myself—neither poor nor rich—are swamped in these days +like those prehistoric animals whose bones we find. There comes a time +when we can't live, and deposits form over us and we're lost even to +memory." +</p> +<p> +But this talk was even harder for Miss Bines to understand than the +English speech of the Baron Ronault de Palliac, and she turned to that +noble gentleman as the turbot with sauce Corail was served. +</p> +<p> +The dining-room, its wall wainscotted from floor to ceiling in Spanish +oak, was flooded with soft light from the red silk dome that depended +from its crown of gold above the table. The laughter and talk were as +little subdued as the scheme of the rooms. It was an atmosphere of +prodigal and confident opulence. From the music-room near by came the +soft strains of a Haydn quartet, exquisitely performed by finished and +expensive artists. +</p> +<p> +"Say, Higbee!" it was the oil chief from Texas, "see if them fiddlers +of yours can't play 'Ma Honolulu Lulu!'" +</p> +<p> +Oldaker, wincing and turning to Miss Bines for sympathy, heard her say: +</p> +<p> +"Yes, do, Mr. Higbee! I do love those ragtime songs—and then have them +play 'Tell Me, Pretty Maiden,' and the 'Intermezzo.'" +</p> +<p> +He groaned in anguish. +</p> +<p> +The talk ran mostly on practical affairs: the current values of the +great staple commodities; why the corn crop had been light; what wheat +promised to bring; how young Burman of the Chicago Board of Trade had +been pinched in his own wheat corner for four millions—"put up" by his +admiring father; what beef on the hoof commanded; how the Federal Oil +Company would presently own the State of Texas. +</p> +<p> +Almost every Barbarian at the table had made his own fortune. Hardly +one but could recall early days when he toiled on farm or in shop or +forest, herded cattle, prospected, sought adventure in remote and +hazardous wilds. +</p> +<p> +"'Tain't much like them old days, eh, Higbee?" queried the Crown Prince +of Cripple Creek—"when you and me had to walk from Chicago to Green +Bay, Wisconsin, because we didn't have enough shillings for +stage-fare?" He gazed about him suggestively. +</p> +<p> +"Corn-beef and cabbage was pretty good then, eh?" and with sure, +vigorous strokes he fell to demolishing his <i>filet de dinde a la +Perigueux</i>, while a butler refilled his glass with Chateau Malescot, +1878. +</p> +<p> +"Well, it does beat the two rooms the madam and me started to keep +house in when we was married," admitted the host. "That was on the +banks of the Chicago River, and now we got the Hudson flowin' right +through the front yard, you might say, right past our own +yacht-landing." +</p> +<p> +From old days of work and hardship they came to discuss the present and +their immediate surroundings, social and financial. +</p> +<p> +Their daughters, it appeared, were being sought in marriage by the sons +of those among whom they sojourned. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, they're a nice band of hand-shakers, all right, all right," +asserted the gentleman from Kansas City. "One of 'em tried to keep +company with our Caroline, but I wouldn't stand for it. He was a +crackin' good shinny player, and he could lead them cotillion-dances +blowin' a whistle and callin', 'All right, Up!' or something, like a +car-starter,—but, 'Tell me something good about him,' I says to an old +friend of his family. Well, he hemmed and hawed—he was a New York +gentleman, and says he, 'I don't know whether I could make you +understand or not,' he says, 'but he's got Family,' jest like that, +bearin' down hard on 'Family'—'and you've got money,' he says, 'and +Money and Family need each other badly in this town,' he says. 'Yes,' +says I, 'I met up with a number of people here,' I says, 'but I ain't +met none yet that you'd have to blindfold and back into a lot of +money,' I says, 'family or no family,' I says. 'And that young man,' he +says, 'is a pleasant, charming fellow; why,' he says, 'he's the +best-coated man in New York.' Well, I looked at him and I says, 'Well,' +says I, 'he may be the best-coated man in New York, but he'll be the +best-booted man in New York, too,' I says, 'if he comes around trying +to spark Caroline any more,—or would be if I had my way. His chin's +pushed too far back under his face,' I says, 'and besides,' I says, +'Caroline is being waited on by a young hardware drummer, a good steady +young fellow travelling out of little old K.C.,' I says, 'and while he +ain't much for fam'ly,' I says, he'll have one of his own before he +gets through,' I says; 'we start fam'lies where I come from,' I says." +</p> +<p> +"Good boy! Good for you," cheered the self-made Barbarians, and drank +success to the absent disseminator of hardware. +</p> +<p> +With much loud talk of this unedifying character the dinner progressed +to an end; through <i>selle d'agneau</i>, floated in '84 champagne, terrapin +convoyed by a special Madeira of 1850, and canvas-back duck with +<i>Romanee Conti</i>, 1865, to a triumphant finale of Turkish coffee and +1811 brandy. +</p> +<p> +After dinner the ladies gossiped of New York society, while the +barbaric males smoked their big oily cigars and bandied reminiscences. +Higbee showed them through every one of the apartment's twenty-two +rooms, from reception-hall to laundry, manipulating the electric lights +with the skill of a stage-manager. +</p> +<p> +The evening ended with a cake-walk, for the musical artists had by rare +wines been mellowed from their classic reserve into a mood of ragtime +abandon. And if Monsieur the Baron with his ceremonious grace was less +exuberant than the Crown Prince of Cripple Creek, who sang as he +stepped the sensuous measure, his pleasure was not less. He joyed to +observe that these men of incredible millions had no hauteur. +</p> +<p> +"I do not," wrote the baron to his noble father the marquis, that +night, "yet understand their joke; why should it be droll to wish that +the man whose coat is of the best should also wear boots of the best? +but as for what they call <i>une promenade de gateau</i>, I find it very +enjoyable. I have met a Mlle. Bines to whom I shall at once pay my +addresses. Unlike Mlle. Higbee, she has not the father from Chicago nor +elsewhere. <i>Quel diable d'homme!</i>" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH17"><!-- CH17 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XVII. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Patricians Entertain +</h3> +<p> +To reward the enduring who read politely through the garish revel of +the preceding chapter, covers for fourteen are now laid with correct +and tasteful quietness at the sophisticated board of that fine old New +York family, the Milbreys. Shaded candles leave all but the glowing +table in a gloom discreetly pleasant. One need not look so high as the +old-fashioned stuccoed ceiling. The family portraits tone agreeably +into the halflight of the walls; the huge old-fashioned walnut +sideboard, soberly ornate with its mirrors, its white marble top and +its wood-carved fruit, towers majestically aloft in proud scorn of the +frivolous Chippendale fad. +</p> +<p> +Jarvis, the accomplished and incomparable butler, would be subdued and +scholarly looking but for the flagrant scandal of his port-wine nose. +He gives finishing little fillips to the white chrysanthemums massed in +the central epergne on the long silver plateau, and bestows a last +cautious survey upon the cut-glass and silver radiating over the dull +white damask. Finding the table and its appointments faultless, he +assures himself once more that the sherry will come on irreproachably +at a temperature of 60 degrees; that the Burgundy will not fall below +65 nor mount above 70; for Jarvis wots of a palate so acutely sensitive +that it never fails to record a variation of so much as one degree from +the approved standard of temperature. +</p> +<p> +How restful this quiet and reserve after the colour and line tumult of +the Higbee apartment. There the flush and bloom of newness were +oppressive to the right-minded. All smelt of the shop. Here the dull +tones and decorous lines caress and soothe instead of overwhelming the +imagination with effects too grossly literal. Here is the veritable +spirit of good form. +</p> +<p> +Throughout the house this contrast might be noted. It is the +brown-stone, high-stoop house, guarded by a cast-iron fence, built in +vast numbers when the world of fashion moved North to Murray Hill and +Fifth Avenue a generation ago. One of these houses was like all the +others inside and out, built of unimaginative "builder's architecture." +The hall, the long parlour, the back parlour or library, the high +stuccoed ceilings—not only were these alike in all the houses, but the +furnishings, too, were apt to be of a sameness in them all, rather +heavy and tasteless, but serving the ends that such things should be +meant to serve, and never flamboyant. Of these relics of a simpler day +not many survive to us, save in the shameful degeneracy of +boarding-houses. But in such as are left, we may confidently expect to +find the traditions of that more dignified time kept unsullied;—to +find, indeed, as we find in the house of Milbrey, a settled air of +gloom that suggests insolvent but stubbornly determined exclusiveness. +</p> +<p> +Something of this air, too, may be noticed in the surviving tenants of +these austere relics. Yet it would hardly be observed in this house on +this night, for not only do arriving guests bring the aroma of a later +prosperity, but the hearts of our host and hostess beat high with a new +hope. For the fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of +Milbrey, after many ominous mutterings, delays, and frank rebellions, +has declared at last her readiness to be a credit to her training by +conferring her family prestige, distinction of manner and charms of +person upon one equipped for their suitable maintenance. +</p> +<p> +Already her imaginative father is ravishing in fancy the mouldiest +wine-cellars of Continental Europe. Already the fond mother has +idealised a house in "Millionaire's Row" east of the Park, where there +shall be twenty servants instead of three, and there shall cease that +gnawing worry lest the treacherous north-setting current sweep them +west of the Park into one of those hideously new apartment houses, +where the halls are done in marble that seems to have been sliced from +a huge Roquefort cheese, and where one must vie, perhaps, with a +shop-keeper for the favours of an irreverent and materialistic janitor. +</p> +<p> +The young woman herself entertains privately a state of mind which she +has no intention of making public. It is enough, she reasons, that her +action should outwardly accord with the best traditions of her class; +and indeed, her family would never dream of demanding more. +</p> +<p> +Her gown to-night is of orchard green, trimmed with apple-blossoms, a +single pink spray of them caught in her hair. The rounding, satin grace +of her slender arms, sloping to the opal-tipped fingers, the exquisite +line from ear to shoulder strap, the melting ripeness of her chin and +throat, the tender pink and white of her fine skin, the capricious, +inciting tilt of her small head, the dainty lift of her short +nose,—these allurements she has inventoried with a calculating and +satisfied eye. She is glad to believe that there is every reason why it +will soon be over. +</p> +<p> +And, since the whole loaf is notoriously better than a half, here is +the engaging son of the house, also firmly bent upon the high emprise +of matrimony; handsome, with the chin, it may be, slightly receding; +but an unexcelled leader of cotillions, a surpassing polo-player, +clever, winning, and dressed with an effect that has long made him +remarked in polite circles, which no mere money can achieve. Money, +indeed, if certain ill-natured gossip of tradesmen be true, has been an +inconsiderable factor in the encompassment of this sartorial +distinction. He waits now, eager for a first glimpse of the young woman +whose charms, even by report, have already won the best devotion he has +to give. A grievous error it is to suppose that Cupid's artillery is +limited to bow and arrows. +</p> +<p> +And now, instead of the rude commercial horde that laughed loudly and +ate uncouthly at the board of the Barbarian, we shall sit at table with +people born to the only manner said to be worth possessing;—if we +except, indeed, the visiting tribe of Bines, who may be relied upon, +however, to behave at least unobtrusively. +</p> +<p> +As a contrast to the oppressively Western matron from Kansas City, here +is Mistress Fidelia Oldaker on the arm of her attentive son. She would +be very old but for the circumstance that she began early in life to be +a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her +back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair +name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the +dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the +single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a +bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence, +her vivacity unimpaired, her energy amazing, and her coquetry +faultless. From which we should learn, and be grateful therefor, that +when a girl is brought up in the way she ought to go she will never be +able to depart from it. +</p> +<p> +Here also is Cornelia Van Geist, sister of our admirable +hostess—relict of a gentleman who had been first or second cousin to +half the people in society it were really desirable to know, and whose +taste in wines, dinners, and sports had been widely praised at his +death by those who had had the fortune to be numbered among his +friends. Mrs. Van Geist has a kind, shrewd face, and her hair, which +turned prematurely grey while she was yet a wife, gives her a look of +age that her actual years belie. +</p> +<p> +Here, too, is Rulon Shepler, the money-god, his large, round head +turning upon his immense shoulders without the aid of a +neck—sharp-eyed, grizzled, fifty, short of stature, and with as few +illusions concerning life as the New York financier is apt to retain at +his age. +</p> +<p> +If we be forced to wait for another guest of note, it is hardly more +than her due; for Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is truly a personage, and the +best people on more than one continent do not become unduly provoked at +being made to wait for her. Those less than the very best frankly +esteem it a privilege. Yet the great lady is not careless of +engagements, and the wait is never prolonged. Mrs. Milbrey has time to +say to her sister, "Yes, we think it's going; and really, it will do +very well, you know. The girl has had some nonsense in her mind for a +year past—none of us can tell what—but now she seems actually +sensible, and she's promised to accept when the chap proposes." But +there is time for no more gossip. +</p> +<p> +The belated guest arrives, enveloped in a vast cloak, and accompanied +by her two nephews, whom Percival Bines recognises for the solemn and +taciturn young men he had met in Shepler's party at the mine. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, albeit a decorative personality, is constructed +on the same broad and generously graceful lines as her own victoria. +The great lady has not only two chins, but what any fair-minded +observer would accept as sufficient promise of a good third. Yet hardly +could a slighter person display to advantage the famous Gwilt-Athelstan +jewels. The rope of pierced diamonds with pigeon-blood rubies strung +between them, which she wears wound over her corsage, would assuredly +overweight the frail Fidelia Oldaker; the tiara of emeralds and +diamonds was never meant for a brow less majestic; nor would the +stomacher of lustrous grey pearls and glinting diamonds ever have +clasped becomingly a figure that was <i>svelte</i>—or "skinny," as the +great lady herself is frank enough to term all persons even remotely +inclined to be <i>svelte</i>. +</p> +<p> +But let us sit and enliven a proper dinner with talk upon topics of +legitimate interest and genuine propriety. +</p> +<p> +Here will be no discussion of the vulgar matter of markets, staples, +and prices, such as we perforce endured through the overwined and +too-abundant repast of Higbee. Instead of learning what beef on the +hoof brings per hundred-weight, f.o.b. at Cheyenne, we shall here glean +at once the invaluable fact that while good society in London used to +be limited to those who had been presented at court, the presentations +have now become so numerous that the limitation has lost its +significance. Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan thus discloses, as if it were a +trifle, something we should never learn at the table of Higbee though +we ate his heavy dinners to the day of ultimate chaos. And while we +learned at that distressingly new table that one should keep one's +heifers and sell off one's steer calves, we never should have been +informed there that Dinard had just enjoyed the gayest season of its +history under the patronage of this enterprising American; nor that +Lady de Muzzy had opened a tea-room in Grafton Street, and Cynthia, +Marchioness of Angleberry, a beauty-improvement parlour on the Strand +"because she needs the money." +</p> +<p> +"Lots of 'em takin' to trade nowadays; it's a smart sayin' there now +that all the peers are marryin' actresses and all the peeresses goin' +into business." Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan nodded little shocks of brilliance +from her tiara and hungrily speared another oyster. +</p> +<p> +"Only trouble is, it's such rotten hard work collectin' bills from +their intimate friends; they simply <i>won't</i> pay." +</p> +<p> +Nor at the barbaric Higbee's should we have been vouchsafed, to +treasure for our own, the knowledge that Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan had +merely run over for the cup-fortnight, meaning to return directly to +her daughter, Katharine, Duchess of Blanchmere, in time for the Melton +Mowbray hunting-season; nor that she had been rather taken by the new +way of country life among us, and so tempted to protract her gracious +sojourn. +</p> +<p> +"Really," she admits, "we're comin' to do the right thing over here; a +few years were all we needed. Hardly a town-house to be opened before +Thanksgivin', I understand; and down at the Hills some of the houses +will stay open all winter. It's coachin', ridin', and golf and +auto-racin' and polo and squash; really the young folks don't go in at +all except to dance and eat; and it's quite right, you know. It's quite +decently English, now. Why, at Morris Park the other day, the crowd on +the lawn looked quite like Ascot, actually." +</p> +<p> +Nor could we have learned in the hostile camp the current gossip of +Tuxedo, Meadowbrook, Lenox, Morristown, and Ardsley; of the mishap to +Mrs. "Jimmie" Whettin, twice unseated at a recent meet; of the woman's +championship tournament at Chatsworth; or the good points of the new +runner-up at Baltusrol, daily to be seen on the links. Where we might +incur knowledge of Beaumont "gusher" or Pittsburg mill we should never +have discovered that teas and receptions are really falling into +disrepute; that a series of dinner-dances will be organised by the +mothers of debutantes to bring them forward; and that big subscription +balls are in disfavour, since they benefit no one but the caterers who +serve poor suppers and bad champagne. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. takes only Scotch whiskey and soda. +</p> +<p> +"But I'm glad," she confides to Horace Milbrey on her left, "that you +haven't got to followin' this fad of havin' one wine at dinner; I know +it's English, but it's downright shoddy." +</p> +<p> +Her host's eyes swam with gratitude for this appreciation. +</p> +<p> +"I stick to my peg," she continued; "but I like to see a Chablis with +the oysters and good dry sherry with the soup, and a Moselle with the +fish, and then you're ready to be livened with a bit of champagne for +the roast, and steadied a bit by Burgundy with the game. Phim sticks to +it, too; tells me my peg is downright encouragement to the bacteria. +But I tell him I've no quarrel with <i>my</i> bacteria. 'Live and let live' +is my motto, I tell him,—and if the microbes and I both like Scotch +and soda, why, what harm. I'm forty-two and not so much of a fool that +I ain't a little bit of a physician. I know my stomach, I tell him." +</p> +<p> +"What about these Western people?" she asked Oldaker at her other side, +after a little. +</p> +<p> +"Decent, unpretentious folks, somewhat new, but with loads of money." +</p> +<p> +"I've heard how the breed's stormin' New York in droves; but they tell +me some of us need the money." +</p> +<p> +"I dined with one last night, a sugar-cured ham magnate from Chicago." +</p> +<p> +"<i>Dear</i> me! how shockin'!" +</p> +<p> +"But they're good, whole-souled people." +</p> +<p> +"And well-<i>heeled</i>—and that's what we need, it seems. Some of us been +so busy bein' well-familied that we've forgot to make money." +</p> +<p> +"It's a good thing, too. Nature has her own building laws about +fortunes. When they get too sky-scrapy she topples them over. These +people with their thrifty habits would have <i>all</i> the money in time if +their sons and daughters didn't marry aristocrats with expensive tastes +who know how to be spenders. Nature keeps things fairly even, one way +or another." +</p> +<p> +"You're thinkin' about Kitty and the duke." +</p> +<p> +"No, not then I wasn't, though that's one of the class I mean. I was +thinking especially about these Westerners." +</p> +<p> +"Well, my grandfather made the best barrels in New York, and I'm +mother-in-law of a chap whose ancestors for three hundred and fifty +years haven't done a stroke of work; but he's the Duke of Blanchmere, +and I hope our friends here will come as near gettin' the worth of +their money as we did. And if that chap"—she glanced at +Percival—"marries a certain young woman, he'll never have a dull +moment. I'd vouch for that. I'm quite sure she's the devil in her." +</p> +<p> +"And if the yellow-haired girl marries the fellow next her—" +</p> +<p> +"He might do worse." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, but might <i>she</i>? He's already doing worse, and he'll keep on +doing it, even if he does marry her." +</p> +<p> +"Nonsense—about that, you know; all rot! What can you expect of these +chaps? So does the duke do worse, but you'll never hear Kitty complain +so long as he lets her alone and she can wear the strawberry leaves. I +fancy I'll have those young ones down to the Hills for Hallowe'en and +the week-end. Might as well help 'em along." +</p> +<p> +At the other end of the table, the fine old ivory of her cheeks gently +suffused with pink until they looked like slightly crumpled leaves of a +la France rose, Mrs. Oldaker was flirting brazenly with Shepler, and +prattling impartially to him and to one of the twin nephews of old days +in social New York; of a time when the world of fashion occupied a +little space at the Battery and along Broadway; of its migration to the +far north of Great Jones Street, St. Mark's Place, and Second Avenue. +In Waverly Place had been the flowering of her belle-hood, and the day +when her set moved on to Murray Hill was to her still recent and +revolutionary. +</p> +<p> +Between the solemn Angstead twins, Mrs. Bines had sat in silence until +by some happy chance it transpired that "horse" was the word to unlock +their lips. As Mrs. Bines knew all about horses the twins at once +became voluble, showing her marked attention. The twins were notably +devoid of prejudice if your sympathies happened to run with theirs. +</p> +<p> +Miss Bines and young Milbrey were already on excellent terms. Percival +and Miss Milbrey, on the other hand, were doing badly. Some disturbing +element seemed to have put them aloof. Miss Milbrey wondered somewhat; +but her mind was easy, for her resolution had been taken. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan extended her invitation to the young people, who +accepted joyfully. +</p> +<p> +"Come down and camp with us, and help Phim keep the batteries of his +autos run out. You know they deteriorate when they're left +half-charged, and it's one of the cares of his life to see to the whole +six of 'em when they come in. He gets in one and the men get in the +others, and he leads a solemn parade around the stables until they've +been run out. Tell me the leisure class isn't a hard-workin' class, +now." +</p> +<p> +Over coffee and chartreuse in the drawing-room there was more general +talk of money and marriage, and of one for the other. +</p> +<p> +"And so he married money," concluded Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan of one they +had discussed. +</p> +<p> +"Happy marriage!" Shepler called out. +</p> +<p> +"No; money talks! and this time, on my word, now, it made you want to +put on those thick sealskin ear-muffs. Poor chap, and he'd been talkin' +to me about the monotony of married life. 'Monotony, my boy,' I said to +him, 'you don't <i>know</i> lovely woman!' and now he wishes jolly well that +he'd not done it, you know." +</p> +<p> +Here, too, was earned by Mrs. Bines a reputation for wit that she was +never able quite to destroy. There had been talk of a banquet to a +visiting celebrity the night before, for which the <i>menu</i> was one of +unusual costliness. Mr. Milbrey had dwelt with feeling upon certain of +its eminent excellences, such as loin of young bear, a la Granville, +and the boned quail, stuffed with goose-livers. +</p> +<p> +"Really," he concluded, "from an artistic standpoint, although large +dinners are apt to be slurred and slighted, it was a creation of +undoubted worth." +</p> +<p> +"And the orchestra," spoke up Mrs. Bines, who had read of the banquet, +"played 'Hail to the <i>Chef!</i>'" +</p> +<p> +The laughter at this sally was all it should have been, even the host +joining in it. Only two of those present knew that the good woman had +been warned not to call "chef" "chief," as Silas Higbee did. The fact +that neither should "chief" be called "chef" was impressed upon her +later, in a way to make her resolve ever again to eschew both of the +troublesome words. +</p> +<p> +When the guests had gone Miss Milbrey received the praise of both +parents for her blameless attitude toward young Bines. +</p> +<p> +"It will be fixed when we come back from Wheatly," said that knowing +young woman, "and now don't worry any more about it." +</p> +<p> +"And, Fred," said the mother, "do keep straight down there. She's a +commonplace girl, with lots of mannerisms to unlearn, but she's pretty +and sweet and teachable." +</p> +<p> +"And she'll learn a lot from Fred that she doesn't know now," finished +that young man's sister from the foot of the stairway. +</p> +<p> +Back at their hotel Psyche Bines was saying: +</p> +<p> +"Isn't it queer about Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan? We've read so much about +her in the papers. I thought she must be some one awful to meet—I was +that scared—and instead, she's like any one, and real chummy besides; +and, actually, ma, don't you think her dress was dowdy—all except the +diamonds? I suppose that comes from living in England so much. And +hasn't Mrs. Milbrey twice as grand a manner, and the son—he's a +precious—he knows everything and everybody; I shall like him." +</p> +<p> +Her brother, who had flung himself into a cushioned corner, spoke with +the air of one who had reluctantly consented to be interviewed and who +was anxious to be quoted correctly: +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan is all right. She reminds me of what Uncle Peter +writes about that new herd of short-horns: 'This breed has a mild +disposition, is a good feeder, and produces a fine quality of flesh.' +But I'll tell you one thing, sis," he concluded with sudden emphasis, +"with all this talk about marrying for money I'm beginning to feel as +if you and I were a couple of white rabbits out in the open with all +the game laws off!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH18"><!-- CH18 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XVIII. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Course of True Love at a House Party +</h3> +<p> +Among sundry maxims and observations of King Solomon, collated by the +discerning men of Hezekiah, it will be recalled that the way of a man +with a maid is held up to wonder. "There be," says the wise king, who +composed a little in the crisp manner of Mr. Kipling, "three things +which are too wonderful for me; yea, four which I know not: the way of +an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a +ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." Why he +neglected to include the way of a maid with a man is not at once +apparent. His unusual facilities for observation must seemingly have +inspired him to wonder at the maid's way even more than at the man's; +and wise men later than he have not hesitated to confess their entire +lack of understanding in the matter. But if Solomon included this item +in his summary, the men of Hezekiah omitted to report the fact, and by +their chronicles we learn only that the woman "eateth and wipeth her +mouth and saith 'I have done no wickedness.'" Perhaps it was Solomon's +mischance to observe phenomena of this character too much in the mass. +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey's way, at any rate, with the man she had decided to marry, +would undoubtedly have made more work for the unnamed Boswells of the +king, could it have been brought to his notice. +</p> +<p> +For, as she journeyed to the meeting-place on a bright October +afternoon, she confessed to herself that it was of a depth beyond her +own fathoming. Lolling easily back in the wicker chair of the car that +bore her, and gazing idly out over the brown fields and yellow forests +of Long Island as they swirled by her, she found herself wishing once +that her eyes were made like those of a doll. She had lately discovered +of one that when it appeared to fall asleep, it merely turned its eyes +around to look into its own head. With any lesser opportunity for +introspection she felt that certain doubts as to her own motives and +processes would remain for ever unresolved. It was not that she could +not say "I have done no wickedness;" let us place this heroine in no +false light. She was little concerned with the morality of her course +as others might appraise it. The fault, if fault it be, is neither ours +nor hers, and Mr. Darwin wrote a big book chiefly to prove that it +isn't. From the force of her environment and heredity Miss Milbrey had +debated almost exclusively her own chances of happiness under given +conditions; and if she had, for a time, questioned the wisdom of the +obvious course, entirely from her own selfish standpoint, it is all +that, and perhaps more than, we were justified in expecting from her. +Let her, then, cheat the reader of no sympathy that might flow to a +heroine struggling for a high moral ideal. Merely is she clear-headed +enough to have discovered that selfishness is not the thing of easy +bonds it is reputed to be; that its delights are not certain; that one +does not unerringly achieve happiness by the bare circumstance of being +uniformly selfish. Yet even this is a discovery not often made, nor one +to be lightly esteemed; for have not the wise ones of Church and State +ever implied that the way of selfishness is a way of sure delight, to +be shunned only because its joys endure not? So it may be, after all, +no small merit we claim for this girl in that, trained to selfishness +and a certain course, she yet had the wit to suspect that its joys have +been overvalued even by its professional enemies. It is no small merit, +perhaps, even though, after due and selfish reflection, she determined +upon the obvious course. +</p> +<p> +If sometimes her heart was sick with the hunger to love and be loved by +the one she loved, so that there were times when she would have +bartered the world for its plenary feeding, it is all that, we insist, +and more, than could be expected of this sort of heroine. +</p> +<p> +And so she had resolved upon surrender—upon an outward surrender. +Inwardly she knew it to be not more than a capitulation under duress, +whose terms would remain for ever secret except to those clever at +induction. And now, as the train took her swiftly to her fate, she made +the best of it. +</p> +<p> +There would be a town-house fit for her; a country-house at Tuxedo or +Lenox or Westbury, a thousand good acres with greeneries, a game +preserve, trout pond, and race-course; a cottage at Newport; a place in +Scotland; a house in London, perhaps. Then there would be jewels such +as she had longed for, a portrait by Chartran, she thought. And there +was the dazzling thought of going to Felix or Doucet with credit +unlimited. +</p> +<p> +And he—would the thought of him as it had always come to her keep on +hurting with a hurt she could neither explain nor appease? Would he +annoy her, enrage her perhaps, or even worse, tire her? He would be +very much in earnest, of course, and so few men could be in earnest +gracefully. But would he be stupid enough to stay so? And if not, would +he become brutal? She suspected he might have capacities for that. +Would she be able to hide all but her pleasant emotions from him,—hide +that want, the great want, to which she would once have done sacrifice? +</p> +<p> +Well, it was easier to try than not to try, and the sacrifice—one +could always sacrifice if the need became imperative. +</p> +<p> +"And I'm making much of nothing," she concluded. "No other girl I know +would do it. And papa shall 'give me away.' What a pretty euphemism +that is, to be sure!" +</p> +<p> +But her troubled musings ended with her time alone. From a whirl over +the crisp, firm macadam, tucked into one of Phimister Gwilt-Athelstan's +automobiles with four other guests, with no less a person than her +genial host for chauffeur, she was presently ushered into the great +hall where a huge log-fire crackled welcome, and where blew a lively +little gale of tea-chatter from a dozen people. +</p> +<p> +Tea Miss Milbrey justly reckoned among the little sanities of life. Her +wrap doffed and her veil pushed up, she was in a moment restored to her +normal ease, a part of the group, and making her part of the talk that +touched the latest news from town, the flower show, automobile show, +Irving and Terry, the morning's meet, the weekly musicale and +dinner-dance at the club; and at length upon certain matters of +marriage and divorce. +</p> +<p> +"Ladies, ladies—this is degenerating into a mere hammer-fest." Thus +spoke a male wit who had listened. "Give over, and be nice to the +absent." +</p> +<p> +"The end of the fairy story was," continued the previous speaker, +unheeding, "and so they were divorced and lived happily ever after." +</p> +<p> +"I think she took the Chicago motto, 'Marry early and often,'" said +another, "but here she comes." +</p> +<p> +And as blond and fluffy little Mrs. Akemit, a late divorcee, joined the +group the talk ranged back to the flourishing new hunt at Goshen, the +driving over of Tuxedo people for the meet, the nasty accident to +Warner Ridgeway when his blue-ribbon winner Musette fell upon him in +taking a double-jump. +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey had taken stock of her fellow guests. Especially was she +interested to note the presence of Mrs. Drelmer and her protege, +Mauburn. It meant, she was sure, that her brother's wooing of Miss +Bines would not be uncontested. +</p> +<p> +Another load of guests from a later train bustled in, the Bineses among +them, and there was more tea and fresher gossip, while the butler +circulated again with his tray for the trunk-keys. +</p> +<p> +The breezy hostess now took pains to impress upon all that only by +doing exactly as they pleased, as to going and coming, could they hope +to please her. Had she not, by this policy, conquered the cold, +Scottish exclusiveness of Inverness-shire, so that the right sort of +people fought to be at her house-parties during the shooting, even +though she would persist in travelling back and forth to London in +gowns that would be conspicuously elaborate at an afternoon reception, +and even though, in any condition of dress, she never left quite enough +of her jewels in their strong-box? +</p> +<p> +During the hour of dressing-sacque and slippers, while maids fluttered +through the long corridors on hair-tending and dress-hooking +expeditions, Mrs. Drelmer favoured her hostess with a confidential chat +in that lady's boudoir, and, over Scotch and soda and a cigarette, +suggested that Mr. Mauburn, in a house where he could really do as he +pleased, would assuredly take Miss Bines out to dinner. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan was instantly sympathetic. +</p> +<p> +"Only I can't take sides, you know, my dear, and young Milbrey will +think me shabby if he doesn't have first go; but I'll be impartial; +Milbrey shall take her in, and Mauburn shall be at her other side, and +may God have mercy on her soul! These people have so much money, I +hear, it amounts to financial embarrassment, but with those two chaps +for the girl, and Avice Milbrey for that decent young chap, I fancy +they'll be disembarrassed, in a measure. But I mustn't 'play +favourites,' as those slangy nephews of mine put it." +</p> +<p> +And so it befell at dinner in the tapestried dining-room that Psyche +Bines received assiduous attention from two gentlemen whom she +considered equally and superlatively fascinating. While she looked at +one, she listened to the other, and her neck grew tired with turning. +Of anything, save the talk, her mind was afterward a blank; but why is +not that the ideal dinner for any but mere feeders? +</p> +<p> +Nor was the dazzled girl conscious of others at the table,—of Florence +Akemit, the babyish blond, listening with feverish attention to the +German savant, Doctor von Herzlich, who had translated Goethe's +"Iphigenie in Tauris" into Greek merely as recreation, and who was now +justifying his choice of certain words and phrases by citing passages +from various Greek authors; a choice which the sympathetic listener, +after discreet intervals for reflection, invariably commended. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful man, you!" she exclaimed, resolving to +sit by some one less wonderful another time. +</p> +<p> +Or there was Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan, like a motherly Venus rising from a +sea of pink velvet and white silk lace, asserting that some one or +other would never get within sniffing-distance of the Sandringham set. +</p> +<p> +Or her husband, whose face, when he settled it in his collar, made the +lines of a perfect lyre, and of whom it would presently become +inaccurate to say that he was getting bald. He was insisting that "too +many houses spoil the home," and that, with six establishments, he was +without a place to lay his head, that is, with any satisfaction. +</p> +<p> +Or there was pale, thin, ascetic Winnie Wilberforce, who, as a +theosophist, is understood to believe that, in a former incarnation, he +came near to having an affair with a danseuse; he was expounding the +esoterics of his cult to a high-coloured brunette with many turquoises, +who, in turn, was rather inclined to the horse-talk of one of the +nephews. +</p> +<p> +Or there were Miss Milbrey and Percival Bines, of whom the former had +noted with some surprise that the latter was studying her with the eyes +of rather cold calculation, something she had never before detected in +him. +</p> +<p> +After dinner there were bridge and music from the big pipe-organ in the +music-room, and billiards and some dancing. +</p> +<p> +The rival cavaliers of Miss Bines, perceiving simultaneously that +neither would have the delicacy to withdraw from the field, cunningly +inveigled each other into the billiard-room, where they watchfully +consumed whiskey and soda together with the design of making each other +drunk. This resulted in the two nephews, who invariably hunted as a +pair, capturing Miss Bines to see if she could talk horse as ably as +her mother, and, when they found that she could, planning a coaching +trip for the morrow. +</p> +<p> +It also resulted in Miss Bines seeing no more of either cavalier that +night, since they abandoned their contest only after every one but a +sleepy butler had retired, and at a time when it became necessary for +the Englishman to assist the American up the stairs, though the latter +was moved to protest, as a matter of cheerful generality, that he was +"aw ri'—entirely cap'le." At parting he repeatedly urged Mauburn, with +tears in his eyes, to point out one single instance in which he had +ever proved false to a friend. +</p> +<p> +To herself, when the pink rose came out of her hair that night, Miss +Milbrey admitted that it wasn't going to be so bad, after all. +</p> +<p> +She had feared he might rush his proposal through that night; he had +been so much in earnest. But he had not done so, and she was glad he +could be restrained and deliberate in that "breedy" sort of way. It +promised well, that he could wait until the morrow. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH19"><!-- CH19 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XIX. +</h2> + +<h3> +An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe +</h3> +<p> +Miss Milbrey, the next morning, faced with becoming resignation what +she felt would be her last day of entire freedom. She was down and out +philosophically to play nine holes with her host before breakfast. +</p> +<p> +Her brother, awakening less happily, made a series of discoveries +regarding his bodily sensations that caused him to view life with +disaffection. Noting that the hour was early, however, he took cheer, +and after a long, strong, cold drink, which he rang for, and a pricking +icy shower, which he nerved himself to, he was ready to ignore his +aching head and get the start of Mauburn. +</p> +<p> +The Englishman, he seemed to recall, had drunk even more than he, and, +as it was barely eight o'clock, would probably not come to life for a +couple of hours yet. He made his way to the breakfast-room. The thought +of food was not pleasant, but another brandy and soda, beading +vivaciously in its tall glass, would enable him to watch with fortitude +the spectacle of others who might chance to be eating. And he would +have at least two hours of Miss Bines before Mauburn's head should ache +him back to consciousness. +</p> +<p> +He opened the door of the spacious breakfast-room. Through the broad +windows from the south-east came the glorious shine of the morning sun +to make him blink; and seated where it flooded him as a calcium was +Mauburn, resplendent in his myriad freckles, trim, alive, and obviously +hungry. Around his plate were cold mutton, a game pie, eggs, bacon, +tarts, toast, and sodden-looking marmalade. Mauburn was eating of these +with a voracity that published his singleness of mind to all who might +observe. +</p> +<p> +Milbrey steadied himself with one hand upon the door-post, and with the +other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes. +But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only +more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the +sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ice, and a siphon +beckoned. +</p> +<p> +Between two gulps of coffee Mauburn grinned affably. +</p> +<p> +"Mornin', old chap! Feelin' a bit seedy? By Jove! I don't wonder. I'm +not so fit myself. I fancy, you know, it must have been that beastly +anchovy paste we had on the biscuits." +</p> +<p> +Milbrey's burning eyes beheld him reach out for another slice of the +cold, terrible mutton. +</p> +<p> +"Life," said Milbrey, as he inflated his brandy from the siphon, "is an +empty dream this morning." +</p> +<p> +"Wake up then, old chap!" Mauburn cordially urged, engaging the game +pie in deadly conflict; "try a rasher; nothing like it; better'n +peggin' it so early. Never drink till dinner-time, old chap, and you'll +be able to eat in the morning like—like a blooming baby." And he +proceeded to crown this notion of infancy's breakfast with a jam tart +of majestic proportions. +</p> +<p> +"Where are the people?" inquired Milbrey, eking out his own moist +breakfast with a cigarette. +</p> +<p> +"All down and out except some of the women. Miss Bines just drove off a +four-in-hand with the two Angsteads—held the reins like an old whip, +too, by Jove; but they'll be back for luncheon;—and directly after +luncheon she's promised to ride with me. I fancy we'll have a little +practice over the sticks." +</p> +<p> +"And I fancy I'm going straight back to bed,—that is, if it's all +right to fancy a thing you're certain about." +</p> +<p> +Outside most of the others had scattered for life in the open, each to +his taste. Some were on the links. Some had gone with the coach. A few +had ridden early to the meet of the Essex hounds near Easthampton, +where a stiff run was expected. Others had gone to follow the hunt in +traps. A lively group came back now to read the morning papers by the +log-fire in the big cheery hall. Among these were Percival and Miss +Milbrey. When they had dawdled over the papers for an hour Miss Milbrey +grew slightly restive. +</p> +<p> +"Why doesn't he have it over?" she asked herself, with some impatience. +And she delicately gave Percival, not an opportunity, but opportunities +to make an opportunity, which is a vastly different form of procedure. +</p> +<p> +But the luncheon hour came and people straggled back, and the afternoon +began, and the request for Miss Milbrey's heart and hand was still +unaccountably deferred. Nor could she feel any of those subtle +premonitions that usually warn a woman when the event is preparing in a +lover's secret heart. +</p> +<p> +Reminding herself of his letters, she began to suspect that, while he +could write unreservedly, he might be shy and reluctant of speech; and +that shyness now deterred him. So much being clear, she determined to +force the issue and end the strain for both. +</p> +<p> +Percival had shown not a little interest in pretty Mrs. Akemit, and was +now talking with that fascinating creature as she lolled on a low seat +before the fire in her lacy blue house-gown. At the moment she was +adroitly posing one foot and then the other before the warmth of the +grate. It may be disclosed without damage to this tale that the feet of +Mrs. Akemit were not cold; but that they were trifles most daintily +shod, and, as her slender silken ankles curved them toward the blaze +from her froth of a petticoat, they were worth looking at. +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey disunited the chatting couple with swiftness and aplomb. +</p> +<p> +"Come, Mr. Bines, if I'm to take that tramp you made me promise you, +it's time we were off." +</p> +<p> +Outside she laughed deliciously. "You know you did make me promise it +mentally, because I knew you'd want to come and want me to come, but I +was afraid Mrs. Akemit mightn't understand about telepathy, so I +pretended we'd arranged it all in words." +</p> +<p> +"Of course! Great joke, wasn't it?" assented the young man, rather +awkwardly. +</p> +<p> +Down the broad sweep of roadway, running between its granite coping, +they strode at a smart pace. +</p> +<p> +"You know you complimented my walking powers on that other walk we +took, away off there where the sun goes down." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, of course," he replied absently. +</p> +<p> +"Now, he's beginning," she said to herself, noting his absent and +somewhat embarrassed manner. +</p> +<p> +In reality he was thinking how few were the days ago he would have held +this the dearest of all privileges, and how strange that he should now +prize it so lightly, almost prefer, indeed, not to have it; that he +should regard her, of all women, "the fairest of all flesh on earth" +with nervous distrust. +</p> +<p> +She was dressed in tan corduroy; elation was in her face; her waist, as +she stepped, showed supple as a willow; her suede-gloved little hands +were compact and tempting to his grasp. His senses breathed the air of +her perfect and compelling femininity. But sharper than all these +impressions rang the words of the worldly-wise Higbee: <i>"She's hunting +night and day for a rich husband; she tries for them as fast as they +come; she'd rather marry a sub-treasury—she'd marry me in a +minute—she'd marry</i> YOU; <i>but if you were broke she'd have about as +much use for you...."</i> +</p> +<p> +Her glance was frank, friendly, and encouraging. Her deep eyes were +clear as a trout-brook. He thought he saw in them once almost a +tenderness for him. +</p> +<p> +She thought, "He <i>does</i> love me!" +</p> +<p> +Outside the grounds they turned down a bridle-path that led off through +the woods—off through the golden sun-wine of an October day. The air +bore a clean autumn spice, and a faint salty scent blended with it from +the distant Sound. The autumn silence, which is the only perfect +silence in all the world, was restful, yet full of significance, +suggestion, provocation. From the spongy lowland back of them came the +pleading sweetness of a meadow-lark's cry. Nearer they could even hear +an occasional leaf flutter and waver down. The quick thud of a falling +nut was almost loud enough to earn its echo. Now and then they saw a +lightning flash of vivid turquoise and heard a jay's harsh scream. +</p> +<p> +In this stillness their voices instinctively lowered, while their eyes +did homage to the wondrous play of colour about them. Over a yielding +brown carpet they went among maple and chestnut and oak, with their +bewildering changes through crimson, russet, and amber to pale yellow; +under the deep-stained leaves of the sweet-gum they went, and past the +dogwood with scarlet berries gemming the clusters of its dim red +leaves. +</p> +<p> +But through all this waiting, inciting silence Miss Milbrey listened in +vain for the words she had felt so certain would come. +</p> +<p> +Sometimes her companion was voluble; again he was taciturn—and through +it all he was doggedly aloof. +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey had put herself bravely in the path of Destiny. Destiny +had turned aside. She had turned to meet it, and now it frankly fled. +Destiny, as she had construed it, was turned a fugitive. She was +bruised, puzzled, and not a little piqued. During the walk back, when +this much had been made clear, the silence was intolerably oppressive. +Without knowing why, they understood perfectly now that neither had +been ingenuous. +</p> +<p> +"She would love the money and play me for a fool," he thought, under +the surface talk. Youth is prone to endow its opinions with all the +dignity of certain knowledge. +</p> +<p> +"Yet I am certain he loves me," thought she. On the other hand, youth +is often gifted with a credulity divine and unerring. +</p> +<p> +At the door as they came up the roadway a trap was depositing a man +whom Miss Milbrey greeted with evident surprise and some restraint. He +was slight, dark, and quick of movement, with finely cut nostrils that +expanded and quivered nervously like those of a high-bred horse in +tight check. +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey introduced him to Percival as Mr. Ristine. +</p> +<p> +"I didn't know you were hereabouts," she said. +</p> +<p> +"I've run over from the Bloynes to dine and do Hallowe'en with you," he +answered, flashing his dark eyes quickly over Percival and again +lighting the girl with them. +</p> +<p> +"Surprises never come singly," she returned, and Percival noted a +curious little air of defiance in her glance and manner. +</p> +<p> +Now it is possible that Solomon's implied distinction as to the man's +way with a maid was not, after all, so ill advised. +</p> +<p> +For young Bines, after dinner, fell in love with Miss Milbrey all over +again. The normal human mind going to one extreme will inevitably +gravitate to its opposite if given time. Having put her away in the +conviction that she was heartless and mercenary—having fasted in the +desert of doubt—he now found himself detecting in her an unmistakable +appeal for sympathy, for human kindness, perhaps for love. He forgot +the words of Higbee and became again the confident, unquestioning +lover. He noted her rather subdued and reserved demeanour, and the +suggestions of weariness about her eyes. They drew him. He resolved at +once to seek her and give his love freedom to tell itself. He would no +longer meanly restrain it. He would even tell her all his distrust. Now +that they had gone she should know every ignoble suspicion; and, +whether she cared for him or not, she would comfort him for the hurt +they had been to him. +</p> +<p> +The Hallowe'en frolic was on. Through the long hall, lighted to +pleasant dusk by real Jack-o'-lanterns, stray couples strolled, with +subdued murmurs and soft laughter. In the big white and gold parlour, +in the dining-room, billiard-room, and in the tropic jungle of the +immense palm-garden the party had bestowed itself in congenial groups, +ever intersecting and forming anew. Little flutters of high laughter +now and then told of tests that were being made with roasting +chestnuts, apple-parings, the white of an egg dropped into water, or +the lighted candle before an open window. +</p> +<p> +Percival watched for the chance to find Miss Milbrey alone. His sister +had just ventured alone with a candle into the library to study the +face of her future husband in a mirror. The result had been, in a +sense, unsatisfactory. She had beheld looking over her shoulder the +faces of Mauburn, Fred Milbrey, and the Angstead twins, and had +declared herself unnerved by the weird prophecy. +</p> +<p> +Before the fire in the hall Percival stood while Mrs. Akemit reclined +picturesquely near by, and Doctor von Herzlich explained, with +excessive care as to his enunciation, that protoplasm can be analysed +but cannot be reconstructed; following this with his own view as to why +the synthesis does not produce life. +</p> +<p> +"You wonderful man!" from Mrs. Akemit; "I fairly tremble when I think +of all you know. Oh, what a delight science must be to her votaries!" +</p> +<p> +The Angstead twins joined the group, attracted by Mrs. Akemit's inquiry +of the savant if he did not consider civilisation a failure. The twins +did. They considered civilisation a failure because it was killing off +all the big game. There was none to speak of left now except in Africa; +and they were pessimistic about Africa. +</p> +<p> +Percival listened absently to the talk and watched Miss Milbrey, now +one of the group in the dining-room. Presently he saw her take a +lighted candle from one of the laughing girls and go toward the +library. +</p> +<p> +His heart-beats quickened. Now she should know his love and it would be +well. He walked down the hall leisurely, turned into the big parlour, +momentarily deserted, walked quickly but softly over its polished floor +to a door that gave into the library, pushed the heavy portiere aside +and stepped noiselessly in. +</p> +<p> +The large room was lighted dimly by two immense yellow pumpkins, their +sides cut into faces of grinning grotesqueness. At the far side of the +room Miss Milbrey had that instant arrived before an antique oval +mirror whose gilded carvings reflected the light of the candle. She +held it above her head with one rounded arm. He stood in deep shadow +and the girl had been too absorbed in the play to note his coming. He +took one noiseless step toward her, but then through the curtained +doorway by which she had come he saw a man enter swiftly and furtively. +</p> +<p> +Trembling on the verge of laughing speech, something held him back, +some unexplainable instinct, making itself known in a thrill that went +from his feet to his head; he could feel the roots of his hair tingle. +The newcomer went quickly, with catlike tread, toward the girl. +Fascinated he stood, wanting to speak, to laugh, yet powerless from the +very swiftness of what followed. +</p> +<p> +In the mirror under the candle-light he saw the man's dark face come +beside the other, heard a little cry from the girl as she half-turned; +then he saw the man take her in his arms, saw her head fall on to his +shoulder, and her face turn to his kiss. +</p> +<p> +He tried to stop breathing, fearful of discovery, grasping with one +hand the heavy fold of the curtain back of him to steady himself. +</p> +<p> +There was the space of two long, trembling breaths; then he heard her +say, in a low, tense voice, as she drew away: +</p> +<p> +"Oh, you are my bad angel—why?—why?" +</p> +<p> +She fled toward the door to the hall. +</p> +<p> +"Don't come this way," she called back, in quick, low tones of caution. +</p> +<p> +The man turned toward the door where Percival stood, and in the +darkness stumbled over a hassock. Instantly Percival was on the other +side of the portiere, and, before the other had groped his way to the +dark corner where the door was, had recrossed the empty parlour and was +safely in the hall. +</p> +<p> +He made his way to the dining-room, where supper was under way. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines has seen a ghost," said the sharp-eyed Mrs. Drelmer. +</p> +<p> +"Poor chap's only starved to death," said Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan. "Eat +something, Mr. Bines; this supper is go-as-you-please. Nobody's to wait +for anybody." +</p> +<p> +Strung loosely about the big table a dozen people were eating hot +scones and bannocks with clotted cream and marmalade, and drinking +mulled cider. +</p> +<p> +"And there's cold fowl and baked beans and doughnuts and all, for those +who can't eat with a Scotch accent," said the host, cheerfully. +</p> +<p> +Percival dropped into one of the chairs. +</p> +<p> +"I'm Scotch enough to want a Scotch high-ball." +</p> +<p> +"And you're getting it so high it's top-heavy," cautioned Mrs. Drelmer. +</p> +<p> +Above the chatter of the table could be heard the voices of men and the +musical laughter of women from the other rooms. +</p> +<p> +"I simply can't get 'em together," said the hostess. +</p> +<p> +"It's nice to have 'em all over the place," said her husband, "fair +women and brave men, you know." +</p> +<p> +"The men <i>have</i> to be brave," she answered, shortly, with a glance at +little Mrs. Akemit, who had permitted Percival to seat her at his side, +and was now pleading with him to agree that simple ways of life are +requisite to the needed measure of spirituality. +</p> +<p> +Then came strains of music from the rich-toned organ. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that dear Ned Ristine is playing," cried one; and several of the +group sauntered toward the music-room. +</p> +<p> +The music flooded the hall and the room, so that the talk died low. +</p> +<p> +"He's improvising," exclaimed Mrs. Akemit. "How splendid! He seems to +be breathing a paean of triumph, some high, exalted spiritual triumph, +as if his soul had risen above us—how precious!" +</p> +<p> +When the deep swell had subsided to silvery ripples and the last +cadence had fainted, she looked at Percival with moistened parted lips +and eyes half-shielded, as if her full gaze would betray too much of +her quivering soul. +</p> +<p> +Then Percival heard the turquoised brunette say: "What a pity his wife +is such an unsympathetic creature!" +</p> +<p> +"But Mr. Ristine is unmarried, is he not?" he asked, quickly. +</p> +<p> +There was a little laugh from Mrs. Drelmer. +</p> +<p> +"Not yet—not that I've heard of." +</p> +<p> +"I beg pardon!" +</p> +<p> +"There have been rumours lots of times that he was going to be +<i>unmarried</i>, but they always seem to adjust their little difficulties. +He and his wife are now staying over at the Bloynes." +</p> +<p> +"Oh! I see," answered Percival; "you're a jester, Mrs. Drelmer." +</p> +<p> +"Ristine," observed the theosophic Wilberforce, in the manner of a +hired oracle, "is, in his present incarnation, imperfectly monogamous." +</p> +<p> +Some people came from the music-room. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Milbrey has stayed by the organist," said one; "and she's +promised to make him play one more. Isn't he divine?" +</p> +<p> +The music came again. +</p> +<p> +"Oh!" from Mrs. Akemit, again in an ecstasy, '"' he's playing that +heavenly stuff from the second act of 'Tristan and Isolde'—the one +triumphant, perfect love-poem of all music." +</p> +<p> +"That Scotch whiskey is good in some of the lesser emergencies," +remarked Percival, turning to her; "but it has its limitations. Let's +you and me trifle with a nice cold quart of champagne!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH20"><!-- CH20 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XX. +</h2> + +<h3> +Doctor Von Herzlich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied +Phenomena +</h3> +<p> +The Hightower Hotel is by many observers held to be an instructive +microcosm of New York, more especially of upper Broadway, with correct +proportions of the native and the visiting provincial. With correct +proportions, again, of the money-making native and the money-spending +native, male and female. A splendid place is this New York; splendid +but terrible. London for the stranger has a steady-going, hearty +hospitality. Paris on short notice will be cosily and coaxingly +intimate. New York is never either. It overwhelms with its lavish +display of wealth, it stuns with its tireless, battering energy. But it +stays always aloof, indifferent if it be loved or hated; if it crush or +sustain. +</p> +<p> +The ground floor of the Hightower Hotel reproduces this magnificent, +brutal indifference. One might live years in its mile or so of stately +corridors and its acre or so of resplendent cafes, parlours, +reception-rooms, and restaurants, elbowed by thousands, suffocated by +that dense air of human crowdedness, that miasma of brain emanations, +and still remain in splendid isolation, as had he worn the magic ring +of Gyges. Here is every species of visitor: the money-burdened who +"stop" here and cultivate an air of being blase to the wealth of +polished splendours; and the less opulent who "stop" cheaply elsewhere +and venture in to tread the corridors timidly, to stare with honest, +drooping-jawed wonder at its marvels of architecture and decoration, +and to gaze with becoming reverence at those persons whom they shrewdly +conceive to be social celebrities. +</p> +<p> +This mixture of many and strange elements is never at rest. Its units +wait expectantly, chat, drink, eat, or stroll with varying airs through +reception-room, corridor, and office. It is an endless function, +attended by all of Broadway, with entertainment diversely contrived for +every taste by a catholic-minded host with a sincere desire to please +the paying public. +</p> +<p> +"Isn't it a huge bear-garden, though?" asks Launton Oldaker of the +estimable Doctor von Herzlich, after the two had observed the scene in +silence for a time. +</p> +<p> +The wise German dropped an olive into his Rhine wine, and gazed +reflectively about the room. Men and women sat at tables drinking. +Beyond the tables at the farther side of the room, other men were +playing billiards. It was four o'clock and the tide was high. +</p> +<p> +"It is yet more," answered the doctor. "In my prolonged studies of +natural phenomena this is the most valuable of all which I have been +privileged to observe." +</p> +<p> +He called them "brifiletched" and "awbsairf" with great nicety. Perhaps +his discernment was less at fault. +</p> +<p> +"Having," continued the doctor, "granted myself some respite from toil +in the laboratory at Marburg, I chose to pleasure voyage, to study yet +more the social conditions in this loveworthy land. I suspected that +much tiredness of travel would be involved. Yet here I find all +conditions whatsoever—here in that which you denominate 'bear-garden'. +They have been reduced here for my edification, yes? But your term is a +term of inadequate comprehensiveness. It is to me more what you call a +'beast-garden,' to include all species of fauna. Are there not here +moths and human flames? are there not cunning serpents crawling with +apples of knowledge to unreluctant, idling Eves, yes? Do we not hear +the amazing converse of parrots and note the pea-fowl negotiating +admiration from observers? Mark at that yet farther table also the +swine and the song-bird; again, mark our draught-horses who have +achieved a competence, yes? You note also the presence of wolves and +lambs. And, endly, mark our tailed arborean ancestors, trained to the +wearing of garments and a single eye-glass. May I ask, have you +bestowed upon this diversity your completest high attention? <i>Hanh</i>!" +</p> +<p> +This explosion of the doctor's meant that he invited and awaited some +contradiction. As none ensued, he went on: +</p> +<p> +"For wolf and lamb I direct your attention to the group at yonder +table. I notice that you greeted the young man as he entered—a common +friend to us then—Mr. Bines, with financial resources incredibly +unlimited? Also he is possessed of an unexperienced freedom from +suspectedness-of-ulterior-motive-in-others—one may not in English as +in German make the word to fit his need of the moment—that +unsuspectedness, I repeat, which has ever characterised the lamb about +to be converted into nutrition. You note the large, loose gentleman +with wide-brimmed hat and beard after my own, somewhat, yes? He would +dispose of some valuable oil-wells which he shall discover at Texas the +moment he shall have sufficiently disposed of them. A wolf he is, yes? +The more correctly attired person at his right, with the beak of a hawk +and lips so thin that his big white teeth gleam through them when they +are yet shut, he is what he calls himself a promoter. He has made +sundry efforts to promote myself. I conclude 'promoter' is one other +fashion of wolf-saying. The yet littler and yet younger man at his left +of our friend, the one of soft voice and insinuating manner, much +resembling a stray scion of aristocracy, discloses to those with whom +he affably acquaints himself the location of a luxurious gaming house +not far off; he will even consent to accompany one to its tables; and +still yet he has but yesterday evening invited me the all-town to see. +</p> +<p> +"As a scientist, I remind you, I permit myself no prejudices. I observe +the workings of unemotional law and sometimes record them. You have a +saying here that there are three generations between shirt-sleeves and +shirt-sleeves. I observe the process of the progress. It is benign as +are all processes. I have lately observed it in England. There, by +their law of entail, the same process is unswifter,—yet does it +unvary. The poor aristocrats, almost back to shirt-sleeves, with their +taxes and entailed lands, seek for the money in shops of dress and +bonnet and ale, and graciously rent their castles to the +but-newly-opulent in American oil or the diamonds of South Africa. Here +the posterity of your Mynherr Knickerbocker do likewise. The ancestor +they boast was a toiler, a market-gardener, a fur-trader, a boatman, +hardworking, simple-wayed, unspending. The woman ancestor +kitchen-gardened, spun, wove, and nourished the poultry. Their +descendants upon the savings of these labours have forgotten how to +labour themselves. They could not yet produce should they even +relinquish the illusion that to produce is of a baseness, that only to +consume is noble. I gather reports that a few retain enough of the +ancient strain to become sturdy tradesmen and gardeners once more. +Others seek out and assimilate this new-richness, which, in its turn, +will become impoverished and helpless. Ah, what beautiful showing of +Evolution! +</p> +<p> +"See the pendulum swing from useful penury to useless opulence. Why +does it not halt midway, you inquire? Because the race is so young. +Ach! a mere two hundred and forty million years from our +grandfather-grandmother amoeba in the ancestral morass! What can one be +expecting? Certain faculties develop in response to the pressure of +environment. Omit the pressure and the faculties no longer ensue. Yes? +Withdraw the pressure, and the faculties decay. Sightless moles, their +environment demands not the sight; nor of the fishes that inhabit the +streams of your Mammoth Cave. Your aristocrats between the +sleeve-of-the-shirt periods likewise degenerate. There is no need to +work, they lose the power. No need to sustain themselves, they become +helpless. They are as animals grown in an environment that demands no +struggle of them. Yet their environment is artificial. They live on +stored energy, stored by another. It is exhausted, they perish. All but +the few that can modify to correspond with the changed environment, as +when your social celebrities venture into trade, and the also few that +in their life of idleness have acquired graces of person and manner to +let them find pleasure in the eyes of marryers among the but-now-rich." +</p> +<p> +The learned doctor submitted to have his glass refilled from the cooler +at his side, dropped another olive into the wine, and resumed before +Oldaker could manage an escape. +</p> +<p> +"And how long, you ask, shall the cosmic pendulum swing between these +extremes of penurious industry and opulent idleness?" +</p> +<p> +Oldaker had not asked it. But he tried politely to appear as if he had +meant to. He had really meant to ask the doctor what time it was and +then pretend to recall an engagement for which he would be already +late. +</p> +<p> +"It will so continue," the doctor placidly resumed, "until the race +achieves a different ideal. Now you will say, but there can be no ideal +so long as there is no imagination; and as I have directly—a +moment-soon—said, the race is too young to have achieved imagination. +The highest felicity which we are yet able to imagine is a felicity +based upon much money; our highest pleasures the material pleasures +which money buys, yes? We strive for it, developing the money-getting +faculty at the expense of all others; and when the money is obtained we +cannot enjoy it. We can imagine to do with it only delicate-eating and +drinking and dressing for show-to-others and building houses immense +and splendidly uncalculated for homes of rational dwelling. Art, +science, music, literature, sociology, the great study and play of our +humanity, they are shut to us. +</p> +<p> +"Our young friend Bines is a specimen. It is as if he were a child, +having received from another a laboratory full of the most beautiful +instruments of science. They are valuable, but he can do but common +things with them because he knows not their possibilities. Or, we may +call it stored energy he has; for such is money, the finest, subtlest, +most potent form of stored energy; it may command the highest fruits of +genius, the lowest fruits of animality; it is also volatile, elusive. +Our young friend has many powerful batteries of it. But he is no +electrician. Some he will happily waste without harm to himself. Much +of it, apparently, he will convert into that champagne he now drinks. +For a week since I had the pleasure of becoming known to him he has +drunk it here each day, copiously. He cannot imagine a more salutary +mode of exhausting his force. I am told he comes of a father who died +at fifty, and who did in many ways like that. This one, at the rate I +have observed, will not last so long. He will not so long correspond +with an environment even so unexacting as this. And his son, perhaps +his grandson, will become what you call broke; will from lack of +pressure to learn some useful art, and from spending only, become +useless and helpless. For besides drink, there is gambling. He plays +what you say, the game of poker, this Bines. You see the gentleman, +rounded gracefully in front, who has much the air of seeming to stand +behind himself,—he drinks whiskey at my far right, yes? He is of a +rich trust, the magnate-director as you say, and plays at cards nightly +with our young friend. He jested with him in my presence before you +entered, saying, 'I will make you look like'—I forget it now, but his +humourous threat was to reduce our young friend to the aspect of some +inconsiderable sum in the money of your country. I cannot recall the +precise amount, but it was not so much as what you call one dollar. +Strange, is it not, that the rich who have too much money gamble as +feverishly as the poor who have none, and therefore have an excuse? And +the love of display-for-display. If one were not a scientist one might +be tempted to say there is no progress. The Peruvian grandee shod his +mules with pure gold, albeit that metal makes but inferior shodding for +beasts of burden. The London factory girl hires the dyed feathers of +the ostrich to make her bonnet gay; and your money people are as +display-loving. Lucullus and your latest millionaire joy in the same +emotion of pleasure at making a show. Ach! we are truly in the race's +childhood yet. The way of evolution is so unfast, yes? Ah! you will go +now, Mr. Oldaker. I shall hope to enjoy you more again. Your +observations have interested me deeply; they shall have my most high +attention. Another time you shall discuss with me how it must be that +the cosmic process shall produce a happy mean between stoic and +epicure, by learning the valuable arts of compromise, yes? How Zeno +with his bread and dates shall learn not to despise a few luxuries, and +Vitellius shall learn that the mind may sometimes feast to advantage +while the body fasts." +</p> +<p> +Through the marbled corridors and regal parlours, down long +perspectives of Persian rugs and onyx pillars, the function raged. +</p> +<p> +The group at Percival's table broke up. He had an appointment to meet +Colonel Poindexter the next morning to consummate the purchase of some +oil stock certain to appreciate fabulously in value. He had promised to +listen further to Mr. Isidore Lewis regarding a plan for obtaining +control of a certain line of one of the metal stocks. And he had +signified his desire to make one of a party the affable younger man +would guide later in the evening to a sumptuous temple of chance, to +which, by good luck, he had gained the entree. The three gentlemen +parted most cordially from him after he had paid the check. +</p> +<p> +To Mr. Lewis, when Colonel Poindexter had also left, the young man with +a taste for gaming remarked, ingenuously: +</p> +<p> +"Say, Izzy, on the level, there's the readiest money that ever +registered at this joint. You don't have to be Mr. William Wisenham to +do business with him. You can have all you want of that at track odds." +</p> +<p> +"I'm making book that way myself," responded the cheerful Mr. Lewis; +"fifty'll get you a thousand any time, my lad. It's a lead-pipe at +twenty to one. But say, with all these Petroleum Pete oil-stock +grafters and Dawson City Daves with frozen feet and mining-stock in +their mitts, a man's got to play them close in to his bosom to win out +anything. Competition is killing this place, my boy." +</p> +<p> +In the Turkish room Percival found Mrs. Akemit, gowned to perfection, +glowing, and wearing a bunch of violets bigger than her pretty head. +</p> +<p> +"I've just sent cards to your mother and sister," she explained, as she +made room for him upon the divan. +</p> +<p> +To them came presently Mrs. Drelmer, well-groomed and aggressively +cheerful. +</p> +<p> +"How de do! Just been down to Wall Street seeing how my other half +lives, and now I'm famished for tea and things. Ah! here are your +mother and our proud Western beauty!" And she went forward to greet +them. +</p> +<p> +"It's more than <i>her</i> other half knows about her," was Mrs. Akemit's +observation to the violets on her breast. +</p> +<p> +"Come sit with me here in this corner, dear," said Mrs. Drelmer to +Psyche, while Mrs. Bines joined her son and Mrs. Akemit. "I've so much +to tell you. And that poor little Florence Akemit, isn't it too bad +about her. You know one of those bright French women said it's so +inconvenient to be a widow because it's necessary to resume the modesty +of a young girl without being able to feign her ignorance. No wonder +Florence has a hard time of it; but isn't it wretched of me to gossip? +And I wanted to tell you especially about Mr. Mauburn. You know of +course he'll be Lord Casselthorpe when the present Lord Casselthorpe +dies; a splendid title, really quite one of the best in all England; +and, my dear, he's out-and-out smitten with you; there's no use in +denying it; you should hear him rave to me about you; really these +young men in love are so inconsiderate of us old women. Ah! here is +that Mrs. Errol who does those fascinating miniatures of all the smart +people. Excuse me one moment, my dear; I want her to meet your mother." +</p> +<p> +The fashionable miniature artist was presently arranging with the dazed +Mrs. Bines for miniatures of herself and Psyche. Mrs. Drelmer, +beholding the pair with the satisfied glance of one who has performed a +kindly action, resumed her <i>tete-a-tete</i> with Psyche. +</p> +<p> +Percival, across the room, listened to Mrs. Akemit's artless disclosure +that she found life too complex—far too hazardous, indeed, for a poor +little creature in her unfortunate position, so liable to cruel +misjudgment for thoughtless, harmless acts, the result of a young zest +for life. She had often thought most seriously of a convent, indeed she +had—"and, really, Mr. Bines, I'm amazed that I talk this way—so +freely to you—you know, when I've known you so short a time; but +something in you compels my confidences, poor little me! and my poor +little confidences! One so seldom meets a man nowadays with whom one +can venture to talk about any of the <i>real</i> things!" +</p> +<p> +A little later, as Mrs. Drelmer was leaving, the majestic figure of the +Baron Ronault de Palliac framed itself in the handsome doorway. He +sauntered in, as if to give the picture tone, and then with purposeful +air took the seat Mrs. Drelmer had just vacated. Miss Bines had been +entertained by involuntary visions of herself as Lady Casselthorpe. She +now became in fancy the noble Baroness de Palliac, speaking faultless +French and consorting with the rare old families of the Faubourg St. +Germain. For, despite his artistic indirection, the baron's manner was +conclusive, his intentions unmistakable. +</p> +<p> +And this day was much like many days in the life of the Bines and in +the life of the Hightower Hotel. The scene from parlour to cafe was +surveyed at intervals by a quiet-mannered person with watchful eyes, +who appeared to enjoy it as one upon whom it conferred benefits. Now he +washed his hands in the invisible sweet waters of satisfaction, and +murmured softly to himself, "Setters and Buyers!" Perhaps the term fits +the family of Bines as well as might many another coined especially for +it. +</p> +<p> +When the three groups in the Turkish room dissolved, Percival with his +mother and sister went to their suite on the fourth floor. +</p> +<p> +"Think of a real live French nobleman!" cried Psyche, with enthusiasm, +"and French must be such a funny language—he talks such funny English. +I wish now I'd learned more of it at the Sem, and talked more with that +French Delpasse girl that was always toasting marshmallows on a +hat-pin." +</p> +<p> +"That lady Mrs. Drelmer introduced me to," said Mrs. Bines, "is an +artist, miniature artist, hand-painted you know, and she's going to +paint our miniatures for a thousand dollars each because we're friends +of Mrs. Drelmer." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, yes," exclaimed Psyche, with new enthusiasm, "and Mrs. Drelmer has +promised to teach me bridge whist if I'll go to her house to-morrow. +Isn't she kind? Really, every one must play bridge now, she tells me." +</p> +<p> +"Well, ladies," said the son and brother, "I'm glad to see you both +getting some of the white meat. I guess we'll do well here. I'm going +into oil stock and lead, myself." +</p> +<p> +"How girlish your little friend Mrs. Akemit is!" said his mother. "How +did she come to lose her husband?" +</p> +<p> +"Lost him in South Dakota," replied her son, shortly. +</p> +<p> +"Divorced, ma," explained Psyche, "and Mrs. Drelmer says her family's +good, but she's too gay." +</p> +<p> +"Ah!" exclaimed Percival, "Mrs. Drelmer's hammer must be one of those +cute little gold ones, all set with precious stones. As a matter of +fact, she's anything but gay. She's sad. She couldn't get along with +her husband because he had no dignity of soul." +</p> +<p> +He became conscious of sympathising generously with all men not thus +equipped. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH21"><!-- CH21 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXI. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire +</h3> +<p> +To be idle and lavish of money, twenty-five years old, with the +appetites keen and the need for action always pressing; then to have +loved a girl with quick, strong, youthful ardour, and to have had the +ideal smirched by gossip, then shattered before his amazed eyes,—this +is a situation in which the male animal is apt to behave inequably. In +the language of the estimable Herr Doctor von Herzlich, he will seek +those avenues of modification in which the least struggle is required. +In the simpler phrasing of Uncle Peter Bines, he will "cut loose." +</p> +<p> +During the winter that now followed Percival Bines behaved according to +either formula, as the reader may prefer. He early ascertained his +limitations with respect to New York and its people. +</p> +<p> +"Say, old man," he asked Herbert Delancey Livingston one night, across +the table at their college club, "are all the people in New York +society impecunious?" +</p> +<p> +Livingston had been with him at Harvard, and Livingston's family was so +notoriously not impecunious that the question was devoid of any +personal element. Livingston, moreover, had dined just unwisely enough +to be truthful. +</p> +<p> +"Well, to be candid with you, Bines," the young man had replied, in a +burst of alcoholic confidence, "about all that you are likely to meet +are broke—else you wouldn't meet 'em, you know," he explained +cheerfully. "You know, old chap, a few of you Western people have got +into the right set here; there's the Nesbits, for instance. On my word +the good wife and mother hasn't the kinks out of her fingers yet, nor +the callouses from her hands, by Jove! She worked so hard cooking and +washing woollen shirts for miners before Nesbit made his strike. As for +him—well caviare, I'm afraid, will always be caviare to Jimmy Nesbit. +And now the son's married a girl that had everything but money—my boy, +Nellie Wemple has fairly got that family of Nesbits awestricken since +she married into it, just by the way she can spend money—but what was +I saying, old chap? Oh, yes, about getting in—it takes time, you know; +on my word, I think they were as much as eight years, and had to start +in abroad at that. At first, you know, you can only expect to meet a +crowd that can't afford to be exclusive any longer." +</p> +<p> +From which friendly counsel, and from certain confirming observations +of his own, Percival had concluded that his lot in New York was to +spend money. This he began to do with a large Western carelessness that +speedily earned him fame of a sort. Along upper Broadway, his advent +was a golden joy. Tradesmen learned to love him; florists, jewelers, +and tailors hailed his coming with honest fervour; waiters told moving +tales of his tips; cabmen fought for the privilege of transporting him; +and the hangers-on of rich young men picked pieces of lint assiduously +and solicitously from his coat. +</p> +<p> +One of his favourite resorts was the sumptuous gambling-house in +Forty-fourth Street. The man who slides back the panel of the stout +oaken door early learned to welcome him through the slit, barred by its +grill of wrought iron. The attendant who took his coat and hat, the +waiter who took his order for food, and the croupier who took his +money, were all gladdened by his coming; for his gratuities were as +large when he lost as when he won Even the reserved proprietor, +accustomed as he was to a wealthy and careless clientele, treated +Percival with marked consideration after a night when the young man +persuaded him to withdraw the limit at roulette, and spent a large sum +in testing a system for breaking the wheel, given to him by a friend +lately returned from Monte Carlo. +</p> +<p> +"I think, really the fellow who gave me that system is an ass," he +said, lighting a cigarette when the play was done. "Now I'm going down +and demolish eight dollars' worth of food and drink—you won't be all +to the good on that, you know." +</p> +<p> +His host decided that a young man who was hungry, after losing a +hundred thousand dollars in five hours' play, was a person to be not +lightly considered. +</p> +<p> +And, though he loved the rhythmic whir and the ensuing rattle of the +little ivory ball at the roulette wheel, he did not disdain the quieter +faro, playing that dignified game exclusively with the +chocolate-coloured chips, which cost a thousand dollars a stack. +Sometimes he won; but not often enough to disturb his host's belief +that there is less of chance in his business than in any other known to +the captains of industry. +</p> +<p> +There were, too, sociable games of poker, played with Garmer, of the +Lead Trust, Burman, the intrepid young wheat operator from Chicago, and +half a dozen other well-moneyed spirits; games in which the limit, to +use the Chicagoan's phrase, was "the beautiful but lofty North Star." +At these games he lost even more regularly than at those where, with +the exception of a trifling percentage, he was solely at the mercy of +chance. But he was a joyous loser, endearing himself to the other +players; to Garmer, whom Burman habitually accused of being "closer +than a warm night," as well as to the open-handed son of the +chewing-gum magnate, who had been raised abroad and who protested +nightly that there was an element of beastly American commercialism in +the game. When Percival was by some chance absent from a sitting, the +others calculated the precise sum he probably would have lost and +humourously acquainted him with the amount by telegraph next +morning,—it was apt to be nine hundred and some odd +dollars,—requesting that he cover by check at his early convenience. +</p> +<p> +Yet the diversion was not all gambling. There were Jong sessions at +all-night restaurants where the element of chance in his favour, +inconspicuous elsewhere, was wholly eliminated; suppers for hungry +Thespians and thirsty parasites, protracted with song and talk until +the gas-flames grew pale yellow, and the cabmen, when the party went +out into the wan light, would be low-voiced, confidential, and +suggestive in their approaches. +</p> +<p> +Broadway would be weirdly quiet at such times, save for the occasional +frenzied clatter of a hurrying milk-wagon. Even the cars seemed to move +with less sound than by day, and the early-rising workers inside, +holding dinner-pails and lunch-baskets, were subdued and silent, yet +strangely observing, as if the hour were one in which the vision was +made clear to appraise the values of life justly. To the north, whence +the cars bulked silently, would be an awakening sky of such tender +beauty that the revellers often paid it the tribute of a moment's +notice. +</p> +<p> +"Pure turquoise," one would declare. +</p> +<p> +"With just a dash of orange bitters in it," another might add. +</p> +<p> +And then perhaps they burst into song under the spell, blending their +voices into what the professional gentlemen termed "barber-shop +harmonies," until a policeman would saunter across the street, +pretending, however, that he was not aware of them. +</p> +<p> +Then perhaps a ride toward the beautiful northern sky would be +proposed, whereupon three or four hansom or coupe loads would begin a +journey that wound up through Central Park toward the northern light, +but which never attained a point remoter than some suburban road-house, +where sleepy cooks and bartenders would have to be routed out to +collaborate toward breakfast. +</p> +<p> +Oftener the party fell away into straggling groups with notions for +sleep, chanting at last, perhaps: +</p> +<p> +"While beer brings gladness, don't forget That water only makes you +wet!" +</p> +<p> +Percival would walk to the hotel, sobered and perhaps made a little +reflective by the unwonted quiet. But they were pleasant, careless +folk, he concluded always. They permitted him to spend his money, but +he was quite sure they would spend it as freely as he if they had it. +More than one appreciative soubrette, met under such circumstances, was +subsequently enabled to laud the sureness of his taste in jewels,—he +cared little for anything but large diamonds, it transpired. It was a +feeling tribute paid to his munificence by one of these in converse +with a sister artist, who had yet to meet him: +</p> +<p> +"Say, Myrtle, on the dead, he spends money just like a young Jew trying +to be white!" +</p> +<p> +Under this more or less happy surface of diversion, however, was an +experience decidedly less felicitous. He knew he should not, must not, +hold Avice Milbrey in his mind; yet when he tried to put her out it +hurt him. +</p> +<p> +At first he had plumed himself upon his lucky escape that night, when +he would have declared his love to her. To have married a girl who +cared only for his money; that would have been dire enough. But to +marry a girl like <i>that!</i> He had been lucky indeed! +</p> +<p> +Yet, as the weeks went by the shock of the scene wore off. The scene +itself remained clear, with the grinning grotesquerie of the +Jack-o'-lanterns lighting it and mocking his simplicity. But the first +sharp physical hurt had healed. He was forced to admit that the girl +still had power to trouble him. At times his strained nerves would +relax to no other device than the picturing of her as his own. Exactly +in the measure that he indulged this would his pride smart. With a +budding gift for negation he could imagine her caring for nothing but +his money; and there was that other picture, swift and awful, a +pantomime in shadow, with the leering yellow faces above it. +</p> +<p> +In the far night, when he awoke to sudden and hungry aloneness, he +would let his arms feel their hunger for her. The vision of her would +be flowers and music and sunlight and time and all things perfect to +mystify and delight, to satisfy and—greatest of all boons—to +unsatisfy. The thought of her became a rest-house for all weariness; a +haven where he was free to choose his nook and lie down away from all +that was not her, which was all that was not beautiful. He would go +back to seek the lost sweetness of their first meeting; to mount the +poor dead belief that she would care for him—that he could make her +care for him—and endow the thing with artificial life, trying to +capture the faint breath of it; but the memory was always fleeting, +attenuated, like the spirit of the memory of a perfume that had been +elusive at best. And always, to banish what joy even this poor device +might bring, came the more vivid vision of the brutal, sordid facts. He +forced himself to face them regularly as a penance and a corrective. +</p> +<p> +They came before him with especial clearness when he met her from time +to time during the winter. He watched her in talk with others, noting +the contradiction in her that she would at one moment appear knowing +and masterful, with depths of reserve that the other people neither +fathomed nor knew of; and at another moment frankly girlish, with an +appealing feminine helplessness which is woman's greatest strength, +coercing every strong masculine instinct. +</p> +<p> +When the reserve showed in her, he became afraid. What was she not +capable of? In the other mood, frankly appealing, she drew him +mightily, so that he abandoned himself for the moment, responding to +her fresh exulting youth, longing to take her, to give her things, to +make her laugh, to enfold and protect her, to tell her secrets, to +feather her cheek with the softest kiss, to be the child-mate of her. +</p> +<p> +Toward him, directly, when they met she would sometimes be glacial and +forbidding, sometimes uninterestedly frank, as if they were but the +best of commonplace friends. Yet sometimes she made him feel that she, +too, threw herself heartily to rest in the thought of their loving, and +cheated herself, as he did, with dreams of comradeship. She left him at +these times with the feeling that they were deaf, dumb, and blind to +each other; that if some means of communication could be devised, +something surer than the invisible play of secret longings, all might +yet be well. They talked as the people about them talked, words that +meant nothing to either, and if there were mute questionings, naked +appeals, unuttered declarations, they were only such as language serves +to divert attention from. Speech, doubtless, has its uses as well as +its abuses. Politics, for example, would be less entertaining without +it. But in matters of the heart, certain it is that there would be +fewer misunderstandings if it were forbidden between the couple under +the penalty of immediate separation. In this affair real meanings are +rarely conveyed except by silences. Words are not more than tasteless +drapery to obscure their lines. The silence of lovers is the plainest +of all speech, warning, disconcerting indeed, by its very bluntness, +any but the truly mated. An hour's silence with these two people by +themselves might have worked wonders. +</p> +<p> +Another diversion of Percival's during this somewhat feverish winter +was Mrs. Akemit. Not only was she a woman of finished and expert +daintiness in dress and manner and surroundings, but she soothed, +flattered, and stimulated him. With the wisdom of her thirty-two years, +devoted chiefly to a study of his species, she took care never to be +exigent. She had the way of referring to herself as "poor little me," +yet she never made demands or allowed him to feel that she expected +anything from him in the way of allegiance. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Akemit was not only like St. Paul, "all things to all men," but +she had gone a step beyond that excellent theologue. She could be all +things to one man. She was light-heartedly frivolous, soberly +reflective, shallow, profound, cynical or naive, ingenuous, or +inscrutable. She prized dearly the ecclesiastical background provided +by her uncle, the bishop, and had him to dine with the same unerring +sense of artistry that led her to select swiftly the becoming shade of +sofa-cushion to put her blond head back upon. +</p> +<p> +The good bishop believed she had jeopardised her soul with divorce. He +feared now she meant to lose it irrevocably through remarriage. As a +foil to his austerity, therefore, she would be audaciously gay in his +presence. +</p> +<p> +"Hell," she said to him one evening, "is given up <i>so</i> reluctantly by +those who don't expect to go there." And while the bishop frowned into +his salad she invited Percival to drink with her in the manner of a +woman who is mad to invite perdition. If the good man could have beheld +her before a background of frivolity he might have suffered less +anxiety. For there her sense of contrast-values led her to be grave and +deep, to express distaste for society with its hollowness, and to +expose timidly the cruel scars on a soul meant for higher things. +</p> +<p> +Many afternoons Percival drank tea with her in the little red +drawing-room of her dainty apartment up the avenue. Here in the half +light which she had preferred since thirty, in a soft corner with which +she harmonised faultlessly, and where the blaze from the open fire +coloured her animated face just enough, she talked him usually into the +glow of a high conceit with himself. When she dwelt upon the +shortcomings of man, she did it with the air of frankly presuming him +to be different from all others, one who could sympathise with her +through knowing the frailties of his sex, yet one immeasurably superior +to them. When he was led to talk of himself—of whom, it seemed, she +could never learn enough—he at once came to take high views of +himself: to gaze, through her tactful prompting, with a gentle, purring +appreciation upon the manifest spectacle of his own worth. +</p> +<p> +Sometimes, away from her, he wondered how she did it. Sometimes, in her +very presence, his sense of humour became alert and suspicious. Part of +the time he decided her to be a charming woman, with a depth and +quality of sweetness unguessed by the world. The rest of the time he +remembered a saying about alfalfa made by Uncle Peter: "It's an +innocent lookin', triflin' vegetable, but its roots go right down into +the ground a hundred feet." +</p> +<p> +"My dear," Mrs. Akemit had once confided to an intimate in an hour of +<i>negligee</i>, "to meet a man, any man, from a red-cheeked butcher boy to +a bloodless monk, and not make him feel something new for +you—something he never before felt for any other woman—really it's as +criminal as a wrinkled stocking, or for blondes to wear shiny things. +Every woman can do it, if she'll study a little how to reduce them to +their least common denominator—how to make them primitive." +</p> +<p> +Of another member of Mrs. Akemit's household Percival acknowledged the +sway with never a misgiving. He had been the devoted lover of Baby +Akemit from the afternoon when he had first cajoled her into +autobiography—a vivid, fire-tipped little thing with her mother's +piquancy. He gleaned that day that she was "a quarter to four years +old;" that she was mamma's girl, but papa was a friend of Santa Claus; +that she went to "ball-dances" every day clad in "dest a stirt 'cause +big ladies don't ever wear waist-es at night;" that she had once ridden +in a merry-go-round and it made her "all homesick right here," patting +her stomach; and that "elephants are horrid, but you mustn't be cruel +to them and cut their eyes out. Oh, no!" +</p> +<p> +Her Percival courted with results that left nothing to be desired. She +fell to the floor in helpless, shrieking laughter when he came. In his +honour she composed and sang songs to an improvised and spirited +accompaniment upon her toy piano. His favourites among these were +"'Cause Why I Love You" and "Darling, Ask Myself to Come to You." She +rendered them with much feeling. If he were present when her bed-time +came she refused to sleep until he had consented to an interview. +</p> +<p> +Avice Milbrey had the fortune to witness one of these bed-time +<i>causeries</i>. One late afternoon the young man's summons came while he +was one of a group that lingered late about Mrs. Akemit's little +tea-table, Miss Milbrey being of the number. +</p> +<p> +He followed the maid dutifully out through the hall to the door of the +bedroom, and entered on all-fours with what they two had agreed was the +growl of a famished bear. +</p> +<p> +The familiar performance was viewed by the mother and by Miss Milbrey, +whom the mother had urged to follow. Baby Akemit in her crib, modestly +arrayed in blue pajamas, after simulating the extreme terror required +by the situation, fell to chatting, while her mother and Miss Milbrey +looked on from the doorway. +</p> +<p> +Miss Akemit had once been out in the woods, it appeared, and a +"biting-wolf" chased her, and she ran and ran until she came to a river +all full of pigs and fishes and berries, so she jumped in and had +supper, and it wasn't a "biting-wolf" at all—and then— +</p> +<p> +But the narrative was cut short by her mother. +</p> +<p> +"Come, Pet! Mr. Bines wishes to go now." +</p> +<p> +Miss Akemit, it appeared, was bent upon relating the adventures of +Goldie Locks, subsequent to her leap from the window of the bears' +house. She had, it seemed, been compelled to ride nine-twenty miles on +a trolley, and, reaching home too late for luncheon, had been obliged +to eat in the kitchen with the cook. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines can't stay, darling!" +</p> +<p> +Baby Akemit calculated briefly, and consented to his departure if Mr. +Bines would bring her something next time. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Bines promised, and moved away after the customary embrace, but she +was not through: +</p> +<p> +"Oh! oh! go out like a bear! dere's a bear come in here!" +</p> +<p> +And so, having brought the bear in, he was forced to drop again and +growl the beast out, whereupon, appeased by this strict observance of +the unities, the child sat up and demanded: +</p> +<p> +"You sure you'll bring me somefin next time?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sure, Lady Grenville St. Clare." "Well, you sure you're <i>comin'</i> +next time?" +</p> +<p> +Being reassured on this point, and satisfied that no more bears were at +large, she lay down once more while Percival and the two observers +returned to the drawing-room. +</p> +<p> +"You love children so!" Miss Milbrey said. And never had she been so +girlishly appealing to all that was strong in him as a man. The frolic +with the child seemed to have blown away a fog from between them. Yet +never had the other scene been more vivid to him, and never had the +pain of her heartlessness been more poignant. +</p> +<p> +When he "played" with Baby Akemit thereafter, the pretence was not all +with the child. For while she might "play" at giving a vexatiously +large dinner, for which she was obliged to do the cooking because she +had discharged all the servants, or when they "played" that the big +couch was a splendid ferry-boat in which they were sailing to Chicago +where Uncle David lived—with many stern threats to tell the janitor of +the boat if the captain didn't behave himself and sail faster—Percival +"played" that his companion's name was Baby Bines, and that her mother, +who watched them with loving eyes, was a sweet and gracious young woman +named Avice. And when he told Baby Akemit that she was "the only +original sweetheart" he meant it of some one else than her. +</p> +<p> +When the play was over he always conducted himself back to sane reality +by viewing this some one else in the cold light of truth. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH22"><!-- CH22 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXII. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines +</h3> +<p> +The fame of the Bines family for despising money was not fed wholly by +Percival's unremitting activities. Miss Psyche Bines, during the +winter, achieved wide and enviable renown as a player of bridge whist. +Not for the excellence of her play; rather for the inveteracy and size +of her losses and the unconcerned cheerfulness with which she defrayed +them. She paid the considerable sums with an air of gratitude for +having been permitted to lose them. Especially did she seem grateful +for the zealous tutelage and chaperonage of Mrs. Drelmer. +</p> +<p> +"Everybody in New York plays bridge, my dear, and of course you must +learn," that capable lady had said in the beginning. +</p> +<p> +"But I never was bright at cards," the girl confessed, "and I'm afraid +I couldn't learn bridge well enough to interest you good players." +</p> +<p> +"Nonsense!" was Mrs. Drelmer's assurance. "Bridge is easy to learn and +easy to play. I'll teach you, and I promise you the people you play +with shall never complain." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Drelmer, it soon appeared, knew what she was talking about. +</p> +<p> +Indeed, that well-informed woman was always likely to. Her husband was +an intellectual delinquent whom she spoke of largely as being "in Wall +Street," and in that feat of jugglery known as "keeping up +appearances," his wife had long been the more dexterous performer. +</p> +<p> +She was apt not only to know what she talked about, but she was a woman +of resource, unafraid of action. She drilled Miss Bines in the +rudiments of bridge. If the teacher became subsequently much the +largest winner of the pupil's losings, it was, perhaps, not more than +her fit recompense. For Miss Bines enjoyed not only the sport of the +game, but her manner of playing it, combined with the social prestige +of her amiable sponsor, procured her a circle of acquaintances that +would otherwise have remained considerably narrower. An enthusiastic +player of bridge, of passable exterior, mediocre skill, and unlimited +resources, need never want in New York for very excellent society. Not +only was the Western girl received by Mrs. Drelmer's immediate circle, +but more than one member of what the lady called "that snubby set" +would now and then make a place for her at the card-table. A few of +Mrs. Drelmer's intimates were so wanting in good taste as to intimate +that she exploited Miss Bines even to the degree of an understanding +expressed in bald percentage, with certain of those to whom she secured +the girl's society at cards. Whether this ill-natured gossip was true +or false, it is certain that the exigencies of life on next to nothing +a year, with a husband who could boast of next to nothing but Family, +had developed an unerring business sense in Mrs. Drelmer; and certain +it also is that this winter was one when the appearances with which she +had to strive were unwontedly buoyant. +</p> +<p> +Miss Bines tirelessly memorised rules. She would disclose to her placid +mother that the lead of a trump to the third hand's go-over of hearts +is of doubtful expediency; or that one must "follow suit with the +smallest, except when you have only two, neither of them better than +the Jack. Then play the higher first, so that when the lower falls your +partner may know you are out of the suit, and ruff it." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines declared that it did seem to her very much like out-and-out +gambling. But Percival, looking over the stubs of his sister's +check-book, warmly protested her innocence of this charge. +</p> +<p> +"Heaven knows sis has her shortcomings," he observed, patronisingly, in +that young woman's presence, "but she's no gambler; don't say it, ma, I +beg of you! She only knows five rules of the game, and I judge it's +cost her about three thousand dollars each to learn those. And the only +one she never forgets is, 'When in doubt, lead your highest check.' But +don't ever accuse her of gambling. Poor girl, if she keeps on playing +bridge she'll have writer's cramp; that's all I'm afraid of. I see +there's a new rapid-fire check-book on the market, and an improved +fountain pen that doesn't slobber. I'll have to get her one of each." +</p> +<p> +Yet Psyche Bines's experience, like her brother's, was not without a +proper leaven of sentiment. There was Fred Milbrey, handsome, clever, +amusing, knowing every one, and giving her a pleasant sense of intimacy +with all that was worth while in New York. Him she felt very friendly +to. +</p> +<p> +Then there was Mauburn, presently to be Lord Casselthorpe, with his +lazy, high-pitched drawl; good-natured, frank, carrying an atmosphere +of high-class British worldliness, and delicately awakening within her +while she was with him a sense of her own latent superiority to the +institutions of her native land. She liked Mauburn, too. +</p> +<p> +More impressive than either of these, however, was the Baron Ronault de +Palliac. Tall, swarthy, saturnine, a polished man of all the world, of +manners finished, elaborate, and ceremonious, she found herself feeling +foreign and distinguished in his presence, quite as if she were the +heroine of a romantic novel, and might at any instant be called upon to +assist in royalist intrigues. The baron, to her intuition, nursed +secret sorrows. For these she secretly worshipped him. It is true that +when he dined with her and her mother, which he was frequently gracious +enough to do, he ate with a heartiness that belied this secret sorrow +she had imagined. But he was fascinating at all times, with a grace at +table not less finished than that with which he bowed at their meetings +and partings. It was not unpleasant to think of basking daily in the +shine of that grand manner, even if she did feel friendlier with +Milbrey, and more at ease with Mauburn. +</p> +<p> +If the truth must be told, Miss Bines was less impressionable than +either of the three would have wished. Her heart seemed not easy to +reach; her impulses were not inflammable. Young Milbrey early confided +to his family a suspicion that she was singularly hard-headed, and the +definite information that she had "a hob-nailed Western way" of +treating her admirers. +</p> +<p> +Mauburn, too, was shrewd enough to see that, while she frankly liked +him, he was for some reason less a favourite than the Baron de Palliac. +</p> +<p> +"It'll be no easy matter marrying that girl," he told Mrs. Drelmer. +"She's really a dear, and awfully good fun, but she's not a bit silly, +and I dare say she'll marry some chap because she likes him, and not +because he's anybody, you know." +</p> +<p> +"Make her like you," insisted his adviser. +</p> +<p> +"On my word, I wish she did. And I'm not so sure, you know, she doesn't +fancy that Frenchman, or even young Milbrey." +</p> +<p> +"I'll keep you before her," promised Mrs. Drelmer, "and I wish you'd +not think you can't win her. 'Tisn't like you." +</p> +<p> +Miss Bines accordingly heard that it was such a pity young Milbrey +drank so, because his only salvation lay in making a rich marriage, and +a young man, nowadays, had to keep fairly sober to accomplish that. +Really, Mrs. Drelmer felt sorry for the poor weak fellow. "Good-hearted +chap, but he has no character, my dear, so I'm afraid there's no hope +for him. He has the soul of a merchant tailor, actually, but not the +tailor's manhood. Otherwise he'd be above marrying some unsuspecting +girl for her money and breaking her heart after marriage. Now, Mauburn +is a type so different; honest, unaffected, healthy, really he's a man +for any girl to be proud of, even if he were not heir to a title—one +of the best in all England, and an ornament of the most exclusively +correct set; of a line, my dear, that is truly great—not like that +shoddy French nobility, discredited in France, that sends so many of +its comic-opera barons here looking for large dowries to pay their +gambling debts and put furniture in their rattle-trap old chateaux, and +keep them in absinthe and their other peculiar diversions. And Mauburn, +you lucky minx, simply adores you—he's quite mad about you, really!" +</p> +<p> +In spite of Mrs. Drelmer's two-edged sword, Miss Bines continued rather +more favourable to the line of De Palliac. The baron was so splendid, +so gloomy, so deferential. He had the air of laying at her feet, as a +rug, the whole glorious history of France. And he appeared so well in +the victoria when they drove in the park. +</p> +<p> +It is true that the heart of Miss Bines was as yet quite untouched; and +it was not more than a cool, dim, aesthetic light in which she surveyed +the three suitors impartially, to behold the impressive figure of the +baron towering above the others. Had the baron proposed for her hand, +it is not impossible that, facing the question directly, she would have +parried or evaded. +</p> +<p> +But certain events befell unpropitiously at a time when the baron was +most certain of his conquest; at the very time, indeed, when he had +determined to open his suit definitely by extending a proposal to the +young lady through the orthodox medium of her nearest male relative. +</p> +<p> +"I admit," wrote the baron to his expectant father, "that it is what +one calls '<i>very chances</i>' in the English, but one must venture in this +country, and your son is not without much hope. And if not, there is +still Mlle. Higbee." +</p> +<p> +The baron shuddered as he wrote it. He preferred not to recognise even +the existence of this alternative, for the reason that the father of +Mlle. Higbee distressed him by an incompleteness of suavity. +</p> +<p> +"He conducts himself like a pork," the baron would declare to himself, +by way of perfecting his English. +</p> +<p> +The secret cause of his subsequent determination not to propose for the +hand of Miss Bines lay in the hopelessly middle-class leanings of the +lady who might have incurred the supreme honour of becoming his +mother-in-law. Had Mrs. Bines been above talking to low people, a +catastrophe might have been averted. But Mrs. Bines was not above it. +She was quite unable to repress a vulgar interest in the menials that +served her. +</p> +<p> +She knew the butler's life history two days after she had ceased to be +afraid of him. She knew the distressing family affairs of the maids; +how many were the ignoble progeny of the elevator-man, and what his +plebeian wife did for their croup; how much rent the hall-boy's +low-born father paid for his mean two-story dwelling in Jersey City; +and how many hours a day or night the debased scrub-women devoted to +their unrefining toil. +</p> +<p> +Brazenly, too, she held converse with Philippe, the active and voluble +Alsatian who served her when she chose to dine in the public restaurant +instead of at her own private table. Philippe acquainted her with the +joys and griefs of his difficult profession. There were fourteen +thousand waiters in New York, if, by waiters, you meant any one. Of +course there were not so many like Philippe, men of the world who had +served their time as assistants and their three years as sub-waiters; +men who spoke English, French, and German, who knew something of +cooking, how to dress a salad, and how to carve. Only such, it +appeared, could be members of the exclusive Geneva Club that procured a +place for you when you were idle, and paid you eight dollars a week +when you were sick. +</p> +<p> +Having the qualifications, one could earn twenty-five dollars a month +in salary and three or four times as much in gratuities. Philippe's +income was never less than one hundred and twenty dollars a month; for +was he not one who had come from Europe as a master, after two seasons +at Paris where a man acquires his polish—his perfection of manner, his +finish, his grace? Philippe could never enough prize that post-graduate +course at the <i>Maison d'Or</i>, where he had personally known—madame +might not believe it—the incomparable Casmir, a <i>chef</i> who served two +generations of epicures, princes, kings, statesmen, travelling +Americans,—all the truly great. +</p> +<p> +With his own lips Casmir had told him, Philippe, of the occasion when +Dumas, <i>pere</i>, had invited him to dinner that they might discuss the +esoterics of salad dressing and sauces; also of the time when the +Marquis de St. Georges embraced Casmir for inventing the precious soup +that afterwards became famous as <i>Potage Germine</i>. And now the skilled +and puissant Casmir had retired. It was a calamity. The <i>Maison +d'Or</i>—Paris—would no longer be what they had been. +</p> +<p> +For that matter, since one must live, Philippe preferred it to be in +America, for in no other country could an adept acquire so much money. +And Philippe knew the whole dining world. With Celine and the baby, +Paul, Philippe dwelt in an apartment that would really amaze madame by +its appointments of luxury, in East 38th Street, and only the four +flights to climb. And Paul was three, the largest for his age, quite +the largest, that either Philippe or Celine had ever beheld. Even the +brother of Celine and his wife, who had a restaurant of their +own—serving the <i>table d'hote</i> at two and one-half francs the plate, +with wine—even these swore they had never seen an infant so big, for +his years, as Paul. +</p> +<p> +And so Mrs. Bines grew actually to feel an interest in the creature and +his wretched affairs, and even fell into the deplorable habit of +saying, "I must come to see you and your wife and Paul some pleasant +day, Philippe," and Philippe, being a man of the world, thought none +the less of her for believing that she did not mean it. +</p> +<p> +Yet it befell on an afternoon that Mrs. Bines found herself in a +populous side-street, driving home from a visit to the rheumatic +scrub-woman who had now to be supported by the papers her miserable +offspring sold. Mrs. Bines had never seen so many children as flooded +this street. She wondered if an orphan asylum were in the +neighbourhood. And though the day was pleasantly warm, she decided that +there were about her at least a thousand cases of incipient pneumonia, +for not one child in five had on a hat. They raged and dashed and +rippled from curb to curb so that they might have made her think of a +swift mountain torrent at the bottom of a gloomy canyon, but that the +worthy woman was too literal-minded for such fancies. She only warned +the man to drive slowly. +</p> +<p> +And then by a street sign she saw that she was near the home of +Philippe. It was three o'clock, and he would be resting from his work. +The man found the number. The waves parted and piled themselves on +either side in hushed wonder as she entered the hallway and searched +for the name on the little cards under the bells. She had never known +the surname, and on two of the cards "Ph." appeared. She rang one of +the bells, the door mysteriously opened with a repeated double click, +and she began the toilsome climb. The waves of children fell together +behind her in turbulent play again. +</p> +<p> +At the top she breathed a moment and then knocked at a door before her. +A voice within called: +</p> +<p> +"<i>Entres!</i>" and Mrs. Bines opened the door. +</p> +<p> +It was the tiny kitchen of Philippe. Philippe, himself, in +shirt-sleeves, sat in a chair tilted back close to the gas-range, the +<i>Courier des Etats Unis</i> in his hands and Paul on his lap. Celine +ironed the bosom of a gentleman's white shirt on an ironing board +supported by the backs of two chairs. +</p> +<p> +Hemmed in the corner by this board and by the gas-range, seated at a +table covered by the oilcloth that simulates the marble of Italy's most +famous quarry, sat, undoubtedly, the Baron Ronault de Palliac. A +steaming plate of spaghetti <i>a la Italien</i> was before him, to his left +a large bowl of salad, to his right a bottle of red wine. +</p> +<p> +For a space of three seconds the entire party behaved as if it were +being photographed under time-exposure. Philippe and the baby stared, +motionless. Celine stared, resting no slight weight on the hot +flat-iron. The Baron Ronault de Palliac stared, his fork poised in +mid-air and festooned with gay little streamers of spaghetti. +</p> +<p> +Then came smoke, the smell of scorching linen, and a cry of horror from +Celine. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Ah, la seule chemise blanche de Monsieur le Baron!</i>" +</p> +<p> +The spell was broken. Philippe was on his feet, bowing effusively. +</p> +<p> +"Ah! it is Madame Bines. <I>Je suis tres honore</i>—I am very honoured to +welcome you, madame. It is madame, <i>ma femme</i>, Celine,—and—Monsieur +le Baron de Palliac—" +</p> +<p> +Philippe had turned with evident distress toward the latter. But +Philippe was only a waiter, and had not behind him the centuries of +schooling that enable a gentleman to remain a gentleman under adverse +conditions. +</p> +<p> +The Baron Ronault de Palliac arose with unruffled aplomb and favoured +the caller with his stateliest bow. He was at the moment a graceful and +silencing rebuke to those who aver that manner and attire be +interdependent. The baron's manner was ideal, undiminished in volume, +faultless as to decorative qualities. One fitted to savour its +exquisite finish would scarce have noted that above his waist the noble +gentleman was clad in a single woollen undergarment of revolutionary +red. +</p> +<p> +Or, if such a one had observed this trifling circumstance, he would, +assuredly, have treated it as of no value to the moment; something to +note, perhaps, and then gracefully to forget. +</p> +<p> +The baron's own behaviour would have served as a model. One swift +glance had shown him there was no way of instant retreat. That being +impossible, none other was graceful; hence none other was to be +considered. He permitted himself not even a glance at the shirt upon +whose fair, defenceless bosom the iron of the overcome Celine had +burned its cruel brown imprimature. Mrs. Bines had greeted him as he +would have wished, unconscious, apparently, that there could be cause +for embarrassment. +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp258.jpg"><img src="illp258_th.jpg" width="150" +alt="'the Spell Was Broken.'"></a> +</p> + +<p> +"Ah! madame," he said, handsomely, "you see me, I unfast with the fork. +You see me here, I have envy of the simple life. I am content of to do +it—<i>comme ca</i>—as that, see you," waving in the direction of his +unfinished repast. "All that magnificence of your grand hotel, there is +not the why of it, the most big of the world, and suchly stupefying, +with its 'infernil rackit' as you say. And of more—what droll of idea, +enough curious, by example! to dwell with the good Philippe and his +<i>femme aimable</i>. Their hotel is of the most littles, but I rest here +very volunteerly since longtime. Is it that one can to comprehend +liking the vast hotel American?" +</p> +<p> +"Monsieur le Baron lodges with us; we have so much of the chambers," +ventured Celine. +</p> +<p> +"Monsieur le Baron wishes to retire to his apartment," said Philippe, +raising the ironing-board. "Will madame be so good to enter our <i>petit +salon</i> at the front, <i>n'est-ce-pas?</i>" +</p> +<p> +The baron stepped forth from his corner and bowed himself graciously +out. +</p> +<p> +"Madame, my compliments—and to the adorable Mademoiselle Bines! <i>Au +revoir</i>, madame—to the soontime—<i>avant peu</i>—before little!" +</p> +<p> +On the farther side of his closed door the Baron Ronault de Palliac +swore—once. But the oath was one of the most awful that a Frenchman +may utter in his native tongue: "Sacred Name of a Name!" +</p> +<p> +"But the baron wasn't done eating," protested Mrs. Bines. +</p> +<p> +"Ah, yes, madame!" replied Philippe. "Monsieur le Baron has consumed +enough for now. <i>Paul, mon enfant, ne touche pas la robe de madame!</i> He +is large, is he not, madame, as I have told you? A monster, yes?" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines, stooping, took the limp and wide-eyed Paul up in her arms. +Whereupon he began to talk so fast to her in French that she set him +quickly down again, with the slightly helpless air of one who has +picked up an innocent-looking clock only to have the clanging alarm go +suddenly off. +</p> +<p> +"Madame will honour our little salon," urged Philippe, opening the door +and bowing low. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Quel dommage!</i>" sighed Celine, moving after them; "<i>la seule chemise +blanche de Monsieur le Baron. Eh bien! il faut lui en acheter une +autre!</i>" +</p> +<p> +At dinner that evening Mrs. Bines related her adventure, to the +unfeigned delight of her graceless son, and to the somewhat troubled +amazement of her daughter. +</p> +<p> +"And, do you know," she ventured, "maybe he isn't a regular baron, +after all!" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I guess he's a regular one all right," said Percival; "only +perhaps he hasn't worked at it much lately." +</p> +<p> +"But his sitting there eating in that—that shirt—" said his sister. +</p> +<p> +"My dear young woman, even the nobility are prey to climatic rigours; +they are obliged, like the wretched low-born such as ourselves, to +wear—pardon me—undergarments. Again, I understand from Mrs. +Cadwallader here that the article in question was satisfactory and +fit—red, I believe you say, Mrs. Terwilliger?" +</p> +<p> +"Awful red!" replied his mother—"and they call their parlour a +saloon." +</p> +<p> +"And of necessity, even the noble have their moments of <i>deshabille</i>." +</p> +<p> +"They needn't eat their lunch that way," declared his sister. +</p> +<p> +"Is <i>deshabille</i> French for underclothes?" asked Mrs. Bines, struck by +the word. +</p> +<p> +"Partly," answered her son. +</p> +<p> +"And the way that child of Philippe's jabbered French! It's wonderful +how they can learn so young." +</p> +<p> +"They begin early, you know," Percival explained. "And as to our friend +the baron, I'm ready to make book that sis doesn't see him again, +except at a distance." +</p> +<p> +Sometime afterwards he computed the round sum he might have won if any +such bets had been made; for his sister's list of suitors, to adopt his +own lucent phrase, was thereafter "shy a baron." +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH23"><!-- CH23 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIII. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Summer Campaign Is Planned +</h3> +<p> +Winter waned and spring charmed the land into blossom. The city-pent, +as we have intimated, must take this season largely on faith. If one +can find a patch of ground naked of stone or asphalt one may feel the +heart of the earth beat. But even now the shop-windows are more +inspiring. At least they copy the outer show. Tender-hued shirt-waists +first push up their sprouts of arms through the winter furs and +woollens, quite as the first violets out in the woodland thrust +themselves up through the brown carpet of leaves. Then every window +becomes a summery glade of lawn, tulle, and chiffon, more lavish of +tints, shades, and combinations, indeed, than ever nature dared to be. +</p> +<p> +Outside, where the unspoiled earth begins, the blossoms are clouding +the trees with a mist of pink and white, and the city-dweller knows it +from the bloom and foliage of these same windows. +</p> +<p> +Then it is that the spring "get away" urge is felt by each prisoner, by +those able to obey it, and by those, alike, who must wear it down in +the groomed and sophisticated wildness of the city parks. +</p> +<p> +On a morning late in May Mrs. Bines and her daughter were at breakfast. +</p> +<p> +"Isn't Percival coming?" asked his mother. "Everything will be cold." +</p> +<p> +"Can't say," Psyche answered. "I don't even know if he came in last +night. But don't worry about cold things. You can't get them too cold +for Perce at breakfast, nowadays. He takes a lot of ice-water and a +little something out of the decanter, and maybe some black coffee." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, and I'm sure it's bad for him. He doesn't look a bit healthy and +hasn't since he quit eating breakfast. He used to be such a hearty +eater at breakfast, steaks and bacon and chops and eggs and waffles. It +was a sight to see him eat; and since he's quit taking anything but +that cold stuff he's lost his colour and his eyes don't look right. I +know what he's got hold of—it's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I heard about +it from Mrs. Balldridge when we came here last fall. I never did +believe in it, either." +</p> +<p> +The object of her solicitude entered in dressing-gown and slippers. +</p> +<p> +"I'm just telling Psyche that this no-breakfast fad is hurting your +health, my son. Now do come and eat like you used to. You began to look +bad as soon as you left off your breakfast. It's a silly fad, that's +what it is. You can't tell <i>me!</i>" +</p> +<p> +The young man stared at his mother until he had mastered her meaning. +Then he put both hands to his head and turned to the sideboard as if to +conceal his emotion. +</p> +<p> +"That's it," he said, as he busied himself with a tall glass and the +cracked ice. "It's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I didn't think you knew +about it. The fact is," he continued, pouring out a measure of brandy, +and directing the butler to open a bottle of soda, "we all eat too +much. After a night of sound sleep we awaken refreshed and buoyant, all +our forces replenished; thirsty, of course, but not hungry"—he sat +down to the table and placed both hands again to his head—"and we have +no need of food. Yet such is the force of custom that we deaden +ourselves for the day by tanking up on coarse, loathsome stuff like +bacon. Ugh! Any one would think, the way you two eat so early in the +day, that you were a couple of cave-dwellers,—the kind that always +loaded up when they had a chance because it might be a week before they +got another." +</p> +<p> +He drained his glass and brightened visibly. +</p> +<p> +"Now, why not be reasonable?" he continued, pleadingly. "You know there +is plenty of food. I have observed it being brought into town in huge +wagon-loads in the early morning on many occasions. Why do you want to +eat it all at one sitting? No one's going to starve you. Why stupefy +yourselves when, by a little nervy self-denial, you can remain as fresh +and bright and clear-headed as I am at this moment? Why doesn't a fire +make its own escape, Mrs. Carstep-Jamwuddle?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe you feel right, either. I just know you've got an +awful headache right now. Do let the man give you a nice piece of this +steak." +</p> +<p> +"Don't, I beg of you, Lady Ashmorton! The suggestion is extremely +repugnant to me. Besides, I'm behaving this way because I arose with +the purely humourous fancy that my head was a fine large accordeon, and +that some meddler had drawn it out too far. I'm sportively pretending +that I can press it back into shape. Now you and sis never get up with +any such light poetic notion as that. You know you don't—don't attempt +to deceive me." He glanced over the table with swift disapproval. +</p> +<p> +"Strawberries, oatmeal, rolls, steak three inches thick, bacon, +omelette—oh, that I should live to see this day! It's disgraceful! And +at your age—before your own innocent woman-child, and leading her into +the same excesses. Do you know what that breakfast is? No; I'll tell +you. That breakfast is No. 78 in that book of Mrs. Rorer's, and she +expressly warns everybody that it can be eaten safely only by +steeple-climbers, piano-movers, and sea-captains. Really, Mrs. +Wrangleberry, I blush for you." +</p> +<p> +"I don't care how you go on. You ain't looked well for months." +</p> +<p> +"But think of my great big heart—a heart like an ox,"—he seemed on +the verge of tears—"and to think that you, a woman I have never +treated with anything but respect since we met in Honduras in the fall +of '93—to think <i>you</i> should throw it up to my own face that I'm not +beautiful. Others there are, thank God, who can look into a man's heart +and prize him for what he is—not condemn him for his mere superficial +blemishes." +</p> +<p> +"And I just know you've got in with a fast set. I met Mr. Milbrey +yesterday in the corridor—" +</p> +<p> +"Did he tell you how to make a lovely asparagus short-cake or +something?" +</p> +<p> +"He told me those men you go with so much are dreadful gamblers, and +that when you all went to Palm Beach last February you played poker for +money night and day, and you told me you went for your health!" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, he did, did he? Well, I didn't get anything else. He's a dear old +soul, if you've got the copper handy. If that man was a woman he'd be a +warm neighbourhood gossip. He'd be the nice kind old lady that <i>starts</i> +things, that's what Hoddy Milbrey would be." +</p> +<p> +"And you said yourself you played poker most of the time when you went +to Aiken on the car last month." +</p> +<p> +"To be honest with you, ma, we did play poker. Say, they took it off of +me so fast I could feel myself catching cold." +</p> +<p> +"There, you see—and you really ought to wear one of those chamois-skin +chest protectors in this damp climate." +</p> +<p> +"Well, we'll see. If I can find one that an ace-full won't go through +I'll snatch it so quick the man'll think he's being robbed. Now I'll +join you ladies to the extent of some coffee, and then I want to know +what you two would rather do this summer <i>than</i>." +</p> +<p> +"Of course," said Psyche, "no one stays in town in summer." +</p> +<p> +"Exactly. And I've chartered a steam yacht as big as this hotel—all +but—But what I want to know is whether you two care to bunk on it or +whether you'd rather stay quietly at some place, Newport perhaps, and +maybe take a cruise with me now and then." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that would be good fun. But here's ma getting so I can't do a +thing with her, on account of all those beggars and horrid people down +in the slums." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines looked guilty and feebly deprecating. It was quite true that +in her own way she had achieved a reputation for prodigality not +inferior to that acquired by her children in ways of their own. +</p> +<p> +"You know it's so, ma," the daughter went on, accusingly. "One night +last winter when you were away we dined at the Balldridge's, in +Eighty-sixth Street, and the pavements were so sleety the horses +couldn't stand, so Colonel Balldridge brought us home in the Elevated, +about eleven o'clock. Well, at one of the stations a big policeman got +on with a little baby all wrapped up in red flannel. He'd found it in +an area-way, nearly covered with snow—where some one had left it, and +he was taking it down to police-headquarters, he said. Well, ma went +crazy right away. She made him undo it, and then she insisted on +holding it all the way down to Thirty-third Street. One man said it +might be President of the United States, some day; and Colonel +Balldridge said, 'Yes, it has unknown possibilities—it may even be a +President's wife'—just like that. But I thought ma would be demented. +It was all fat and so warm and sleepy it could hardly hold its eyes +open, and I believe she'd have kept it then and there if the policeman +would have let her. She made him promise to get it a bottle of warm +milk the first thing, and borrowed twenty dollars of the colonel to +give to the policeman to get it things with, and then all the way down +she talked against the authorities for allowing such things—as if they +could help it—and when we got home she cried—you <i>know</i> you did, +ma—and you pretended it was toothache—and ever since then she's been +perfectly daft about babies. Why, whenever she sees a woman going along +with one she thinks the poor thing is going to leave it some place; and +now she's in with those charity workers and says she won't leave New +York at all this summer." +</p> +<p> +"I don't care," protested the guilty mother, "it would have frozen to +death in just a little while, and it's done so often. Why, up at the +Catholic Protectory they put out a basket at the side door, so a body +can leave their baby in it and ring the bell and run away; and they get +one twice a week sometimes; and this was such a sweet, fat little baby +with big blue eyes, and its forehead wrinkled, and it was all puckered +up around its little nose—" +</p> +<p> +"And that isn't the worst of it," the relentless daughter broke in. +"She gets begging letters by the score and gives money to all sorts of +people, and a man from the Charities Organisation, who had heard about +it, came and warned her that they were impostors—only she doesn't +care. Do you know, there was a poor old blind woman with a dismal, +wheezy organ down at Broadway and Twenty-third Street—the organ would +hardly play at all, and just one wretched tune—only the woman wasn't +blind at all we found out—and ma bought her a nice new organ that cost +seventy-five dollars and had it taken up to her. Well, she found out +through this man from the Organisation that the woman had pawned the +new organ for twenty dollars and was still playing on the old one. She +didn't want a new one because it was too cheerful; it didn't make +people sad when they heard it, like her old one did. And yesterday ma +bought an Indian—" +</p> +<p> +"A what?" asked her brother, in amazement. +</p> +<p> +"An Indian—a tobacco sign." +</p> +<p> +"You don't mean it? One of those lads that stand out in front and peer +under their hands to see what palefaces are moving into the house +across the street? Say, ma, what you going to do with him? There isn't +much room here, you know." +</p> +<p> +"I didn't buy him for myself," replied Mrs. Bines, with dignity; "I +wouldn't want such an object." +</p> +<p> +"She bought it," explained his sister, "for an Italian woman who keeps +a little tobacco-shop down in Rivington Street. A man goes around to +repaint them, you know, but hers was so battered that this man told her +it wasn't worth painting again, and she'd better get another, and the +woman said she didn't know what to do because they cost twenty-five +dollars and one doesn't last very long. The bad boys whittle him and +throw him down, and the people going along the street put their shoes +up to tie them and step on his feet, and they scratch matches on his +face, and when she goes out and says that isn't right they tell her +she's too fresh. And so ma gave her twenty-five dollars for a new one." +</p> +<p> +"But she has to support five children, and her husband hasn't been able +to work for three years, since he fell through a fire-escape where he +was sleeping one hot night," pleaded Mrs. Bines, "and I think I'd +rather stay here this summer. Just think of all those poor babies when +the weather gets hot. I never thought there were so many babies in the +world." +</p> +<p> +"Well, have your own way," said her son. "If you've started out to look +after all the babies in New York you won't have any time left to play +the races, I'll promise you that." +</p> +<p> +"Why, my son, I never—" +</p> +<p> +"But sis here would probably rather do other things." +</p> +<p> +"I think," said Psyche, "I'd like Newport—Mrs. Drelmer says I +shouldn't think of going any place else. Only, of course, I can't go +there alone. She says she would be glad to chaperone me, but her +husband hasn't had a very good year in Wall Street, and she's afraid +she won't be able to go herself." +</p> +<p> +"Maybe," began Mrs. Bines, "if you'd offer—" +</p> +<p> +"Oh! she'd be offended," exclaimed Psyche. +</p> +<p> +"I'm not so sure of that," said her brother, "not if you suggest it in +the right way—put it on the ground that you'll be quite helpless +without her, and that she'd oblige you world without end and all that. +The more I see of people here the more I think they're quite reasonable +in little matters like that. They look at them in the right light. Just +lead up to it delicately with Mrs. Drelmer and see. Then if she's +willing to go with you, your summer will be provided for; except that +we shall both have to look in upon Mrs. Juzzlebraggin here now and then +to see that she doesn't overplay the game and get sick herself, and +make sure that they don't get her vaccination mark away from her. And, +ma, you'll have to come off on the yacht once or twice, just to give it +tone." +</p> +<p> +It appeared that Percival had been right in supposing that Mrs. Drelmer +might be led to regard Psyche's proposal in a light entirely rational. +She was reluctant, at first, it is true. +</p> +<p> +"It's awfully dear of you to ask me, child, but really, I'm afraid it +will be quite impossible. Oh!—for reasons which you, of course, with +your endless bank-account, cannot at all comprehend. You see we old New +York families have a secure position <i>here</i> by right of birth; and even +when we are forced to practice little economies in dress and household +management it doesn't count against us—so long as we <i>stay</i> here. Now, +Newport is different. One cannot economise gracefully there—not even +one of <i>us</i>. There are quiet and very decent places for those of us +that must. But at Newport one must not fall behind in display. A sense +of loyalty to the others, a <i>noblesse oblige</i>, compels one to be as +lavish as those flamboyant outsiders who go there. One doesn't want +them to report, you know, that such and such families of our smart set +are falling behind for lack of means. So, while we of the real stock +are chummy enough here, where there is only <i>us</i> in a position to +observe ourselves, there is a sort of tacit agreement that only those +shall go to Newport who are able to keep up the pace. One need not, for +one season or so, be a cottager; but, for example, in the matter of +dress, one must be sinfully lavish. Really, child, I could spend three +months in the Engadine for the price of one decent month at Newport; +the parasols, gloves, fans, shoes, 'frillies'—enough to stock the Rue +de la Paix, to say nothing of gowns—but why do I run on? Here am I +with a few little simple summer things, fit enough indeed for the quiet +place we shall reach for July and August, but ab-so-lute-ly impossible +for Newport—so say no more about it, dear. You're a sweet—but it's +madness to think of it." +</p> +<p> +"And I had," reported Psyche to her mother that night, "such a time +getting her to agree. At first she wouldn't listen at all. Then, after +I'd just fairly begged her, she admitted she might because she's taken +such a fancy to me and hates to leave me—but she was sensitive about +what people might say. I told her they'd never have a chance to say a +word; and she was anxious Perce shouldn't know, because she says he's +so cynical about New York people since that Milbrey girl made such a +set for him; and at last she called me a dear and consented, though +she'd been looking forward to a quiet summer. To-morrow early we start +out for the shops." +</p> +<p> +So it came that the three members of the Bines family pursued during +the summer their respective careers of diversion under conditions most +satisfactory to each. +</p> +<p> +The steam yacht <i>Viluca</i>, chartered by Percival, was put into +commission early in June. Her first cruise of ten days was a signal +triumph. His eight guests were the men with whom he had played poker so +tirelessly during the winter. Perhaps the most illuminating log of that +cruise may be found in the reply of one of them whom Percival invited +for another early in July. +</p> +<p> +"Much obliged, old man, but I haven't touched a drop now in over three +weeks. My doctor says I must let it be for at least two months, and I +mean to stick by him. Awfully kind of you, though!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH24"><!-- CH24 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIV. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee +</h3> +<p> +From the landing on a still morning in late July, Mrs. Drelmer surveyed +the fleet of sailing and steam yachts at anchor in Newport harbour. She +was beautifully and expensively gowned in nun's grey chiffon; her toque +was of chiffon and lace, and she held a pale grey parasol, its ivory +handle studded with sapphires. She fixed a glass upon one of the white, +sharp-nosed steam yachts that rode in the distance near Goat Island. +"Can you tell me if that's the <i>Viluca?</i>" she asked a sailor landing +from a dinghy, "that boat just astern of the big schooner?" +</p> +<p> +"No ma'am; that's the <i>Alta</i>, Commodore Weckford." +</p> +<p> +"Looking for some one?" inquired a voice, and she turned to greet Fred +Milbrey descending the steps. +</p> +<p> +"Oh! Good-morning! yes; but they've not come in, evidently. It's the +<i>Viluca</i>—Mr. Bines, you know; he's bringing his sister back to me. And +you?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm expecting the folks on Shepler's craft. Been out two weeks now, +and were to have come down from New London last night. They're not in +sight either. Perhaps the gale last night kept them back." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Drelmer glanced above to where some one seemed to be waiting for +him. +</p> +<p> +"Who's your perfectly gorgeous companion? You've been so devoted to her +for three days that you've hardly bowed to old friends. Don't you want +her to know any one?" +</p> +<p> +The young man laughed with an air of great shrewdness. +</p> +<p> +"Come, now, Mrs. Drelmer, you're too good a friend of Mauburn's—about +his marrying, I mean. You fixed him to tackle me low the very first +half of one game we know about, right when I was making a fine run down +the field, too. I'm going to have better interference this time." +</p> +<p> +"Silly! Your chances are quite as good as his there this moment." +</p> +<p> +"You may think so; I know better." +</p> +<p> +"And of course, in any other affair, I'd never think of—" +</p> +<p> +"P'r'aps so; but I'd rather not chance it just yet." +</p> +<p> +"But who is she? What a magnificent mop of hair. It's like that rich +piece of ore Mr. Bines showed us, with copper and gold in it." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I don't mind telling you she's the widow of a Southern +gentleman, Colonel Brench Wybert." +</p> +<p> +"Ah, indeed! I did notice that two-inch band of black at the bottom of +her accordeon-plaited petticoat. I'll wager that's a <i>Rue de la Paix</i> +idea of mourning for one's dead husband. And she confides her grief to +the world with such charming discretion. Half the New York women can't +hold their skirts up as daintily as she does it. I dare say, now, her +tears could be dried?—by the right comforter?" +</p> +<p> +Milbrey looked important. +</p> +<p> +"And I don't mind telling you the late Colonel Brench Wybert left her a +fortune made in Montana copper. Can't say how much, but two weeks ago +she asked the governor's advice about where to put a spare million and +a half in cash. Not so bad, eh?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, this new plutocracy! Where <i>do</i> they get it?" +</p> +<p> +"How old, now, should you say she was?" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Drelmer glanced up again at the colour-scheme of heliotrope seated +in a victoria upholstered in tan brocade. +</p> +<p> +"Thirty-five, I should say—about." +</p> +<p> +"Just twenty-eight." +</p> +<p> +"Just about what I should say—she'd say." +</p> +<p> +"Come now, you women can't help it, can you? But you can't deny she's +stunning?" +</p> +<p> +"Indeed I can't! She's a beauty—and, good luck to you. Is that the +<i>Viluca</i> coming in? No; it has two stacks; and it's not your people +because the <i>Lotus</i> is black. I shall go back to the hotel. Bertie +Trafford brought me over on the trolley. I must find him first and do +an errand in Thames Street." +</p> +<p> +At the head of the stairs they parted, Milbrey joining the lady who had +waited for him. +</p> +<p> +Hers was a person to gladden the eye. Her figure, tall and full, was of +a graceful and abundant perfection of contours; her face, precisely +carved and showing the faintly generous rounding of maturity, was warm +in colouring, with dark eyes, well shaded and languorous; her full lips +betrayed their beauty in a ready and fascinating laugh; her voice was a +rich, warm contralto; and her speech bore just a hint of the soft +r-less drawl of the South. +</p> +<p> +She had blazed into young Milbrey's darkness one night in the palm-room +of the Hightower Hotel, escorted by a pleased and beefy youth of his +acquaintance, who later told him of their meeting at the American +Embassy in Paris, and who unsuspectingly presented him. Since their +meeting the young man had been her abject cavalier. The elder Milbrey, +too, had met her at his son's suggestion. He had been as deeply +impressed by her helplessness in the matter of a million and a half +dollars of idle funds as she had been by his aristocratic bearing and +enviable position in New York society. +</p> +<p> +"Sorry to have kept you waiting. The <i>Lotus</i> hasn't come in sight yet. +Let's loaf over to the beach and have some tall, cold ones." +</p> +<p> +"Who was your elderly friend?" she asked, as they were driven slowly up +the old-fashioned street. +</p> +<p> +"Oh! that's Joe Drelmer. She's not so old, you know; not a day over +forty, Joe can't be; fine old stock; she was a Leydenbroek and her +husband's family is one of the very oldest in New York. Awfully +exclusive. Down to meet friends, but they'd not shown up, either. That +reminds me; they're friends of ours, too, and I must have you meet +them. They're from your part of the country—the Bines." +</p> +<p> +"The—ah—" +</p> +<p> +"Bines; family from Montana; decent enough sort; didn't know but you +might have heard of them, being from your part of the country." +</p> +<p> +"Ah, I never think of that vulgar West as 'my part of the country' at +all. <i>My</i> part is dear old Virginia, where my father, General Tulver, +and his father and his father's father all lived the lives of country +gentlemen, after the family came here from Devonshire. It was there +Colonel Wybert wooed me, though we later removed to New Orleans." Mrs. +Wybert called it "New <i>Aw</i>-leens." +</p> +<p> +"But it was not until my husband became interested in Montana mines +that we ventured into that horrid West. So <i>do</i> remember not to +confound me with your Western—ah—Bones,—was it not?" +</p> +<p> +"No, Bines; they'll be here presently, and you can meet them, anyway." +</p> +<p> +"Is there an old fellow—a queer old character, with them?" +</p> +<p> +"No, only a son and daughter and the mother." +</p> +<p> +"Of course I sha'n't mind meeting any friends of yours," she said, with +charming graciousness, "but, really, I always understood that you +Knickerbockers were so vastly more exclusive. I do recall this name +now. I remember hearing tales of the family in Spokane. They're a type, +you know. One sees many of the sort there. They make a strike in the +mines and set up ridiculous establishments regardless of expense. You +see them riding in their carriages with two men in the box—red-handed, +grizzled old vulgarians who've roughed it in the mountains for twenty +years with a pack-mule and a ham and a pick-axe—with their jug of +whiskey—and their frowsy red-faced wives decked out in impossible +finery. Yes, I do recall this family. There is a daughter, you say?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes; Miss Psyche Bines." +</p> +<p> +"Psyche; ah, yes; it's the same family. I recollect perfectly now. You +know they tell the funniest tales of them out there. Her mother found +the name 'Psyche' in a book, and liked it, but she pronounced it +'Pishy,' and so the girl was called until she became old enough to go +to school and learned better." +</p> +<p> +"Dear me; fancy now!" +</p> +<p> +"And there are countless tales of the mother's queer sayings. Once a +gentleman whom they were visiting in San Francisco was showing her a +cabinet of curios. 'Now, don't you find the Pompeiian figurines +exquisite?' he asked her. The poor creature, after looking around her +helplessly, declared that she <i>did</i> like them; but that she liked the +California nectarines better—they were so much juicier." +</p> +<p> +"You don't tell me; gad! that was a good one. Oh, well, she's a meek, +harmless old soul, and really, my family's not the snobbish sort, you +know." +</p> +<p> +In from the shining sea late that afternoon steamed the <i>Viluca</i>. As +her chain was rattling through the hawse-hole, Percival, with his +sister and Mauburn, came on deck. +</p> +<p> +"Why, there's the <i>Chicago</i>—Higbee's yacht." +</p> +<p> +"That's the boat," said Mauburn, "that's been piling the white water up +in front of her all afternoon trying to overhaul us." +</p> +<p> +"There's Millie Higbee and old Silas, now." +</p> +<p> +"And, as I live," exclaimed Psyche, "there's the Baron de Palliac +between them!" +</p> +<p> +"Sure enough," said her brother. "We must call ma up to see him dressed +in those sweet, pretty yachting flannels. Oh, there you are!" as Mrs. +Bines joined them. "Just take this glass and treat yourself to a look +at your old friend, the baron. You'll notice he has one +on—see—they're waving to us." +</p> +<p> +"Doesn't the baron look just too distinguished beside Mr. Higbee?" said +Psyche, watching them. +</p> +<p> +"And doesn't Higbee look just too Chicago beside the baron?" replied +her brother. +</p> +<p> +The Higbee craft cut her way gracefully up to an anchorage near the +<i>Viluca</i>, and launches from both yachts now prepared to land their +people. At the landing Percival telephoned for a carriage. While they +were waiting the Higbee party came ashore. +</p> +<p> +"Hello!" said Higbee; "if I'd known that was you we was chasing I'd +have put on steam and left you out of sight." +</p> +<p> +"It's much better you didn't recognise us; these boiler explosions are +so messy." +</p> +<p> +"Know the baron here?" +</p> +<p> +"Of course we know the baron. Ah, baron!" +</p> +<p> +"Ah, ha! very charmed, Mr. Bines and Miss Bines; it is of a long time +that we are not encountered." +</p> +<p> +He was radiant; they had never before seen him thus. Mrs. Higbee +hovered near him with an air of proud ownership. Pretty Millie Higbee +posed gracefully at her side. +</p> +<p> +"This your carriage?" asked Higbee; "I must telephone for one myself. +Going to the Mayson? So are we. See you again to-night. We're off for +Bar Harbour early to-morrow." +</p> +<p> +"Looks as if there were something doing there," said Percival, as they +drove off the wharf. +</p> +<p> +"Of course, stupid!" said his sister; "that's plain; only it isn't +doing, it's already done. Isn't it funny, ma?" +</p> +<p> +"For a French person," observed Mrs. Bines, guardedly, "I always liked +the baron." +</p> +<p> +"Of course," said her son, to Mauburn's mystification, "and the noblest +men on this earth have to wear 'em." +</p> +<p> +The surmise regarding the Baron de Palliac and Millie Higbee proved to +be correct. Percival came upon Higbee in the meditative enjoyment of +his after-dinner cigar, out on the broad piazza. +</p> +<p> +"I s'pose you're on," he began; "the girl's engaged to that Frenchy." +</p> +<p> +"I congratulate him," said Percival, heartily. +</p> +<p> +"A real baron," continued Higbee. "I looked him up and made sure of +that; title's good as wheat. God knows that never would 'a' got me, but +the madam was set on it, and the girl too, and I had to give in. It +seemed to be a question of him or some actor. The madam said I'd had my +way about Hank, puttin' his poor stubby nose to the grindstone out +there in Chicago, and makin' a plain insignificant business man out of +him, and I'd ought to let her have her way with the girl, being that I +couldn't expect her to go to work too. So Mil will work the society +end. I says to the madam, I says, 'All right, have your own way; and +we'll see whether you make more out of the girl than I make out of the +boy,' I says. But it ain't going to be <i>all</i> digging up. I've made the +baron promise to go into business with me, and though I ain't told him +yet, I'm going to put out a line of Higbee's thin-sliced ham and bacon +in glass jars with his crest on 'em for the French trade. This baron'll +cost me more'n that sign I showed you coming out of the old town, and +he won't give any such returns, but the crest on them jars, printed in +three colours and gold, will be a bully ad; and it kept the women +quiet," he concluded, apologetically. +</p> +<p> +"The baron's a good fellow," said Percival. +</p> +<p> +"Sure," replied Higbee. "They're all good fellows. Hank had the makin's +of a good fellow in him. And say, young man, that reminds me; I hear +all kinds of reports about your getting to be one yourself. Now I knew +your father, Daniel J. Bines, and I liked him, and I like you; and I +hope you won't get huffy, but from what they tell me you ain't doing +yourself a bit of good." +</p> +<p> +"Don't believe all you hear," laughed Percival. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I'll tell you one thing plain, if you was my son, you'd fade +right back to the packing-house along with Henry-boy. It's a pity you +ain't got some one to shut down on you that way. They tell me you got +your father's capacity for carrying liquor, and I hear you're known +from one end of Broadway to the other as the easiest mark that ever +came to town. They say you couldn't walk in your sleep without spending +money. Now, excuse my plain speaking, but them are two reputations that +are mighty hard to live up to beyond a certain limit. They've put lots +of good weight-carriers off the track before they was due to go. I hear +you got pinched in that wheat deal of Burman's?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, only for a few hundred thousand. The reports of our losses were +exaggerated. And we stood to win over—" +</p> +<p> +"Yes—you stood to win, and then you went 'way back and set down,' as +the saying is. But it ain't the money. You've got too much of that, +anyway, Lord knows. It's this everlasting hullabaloo and the drink that +goes with it, and the general trifling sort of a dub it makes out of a +young fellow. It's a pity you ain't my son; that's all I got to say. I +want to see you again along in September after I get back from San +Francisco; I'm going to try to get you interested in some business. +That'd be good for you." +</p> +<p> +"You're kind, Mr. Higbee, and really I appreciate all you say; but +you'll see me settle down pretty soon, quick as I get my bearings, and +be a credit to the State of Montana." +</p> +<p> +"I say," said Mauburn, coming up, "do you see that angel of the flaming +hair with that young Milbrey chap?" +</p> +<p> +The two men gazed where he was indicating. +</p> +<p> +"By Jove! she <i>is</i> a stunner, isn't she?" exclaimed Percival. +</p> +<p> +"Might be one of Shepler's party," suggested Higbee. "He has the +Milbrey family out with him, and I see they landed awhile ago. You can +bet that party's got more than her good looks, if the Milbreys are +taking any interest in her. Well, I've got to take the madam and the +young folks over to the Casino. So long!" +</p> +<p> +Fred Milbrey came up. +</p> +<p> +"Hello, you fellows!" +</p> +<p> +"Who is she?" asked the two in faultless chorus. +</p> +<p> +"We're going over to hear the music awhile. Come along and I'll present +you." +</p> +<p> +"Rot the luck!" said Mauburn; "I'm slated to take Mrs. Drelmer and Miss +Bines to a musicale at the Van Lorrecks, where I'm certain to fall +asleep trying to look as if I quite liked it, you know." +</p> +<p> +"You come," Milbrey urged Percival. "My sister's there and the governor +and mother." +</p> +<p> +But for the moment Percival was reflecting, going over in his mind the +recent homily of Higbee. Higbee's opinion of the Milbreys also came +back to him. +</p> +<p> +"Sorry, old man, but I've a headache, so you must excuse me for +to-night. But I'll tell you, we'll all come over in the morning and go +for a dip with you." +</p> +<p> +"Good! Stop for us at the Laurels, about eleven, or p'r'aps I'll stroll +over and get you. I'm expecting some mail to be forwarded to this +hotel." +</p> +<p> +He rejoined his companion, who had been chatting with a group of women +near the door, and they walked away. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Isn't</i> she a stunner!" exclaimed Mauburn. +</p> +<p> +"She is a <i>peach!</i>" replied Percival, in tones of deliberate and +intense conviction. "Whoever she is, I'll meet her to-morrow and ask +her what she means by pretending to see anything in Milbrey. This thing +has gone too far!" +</p> +<p> +Mauburn looked wistful but said nothing. After he had gone away with +Mrs. Drelmer and Psyche, who soon came for him, Percival still sat +revolving the paternal warnings of Higbee. He considered them +seriously. He decided he ought to think more about what he was doing +and what he should do. He decided, too, that he could think better with +something mechanical to occupy his hands. He took a cab and was driven +to the local branch of his favourite temple of chance. His host +welcomed him at the door. +</p> +<p> +"Ah, Mr. Bines, a little recreation, eh? Your favourite dealer, Dutson, +is here to-night, if you prefer bank." +</p> +<p> +Passing through the crowded, brightly-lighted rooms to one of the faro +tables, where his host promptly secured a seat for him, he played +meditatively until one o'clock; adding materially to his host's reasons +for believing he had done wisely to follow his New York clients to +their summer annex. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH25"><!-- CH25 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXV. +</h2> + +<h3> +Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House +</h3> +<p> +In the shade of the piazza at the Hotel Mayson next morning there was a +sorting out of the mail that had been forwarded from the hotel in New +York. The mail of Mrs. Bines was a joy to her son. There were three +conventional begging letters, heart-breaking in their pathos, and +composed with no mean literary skill. There was a letter from one of +the maids at the Hightower for whose mother Mrs. Bines had secured +employment in the family of a friend; a position, complained the +daughter, "in which she finds constant hard labour caused by the +quantity expected of her to attend to." There was also a letter from +the lady's employer, saying she would not so much mind her laziness if +she did not aggravate it by drink. Mrs. Bines sighed despairingly for +the recalcitrant. +</p> +<p> +"And who's this wants more help until her husband's profession picks up +again?" asked Percival. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that's a poor little woman I helped. They call her husband 'the +Terrible Iceman.'" +</p> +<p> +"But this is just the season for icemen!" +</p> +<p> +"Well," confessed his mother, with manifest reluctance, "he's a +prize-fighter or something." +</p> +<p> +Percival gasped. +</p> +<p> +"—and he had a chance to make some money, only the man he fought +against had some of his friends drug this poor fellow before +their—their meeting—and so of course he lost. If he hadn't been +drugged he would have won the money, and now there's a law passed +against it, and of course it isn't a very nice trade, but I think the +law ought to be changed. He's got to live." +</p> +<p> +"I don't see why; not if he's the man I saw box one night last winter. +He didn't have a single excuse for living. And what are these +tickets,—'Grand Annual Outing and Games of the Egg-Candlers & Butter +Drivers' Association at Sulzer's Harlem River Park. Ticket Admitting +Lady and Gent, One dollar.' Heavens! What is it?" +</p> +<p> +"I promised to take ten tickets," said Mrs. Bines. "I must send them a +check." +</p> +<p> +"But what are they?" her son insisted; "egg-candlers may be all right, +but what are butter-drivers? Are you quite sure it's respectable? Why, +I ask you, should an honest man wish to drive butter? That shows you +what life in a great city does for the morally weak. Look out you don't +get mixed up in it yourself, that's all I ask. They'll have you driving +butter first thing you know. Thank heaven! thus far no Bines has ever +candled an egg—and as for driving butter—" he stopped, with a shudder +of extreme repugnance. +</p> +<p> +"And here's a notice about the excursions of the St. John's Guild. I've +been on four already, and I want you to get me back to New York right +away for the others. If you could only see all those babies we take out +on the floating hospital, with two men in little boats behind to pick +up those that fall overboard—and really it's a wonder any of them live +through the summer in that cruel city. Down in Hester Street the other +day four of them had a slice of watermelon from Mr. Slivinsky's stand +on the corner, and when I saw them they were actually eating the hard, +green rind. It was enough to kill a horse." +</p> +<p> +"Well, have your own fun," said her son, cheerfully. "Here's a letter +from Uncle Peter I must read." +</p> +<p> +He drew his chair aside and began the letter: +</p> +<p> +"MONTANA CITY, July 21st, 1900. +</p> +<p> +"DEAR PETE:—Your letter and Martha's rec'd, and glad to hear from you. +I leave latter part of this week for the mtns. Late setting out this +season acct. rhumatiz caught last winter that laid me up all spring. It +was so mortal dull here with you folks gone that I went out with a +locating party to get the M. P. branch located ahead of the Short Line +folks. So while you were having your fun there I was having mine here, +and I had it good and plenty. +</p> +<p> +"The worst weather I ever did see, and I have seen some bad. Snow six +to eight feet on a level and the mercury down as low as 62 with an +ornery fierce wind. We lost four horses froze to death, and all but two +of the men got froze up bad. We reached the head of Madison Valley Feb. +19, north of Red Bank Canyon, but it wasn't as easy as it sounds. +</p> +<p> +"Jan. 8, after getting out of supplies, we abandoned our camp at +Riverside and moved 10 m. down the river carrying what we could on our +backs. Met pack train with a few supplies that night, and next day I +took part of the force in boat to meet over-due load of supplies. We +got froze in the ice. Left party to break through and took Billy Brue +and went ahead to hunt team. Billy and me lived four days on one lb. +bacon. The second day Billy took some sickness so he could not eat +hardly any food; the next day he was worse, and the last day he was so +bad he said the bare sight of food made him gag. I think he was a liar, +because he wasn't troubled none after we got to supplies again, but I +couldn't do anything with him, and so I lived high and come out slick +and fat. Finally we found the team coming in. They had got stuck in the +river and we had to carry out the load on our backs, waist-deep in +running water. I see some man in the East has a fad for breaking the +ice in the river and going swimming. I would not do it for any fad. +Slept in snow-drift that night in wet clothes, mercury 40 below. Was 18 +days going 33 miles. Broke wagon twice, then broke sled and crippled +one horse. Packed the other five and went on till snow was too deep. +Left the horses where four out of five died and carried supplies the +rest of the way on our backs. Moved camp again on our backs and got +caught in a blizzard and nearly all of us got our last freezeup that +time. Finally a Chinook opened the river and I took a boat up to get +the abandoned camp. Got froze in harder than ever and had to walk out. +Most of the men quit on account of frozen feet, etc., etc. They are a +getting to be a sissy lot these days, rather lie around a hot stove all +winter. +</p> +<p> +"I had to pull chain, cut brush, and shovel snow after the 1st Feb. Our +last stage was from Fire Hole Basin to Madison Valley, 45 m. It was +hell. Didn't see the sun but once after Feb. 1, and it stormed +insessant, making short sights necessary, and with each one we would +have to dig a hole to the ground and often a ditch or a tunnel through +the snow to look through. The snow was soft to the bottom and an +instrument would sink through." +</p> +<p> +"Here's a fine letter to read on a hot day," called Percival. "I'm +catching cold." He continued. +</p> +<p> +"We have a very good line, better than from Beaver Canon, our maps +filed and construction under way; all grading done and some track laid. +That's what you call hustling. The main drawback is that Red Bank +Canon. It's a regular avalanche for eight miles. The snow slides just +fill the river. One just above our camp filled it for 1/4 mile and 40 +feet deep and cut down 3 ft. trees like a razor shaves your face. I had +to run to get out of the way. Reached Madison Valley with one tent and +it looked more like mosquito bar than canvas. The old cloth wouldn't +hardly hold the patches together. I slept out doors for six weeks. I +got frost-bit considerable and the rhumatiz. I tell you, at 75 I ain't +the man I used to be. I find I need a stout tent and a good warm +sleeping bag for them kind of doings nowdays. +</p> +<p> +"Well, this Western country would be pretty dull for you I suppose +going to balls and parties every night with the Astors and Vanderbilts. +I hope you ain't cut loose none. +</p> +<p> +"By the way, that party that ground-sluiced us, Coplen he met a party +in Spokane the other day that seen her in Paris last spring. She was +laying in a stock of duds and the party gethered that she was going +back to New York—" +</p> +<p> +The Milbreys, father and son, came up and greeted the group on the +piazza. +</p> +<p> +"I've just frozen both ears reading a letter from my grandfather," said +Percival. "Excuse me one moment and I'll be done." +</p> +<p> +"All right, old chap. I'll see if there's some mail for me. Dad can +chat with the ladies. Ah, here's Mrs. Drelmer. Mornin'!" +</p> +<p> +Percival resumed his letter: +</p> +<p> +"—going back to New York and make the society bluff. They say she's +got the face to do it all right. Coplen learned she come out here with +a gambler from New Orleans and she was dealing bank herself up to +Wallace for a spell while he was broke. This gambler he was the +slickest short-card player ever struck hereabouts. He was too good. He +was so good they shot him all up one night last fall over to Wardner. +She hadn't lived with him for some time then, though Coplen says they +was lawful man and wife, so I guess maybe she was glad when he got it +good in the chest-place—" +</p> +<p> +Fred Milbrey came out of the hotel office. +</p> +<p> +"No mail," he said. "Come, let's be getting along. Finish your letter +on the way, Bines." +</p> +<p> +"I've just finished," said Percival, glancing down the last sheet. +</p> +<p> +"—Coplen says she is now calling herself Mrs. Brench Wybert or some +such name. I just thought I'd tell you in case you might run acrost her +and—" +</p> +<p> +"Come along, old chap," urged Milbrey; "Mrs. Wybert will be waiting." +His father had started off with Psyche. Mrs. Bines and Mrs. Drelmer +were preparing to follow. +</p> +<p> +"I beg your pardon," said Percival, "I didn't quite catch the name." +</p> +<p> +"I say Mrs. Wybert and mother will be waiting—come along!" +</p> +<p> +"What name?" +</p> +<p> +"Wybert—Mrs. Brench Wybert—my friend—what's the matter?" +</p> +<p> +"We can't go;—that is—we can't meet her. Sis, come back a moment," he +called to Psyche, and then: +</p> +<p> +"I want a word with you and your father, Milbrey." +</p> +<p> +The two joined the elder Milbrey and the three strolled out to the +flower-bordered walk, while Psyche Bines went, wondering, back to her +mother. +</p> +<p> +"What's all the row?" inquired Fred Milbrey. +</p> +<p> +"You've been imposed upon. This woman—this Mrs. Brench Wybert—there +can be no mistake; you are sure that's the name?" +</p> +<p> +"Of course I'm sure; she's the widow of a Southern gentleman, Colonel +Brench Wybert, from New Orleans." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, the same woman. There is no doubt that you have been imposed +upon. The thing to do is to drop her quick—she isn't right." +</p> +<p> +"In what way has my family been imposed upon, Mr. Bines?" asked the +elder Milbrey, somewhat perturbed; "Mrs. Wybert is a lady of family and +large means—" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I know, she has, or did have a while ago, two million dollars in +cold cash." +</p> +<p> +"Well, Mr. Bines—?" +</p> +<p> +"Can't you take my word for it, that she's not right—not the woman for +your wife and daughter to meet?" +</p> +<p> +"Look here, Bines," the younger Milbrey spluttered, "this won't do, you +know. If you've anything to say against Mrs. Wybert, you'll have to say +it out and you'll have to be responsible to me, sir." +</p> +<p> +"Take my word that you've been imposed upon; she's not—not the kind of +person you would care to know, to be thrown—" +</p> +<p> +"I and my family have found her quite acceptable, Mr. Bines," +interposed the father, stiffly. "Her deportment is scrupulously +correct, and I am in her confidence regarding certain very extensive +investments—she cannot be an impostor, sir!" +</p> +<p> +"But I tell you she isn't right," insisted Percival, warmly. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I see," said the younger Milbrey—his face clearing all at once. +"It's all right, dad, come on!" +</p> +<p> +"If you insist," said Percival, "but none of us can meet her." +</p> +<p> +"It's all right, dad—I understand—" +</p> +<p> +"Nor can we know any one who receives her." +</p> +<p> +"Really, sir," began the elder Milbrey, "your effrontery in assuming to +dictate the visiting list of my family is overwhelming." +</p> +<p> +"If you won't take my word I shall have to dictate so far as I have any +personal control over it." +</p> +<p> +"Don't mind him, dad—I know all about it, I tell you—I'll explain +later to you." +</p> +<p> +"Why," exclaimed Percival, stung to the revelation, "that woman, this +woman now waiting with your wife and daughter, was my—" +</p> +<p> +"Stop, Mr. Bines—not another word, if you please!" The father raised +his hand in graceful dismissal. "Let this terminate the acquaintance +between our families! No more, sir!" and he turned away, followed by +his son. As they walked out through the grounds and turned up the +street the young man spoke excitedly, while his father slightly bent +his head to listen, with an air of distant dignity. +</p> +<p> +"What's the trouble, Perce?" asked his sister, as he joined the group +on the piazza. +</p> +<p> +"The trouble is that we've just had to cut that fine old New York +family off our list." +</p> +<p> +"What, not the Milbreys!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer. +</p> +<p> +"The same. Now mind, sis, and you, ma—you're not to know them +again—and mind this—if any one else wants to present you to a Mrs. +Wybert—a Mrs. Brench Wybert—don't you let them. Understand?" +</p> +<p> +"I thought as much," said Mrs. Drelmer; "she acted just the least +little bit <i>too</i> right." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I haven't my hammer with me—but remember, now, sis, it's for +something else than because her father's cravats were the ready-to-wear +kind, or because her worthy old grandfather inhaled his soup. Don't +forget that." +</p> +<p> +"As there isn't anything else to do," he suggested, a few moments +later, "why not get under way and take a run up the coast?" +</p> +<p> +"But I must get back to my babies," said Mrs. Bines, plaintively. "Here +I've been away four days." +</p> +<p> +"All right, ma, I suppose we shall have to take you there, only let's +get out of here right away. We can bring sis and you back, Mrs. +Drelmer, when those people we don't know get off again. There's +Mauburn; I'll tell him." +</p> +<p> +"I'll have my dunnage down directly," said Mauburn. +</p> +<p> +Up the street driving a pony-cart came Avice Milbrey. Obeying a quick +impulse, Percival stepped to the curb as she came opposite to him. She +pulled over. She was radiant in the fluffs of summer white, her hat and +gown touched with bits of the same vivid blue that shone in her eyes. +The impulse that had prompted him to hail her now prompted wild words. +His long habit of thought concerning her enabled him to master this +foolishness. But at least he could give her a friendly word of warning. +She greeted him with the pretty reserve in her manner that had long +marked her bearing toward him. +</p> +<p> +"Good-morning! I've borrowed this cart of Elsie Vainer to drive down to +the yacht station for lost mail. Isn't the day perfect—and isn't this +the dearest fat, sleepy pony, with his hair in his eyes?" +</p> +<p> +"Miss Milbrey, there's a woman who seems to be a friend of your +family—a Mrs.—" +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Wybert; yes, you know her?" +</p> +<p> +"No, I'd never seen her until last night, nor heard that name until +this morning; but I know of her." +</p> +<p> +"Yes?" +</p> +<p> +"It became necessary just now—really, it is not fair of me to speak to +you at all—" +</p> +<p> +"Why, pray?—not fair?" +</p> +<p> +"I had to tell your father and brother that we could not meet Mrs. +Wybert, and couldn't know any one who received her." +</p> +<p> +"There! I knew the woman wasn't right directly I heard her speak. +Surely a word to my father was enough." +</p> +<p> +"But it wasn't, I'm sorry to say. Neither he nor your brother would +take my word, and when I started to give my reasons—something it would +have been very painful for me to do—your father refused to listen, and +declared the acquaintance between our families at an end." +</p> +<p> +"Oh!" +</p> +<p> +"It hurt me in a way I can't tell you, and now, even this talk with you +is off-side play. Miss Milbrey!" +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines!" +</p> +<p> +"I wouldn't have said what I did to your father and brother without +good reason." +</p> +<p> +"I am sure of that, Mr. Bines." +</p> +<p> +"Without reasons I was sure of, you know, so there could be no chance +of any mistake." +</p> +<p> +"Your word is enough for me, Mr. Bines." +</p> +<p> +"Miss Milbrey—you and I—there's always been something between +us—something different from what is between most people. We've never +talked straight out since I came to New York—I'll be sorry, perhaps, +for saying as much as I am saying, after awhile—but we may not talk +again at all—I'm afraid you may misunderstand me—but I must say it—I +should like to go away knowing you would have no friendship,—no +intimacy whatever with that woman." +</p> +<p> +"I promise you I shall not, Mr. Bines; they can row if they like." +</p> +<p> +"And yet it doesn't seem fair to have you promise as if it were a +consideration for <i>me</i>, because I've no right to ask it. But if I felt +sure that you took my word quite as if I were a stranger, and relied +upon it enough to have no communication or intercourse of any sort +whatsoever with her, it would be a great satisfaction to me." +</p> +<p> +"I shall not meet her again. And—thank you!" There was a slight +unsteadiness once in her voice, and he could almost have sworn her eyes +showed that old brave wistfulness. +</p> +<p> +"—and quite as if you were a stranger." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you! and, Miss Milbrey?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes?" +</p> +<p> +"Your brother may become entangled in some way with this woman." +</p> +<p> +"It's entirely possible." +</p> +<p> +Her voice was cool and even again. +</p> +<p> +"He might even marry her." +</p> +<p> +"She has money, I believe; he might indeed." +</p> +<p> +"Always money!" he thought; then aloud: +</p> +<p> +"If you find he means to, Miss Milbrey, do anything you can to prevent +it. It wouldn't do at all, you know." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you, Mr. Bines; I shall remember." +</p> +<p> +"I—I think that's all—and I'm sorry we're not—our families are not +to be friends any more." +</p> +<p> +She smiled rather painfully, with an obvious effort to be conventional. +</p> +<p> +"<i>So</i> sorry! Good-bye!" +</p> +<p> +He looked after her as she drove off. She sat erect, her head straight +to the front, her trim shoulders erect, and the whip grasped firmly. He +stood motionless until the fat pony had jolted sleepily around the +corner. +</p> +<p> +"Bines, old boy!" he said to himself, "you nearly <i>made</i> one of +yourself there. I didn't know you had such ready capabilities for being +an ass." +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH26"><!-- CH26 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXVI. +</h2> + +<h3> +A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage +</h3> +<p> +At five o'clock that day the prow of the <i>Viluca</i> cut the waters of +Newport harbour around Goat Island, and pointed for New York. +</p> +<p> +"Now is your time," said Mrs. Drelmer to Mauburn. "I'm sure the girl +likes you, and this row with the Milbreys has cut off any chance that +cub had. Why not propose to her to-night?" +</p> +<p> +"I <i>have</i> seemed to be getting on," answered Mauburn. "But wait a bit. +There's that confounded girl over there. No telling what she'll do. She +might knock things on the head any moment." +</p> +<p> +"All the more reason for prompt action, and there couldn't very well be +anything to hurt you." +</p> +<p> +"By Jove! that's so; there couldn't, very well, could there? I'll take +your advice." +</p> +<p> +And so it befell that Mauburn and Miss Bines sat late on deck that +night, and under the witchery of a moon that must long since have +become hardened to the spectacle, the old, old story was told, to the +accompaniment of the engine's muffled throb, and the soft purring of +the silver waters as they slipped by the boat and blended with the +creamy track astern. So little variation was there in the time-worn +tale, and in the maid's reception of it, that neither need here be told +of in detail. +</p> +<p> +Nor were the proceedings next morning less tamely orthodox. Mrs. Bines +managed to forget her relationship of elder sister to the poor long +enough to behave as a mother ought when the heart of her daughter has +been given into a true-love's keeping. Percival deported himself +cordially. +</p> +<p> +"I'm really glad to hear it," he said to Mauburn. "I'm sure you'll make +sis as good a husband as she'll make you a wife; and that's very good, +indeed. Let's fracture a cold quart to the future Lady Casselthorpe." +</p> +<p> +"And to the future Lord Casselthorpe!" added Mrs. Drelmer, who was +warmly enthusiastic. +</p> +<p> +"Such a brilliant match," she murmured to Percival, when they had +touched glasses in the after-cabin. "I know more than one New York girl +who'd have jumped at the chance." +</p> +<p> +"We'll try to bear our honours modestly," he answered her. +</p> +<p> +The yacht lay at her anchorage in the East River. Percival made +preparations to go ashore with his mother. +</p> +<p> +"Stay here with the turtle-doves," he said to Mrs. Drelmer, "far enough +off, of course, to let them coo, and I'll be back with any people I can +pick up for a cruise." +</p> +<p> +"Trust me to contract the visual and aural infirmities of the ideal +chaperone," was Mrs. Drelmer's cheerful response. "And if you should +run across that poor dear of a husband of mine, tell him not to slave +himself to death for his thoughtless butterfly of a wife, who toils +not, neither does she spin. Tell him," she added, "that I'm playing +dragon to this engaged couple. It will cheer up the poor dear." +</p> +<p> +The city was a fiery furnace. But its prisoners were not exempt from +its heat, like certain holy ones of old. On the dock where Percival and +his mother landed was a listless throng of them, gasping for the faint +little breezes that now and then blew in from the water. A worn woman +with unkempt hair, her waist flung open at the neck, sat in a spot of +shade, and soothed a baby already grown too weak to be fretful. Mrs. +Bines spoke to her, while Percival bought a morning paper from a tiny +newsboy, who held his complete attire under one arm, his papers under +the other, and his pennies in his mouth, keeping meantime a shifty +side-glance on the policeman a block away, who might be expected to +interfere with his contemplated plunge. +</p> +<p> +"That poor soul's been there all night," said Mrs. Bines. "She's afraid +her baby's going to die; and yet she was so cheerful and polite about +it, and when I gave her some money the poor thing blushed. I told her +to bring the baby down to the floating hospital to-morrow, but I +mistrust it won't be alive, and—oh, there's an ambulance backed up to +the sidewalk; see what the matter is." +</p> +<p> +As Percival pushed through the outer edge of the crowd, a battered +wreck of a man past middle age was being lifted into the ambulance. His +eyes were closed, his face a dead, chalky white, and his body hung +limp. +</p> +<p> +"Sunstroke?" asked Percival. +</p> +<p> +The overworked ambulance surgeon, who seemed himself to be in need of +help, looked up. +</p> +<p> +"Nope; this is a case of plain starvation. I'm nearer sunstroke myself +than he is—not a wink of sleep for two nights now. Fifty-two runs +since yesterday at this time, and the bell still ringing. Gee! but it's +hot. This lad won't ever care about the weather again, though," he +concluded, jumping on to the rear step and grasping the rails on either +side while the driver clanged his gong and started off. +</p> +<p> +"Was it sunstroke?" asked Mrs. Bines. +</p> +<p> +"Man with stomach trouble," answered her son, shortly. +</p> +<p> +"They're so careless about what they eat this hot weather," Mrs. Bines +began, as they walked toward a carriage; "all sorts of heavy foods and +green fruit—" +</p> +<p> +"Well, if you must know, this one had been careless enough not to eat +anything at all. He was starved." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, dear! What a place! here people are starving, and look at us! Why, +we wasted enough from breakfast to feed a small family. It isn't right. +They never would allow such a thing in Montana City." +</p> +<p> +They entered the carriage and were driven slowly up a side street where +slovenly women idled in windows and doorways and half-naked children +chased excitedly after the ice-wagons. +</p> +<p> +"I used to think it wasn't right myself until I learned not to question +the ways of Providence." +</p> +<p> +"Providence, your grandmother! Look at those poor little mites fighting +for that ice!" +</p> +<p> +"We have to accept it. It seems to be proof of the Creator's +versatility. It isn't every one who would be nervy enough and original +enough to make a world where people starve to death right beside those +who have too much." +</p> +<p> +"That's rubbish!" +</p> +<p> +"You're blasphemous! and you're overwrought about the few cases of need +here. Think of those two million people that have just starved to death +in India." +</p> +<p> +"That wasn't my fault." +</p> +<p> +"Exactly; if you'd been there the list might have been cut down four or +five thousand; not more. It was the fault of whoever makes the weather. +It didn't rain and their curry crop failed—or whatever they raise—and +there you are; and we couldn't help matters any by starving ourselves +to death." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I know of a few matters here I can help. And just look at all +those empty houses boarded up!" she cried later, as they crossed +Madison Avenue. "Those poor things bake themselves to death down in +their little ovens, and these great cool places are all shut up. Why, +that poor little baby's hands were just like bird's claws." +</p> +<p> +"Well, don't take your sociology too seriously," Percival warned her, +as they reached the hotel. "Being philanthropic is obeying an instinct +just as selfish as any of the others. A little of it is all right—but +don't be a slave to your passions. And be careful of your health." +</p> +<p> +In his mail at the Hightower was a note from Mrs. Akemit: +</p> +<p> +"NEW LONDON, July 29th. +</p> +<p> +"You DEAR THOUGHTFUL MAN: I'll be delighted, and the aunt, a worthy +sister of the dear bishop, has consented. She is an acidulous maiden +person with ultra-ritualistic tendencies. At present she is strong on +the reunion of Christendom, and holds that the Anglican must be the +unifying medium of the two religious extremes. So don't say I didn't +warn you fairly. She will, however, impart an air of Episcopalian +propriety to that naughty yacht of yours—something sadly needed if I +am to believe the tales I hear about its little voyages to nowhere in +particular. +</p> +<p> +"Babe sends her love, and says to tell 'Uncle Percibal' that the ocean +tastes 'all nassy.' She stood upon the beach yesterday after making +this discovery involuntarily, and proscribed it with one magnificent +wave of her hand and a brief exclamation of disgust—turned her back +disrespectfully upon a body of water that is said to cover +two-thirds—or is it three-fourths?—of the earth's surface. Think of +it! She seemed to suspect she had been imposed upon in the matter of +its taste, and is going to tell the janitor directly we get home, in +order that the guilty ones may be seen to. Her little gesture of +dismissal was superbly contemptuous. I wish you had been with me to +watch her. Yes, the bathing-suit does have little touches of red, and +red—but this will never do. Give us a day's notice, and believe me, +</p> +<p> +"Sincerely, +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"FLORENCE VERDON AKEMIT. +</p> +<p> +"P.S. Babe is on the back of my chair, cuddling down in my neck, and +says, 'Send him your love, too, Mommie. Now don't you forget.'" +</p> +<p> +He telegraphed Mrs. Akemit: "Will reach New London to-morrow. Assure +your aunt of my delight at her acceptance. I have long held that the +reunion must come as she thinks it will." +</p> +<p> +Then he ventured into the heat and glare of Broadway where humanity +stewed and wilted. At Thirty-second Street he ran into Burman, with +whom he had all but cornered wheat. +</p> +<p> +"You're the man I wanted to see," said Percival. +</p> +<p> +"Hurry and look! I'm melting fast." +</p> +<p> +"Come off on the yacht." +</p> +<p> +"My preserver! I was just going down to the Oriental, but your dug-out +wins me hands down. Come into this poor-man's club. I must have a cold +drink taller than a church steeple." +</p> +<p> +"Anybody else in town we can take?" +</p> +<p> +"There's Billy Yelverton—our chewing-gum friend; just off the +<i>Lucania</i> last night; and Eddie Arledge and his wife. They're in town +because Eddie was up in supplementary or something—some low, coarse +brute of a tradesman wanted his old bill paid, and wouldn't believe +Eddie when he said he couldn't spare the money. Eddie is about as +lively as a dish of cold breakfast food, but his wife is all right, all +right. Retiring from the footlights' glare didn't spoil Mrs. E. +Wadsworth Arledge,—not so you could notice it." +</p> +<p> +"Well, see Eddie if you can, and I'll find Yelverton; he's probably at +the hotel yet; and meet me there by five, so we can get out of this +little amateur hell." +</p> +<p> +"And quit trying to save that collar," urged Burman, as they parted; +"you look foolisher than a horse in a straw hat with it on anyway. Let +it go and tuck in your handkerchief like the rest of us. See you at +five!" +</p> +<p> +At the hour named the party had gathered. Percival, Arledge and his +lively wife, Yelverton, who enjoyed the rare distinction of having lost +money to Percival, and Burman. East they drove through the street where +less fortunate mortals panted in the dead afternoon shade, and out on +to the dock, whence the <i>Viluca's</i> naphtha launch presently put them +aboard that sumptuous craft. A little breeze there made the heat less +oppressive. +</p> +<p> +"We'll be under way as soon as they fetch that luggage out," Percival +assured his guests. +</p> +<p> +"It's been frightfully oppressive all day, even out here," said Mrs. +Drelmer, "but the engaged ones haven't lost their tempers once, even if +the day was trying. And really they're the most unemotional and +matter-of-fact couple I ever saw. Oh! do give me that stack of papers +until I catch up with the news again." +</p> +<p> +Percival relinquished to her the evening papers he had bought before +leaving the hotel, and Mrs. Drelmer in the awninged shade at the stern +of the boat was soon running through them. +</p> +<p> +The others had gone below, where Percival was allotting staterooms, and +urging every one to "order whatever cold stuff you like and get into as +few things as the law allows. For my part, I'd like to wear nothing but +a cold bath." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Drelmer suddenly betrayed signs of excitement. She sat up straight +in the wicker deck-chair, glanced down a column of her newspaper, and +then looked up. +</p> +<p> +Mauburn's head appeared out of the cabin's gloom. He was still speaking +to some one below. Mrs. Drelmer rattled the paper and waved it at him. +He came up the stairs. +</p> +<p> +"What's the row?" +</p> +<p> +"Read it!" +</p> +<p> +He took the paper and glanced at the headlines. "I knew she'd do it. A +chap always comes up with something of that sort, and I was beginning +to feel so chippy!" He read: +</p> +<p> +"London, July 30th.—Lord Casselthorpe to-day wed Miss 'Connie' Burke, +the music-hall singer who has been appearing at the Alhambra. The +marriage was performed, by special license, at St. Michael's Church, +Chester Square, London, the Rev. Canon Mecklin, sub-dean of the Chapel +Royal, officiating. The honeymoon will be spent at the town-house of +the groom, in York Terrace. Lord Casselthorpe has long been known as +the blackest sheep of the British Peerage, being called the 'Coster +Peer' on account of his unconventional language, his coarse manner, and +slovenly attire. Two years ago he was warned off Newmarket Heath and +the British turf by the Jockey Club. He is eighty-eight years old. The +bride, like some other lights of the music-hall who have become the +consorts of Britain's hereditary legislators, has enjoyed considerable +ante-nuptial celebrity among the gilded youth of the metropolis, and is +said to have been especially admired at one time by the next in line of +this illustrious family, the Hon. Cecil G.H. Mauburn. +</p> +<p> +"The Hon. Cecil G. H. Mauburn, mentioned in the above cable despatch, +has been rather well-known in New York society for two years past. His +engagement to the daughter of a Montana mining magnate, not long +deceased, has been persistently rumoured." +</p> +<p> +Mauburn was pale under his freckles. +</p> +<p> +"Have they seen it yet?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't think so," she answered. "We might drop these papers over the +rail here." +</p> +<p> +"That's rot, Mrs. Drelmer; it's sure to be talked of, and anyway I +don't want to be sneaky, you know." +</p> +<p> +Percival came up from the cabin with a paper in his hand. +</p> +<p> +"I see you have it, too," he said, smiling. "Burman just handed me +this." +</p> +<p> +"Isn't it perfectly disreputable!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer. +</p> +<p> +"Why? I only hope I'll have as much interest in life by the time I'm +that age." +</p> +<p> +"But how will your sister take it?" asked Mauburn; "she may be afraid +this will knock my title on the head, you know." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I see," said Percival; "I hadn't thought of that." +</p> +<p> +"Only it can't," continued Mauburn. "Hang it all, that blasted old +beggar will be eighty-nine, you know, in a fortnight. There simply +can't be any issue of the marriage, and that—that blasted—" +</p> +<p> +"Better not try to describe her—while I'm by, you know," said Mrs. +Drelmer, sympathetically. +</p> +<p> +"Well—his wife—you know, will simply worry him into the grave a bit +sooner, I fancy—that's all can possibly come of it." +</p> +<p> +"Well, old man," said Percival, "I don't pretend to know the workings +of my sister's mind, but you ought to be able to win a girl on your own +merits, title or no title." +</p> +<p> +"Awfully good of you, old chap. I'm sure she does care for me." +</p> +<p> +"But of course it will be only fair to sis to lay the matter before her +just as it is." +</p> +<p> +"To be sure!" Mauburn assented. +</p> +<p> +"And now, thank the Lord, we're under way. Doesn't that breeze save +your life, though? We'll eat here on deck." +</p> +<p> +The <i>Viluca</i> swung into mid-stream, and was soon racing to the north +with a crowded Fall River boat. +</p> +<p> +"But anyway," concluded Percival, after he had explained Mauburn's +position to his sister, "he's a good fellow, and if you suit each other +even the unexpected wouldn't make any difference." +</p> +<p> +"Of course not," she assented, "'the rank is but the guinea's stamp,' I +know—but I wasn't meaning to be married for quite a time yet, +anyway,—it's such fun just being engaged." +</p> +<p> +"A mint julep?" Mauburn was inquiring of one who had proposed it. "Does +it have whiskey in it?" +</p> +<p> +"It does," replied Percival, overhearing the question; "whiskey may be +said to pervade, even to infest it. Try five or six, old man; that many +make a great one-night trouble cure. And I can't have any one with +troubles on this Cunarder—not for the next thirty days. I need +cheerfulness and rest for a long time after this day in town. Ah! +General Hemingway says that dinner is served; let's be at it before the +things get all hot!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH27"><!-- CH27 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXVII. +</h2> + +<h3> +A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes +</h3> +<p> +It was a morning early in November. In the sedate Milbrey dining-room a +brisk wood-fire dulled the edge of the first autumn chill. At the +breakfast-table, comfortably near the hearth, sat Horace Milbrey. With +pointed spoon he had daintily scooped the golden pulp from a Florida +orange, touched the tips of his slender white fingers to the surface of +the water in the bowl, and was now glancing leisurely at the headlines +of his paper, while his breakfast appetite gained agreeable zest from +the acid fruit. +</p> +<p> +On the second page of the paper the names in a brief item arrested his +errant glance. It disclosed that Mr. Percival Bines had left New York +the day before with a party of guests on his special car, to shoot +quail in North Carolina. Mr. Milbrey glanced at the two shells of the +orange which the butler was then removing. +</p> +<p> +"What a hopeless brute that fellow was!" he reflected.. He was +recalling a dictum once pronounced by Mr. Bines. "Oranges should never +be eaten in public," he had said with that lordly air of dogmatism +characteristic of him. "The only right way to eat a juicy orange is to +disrobe, grasp the fruit firmly in both hands and climb into a bath-tub +half full of water." +</p> +<p> +The finished epicure shuddered at the recollection, poignantly, quite +as if a saw were being filed in the next room. +</p> +<p> +The disagreeable emotion was allayed, however, by the sight of his next +course—<i>oeufs aux saucissons</i>. Tender, poetic memories stirred within +him. The little truffled French sausages aroused his better nature. Two +of them reposed luxuriously upon an egg-divan in the dainty French +baking-dish of dull green. Over them—a fitting baptism, was the rich +wine sauce of golden brown—a sauce that might have been the tears of +envious angels, wept over a mortal creation so faultlessly precious. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Milbrey entered, news of importance visibly animating her. Her +husband arose mechanically, placed the chair for her, and resumed his +fork in an ecstasy of concentration. Yet, though Mrs. Milbrey was full +of talk, like a charged siphon, needing but a slight pressure to pour +forth matters of grave moment, she observed the engrossment of her +husband, and began on the half of an orange. She knew from experience +that he would be deaf, for the moment, to anything less than an alarm +of fire. +</p> +<p> +When he had lovingly consumed the last morsel he awoke to her presence +and smiled benignantly. +</p> +<p> +"My dear, don't fail to try them, they're exquisitely perfect!" +</p> +<p> +"You really <i>must</i> talk to Avice," his wife replied. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Milbrey sighed, deprecatingly. He could remember no time within +five years when that necessity had not weighed upon his father's sense +of duty like a vast boulder of granite. He turned to welcome the +diversion provided by the <i>rognons sautees</i> which Jarvis at that moment +uncovered before him with a discreet flourish. +</p> +<p> +"Now you really must," continued his wife, "and you'll agree with me +when I tell you why." +</p> +<p> +"But, my dear, I've already talked to the girl exhaustively. I've +pointed out that her treatment of Mrs. Wybert—her perverse refusal to +meet the lady at all, is quite as absurd as it is rude, and that if +Fred chooses to marry Mrs. Wybert it is her duty to act the part of a +sister even if she cannot bring herself to feel it. I've assured her +that Mrs. Wybert's antecedents are all they should be; not illustrious, +perhaps, but eminently respectable. Indeed, I quite approve of the +Southern aristocracy. But she constantly recalls what that snobbish +Bines was unfair enough to tell her. I've done my utmost to convince +her that Bines spoke in the way he did about Mrs. Wybert because he +knew she was aware of those ridiculous tales of his mother's +illiteracy. But Avice is—er—my dear, she is like her mother in more +ways than one. Assuredly she doesn't take it from me." +</p> +<p> +He became interested in the kidneys. "If Marie had been a man," he +remarked, feelingly, "I often suspect that her fame as a <i>chef</i> would +have been second to none. Really, the suavity of her sauces is a +never-ending delight to me." +</p> +<p> +"I haven't told you yet the reason—a new reason—why you must talk to +Avice." +</p> +<p> +"The money—yes, yes, my dear, I know, we all know. Indeed, I've put it +to her plainly. She knows how sorely Fred needs it. She knows how that +beast of a tailor is threatening to be nasty—and I've explained how +invaluable Mrs. Wybert would be, reminding her of that lady's generous +hint about the rise in Federal Steel, which enabled me to net the neat +little profit of ten thousand dollars a month ago, and how, but for +that, we might have been acutely distressed. Yet she stubbornly clings +to the notion that this marriage would be a <i>mesalliance</i> for the +Milbreys." +</p> +<p> +"I agree with her," replied his wife, tersely. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Milbrey looked perplexed but polite. +</p> +<p> +"I quite agree with Avice," continued the lady. "That woman hasn't been +right, Horace, and she isn't right. Young Bines knew what he was +talking about. I haven't lived my years without being able to tell that +after five minutes with her, clever as she is. I can read her. Like so +many of those women, she has an intense passion to be thought +respectable, and she's come into money enough—God only knows how—to +gratify it. I could tell it, if nothing else showed it, by the way in +which she overdoes respectability. She has the thousand and one +artificial little rules for propriety that one never does have when one +has been bred to it. That kind of woman is certain to lapse sooner or +later. She would marry Fred because of his standing, because he's a +favourite with the smart people she thinks she'd like to be pally with. +Then, after a little she'd run off with a German-dialect comedian or +something, like that appalling person Normie Whitmund married." +</p> +<p> +"But the desire to be respectable, my dear—and you say this woman has +it—is a mighty lever. I'm no cynic about your sex, but I shudder to +think of their—ah—eccentricities if it should cease to be a factor in +the feminine equation." +</p> +<p> +"It's nothing more than a passing fad with this person—besides, that's +not what I've to tell you." +</p> +<p> +"But you, yourself, were not averse to Fred's marrying her, in spite of +these opinions you must secretly have held." +</p> +<p> +"Not while it seemed absolutely necessary—not while the case was so +brutally desperate, when we were actually pressed—" +</p> +<p> +"Remember, my dear, there's nothing magic in those ten thousand +dollars. They're winged dollars like all their mates, and most of them, +I'm sorry to say, have already flown to places where they'd long been +expected." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Milbrey's sensation was no longer to be repressed. She had toyed +with the situation sufficiently. Her husband was now skilfully +dissecting the devilled thighs of an immature chicken. +</p> +<p> +"Horace," said his wife, impressively, "Avice has had an offer of +marriage—from—" +</p> +<p> +He looked up with new interest. +</p> +<p> +"From Rulon Shepler." +</p> +<p> +He dropped knife and fork. Shepler, the man of mighty millions! The +undisputed monarch of finance! The cold-blooded, calculating sybarite +in his lighter moments, but a man whose values as a son-in-law were so +ideally superb that the Milbrey ambition had never vaulted high enough +even to overlook them for one daring moment! Shepler, whom he had known +so long and so intimately, with never the audacious thought of a union +so stupendously glorious! +</p> +<p> +"Margaret, you're jesting!" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Milbrey scorned to be dazzled by her triumph. +</p> +<p> +"Nonsense! Shepler asked her last night to marry him." +</p> +<p> +"It's bewildering! I never dreamed—" +</p> +<p> +"I've expected it for months. I could tell you the very moment when the +idea first seized the man—on the yacht last summer. I was sure she +interested him, even before his wife died two years ago." +</p> +<p> +"Margaret, it's too good to be true!" +</p> +<p> +"If you think it is I'll tell you something that isn't: Avice +practically refused him." +</p> +<p> +Her husband pushed away his plate; the omission of even one regretful +glance at its treasures betrayed the strong emotion under which he +laboured. +</p> +<p> +"This is serious," he said, quietly. "Let us get at it. Tell me if you +please!" +</p> +<p> +"She came to me and cried half the night. She refused him definitely at +first, but he begged her to consider, to take a month to think it +over—" +</p> +<p> +Milbrey gasped. Shepler, who commanded markets to rise and they rose, +or to fall and they fell—Shepler begging, entreating a child of his! +Despite the soul-sickening tragedy of it, the situation was not without +its element of sublimity. +</p> +<p> +"She will consider; she <i>will</i> reflect?" +</p> +<p> +"You're guessing now, and you're as keen at that as I. Avice is not +only amazingly self-willed, as you intimated a moment since, but she is +intensely secretive. When she left me I could get nothing from her +whatever. She was wretchedly sullen and taciturn." +</p> +<p> +"But why <i>should</i> she hesitate? Shepler—Rulon Shepler! My God! is the +girl crazy? The very idea of hesitation is preposterous!" +</p> +<p> +"I can't divine her. You know she has acted perversely in the past. I +used to think she might have some affair of which we knew +nothing—something silly and romantic. But if she had any such thing +I'm sure it was ended, and she'd have jumped at this chance a year ago. +You know yourself she was ready to marry young Bines, and was really +disappointed when he didn't propose." +</p> +<p> +"But this is too serious." He tinkled the little silver bell. +</p> +<p> +"Find out if Miss Avice will be down to breakfast." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir." +</p> +<p> +"If she's not coming down I shall go up," declared Mr. Milbrey when the +man had gone. +</p> +<p> +"She's stubborn," cautioned his wife. +</p> +<p> +"Gad! don't I know it?" +</p> +<p> +Jarvis returned. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Avice won't be down, sir, and I'm to fetch her up a pot of +coffee, sir." +</p> +<p> +"Take it at once, and tell her I shall be up to see her presently." +Jarvis vanished. +</p> +<p> +"I think I see a way to put pressure on her, that is if the morning +hasn't already brought her back to her senses." +</p> +<p> +At four o'clock that afternoon, Avice Milbrey's ring brought Mrs. Van +Geist's butler to the door. +</p> +<p> +"Sandon, is Aunt Cornelia at home?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Miss Milbrey, she's confined to her room h'account h'of a cold, +miss." +</p> +<p> +"Thank heaven!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, miss—certainly! will you go h'up to her?" +</p> +<p> +"And Mutterchen, dear, it was a regular bombshell," she concluded after +she had fluttered some of the November freshness into Mrs. Van Geist's +room, and breathlessly related the facts. +</p> +<p> +"You demented creature! I should say it must have been." +</p> +<p> +"Now, don't lecture!" +</p> +<p> +"But Shepler is one of the richest men in New York." +</p> +<p> +"Dad already suspects as much." +</p> +<p> +"And he's kind, he's a big-hearted chap, a man of the world, +generous—a—" +</p> +<p> +"'A woman fancier,' Fidelia Oldaker calls him." +</p> +<p> +"My dear, if he fancies you—" +</p> +<p> +"There, you old conservative, I've heard all his good points, and my +duty has been written before me in letters of fire. Dad devoted three +hours to writing it this morning, so don't, please, say over any of the +moral maxims I'm likely to have heard." +</p> +<p> +"But why are you unwilling?" +</p> +<p> +"Because—because I'm wild, I fancy—just because I don't like the idea +of marrying that man. He's such a big, funny, round head, and +positively no neck—his head just rolls around on his big, pillowy +shoulders—and then he gets little right at once, tapers right off to a +point with those tiny feet." +</p> +<p> +"It isn't easy to have everything." +</p> +<p> +"It wouldn't be easy to have him, either." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Van Geist fixed her niece with a sudden look of suspicion. +</p> +<p> +"Has—has that man anything to do with your refusal?" +</p> +<p> +"No—not a thing—I give you my word, auntie. If he had been what I +once dreamed he was no one would be asking me to marry him now, but—do +you know what I've decided? Why, that he is a joke—that's all—just a +joke. You needn't think of him, Mutterchen—I don't, except to think it +was funny that he should have impressed me so—he's simply a joke." +</p> +<p> +"I could have told you as much long ago." +</p> +<p> +"Tell me something now. Suppose Fred marries that Wybert woman." +</p> +<p> +"It will be a sorry day for Fred." +</p> +<p> +"Of course! Now see how I'm pinned. Dad and the mater both say the same +now—they're more severe than I was. Only we were never in such straits +for money. It must be had. So this is the gist of it: I ought to marry +Rulon Shepler in order to save Fred from a marriage that might get us +into all sorts of scandal." +</p> +<p> +"Well?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, I would do a lot for Fred. He has faults, but he's always been +good to me." +</p> +<p> +"And so?" +</p> +<p> +"And so it's a question whether he marries a very certain kind of woman +or whether I marry a very different kind of man." +</p> +<p> +"How do you feel?" +</p> +<p> +"For one thing Fred sha'n't get into that kind of muss if I can save +him from it." +</p> +<p> +"Then you'll marry Shepler?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm still uncertain about Mr. Shepler." +</p> +<p> +"But you say—" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I know, but I've reasons for being uncertain. If I told you you'd +say they're like the most of a woman's reasons, mere fond, foolish +hopes, so I won't tell you." +</p> +<p> +"Well, dear, work it out by your lonely if you must. I believe you'll +do what's best for everybody in the end. And I am glad that your father +and Margaret take your view of that woman." +</p> +<p> +"I was sure she wasn't right—and I knew Mr. Bines was too much of a +man to speak of her as he did without positive knowledge. Now please +give me some tea and funny little cakes; I'm famished." +</p> +<p> +"Speaking of Mr. Bines," said Mrs. Van Geist, when the tea had been +brought by Sandon, "I read in the paper this morning that he'd taken a +party to North Carolina for the quail shooting, Eddie Arledge and his +wife and that Mr. and Mrs. Garmer, and of course Florence Akemit. +Should you have thought she'd marry so soon after her divorce? They say +Bishop Doolittle is frightfully vexed with her." +</p> +<p> +"Really I hadn't heard. Whom is Florence to marry?" +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines, to be sure! Where have you been? You know she was on his +yacht a whole month last summer—the bishop's sister was with her— +highly scandalised all the time by the drinking and gaiety, and now +every one's looking for the engagement to be announced. Here, what did +I do with that <i>Town Topics</i> Cousin Clint left? There it is on the +tabouret. Read the paragraph at the top of the page." Avice read: +</p> +<p> +"An engagement that is rumoured with uncommon persistence will put +society on the <i>qui vive</i> when it is definitely announced. The man in +the case is the young son of a mining Croesus from Montana, who has +inherited the major portion of his father's millions and who began to +dazzle upper Broadway about a year since by the reckless prodigality of +his ways. His blond <i>innamorata</i> is a recent <i>divorcee</i> of high social +standing, noted for her sparkling wit and an unflagging exuberance of +spirits. The interest of the gossips, however, centres chiefly in the +uncle of the lady, a Right Reverend presiding over a bishopric not a +thousand miles from New York, and in the attitude he will assume toward +her contemplated remarriage. At the last Episcopal convention this +godly and well-learned gentleman was a vehement supporter of the +proposed canon to prohibit absolutely the marriage of divorced persons; +and though he stoutly championed his bewitching niece through the +infelicities that eventuated in South Dakota, <i>on dit</i> that he is +highly wrought up over her present intentions, and has signified +unmistakably his severest disapproval. However, <i>nous verrons ce que +nous verrons."</i> +</p> +<p> +"But, Mutterchen, that's only one of those absurd, vulgar things that +wretched paper is always printing. I could write dozens of them myself. +Tom Banning says they keep one man writing them all the time, out of +his own imagination, and then they put them in like raisins in a cake." +</p> +<p> +"But, my dear, I'm quite sure this is authentic. I know from Fidelia +Oldaker that the bishop began to cut up about it to Florence, and +Florence defied him. That ancient theory that most gossip is without +truth was exploded long ago. As a matter of fact most gossip, at least +about the people we know, doesn't do half justice to the facts. But, +really, I can't see why he fancied Florence Akemit. I should have +thought he'd want some one a bit less fluttery." +</p> +<p> +"I dare say you're right, about the gossip, I mean—" Miss Milbrey +remarked when she had finished her tea, and refused the cakes. "I +remember, now, one day when we met at her place, and he seemed so much +at home there. Of course, it must be so. How stupid of me to doubt it! +Now I must run. Good-bye, you old dear, and be good to the cold." +</p> +<p> +"Let me know what you do." +</p> +<p> +"Indeed I shall; you shall be the first one to know. My mind is really, +you know, <i>almost</i> made up." +</p> +<p> +A week later Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milbrey announced in the public prints +the engagement of their daughter Avice to Mr. Rulon Shepler. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH28"><!-- CH28 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXVIII. +</h2> + +<h3> +Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man +</h3> +<p> +One day in December Peter Bines of Montana City dropped in on the +family,—came with his gaunt length of limb, his kind, brown old face +with eyes sparkling shrewdly far back under his grizzled brows, with +his rough, resonant, musical voice, the spring of youth in his step, +and the fresh, confident strength of the big hills in his bearing. +</p> +<p> +He brought Billy Brue with him, a person whose exact social status some +of Percival's friends were never able to fix with any desirable +certainty. Thus, Percival had presented the old man, the morning after +his arrival, to no less a person than Herbert Delancey Livingston, with +whom he had smoked a cigar of unusual excellence in the <i>cafe</i> of the +Hightower Hotel. +</p> +<p> +"If you fancy that weed, Mr. Bines," said Livingston, graciously, to +the old man, "I've a spare couple of hundred I'd like to let you have. +The things were sent me, but I find them rather stiffish. If your man's +about the hotel I'll give him a card to my man, and let him fetch +them." +</p> +<p> +"My man?" queried Uncle Peter, and, sighting Billy Brue at that moment, +"why, yes, here's my man, now. Mr. Brue, shake hands with Mr. +Livingston. Billy, go up to the address he gives you, and get some of +these se-gars. You'll relish 'em as much as I do. Now don't talk to any +strangers, don't get run over, and don't lose yourself." +</p> +<p> +Livingston had surrendered a wavering and uncertain hand to the warm, +reassuring clasp of Mr. Brue. +</p> +<p> +"He ain't much fur style, Billy ain't," Uncle Peter explained when that +person had gone upon his errand, "he ain't a mite gaudy, but he's got +friendly feelings." +</p> +<p> +The dazed scion of the Livingstons had thereupon made a conscientious +tour of his clubs in a public hansom, solely for the purpose of +relating this curious adventure to those best qualified to marvel at +it. +</p> +<p> +The old man's arrival had been quite unexpected. Not only had he sent +no word of his coming, but he seemed, indeed, not to know what his +reasons had been for doing a thing so unusual. +</p> +<p> +"Thought I'd just drop in on your all and say 'howdy,'" had been his +first avowal, which was lucid as far as it went. Later he involved +himself in explanations that were both obscure and conflicting. Once it +was that he had felt a sudden great longing for the life of a gay city. +Then it was that he would have been content in Montana City, but that +he had undertaken the winter in New York out of consideration for Billy +Brue. +</p> +<p> +"Just think of it," he said to Percival, "that poor fellow ain't ever +been east of Denver before now. It wa'n't good for him to be holed up +out there in them hills all his life. He hadn't got any chance to +improve his mind." +</p> +<p> +"He'd better improve his whiskers first thing he does," suggested +Percival. "He'll be gold-bricked if he wears 'em scrambled that way +around this place." +</p> +<p> +But in neither of these explanations did the curious old man impress +Percival as being wholly ingenuous. +</p> +<p> +Then he remarked casually one day that he had lately met Higbee, who +was on his way to San Francisco. +</p> +<p> +"I only had a few minutes with him while they changed engines at Green +River, but he told me all about you folks—what a fine time you was +havin', yachts and card-parties, and all like that. Higbee said a man +had ought to come to New York every now and then, jest to keep from +gettin' rusty." +</p> +<p> +Back of this Percival imagined for a time that he had discovered Uncle +Peter's true reason for descending upon them. Higbee would have regaled +him with wild tales of the New York dissipations, and Uncle Peter had +come promptly on to pull him up. Percival could hear the story as +Higbee would word it, with the improving moral incident of his own son +snatched as a brand from the "Tenderloin," to live a life of +impecunious usefulness in far Chicago. But, when he tried to hold this +belief, and to prove it from his observations, he was bound to admit +its falsity. For Uncle Peter had shown no inclination to act the part +of an evangel from the virtuous West. He had delivered no homilies, no +warnings as to the fate of people who incontinently "cut loose." He had +evinced not the least sign of any disposition even to criticise. +</p> +<p> +On the contrary, indeed, he appeared to joy immensely in Percival's way +of life. He manifested a willingness and a capacity for unbending in +boon companionship that were, both of them, quite amazing to his +accomplished grandson. By degrees, and by virtue of being never at all +censorious, he familiarised himself with the young man's habits and +diversions. He listened delightedly to the tales of his large gambling +losses, of the bouts at poker, the fruitless venture in Texas Oil land, +the disastrous corner in wheat, engineered by Burman, and the uniformly +unsuccessful efforts to "break the bank" in Forty-fourth Street. He +never tired of hearing whatever adventures Percival chose to relate; +and, finding that he really enjoyed them, the young man came to confide +freely in him, and to associate with him without restraint. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter begged to be introduced at the temple of chance, and spent +a number of late evenings there with his popular grandson. He also +frequently made himself one of the poker coterie, and relished keenly +the stock jokes as to his grandson's proneness to lose. +</p> +<p> +"Your pa," he would say, "never <i>could</i> learn to stay out of a Jack-pot +unless he had Jacks or better; he'd come in and draw four cards to an +ace any time, and then call it 'hard luck' when he didn't draw out. And +he just loved straights open in the middle; said anybody could fill +them that's open at both ends; but, after all, I guess that's the only +way to have fun at the game. If a man ain't got the sperrit to overplay +aces-up when he gets 'em, he might as well be clerkin' in a bank for +all the fun he'll have out of the game." +</p> +<p> +The old man's endurance of late suppers and later hours, and his +unsuspected disposition to "cut loose," became twin marvels to +Percival. He could not avoid contrasting this behaviour with his past +preaching. After a few weeks he was forced to the charitable conclusion +that Uncle Peter's faculties were failing. The exposure and hardships +of the winter before had undoubtedly impaired his mental powers. +</p> +<p> +"I can't make him out," he confided to his mother. "He never wants to +go home nights; he can drink more than I can without batting an eye, +and show up fresher in the morning, and he behaves like a young fellow +just out of college. I don't know where he would bring up if he didn't +have me to watch over him." +</p> +<p> +"I think it's just awful—at his time of life, too," said Mrs. Bines. +</p> +<p> +"I think that's it. He's getting old, and he's come along into his +second childhood. A couple of more months at this rate, and I'm afraid +I'll have to ring up one of those nice shiny black wagons to take him +off to the foolish-house." +</p> +<p> +"Can't you talk to him, and tell him better?" +</p> +<p> +"I could. I know it all by heart—all the things to say to a man on the +downward path. Heaven knows I've heard them often enough, but I'd feel +ashamed to talk that way to Uncle Peter. If he were my son, now, I'd +cut off his allowance and send him back to make something of himself, +like Sile Higbee with little Hennery; but I'm afraid all I can do is to +watch him and see that he doesn't marry one of those little pink-silk +chorus girls, or lick a policeman, or anything." +</p> +<p> +"You're carryin' on the same way yourself," ventured his mother. +</p> +<p> +"That's different," replied her perspicacious son. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter had refused to live at the Hightower after three days in +that splendid and populous caravansary. +</p> +<p> +"It suits me well enough," he explained to Percival, "but I have to +look after Billy Brue, and this ain't any place for Billy. You see +Billy ain't city broke yet. Look at him now over there, the way he goes +around butting into strangers. He does that way because he's all the +time looking down at his new patent-leather shoes—first pair he ever +had. He'll be plumb stoop-shouldered if he don't hurry up and get the +new kicked off of 'em. I'll have to get him a nice warm box-stall in +some place that ain't so much on the band-wagon as this one. The +ceilings here are too high fur Billy. And I found him shootin' craps +with the bell-boy this mornin'. The boy thinks Billy, bein' from the +West, is a stage robber, or somethin' like he reads about in the Cap' +Collier libr'ies, and follows him around every chance he gets. And +Billy laps up too many of them little striped drinks; and them +French-cooked dishes ain't so good fur him, either. He caught on to the +bill-of-fare right away. Now he won't order anything but them +allas—them dishes that has 'a la' something or other after 'em," he +explained, when Percival looked puzzled. "He knows they'll always be +something all fussed up with red, white, and blue gravy, and a little +paper bouquet stuck into 'em. I never knew Billy was such a fancy eater +before." +</p> +<p> +So Uncle Peter and his charge had established themselves in an +old-fashioned but very comfortable hotel down on one of the squares, a +dingy monument to the time when life had been less hurried. Uncle Peter +had stayed there thirty years before, and he found the place unchanged. +The carpets and hangings were a bit faded, but the rooms were +generously broad, the chairs, as the old man remarked, were "made to +sit in," and the <i>cuisine</i> was held, by a few knowing old epicures who +still frequented the place, to be superior even to that of the more +pretentious Hightower. The service, it is true, was apt to be slow. +Strangers who chanced in to order a meal not infrequently became +enraged, and left before their food came, trailing plain short words of +extreme dissatisfaction behind them as they went. But the elect knew +that these delays betokened the presence of an artistic conscience in +the kitchen, and that the food was worth tarrying for. "They know how +to make you come back hungry for some more the next day," said Uncle +Peter Bines. +</p> +<p> +From this headquarters the old man went forth to join in the diversions +of his grandson. And here he kept a watchful eye upon the uncertain +Billy Brue; at least approximately. Between them, his days and nights +were occupied to crowding. But Uncle Peter had already put in some hard +winters, and was not wanting in fortitude. +</p> +<p> +Billy Brue was a sore trouble to the old man. "I jest can't keep him +off the streets nights," was his chief complaint. By day Billy Brue +walked the streets in a decent, orderly trance of bewilderment. He was +properly puzzled and amazed by many strange matters. He never could +find out what was "going on" to bring so many folks into town. They all +hurried somewhere constantly, but he was never able to reach the centre +of excitement. Nor did he ever learn how any one could reach those high +clothes-lines, strung forty feet above ground between the backs of +houses; nor how there could be "so many shows in town, all on one +night;" nor why you should get so many good things to eat by merely +buying a "slug of whiskey;" nor why a thousand people weren't run over +in Broadway each twenty-four hours. +</p> +<p> +At night, Billy Brue ceased to be the astounded alien, and, as Percival +said Dr. Von Herzlich would say, "began to mingle and cooperate with +his environment." In the course of this process he fell into +adventures, some of them, perhaps, unedifying. But it may be told that +his silver watch with the braided leather fob was stolen from him the +second night out; also that the following week, in a Twenty-ninth +Street saloon, he accepted the hospitality of an affable stranger, who +had often been in Montana City. His explanation of subsequent events +was entirely satisfactory, at least, from the time that he returned to +consciousness of them. +</p> +<p> +"I only had about thirty dollars in my clothes," he told Percival, "but +what made me so darned hot, he took my breastpin, too, made out of the +first nugget ever found in the Early Bird mine over Silver Bow way. +Gee! when I woke up I couldn't tell where I was. This cop that found me +in a hallway, he says I must have been give a dose of Peter. I says, +'All right—I'm here to go against all the games,' I says, 'but pass me +when the Peter comes around again,' I says. And he says Peter was +knockout drops. Say, honestly, I didn't know my own name till I had a +chanst to look me over. The clothes and my hands looked like I'd seen +'em before, somehow—and then I come to myself." +</p> +<p> +After this adventure, Uncle Peter would caution him of an evening: +</p> +<p> +"Now, Billy, don't stay out late. If you ain't been gone through by +eleven, just hand what you got on you over to the first man you +meet—none of 'em'll ask any questions—and then pike fur home. The +later at night it gets in New York the harder it is fur strangers to +stay alive. You're all right in Wardner or Hellandgone, Billy, but in +this here camp you're jest a tender little bed of pansies by the +wayside, and these New Yorkers are terrible careless where they step +after dark." +</p> +<p> +Notwithstanding which, Mr. Brue continued to behave uniformly in a +manner to make all judicious persons grieve. His place of supreme +delight was the Hightower. Its marble splendours, its myriad lights, +the throngs of men and women in evening dress, made for him a scene of +unfailing fascination. The evenings when he was invited to sit in the +<i>cafe</i> with Uncle Peter and Percival made memories long to be +cherished. +</p> +<p> +He spent such an evening there at the end of their first month in New +York. Half a dozen of Percival's friends sat at the table with them +from time to time. There had been young Beverly Van Arsdel, who, +Percival disclosed, was heir to all the Van Arsdel millions, and no end +of a swell. And there was big, handsome, Eddie Arledge, whose father +had treated him shabbily. These two young gentlemen spoke freely about +the inferiority of many things "on this side"—as they denominated this +glorious Land of Freedom—of many things from horses to wine. The +country was rapidly becoming, they agreed, no place for a gentleman to +live. Eddie Arledge confessed that, from motives of economy, he had +been beguiled into purchasing an American claret. +</p> +<p> +"I fancied, you know," he explained to Uncle Peter, "that it might do +for an ordinary luncheon claret, but on my sacred honour, the stuff is +villainous. Now you'll agree with me, Mr. Bines, I dare say, that a +Bordeaux of even recent vintage is vastly superior to the very best +so-called American claret." +</p> +<p> +Whereupon Beverly Van Arsdel having said, "To be sure—fancy an +American Burgundy, now! or a Chablis!" Uncle Peter betrayed the first +sign of irritation Percival had detected since his coming. +</p> +<p> +"Well, you see, young men, we're not much on vintages in Montana. +Whiskey is mostly our drink—whiskey and spring water—and if our +whiskey is strong, it's good enough. When we want to test a new barrel, +we inject three drops of it into a jack-rabbit, and if he doesn't lick +a bull clog in six seconds, we turn down the goods. That's as far's our +education has ever gone in vintages." +</p> +<p> +It sounded like the old Uncle Peter, but he was afterward so +good-natured that Percival concluded the irritation could have been but +momentary. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH29"><!-- CH29 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIX. +</h2> + +<h3> +Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something +</h3> +<p> +Uncle Peter and Billy Brue left the Hightower at midnight. Billy Brue +wanted to walk down to their hotel, on the plea that they might see a +fight or a fire "or something." He never ceased to feel cheated when he +was obliged to ride in New York. But Uncle Peter insisted on the cab. +</p> +<p> +"Say, Uncle Peter," he said, as they rode down, "I got a good notion to +get me one of them first-part suits—like the minstrels wear in the +grand first part, you know—only I'd never be able to git on to the +track right without a hostler to harness me and see to all the buckles +and cinch the straps right. They're mighty fine, though." +</p> +<p> +Finding Uncle Peter uncommunicative, he mused during the remainder of +the ride, envying the careless ease with which Percival and his +friends, and even Uncle Peter, wore the prescribed evening regalia of +gentlemen, and yearning for the distinguished effect of its black and +white elegance upon himself. +</p> +<p> +They went to their connecting rooms, and Billy Brue regretfully sought +his bed, marvelling how free people in a town like New York could ever +bring themselves to waste time in sleep. As he dozed off, he could hear +the slow, measured tread of Uncle Peter pacing the floor in the next +room. +</p> +<p> +He was awakened by hearing his name called. Uncle Peter stood in a +flood of light at the door of his room. He was fully dressed. +</p> +<p> +"Awake, Billy?" +</p> +<p> +"Is it gittin'-up time?" +</p> +<p> +The old man came into the room and lighted a gas-jet. He looked at his +watch. +</p> +<p> +"No; only a quarter to four. I ain't been to bed yet." +</p> +<p> +Billy Brue sat up and rubbed his eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Rheumatiz again, Uncle Peter?" +</p> +<p> +"No; I been thinkin', Billy. How do you like the game?" +</p> +<p> +He began to pace the floor again from one room to the other. +</p> +<p> +"What game?'! Billy Brue had encountered a number in New York. +</p> +<p> +"This whole game—livin' in New York." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Brue became judicial. +</p> +<p> +"It's a good game as long as you got money to buy chips. I'd hate like +darnation to go broke here. All the pay-claims have been located, I +guess." +</p> +<p> +"I doubt it's bein' a good game any time, Billy. I been actin' as kind +of a lookout now fur about forty days and forty nights, and the chances +is all in favour of the house. You don't even get half your money on +the high card when the splits come." +</p> +<p> +Billy Brue pondered this sentiment. It was not his own. +</p> +<p> +"The United States of America is all right, Billy." +</p> +<p> +This was safe ground. +</p> +<p> +"Sure!" His mind reverted to the evening just past. "Of course there +was a couple of Clarences in high collars there to-night that made out +like they was throwin' it down; but they ain't the whole thing, not by +a long shot." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, and that young shrimp that was talkin' about 'vintages' and +'trouserings.'" The old man paused in his walk. +</p> +<p> +"What <i>are</i> 'trouserings,' Billy?" +</p> +<p> +Mr. Brue had not looked into shop windows day after day without +enlarging his knowledge. +</p> +<p> +"Trouserings," he proclaimed, rather importantly, "is the cloth they +make pants out of." +</p> +<p> +"Oh! is that all? I didn't know but it might be some new kind of duds. +And that fellow don't ever get up till eleven o'clock A.M. I don't +reckon I would myself if I didn't have anything but trouserings and +vintages to worry about. And that Van Arsdel boy!" +</p> +<p> +"Say!" said Billy, with enthusiasm, "I never thought I'd be even in the +same room with one of that family, 'less I prized open the door with a +jimmy." +</p> +<p> +"Well, who's <i>he?</i> My father knew his grandfather when he kep' tavern +over on the Raritan River, and his grandmother!—this shrimp's +grandmother!—she tended bar." +</p> +<p> +"Gee!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, they kep' tavern, and the old lady passed the rum bottle over the +bar, and took in the greasy money. This here fellow, now, couldn't make +an honest livin' like that, I bet you. He's like a dogbreeder would +say—got the pedigree, but not the points." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Brue emitted a high, throaty giggle. +</p> +<p> +"But they ain't all like that here, Uncle Peter. Say, you come out with +me some night jest in your workin' clothes. I can show you people all +right that won't ask to see your union card. Say, on the dead, Uncle +Peter, I wish you'd come. There's a lady perfessor in a dime museum +right down here on Fourteenth Street that eats fire and juggles the big +snakes;—say, she's got a complexion—" +</p> +<p> +"There's enough like that kind, though," interrupted Uncle Peter. "I +could take a double-barrel shotgun up to that hotel and get nine with +each barrel around in them hallways; the shot wouldn't have to be +rammed, either; 'twouldn't have to scatter so blamed much." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, well, them society sports—there's got to be some of <i>them</i>—" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, and the way they make 'em reminds me of what Dal Mutzig tells +about the time they started Pasco. 'What you fellows makin' a town here +fur?' Dal says he asked 'em, and he says they says, 'Well, why not? The +land ain't good fur anything else, is it?' they says. That's the way +with these shrimps; they ain't good fur anything else. There's that +Arledge, the lad that keeps his mouth hangin' open all the time he's +lookin' at you—he'll catch cold in his works, first thing <i>he</i> +knows—with his gold monogram on his cigarettes." +</p> +<p> +"He said he was poor," urged Billy, who had been rather taken with the +ease of Arledge's manner. +</p> +<p> +"Fine, big, handsome fellow, ain't he? Strong as an ox, active, and +perfectly healthy, ain't he? Well, he's a <i>pill</i>! But <i>his</i> old man +must 'a' been on to him. Here, here's a piece in the paper about that +fine big strappin' giant—it's partly what got me to thinkin' to-night, +so I couldn't sleep. Just listen to this," and Uncle Peter read: +</p> +<p> +"E. Wadsworth Arledge, son of the late James Townsend Arledge, of the +dry-goods firm of Arledge & Jackson, presented a long affidavit to +Justice Dutcher, of the Supreme Court, yesterday, to show why his +income of six thousand dollars a year from his father's estate should +not be abridged to pay a debt of $489.32. Henry T. Gotleib, a grocer, +who obtained a judgment for that amount against him in 1895, and has +been unable to collect, asked the Court to enjoin Judge Henley P. +Manderson, and the Union Fidelity Trust Company, as executors of the +Arledge estate, from paying Mr. Arledge his full income until the debt +has been discharged. Gotleib contended that Arledge could sustain the +reduction required. +</p> +<p> +"James T. Arledge died about two years ago, leaving an estate of about +$3,000,000. He had disapproved of the marriage of his son and evinced +his displeasure in his will. The son had married Flora Florenza, an +actress. To the son was given an income of $6,000 a year for life. The +rest of the estate went to the testator's widow for life, and then to +charity. +</p> +<p> +"Here is the affidavit of E. Wadsworth Arledge: +</p> +<p> +"'I have been brought up in idleness, under the idea that I was to +inherit a large estate. I have never acquired any business habits so as +to fit me to acquire property, or to make me take care of it. +</p> +<p> +"'I have never been in business, except many years ago, when I was a +boy, when I was for a short time employed in one of the stores owned by +my father. For many years prior to my father's death I was not +employed, but lived on a liberal allowance made to me by him. I am a +married man, and in addition to my wife have a family of two children +to support from my income. +</p> +<p> +"'All our friends are persons of wealth and of high social standing, +and we are compelled to spend money in entertaining the many friends +who entertain us. I am a member of many expensive clubs. I have +absolutely no income except the allowance I receive from my father's +estate, and the same is barely sufficient to support my family. +</p> +<p> +"'I have received no technical or scientific education, fitting me for +any business or profession, and should I be deprived of any portion of +my income, I will be plunged in debt anew.' +</p> +<p> +"The Court reserved decision." +</p> +<p> +"You hear that, Billy? The Court reserved decision. Mr. Arledge has to +buy so many gold cigarettes and vintages and trouserings, and belong to +so many clubs, that he wants the Court to help him chouse a poor grocer +out of his money. Say, Billy, that judge could fine me for contempt of +court, right now, fur reservin' his decision. You bet Mr. Arledge would +'a' got my decision right hot off the griddle. I'd 'a' told him, +'You're the meanest kind of a crook I ever heard of fur wantin' to lie +down on your fat back and whine out of payin' fur the grub you put in +your big gander paunch,' I'd tell him, 'and now you march to the +lock-up till you can look honest folks in the face,' I'd tell him. Say, +Billy, some crooks are worse than others. Take Nate Leverson out there. +Nate set up night and day for six years inventin' a process fur +sweatin' gold into ore; finally he gets it; how he does it, nobody +knows, but he sweat gold eighteen inches into the solid rock. The first +few holes he salted he gets rid of all right, then of course they catch +him, and Nate's doin' time now. But say, I got respect fur Nate since +readin' that piece. There's a good deal of a man about him, or about +any common burglar or sneak thief, compared to this duck. They take +chances, say nothin' of the hard work they do. This fellow won't take a +chance and won't work a day. Billy, that's the meanest specimen of +crook I ever run against, bar none, and that crook is produced and +tolerated in a place that's said to be the centre of 'culture and +refinement and practical achievement.' Billy, he's a pill!" +</p> +<p> +"That's right," said Billy Brue, promptly throwing the recalcitrant +Arledge overboard. +</p> +<p> +"But it ain't none of my business. What I do spleen again, is havin' a +grandson of mine livin' in a community where a man that'll act like +that is actually let in their houses by honest folks. Think of a son of +Daniel J. Bines treatin' folks like that as if they was his equals. +Say, Dan'l had a line of faults, all right—but, by God! he'd a trammed +ore fur two twenty-five a day any time in his life rather'n not pay a +dollar he owed. And think of this lad making his bed in this kind of a +place where men are brought up to them ways; and that name; think of a +husky, two-fisted boy like him lettin' himself be called by a measly +little gum-drop name like Percival, when he's got a right to be called +Pete. And he's right in with 'em. He'd be jest as bad—give him a +little time; and Pishy engaged to a damned fortune-hunting Englishman +into the bargain. It's all Higbee said it was, only it goes double. +Say, Billy, I been thinkin' this over all night." +</p> +<p> +"'Tis mighty worryin', ain't it, Uncle Peter?" +</p> +<p> +"And I got it thought out." +</p> +<p> +"Sure, you must 'a' got it down to cases." +</p> +<p> +"Billy,' listen now. There's a fellow down in Wall Street. His name is +Shepler, Rulon Shepler. He's most the biggest man down there." +</p> +<p> +"Sure! I heard of him." +</p> +<p> +"Listen! I'm goin' to bed now. I can sleep since I got my mind made up. +But I want to see Shepler in private to-morrow. Don't wake me up in the +morning. But get up yourself, and go find his office—look in a +directory, then ask a policeman. Shepler's a busy man. You tell the +clerk or whoever holds you up that Mr. Peter Bines wants an appointment +with Mr. Shepler as soon as he can make it—Mr. Peter Bines, of +Montana City. Be there by 9.30 so's to get him soon as he comes. He +knows me; tell him I want to see him on business soon as possible, and +find out when he can give me time. And don't you say to any one else +that I ever seen him or sent you there. Understand? Don't ever say a +word to any one. Remember, now, be there at 9.30, and don't let any +clerk put you off, and ask him what hour'll be convenient for him. Now +get what sleep's comin' to you. It's five o'clock." +</p> +<p> +At noon Billy Brue returned to the hotel to find Uncle Peter finishing +a hearty breakfast. +</p> +<p> +"I found him all right, Uncle Peter. The lookout acted suspicious, but +I saw the main guy himself come out of a door—like I'd seen his +picture in the papers, so I just called to him, and said, 'Mr. Peter +Bines wants to see you,' like that. He took me right into his office, +and I told him what you said, and he'll be ready for you at two +o'clock. He knows mines, all right, out our way, don't he?—and he +crowded a handful of these tin-foil cigars on to me, and acted real +sociable. Told me to drop in any time. Say, he'd run purty high in the +yellow stuff all right." +</p> +<p> +"At two o'clock, you say?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes." +</p> +<p> +"And what's his number?" +</p> +<p> +"Gee, I forgot; I can tell you, though. You go down Broadway to that +old church—say, Uncle Peter, there's folks in that buryin'-ground +been dead over two hundred years, if you can go by their gravestones. +Gee! I didn't s'pose <i>anybody'd</i> been dead that long—then you turn +down the gulch right opposite, until you come to the Vandevere +Building, a few rods down on the left. Shepler's there. Git into the +bucket and go up to the second level, and you'll find him in the +left-hand back stope—his name's on the door in gold letters." +</p> +<p> +"All right. And look here, Billy, keep your head shut about all I said +last night about anything. Don't you ever let on to a soul that I ain't +stuck on this place and its people—no matter what I do." +</p> +<p> +"Sure not! What <i>are</i> you going to do, Uncle Peter?" +</p> +<p> +The old man's jaws were set for some seconds in a way to make Billy +Brue suspect he might be suffering from cramp. It seemed, however, that +he had merely been thinking intently. Presently he said: +</p> +<p> +"I'm goin' to raise hell, Billy." +</p> +<p> +"Sure!" said Mr. Brue—approvingly on general principles. "Sure! Why +not?" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH30"><!-- CH30 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXX. +</h2> + +<h3> +Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions +</h3> +<p> +On three successive days the old man held lengthy interviews with +Shepler in the latter's private office. At the close of the third day's +interview, Shepler sent for Relpin, of the brokerage firm of Relpin and +Hendricks. A few days after this Uncle Peter said to Percival one +morning: +</p> +<p> +"I want to have a talk with you, son." +</p> +<p> +"All right, Uncle Peter," was the cheerful answer. He suspected the old +man might at last be going to preach a bit, since for a week past he +had been rather less expansive. He resolved to listen with good grace +to any homilies that might issue. He took his suspicion to be confirmed +when Uncle Peter began: +</p> +<p> +"You folks been cuttin' a pretty wide swath here in New York." +</p> +<p> +"That's so, Uncle Peter,—wider than we could have cut in Montana +City." +</p> +<p> +"Been spendin' money purty free for a year." +</p> +<p> +"Yes; you need money here." +</p> +<p> +"I reckon you can't say about how much, now?" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I shouldn't wonder," Percival answered, going over to the +escritoire, and taking out some folded sheets and several check-books. +"Of course, I haven't it all here, but I have the bulk of it. Let me +figure a little." +</p> +<p> +He began to work with a pencil on a sheet of paper. He was busy almost +half an hour, while Uncle Peter smoked in silence. +</p> +<p> +"It struck me the other night we might have been getting a little near +to the limit, so I figured a bit then, too, and I guess this will give +you some idea of it. Of course this isn't all mine; it includes ma's +and Psyche's. Sis has been a mark for every bridge-player between the +Battery and the Bronx, and the way ma has been plunging on her indigent +poor is a caution,—she certainly does hold the large golden medal for +amateur cross-country philanthropy. Now here's a rough expense +account—of course only approximate, except some of the items I +happened to have." Uncle Peter took the statement, and studied it +carefully. +</p> +<p> +Paid Hightower Hotel................ $ 42,983.75 +</p> +<p> +Keep of horses, and extra horse and carriage +hire....................... 5,628.50 +</p> +<p> +Chartering steam-yacht <i>Viluca</i> three +months.............................. 24,000.00 +</p> +<p> +Expenses running yacht.............. 46,850.28 +</p> +<p> +W. U. Telegraph Company............. 32.65 +</p> +<p> +Incidentals......................... 882,763.90 +</p> +<p> +Total $1,002,259.08 +</p> +<p> +His sharp old eyes ran up and down the column of figures. Something +among the items seemed to annoy him. +</p> +<p> +"Looking at those 'incidentals'? I took those from the check-books. +They are pretty heavy." +</p> +<p> +"It's an outrage!" exclaimed the old man, indignantly, "that there +$32.50 to the telegraph company. How's it come you didn't have a +Western Union frank this year? I s'posed you had one. They sent me +mine." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, well, they didn't send me one, and I didn't bother to ask for it," +the young man answered in a tone of relief. "Of course the expenses +have been pretty heavy, coming here strangers as we did. Now, another +year—" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, that ain't anything. Of course you got to spend money. I see one +of them high-toned gents that died the other day said a gentleman +couldn't possibly get along on less'n two thousand dollars a day and +expenses. I'm glad to see you ain't cut under the limit none—you got +right into his class jest like you'd always lived here, didn't you? +But, now, I been kind of lookin' over the ground since I come here, and +it's struck me you ain't been gettin' enough for your money. You've +spent free, but the goods ain't been delivered. I'm talkin' about +yourself. Both your ma and Pishy has got more out of it than you have. +Why, your ma gets her name in the papers as a philanthropist along with +that—how do the papers call her?—'the well-known club woman'—that +Mrs. Helen Wyot Lamson that always has her name spelled out in full? +Your ma is getting public recognition fur her money, and look at Pishy. +What's she gone and done while you been laxin' about? Why, she's got +engaged to a lord, or just as good. Look at the prospects she's got! +She'll enter the aristocracy of England and have a title. But look at +you! Really, son, I'm ashamed of you. People over there'll be sayin' +'Lady What's-her-name? Oh, yes! She <i>has</i> got a brother, but he don't +amount to shucks—he ain't much more'n a three-spot. He can't do +anything but play bank and drink like a fish. He's throwed away his +opportunities'—that's what them dukes and counts will be sayin' about +you behind your back." +</p> +<p> +"I understood you didn't think much of sis's choice." +</p> +<p> +"Well, of course, he wouldn't be much in Montana City, but he's all +right in his place, and he seems to be healthy. What knocks <i>me</i> is how +he ever got all them freckles. He never come by 'em honestly, I bet. He +must 'a' got caught in an explosion of freckles sometime. But that +ain't neither here nor there. He has the goods and Pish'll get 'em +delivered. She's got something to show fur her dust. But what <i>you</i> got +to show? Not a blamed thing but a lot of stubs in a check-book, and a +little fat. Now I ain't makin' any kick. I got no right to; but I do +hate to see you leadin' this life of idleness and dissipation when you +might be makin' something of yourself. Your pa was quite a man. He left +his mark out there in that Western country. Now you're here settled in +the East among big people, with a barrel of money and fine chances to +do something, and you're jest layin' down on the family name. You +wouldn't think near so much of your pa if he'd laid down before his +time; and your own children will always have to say 'Poor pa—he had a +good heart, but he never could amount to anything more'n a threespot; +he didn't have any stuff in him,' they'll be sayin'. Now, on the level, +you don't want to go through life bein' just known as a good thing and +easy money, do you?" +</p> +<p> +"Why, of course not, Uncle Peter; only I had to look around some at +first,—for a year or so." +</p> +<p> +"Well, if you need to look any more, then your eyes ain't right. That's +my say. I ain't askin' you to go West. I don't expect that!" +</p> +<p> +Percival brightened. +</p> +<p> +"But I am tryin' to nag you into doin' something here. People can say +what they want to about you," he continued, stubbornly, as one who +confesses the most arrant bigotry, "but I know you <i>have</i> got some +brains, some ability—I really believe you got a whole lot—and you got +the means to take your place right at the top. You can head 'em all in +this country or any other. Now what you ought to do, you ought to take +your place in the world of finance—put your mind on it night and +day—swing out—get action—and set the ball to rolling. Your pa was a +big man in the West, and there ain't any reason as I can see of why you +can't be just as big a man in proportion here. People can talk all they +want to about your bein' just a dub—I won't believe 'em. And there's +London. You ain't been ambitious enough. Get a down-hill pull on New +York, and then branch out. Be a man of affairs like your pa, and like +that fellow Shepler. Let's <i>be</i> somebody. If Montana City was too small +fur us, that's no reason why New York should be too big." +</p> +<p> +Percival had walked the floor in deep attention to the old man's words. +</p> +<p> +"You've got me right, Uncle Peter," he said at last. "And you're right +about what I ought to do. I've often thought I'd go into some of these +big operations here. But for one thing I was afraid of what you'd say. +And then, I didn't know the game very well. But I see I ought to do +something. You're dead right." +</p> +<p> +"And we need more money, too," urged the old man. "I was reading a +piece the other day about the big fortunes in New York. Why, we ain't +one, two, three, with the dinky little twelve or thirteen millions we +could swing. You don't want to be a piker, do you? If you go in the +game at all, play her open and high. Make 'em take the ceiling off. You +can just as well get into the hundred million class as not, and I know +it. They needn't talk to <i>me</i>—I know you <i>have</i> got some brains. If +you was to go in now it would keep you straight and busy, and take you +out of this pin-head class that only spends their pa's money." +</p> +<p> +"You're all right, Uncle Peter! I certainly did need you to come along +right now and set me straight. You founded the fortune, pa trebled it, +and now I'll get to work and roll it up like a big snowball." +</p> +<p> +"That's the talk. Get into the hundred million class, and show these +wise folks you got something in you besides hot air, like the sayin' +is. <i>Then</i> they won't always be askin' who your pa was—they'll be +wantin' to know who you are, by Gripes! Then you can have the biggest +steam yacht afloat, two or three of 'em, and the best house in New +York, and palaces over in England; and Pish'll be able to hold up her +head in company over there. You can finance <i>that</i> proposition right up +to the nines." +</p> +<p> +"By Jove! but you're right. You're a wonder, Uncle Peter. And that +reminds me—" +</p> +<p> +He stopped in his walk. +</p> +<p> +"I gave it hardly any thought at the time, but now it looks bigger than +a mountain. I know just the things to start in on systematically. Now +don't breathe a word of this, but there's a big deal on in Consolidated +Copper. I happened on to the fact in a queer way the other night. +There's a broker I've known down-town—fellow by the name of Relpin. +Met him last summer. He does most of Shepler's business; he's supposed +to be closer to Shepler and know more about the inside of his deals +than any man in the Street. Well, I ran across Relpin down in the cafe +the other night and he was wearing one of those gents' nobby +three-button souses. Nothing would do but I should dine with him, so I +did. It was the night you and the folks went to the opera with the +Oldakers. Relpin was full of lovely talk and dark hints about a rise in +copper stock, and another rise in Western Trolley, and a bigger rise +than either of them in Union Cordage. How that fellow can do Shepler's +business and drink the stuff that makes you talk I don't see. Anyway he +said—and you can bet what he says goes—that the Consolidated is going +to control the world's supply of copper inside of three months, and the +stock is bound to kite, and so are these other two stocks; Shepler's +back of all three. The insiders are buying up now, slowly and +cautiously, so as not to start any boom prematurely. Consolidated is no +now, and it'll be up to 150 by April at the latest. The others may go +beyond that. I wasn't looking for the game at the time, so I didn't +give it any thought, but now, you see, there's our chance. We'll plunge +in those three lines before they start to rise, and be in on the ground +floor." "Now don't you be rash! That Shepler's old enough to suck eggs +and hide the shells. I heard a man say the other day copper was none +too good at no." +</p> +<p> +"Exactly. You can hear anything you're looking to hear, down there. But +I tell you this was straight. Don't you suppose Shepler knows what he's +about?—there's a boy that won't be peddling shoe-laces and gum-drops +off one of these neat little bosom-trays—not for eighty-five or +ninety-thousand years yet—and Relpin, even if he was drunk, knows +Shepler's deals like you know Skiplap. They'll bear the stocks all they +can while they're buying up. I wouldn't be surprised if the next +Consolidated dividend was reduced. That would send her down a few +points, and throw more stock on the market. Meantime, they're quietly +workin' to get control of the European mines—and as to Western Trolley +and Union Cordage—say, Relpin actually got to crying—they're so +good—he had one of those loving ones, the kind where you want to be +good to every one in the world. I'm surprised he didn't get into a +sandwich sign and patrol Broadway, giving those tips to everybody.". +</p> +<p> +"Course, we're on a proposition now that you know more about it than I +do; you certainly do take right hold at once—that was your pa's way, +too. Daniel J. could look farther ahead in a minute than most men could +in a year. I got to trust you wholly in these matters, and I know I can +do it, too. I got confidence in you, no matter <i>what</i> other people say. +They don't know you like I do. And if there's any other things you know +about fur sure—" +</p> +<p> +"Well, there's Burman. He's plunging in corn now. His father has staked +him, and he swears he can't lose. He was after me to put aside a +million. Of course if he does win out it would be big money." +</p> +<p> +"Well, son, I can't advise you none—except I know you have got a head +on you, no matter how people talk. You know about this end of the game, +and I'll have to be led entirely by you. If you think Burman's got a +good proposition, why, there ain't anything like gettin' action all +along the layout, from ace down to seven-spot and back to the king +card." +</p> +<p> +"That's the talk. I'll see Relpin to-day or to-morrow. I'll bet he +tries to hedge on what he said. But I got him too straight—let a +drunken man alone for telling the truth when he's got it in him. We'll +start in buying at once." +</p> +<p> +"It does sound good. I must say you take hold of it considerable like +Dan'l J. would 'a' done—and use my money jest like your own. I do want +to see you takin' your place where you belong. This life of idleness +you been leadin'—one continual potlatch the whole time—it wa'n't +doin' you a bit of good." +</p> +<p> +"We'll get action, don't you worry. Now let's have lunch down-stairs, +and then go for a drive. It's too fine a day to stay in. I'll order the +cart around and show you that blue-ribbon cob I bought at the horse +show. I just want you to see his action. He's a beaut, all right. He's +been worked a half in 1.17, and he can go to his speed in ten lengths, +any time." +</p> +<p> +In the afternoon they fell into the procession of carriages streaming +toward the park. The day was pleasantly sharp, the clear sunshine +enlivening, and the cob was one with the spirit of the occasion, +alertly active, from his rubber-shod, varnished hoofs to the tips of +his sensitive ears. +</p> +<p> +"Central Park," said Uncle Peter, "always seems to me just like a tidy +little parlour, livin' around in them hills the way I have." +</p> +<p> +He watched the glinting of varnished spokes, and listened absently to +the rhythmic "click-clump" of trotting horses, with its accompanying +jingle of silver harness trappings. +</p> +<p> +"These people must have lots of money," he observed. "But you'll go in +and outdo 'em all." +</p> +<p> +"That's what! Uncle Peter." +</p> +<p> +Toward the upper end of the East Drive they passed a victoria in which +were Miss Milbrey and her mother with Rulon Shepler. The men raised +their hats. Miss Milbrey flashed the blue of her eyes to them and +pointed down her chin in the least bit of a bow. Mrs. Milbrey stared. +</p> +<p> +"Wa'n't that Shepler?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Shepler and the Milbreys. That woman certainly has the haughtiest +lorgnon ever built." +</p> +<p> +"She didn't speak to us. Is her eyes bad?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, ever since that time at Newport. None of them has spoken to me +but the girl—she's engaged to Shepler." +</p> +<p> +"She's a right nice lookin' little lady. I thought you was kind of +taken there." +</p> +<p> +"She would have married me for my roll. I got far enough along to tell +that. But that was before Shepler proposed. I'd give long odds she +wouldn't consider me now. I haven't enough for her with him in the +game." +</p> +<p> +"Well, you go in and make her wish she'd waited for you." +</p> +<p> +"I'll do that; I'll make Shepler look like a well-to-do business man +from Pontiac, Michigan." +</p> +<p> +"Is that brother of hers you told me about still makin' up to that +party?" +</p> +<p> +"Can't say. I suppose he'll be a little more fastidious, as the +brother-in-law of Shepler. In fact I heard that the family had shut +down on any talk of his marrying her." +</p> +<p> +"Still, she ought to be able to do well here. Any man that would marry +a woman fur money wouldn't object to her. One of these fortune-hunting +Englishmen, now, would snap her up." +</p> +<p> +"She hasn't quite enough for that. Two millions isn't so much here, you +know, and she must have spent a lot of hers. I hear she has a very +expensive suite back there at the Arlingham, and lives high. I did +hear, too, that she takes a flyer in the Street now and then. She'll be +broke soon if she keeps that up." +</p> +<p> +"Too bad she ain't got a few more millions," said Uncle Peter, +ruminantly. "Take one of these titled Englishmen looking for an heiress +to keep 'em—she'd make just the kind of a wife he'd ought to get. She +certainly ought to have a few more millions. If she had, now, she might +cure some decent girl of her infatuation. Where'd you say she was +stoppin'?" +</p> +<p> +"Arlingham—that big private hotel I showed you back there." +</p> +<p> +Percival confessed to his mother that night that he had wronged Uncle +Peter. +</p> +<p> +"That old boy is all right yet," he said, with deep conviction. "Don't +make any mistake there. He has bigger ideas than I gave him credit for. +I suggested branching out here in a business way, to-day, and the old +fellow got right in line. If anybody tells you that old Petie Bines +hasn't got the leaves of his little calendar torn off right up to date +you just feel wise inside, and see what odds are posted on it!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH31"><!-- CH31 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXI. +</h2> + +<h3> +Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers +</h3> +<p> +Consolidated copper at 110. The day after his talk with Uncle Peter, +Percival through three different brokers gave orders to buy ten +thousand shares. +</p> +<p> +"I tried to give Relpin an order for five thousand shares over the +telephone," he said to Uncle Peter; "but they're used to those fifty +and a hundred thousand dollar pikers down in that neighbourhood. He +seemed to think I was joshing him. When I told him I meant it and was +ready to take practically all he could buy for the next few weeks or +so, I think he fell over in the booth and had to be helped out." +</p> +<p> +Orders for twenty thousand more shares in thousand share lots during +the next three weeks sent the stock to 115. Yet wise men in the Street +seemed to fear the stock. They were waiting cautiously for more +definite leadings. The plunging of Bines made rather a sensation, and +when it became known that his holdings were large and growing almost +daily larger, the waning confidence of a speculator here and there +would be revived. +</p> +<p> +At 115 the stock rested again, with few sales recorded. A certain few +of the elect regarded this calm as ominous. It was half believed by +others that the manipulations of the inner ring would presently advance +the stock to a sensational figure, and that the reckless young man from +Montana might be acting upon information of a definite character. But +among the veteran speculators the feeling was conservative. Before +buying they preferred to await some sign that the advance had actually +begun. The conservatives were mostly the bald old fellows. Among the +illusions that rarely survive a man's hair in Wall Street is the one +that "sure things" are necessarily sure. +</p> +<p> +Percival watched Consolidated Copper go back to 110, and bought +again—ten thousand shares. The price went up two points the day after +his orders were placed, and two days later dropped back to 110. The +conservatives began to agree with the younger set of speculators, in so +far as both now believed that the stock was behaving in an unnatural +manner, indicating that "something was doing"—that manipulation behind +the scenes was under way to a definite end. The conservatives and the +radicals differed as to what this end was. But then, Wall Street is +nourished almost exclusively upon differences of opinion. +</p> +<p> +Percival now had accounts with five firms of brokers. +</p> +<p> +"Relpin," he explained to Uncle Peter, "is a foxy boy. He's foxier than +a fox. He not only tried to hedge on what he told me,—said he'd been +drinking absinthe <i>frappé</i> that day, and it always gets him +dreamy,—but he actually had the nerve to give me the opposite steer. +Of course he knows the deal clear to the centre, and Shepler knows that +he knows, and he must have been afraid Shepler would suspect he'd been +talking. So I only traded a few thousand shares with him. I didn't want +to embarrass him. Funny about him, too. I never heard before of his +drinking anything to speak of. And there isn't a man in the Street +comes so near to knowing what the big boys are up to. But we're on the +winning cards all right. I get exactly the same information from a +dozen confidential sources; some of it I can trace to Relpin, and some +of it right to Shepler himself." "Course I'm leavin' it all to you," +answered Uncle Peter; "and I must say I do admire the way you take hold +and get things on the move. You don't let any grass grow under <i>your</i> +heels. You got a good head fur them things. I can tell by the way you +start out—just like your pa fur all the world. I'll feel safe enough +about my money as long as you keep your health. If only you got the +nerve. I've known men would play a big proposition half-through and +then get scared and pull out. Your pa wa'n't that way. He could get a +proposition right by its handle every time, and they never come any too +big fur him; the bigger they was, better he liked 'em. That's the kind +of genius I think you got. You ain't afraid to take a chance." +</p> +<p> +Percival beamed modestly under praise of this sort which now came to +him daily. +</p> +<p> +"It's good discipline for me, too, Uncle Peter. It's what I needed, +something to put my mind on. I needed a new interest in life. You had +me down right. I wasn't doing myself a bit of good with nothing to +occupy my mind." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I'm mighty glad you thought up this stock deal. It'll give you +good business habits and experience, say nothing of doubling your +capital." +</p> +<p> +"And I've gone in with Burman on his corn deal. He's begun to buy, and +he has it cinched this time. He'll be the corn king all right by June +1st; don't make any mistake on that. I thought as long as we were +plunging so heavy in Western Trolley and Union Cordage, along with the +copper, we might as well take the side line of corn. Then we won't have +our eggs all in one basket." +</p> +<p> +"All right, son, all right! I'm trustin' you. A corner in corn is +better'n a corner in wild-oats any day; anything to keep you straight, +and doin' something. I don't care <i>how</i> many millions you pile up! I +hear the Federal Oil people's back of the copper deal." +</p> +<p> +"That's right; the oil crowd and Shepler. I had it straight from Relpin +that night. They're negotiating now with the Rothschilds to limit the +output of the Rio Tinto mines. They'll end by controlling them, and +then—well, we'll have a roll of the yellow boys—say, we'll have to +lay quiet for a year just to count it." +</p> +<p> +"Do it good while you're doin' it," urged Uncle Peter, cheerfully. "I +rely so much on your judgment, I want you to get action on my stuff, +too. I got a couple millions that ought to be workin' harder than they +are." +</p> +<p> +"Good; I didn't think you had so much gambler in you." +</p> +<p> +"It's fur a worthy purpose, son. And it seems too bad that Pishy can't +pull out something with her bit, when it's to be had so easy. From what +that spangle-faced beau of hers tells me there's got to be some +expensive plumbing done in that castle he gets sawed off on to him." +</p> +<p> +"We'll let sis in, too," exclaimed her brother, generously, "and ma +could use a little more in her business. She's sitting up nights to +corner all the Amalgamated Hard-luck on the island. We'll pool issue, +and say, we'll make those Federal Oil pikers think we've gnawed a +corner off the subtreasury. I'll put an order in for twenty thousand +more shares to-morrow—among the three stocks. And then we'll have to +see about getting all our capital here. We'll need every cent of it +that's loose; and maybe we better sell off some of those dead-wood +stocks." +</p> +<p> +The twenty thousand shares were bought by the following week, five +thousand of them being Consolidated Copper, ten thousand Western +Trolley, and five thousand Union Cordage. Consolidated Copper fell off +two points, upon rumours, traceable to no source, that the company had +on hand a large secret supply of copper, and was producing largely in +excess of the demand every month. +</p> +<p> +Percival told Uncle Peter of these rumours, and chuckled with the easy +confidence of a man who knows secrets. +</p> +<p> +"You see, it's coming the way Relpin said. The insiders are hammering +down the stock with those reports, hammering with one hand, and buying +up small lots quietly with the other. But you'll notice the price of +copper doesn't go down any. They keep it at seventeen cents all right. +Now, the moment they get control of the European supply they'll hold +the stuff, force up the selling price to awful figures, and squeeze out +dividends that will make you wear blue glasses to look at them." +</p> +<p> +"You certainly do know your business, son," said Uncle Peter, +fervently. "You certainly got your pa's head on you. You remind me more +and more of Dan'l J. Bines every day. I'd rather trust your judgment +now than lots of older men down there. You know their tricks all right. +Get in good and hard so long as you got a sure thing. I'd hate to have +you come meachin' around after that stock has kited, and be kickin' +because you hadn't bet what your hand was worth." +</p> +<p> +"Trust me for that, Uncle Peter. Garmer tried to steer me off this line +of stocks the other night. He'd heard these rumours about a slump, and +he's fifty years old at that. I thanked him for his tip and coppered it +with another thousand shares all around next day. The way Garmer can +tell when you're playing a busted flush makes you nervous, but I +haven't looked over his license to know everything down in the Street +yet." +</p> +<p> +The moral gain to Percival from his new devotion to the stock market +was commented upon approvingly both by Uncle Peter and by his mother. +It was quite as tangible as his money profits promised to be. He ceased +to frequent the temple of chance in Forty-fourth Street, to the +proprietor's genuine regret. The poker-games at the hotel he abandoned +as being trivial. And the cabmen along upper Broadway had seldom now +the opportunity to compete for his early morning patronage. He began to +keep early hours and to do less casual drinking during the day. After +three weeks of this comparatively regular living his mother rejoiced to +note signs that his breakfast-appetite was returning. +</p> +<p> +"You see," he explained earnestly to Uncle Peter, "a man to make +anything at this game must keep his head clear, and he must have good +health to do that. I meet a lot of those fellows down there that queer +themselves by drink. It doesn't do so much hurt when a man isn't +needing his brains,—but no more of it for me just now!" +</p> +<p> +"That's right, son. I knew I could make something more than a polite +sosh out of you. I knew you'd pull up if you got into business like you +been doin'." +</p> +<p> +"Come down-town with me this afternoon, and see me make a play, Uncle +Peter. I think I'll begin now to buy on a margin. The rise can't hold +off much longer." +</p> +<p> +"I'd like to, son, but I'd laid out to take a walk up to the park this +afternoon, and look in at the monkeys awhile. I need the out-doors, and +anyway you don't need me down there. You know <i>your</i> part all right. +My! but I'd begin to feel nervous with all that money up, if it was +anybody but you, now." +</p> +<p> +In pursuance of his pronounced plan, Uncle Peter walked up Fifth Avenue +that afternoon. But he stopped short of the park. At the imposing +entrance of the Arlingham he turned in. At the desk he asked for Mrs. +Wybert. +</p> +<p> +"I'll see if Mrs. Wybert is in," said the clerk, handing him a blank +card; "your name, please!" +</p> +<p> +The old man wrote, "Mr. Peter Bines of Montana City would like a few +minutes' talk with Mrs. Wybert." +</p> +<p> +The boy was gone so long that Uncle Peter, waiting, began to suspect he +would not be received. He returned at length with the message, "The +lady says will you please step up-stairs." +</p> +<p> +Going up in the elevator, the old man was ushered by a maid into a +violet-scented little nest whose pale green walls were touched +discreetly with hangings of heliotrope. An artist, in Uncle Peter's +place, might have fancied that the colour scheme of the apartment cried +out for a bit of warmth. A glowing, warm-haired woman was needed to +set the walls afire; and the need was met when Mrs. Wybert entered. +</p> +<p> +She wore a long coat of seal trimmed with chinchilla, and had been, +apparently, about to go out. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter rose and bowed. Mrs. Wybert nodded rather uncertainly. +</p> +<p> +"You wished to see me, Mr. Bines?" +</p> +<p> +"I did want to have a little talk with you, Mrs. Wybert, but you're +goin' out, and I won't keep you. I know how pressed you New York +society ladies are with your engagements." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Wybert had seemed to be puzzled. She was still puzzled but +unmistakably pleased. The old man was looking at her with frank and +friendly apology for his intrusion. Plainly she had nothing to fear +from him. She became gracious. +</p> +<p> +"It was only a little shopping tour, Mr. Bines, that and a call at the +hospital, where they have one of my maids who slipped on the avenue +yesterday and fractured one of her—er—limbs. Do sit down." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Wybert said "limb" for leg with the rather conscious air of +escaping from an awkward situation only by the subtlest finesse. +</p> +<p> +She seated herself before a green and heliotrope background that +instantly took warmth from her colour. Uncle Peter still hesitated. +</p> +<p> +"You see, I wanted kind of a long chat with you, Mrs. Wybert—a +friendly chat if you didn't mind, and I'd feel a mite nervous if you're +bundled up that way." +</p> +<p> +"I shall be delighted, Mr. Bines, to have a long, friendly chat. I'll +send my cloak back, and you take your own time. There now, do be right +comfortable!" +</p> +<p> +The old man settled himself and bestowed upon his hostess a long look +of approval. +</p> +<p> +"The reports never done you justice, Mrs. Wybert, and they was very +glowin' reports, too." +</p> +<p> +"You're very kind, Mr. Bines, awfully good of you!" +</p> +<p> +"I'm goin' to be more, Mrs. Wybert. I'm goin' to be a little bit +confidential—right out in the straight open with you." +</p> +<p> +"I am sure of that." +</p> +<p> +"And if you want to, you can be the same with me. I ain't ever held +anything against you, and maybe now I can do you a favour." +</p> +<p> +"It's right good of you to say so." +</p> +<p> +"Now, look here, ma'am, lets you and me get right down to cases about +this society game here in New York." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Wybert laughed charmingly and relaxed in manner. +</p> +<p> +"I'm with you, Mr. Bines. What about it, now?" +</p> +<p> +"Now don't get suspicious, and tell me to mind my own business when I +ask you questions." +</p> +<p> +"I couldn't be suspicious of you—really I feel as if I'd have to tell +you everything you asked me, some way." +</p> +<p> +"Well, there's been some talk of your marrying that young Milbrey. Now +tell me the inside of it." +</p> +<p> +She looked at the old man closely. Her intuition confirmed his own +protestations of friendliness. +</p> +<p> +"I don't mind telling you in strict confidence, there <i>was</i> talk of +marriage, and his people, all but the sister, encouraged it. Then after +she was engaged to Shepler they talked him out of it. Now that's the +whole God's truth, if it does you any good." +</p> +<p> +"If you had married him you'd 'a' had a position, like they say here, +right away." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, dear, yes! awfully swagger people—dead swell, every one of them. +There's no doubt about that." +</p> +<p> +"Exactly; and there ain't really any reason why you can't be somebody +here." +</p> +<p> +"Well, between you and I, Mr. Bines, I can play the part as well as a +whole lot of these women here. I don't want to talk, of course, +but—well!" +</p> +<p> +"Exactly, you can give half of 'em cards and spades and both casinos, +Mrs. Wybert." +</p> +<p> +"And I'll do it yet. I'm not through by any means. They're not the only +perfectly elegant people in this town!" +</p> +<p> +"Of course you'll do it, and you could do it better if you had three or +four times the stake you got." +</p> +<p> +"Dollars are worth more apiece in New York than any town I've ever been +in." +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Wybert, I can put you right square into a good thing, and I'm +going to do it. Heard anything about Consolidated Copper?" +</p> +<p> +"I've heard something big was doing in it; but nobody seems to know for +certain. My broker is afraid of it." +</p> +<p> +"Very well. Now you do as I tell you, and you can clean up a big lot +inside of the next two months. If you do as I tell you, mind, no matter +<i>what</i> you hear, and if you don't talk." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Wybert meditated. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines, I'm—it's natural that I'm a little uneasy. Why should you +want to see me do well, after our little affair? Now, out with it! What +are you trying to do with me? What do you expect me to do for you? Get +down to cases yourself, Mr. Bines!" +</p> +<p> +"I will, ma'am, in a few words. My granddaughter, you may have heard, +is engaged to an Englishman. He's next thing to broke, but he's got a +title coming. Naturally he's looking fur money. Naturally he don't care +fur the girl. But I'm afraid she's infatuated with him. Now then, if he +had a chance at some one with more money than she's got, why, naturally +he'd jump at it." +</p> +<p> +"Aren't you a little bit wild?" +</p> +<p> +"Not a little bit. He saw you at Newport last summer, and he's seen you +here. He was tearing the adjectives up telling me about you the other +night, not knowing, you understand, that I'd ever heard tell of you +before. You could marry him in a jiffy if you follow my directions." +</p> +<p> +"But your granddaughter has a fortune." +</p> +<p> +"You'll have as much if you play this the way I tell you. And—you +never can tell in these times—she might lose a good bit of hers." +</p> +<p> +"It's very peculiar, Mr. Bines—your proposition." +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp373.jpg"><img src="illp373_th.jpg" width="150" +alt="'<I>Why, You'D Be Lady Casselthorpe, With Dukes and Counts Takin' off their Crowns to You</I>.'"></a> +</p> + +<p> +"Look at what a brilliant match it would be fur you. Why, you'd be +Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off their crowns to +you. And that other one—that Milbrey—from all I hear he's lighter'n +cork—cut his galluses and he'd float right up into the sky. He ain't +got anything but his good family and a thirst." +</p> +<p> +"I see. This Mauburn isn't good enough for your family, but you reckon +he's good enough for me? Is that it, now?" +</p> +<p> +"Come, Mrs. Wybert, let's be broad. That's the game you like, and I +don't criticise you fur it. It's a good game if that's the kind of a +game you're huntin' fur. And you can play it better'n my granddaughter. +She wa'n't meant fur it—and I'd rather have her marry an American, +anyhow. Now you like it, and you got beauty—only you need more money. +I'll put you in the way of it, and you can cut out my granddaughter." +</p> +<p> +"I must think about it. Suppose I plunge in copper, and your tip isn't +straight. I've seen hard times, Mr. Bines, in my life. I haven't always +wore sealskin and diamonds." +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Wybert, you was in Montana long enough to know how I stand +there?" +</p> +<p> +"I know you're A1, and your word's as good as another man's money. I +don't question your good intentions." +</p> +<p> +"It's my judgment, hey? Now, look here, I won't tell you what I know +and how I know it, but you can take my word that I know I do know. You +plunge in copper right off, without saying a word to anybody or makin' +any splurge, and here—" +</p> +<p> +From the little table at his elbow he picked up the card that had +announced him and drew out his pencil. +</p> +<p> +"You said my word was as good as another man's money. Now I'm going to +write on this card just what you have to do, and you're to follow +directions, no matter what you hear about other people doing. There'll +be all sorts of reports about that stock, but you follow my +directions." +</p> +<p> +He wrote on the back of the card with his pencil. +</p> +<p> +"Consolidated Copper, remember—and now I'm a-goin' to write something +else under them directions. +</p> +<p> +"'Do this up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything +you lose.' There, Mrs. Wybert, I've signed that 'Peter Bines.' That +card wouldn't be worth a red apple in a court of law, but you know me, +and you know it's good fur every penny you lose." +</p> +<p> +"Really, Mr. Bines, you half-way persuade me. I'll certainly try the +copper play—and about the other—well,—we'll see; I don't promise, +mind you!" +</p> +<p> +"You think over it. I'm sure you'll like the idea—think of bein' in +that great nobility, and bein' around them palaces with their dukes and +counts. Think how these same New York women will meach to you then!" +</p> +<p> +The old man rose. +</p> +<p> +"And mind, follow them directions and no other—makes no difference +what you hear, or I won't be responsible. And I'll rely on you, ma'am, +never to let anyone know about my visit, and to send me back that +little document after you've cashed in." +</p> +<p> +He left her studying the card with a curious little flash of surprise. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH32"><!-- CH32 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXII. +</h2> + +<h3> +Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting +</h3> +<p> +In the weeks that now followed, Percival became a model of sobriety and +patient, unremitting industry, according to his own ideas of industry. +He visited the offices of his various brokers daily, reading the tape +with the single-hearted devotion of a veteran speculator. He acquired a +general knowledge of the ebb and flow of popular stocks. He frequently +saw opportunities for quick profit in other stocks than the three he +was dealing in, but he would not let himself be diverted. +</p> +<p> +"I'm centering on those three," he told Uncle Peter. "When they win out +we'll take up some other lines. I could have cleared a quarter of a +million in that Northern Pacific deal last week, as easy as not. I saw +just what was being done by that Ledrick combine. But we've got +something better, and I don't want to take chances on tying up some +ready money we might need in a hurry. If a man gets started on those +little side issues he's too apt to lose his head. He jumps in one day, +and out the next, and gets to be what they call a 'kangaroo,' down in +the Street. It's all right for amusement, but the big money is in +cinching one deal and pushing hard. It's a bull market now, too; buy +A.O.T. is the good word—Any Old Thing—but I'm going to stay right by +my little line." +</p> +<p> +"You certainly have a genius fur finance," declared Uncle Peter, with +fervent admiration. "This going into business will be the makin' of +you. You'll be good fur something else besides holdin' one of them +dinky little teacups, and talking about 'trouserings'—no matter <i>what</i> +people say. Let 'em <i>talk</i> about you—sayin' you'll never be anything +like the man your pa was—<i>you'll</i> show 'em." +</p> +<p> +And Percival, important with his secret knowledge of the great <i>coup</i>, +went back to the ticker, and laughed inwardly at the seasoned experts +who frankly admitted their bewilderment as to what was "doing" in +copper and Western Trolley. +</p> +<p> +"When it's all over," he confided gaily to the old man, "we ought to +pinch off about ten per cent of the winnings, and put up a monument to +absinthe <i>frappé</i>—the stuff Relpin had been drinking that day. +They'll give us a fine public square for it in Paris if they won't here +in New York. And it wouldn't do any good to give it to Relpin, who's +really earned it—he'd only lush himself into one of those drunkard's +graves—I understand there's a few left yet." +</p> +<p> +Early in March, Coplen, the lawyer, was sent for, and with him Percival +spent two laborious weeks, going over inventories of the properties, +securities, and moneys of the estate. The major portion of the latter +was now invested in the three stocks, and the remainder was at hand +where it could be conveniently reached. +</p> +<p> +Percival informed himself minutely as to the values of the different +mining properties, railroad and other securities. A group of the +lesser-paying mines was disposed of to an English syndicate, the +proceeds being retained for the stock deal. All but the best paying of +the railroad, smelting, and land-improvement securities were also +thrown on the market. +</p> +<p> +The experience was a valuable one to the young man, enlarging greatly +his knowledge of affairs, and giving him a needed insight into the +methods by which the fortune had been accumulated. +</p> +<p> +"That was a slow, clumsy, old-fashioned way to make money," he declared +to Coplen. "Nowadays it's done quicker." +</p> +<p> +His grasp of details delighted Uncle Peter and surprised Coplen. +</p> +<p> +"I didn't know but he might be getting plucked," said Coplen to the old +man, "with all that money being drawn out so fast. If I hadn't known +you were with him, I'd have taken it on myself to find out something +about his operations. But he's all right, apparently. He had a scent +like a hound for those dead-wood properties—got rid of them while we +would have been making up our minds to. That boy will make his way +unless I'm mistaken. He has a head for detail." +</p> +<p> +"I'll make him a bigger man than his pa was yet," declared Uncle Peter. +"But I wouldn't want to let on that I'd had anything to do with it. +He'll think he's done it all himself, and it's right he should. It +stimulates 'em. Boys of his age need just about so much conceit, and it +don't do to take it out of 'em." +</p> +<p> +Reports of the most encouraging character came from Burman. The deal in +corn was being engineered with a riper caution than had been displayed +in the ill-fated wheat deal of the spring before. +</p> +<p> +"Burman's drawn close up to a million already," said Percival to Uncle +Peter, "and now he wants me to stand ready for another million." +</p> +<p> +"Is Burman," asked Uncle Peter, "that young fellow that had a habit of +standin' pat on a pair of Jacks, and then bettin' everybody off the +board?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, that was Burman." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I liked his ways. I should say he could do you a whole lot of +good in a corn deal." +</p> +<p> +"It certainly does look good—and Burman has learned the ropes and +spars. They're already calling him the 'corn-king' out on the Chicago +Board of Trade." +</p> +<p> +"Use your own judgment," Uncle Peter urged him. "You're the one that +knows all about these things. My Lord! how you ever <i>do</i> manage to keep +things runnin' in your head gets me. If you got confidence in Burman, +all I can say is—well, your pa was a fine judge of men, and I don't +see why you shouldn't have the gift." +</p> +<p> +"Between you and me, Uncle Peter, I <i>am</i> a good judge of human nature, +and I know this much about Burman: when he does win out he'll win big. +And I think he's going to whipsaw the market to a standstill this time, +for sure. Here's a little item from this morning's paper that sounds +right, all along the line." +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"COPPER, CORN, AND CORDAGE. +</p> +<p> +"There are just now three great movements in the market, Copper Trust +stock, corn, and cordage stock. The upward movement in corn seems to be +in the main not speculative but natural—the result of a short supply +and a long demand. The movements in Copper and Cordage Trust stocks are +purely speculative. The copper movement is based on this proposition: +Can the Copper Trust maintain the price for standard copper at +seventeen cents a pound, in face of enormously increased supply and the +rapidly decreasing demand, notably in Germany? The bears think not. The +bulls, contrarily, persist in behaving as if they had inside +information of a superior value. Just possibly a simultaneous rise in +corn, copper, and cordage will be the next sensation in the trading +world." +</p> +<p> +"You see?" said Percival. "They're beginning to wake up, down +there—beginning to turn over in their sleep and mutter. Pretty soon +they'll begin to stretch lazily; when they finally hear something drop +and jump out of bed it will be too late. The bulls will be counting +their chips to cash in, and the man waiting around to put out the +lights. And I don't see why Burman isn't as safe as I am." "I don't, +either," said Uncle Peter. +</p> +<p> +"'A short supply and a long demand,'—it would be a sin to let any one +else in. I'll just wire him we're on, and that we need all of that good +thing ourselves." +</p> +<p> +In the flush of his great plans and great expectations came a chance +meeting with Miss Milbrey. He had seen her only at a distance since +their talk at Newport. Yet the thought of her had persisted as a +plaintive undertone through all the days after. Only the sharp hurt to +his sensitive pride—from the conviction that she had found him +tolerable solely because of the money—had saved him from the willing +admission to himself that he had carried off too much of her ever to +forget. In his quiet moments, the tones of her clear, low voice came +movingly to his ears, and his eyes conjured involuntarily her girlish +animation, her rounded young form, her colour and fire—the choked, +smouldering fire of opals. He saw the curve of her wrist, the confident +swing of her walk, the easy poise of her head, her bearing, at once +girlish and womanly, the little air, half of wistful appeal, and half +of self-reliant assertion. Yet he failed not to regard these +indulgences as utter folly. It had been folly enough while he believed +that she stood ready to accept him and his wealth. It was more +flagrant, now that her quest for a husband with millions had been so +handsomely rewarded. +</p> +<p> +But again, the fact that she was now clearly impossible for him, so +that even a degrading submission on his part could no longer secure +her, served only to bring her attractiveness into greater relief. With +the fear gone that a sudden impulse to possess her might lead him to +stultify himself, he could see more clearly than ever why she was and +promised always to be to him the very dearest woman in the +world—dearest in spite of all he could reason about so lucidly. He +felt, then, a little shock of unreasoning joy to find one night that +they were dining together at the Oldakers'. +</p> +<p> +At four o'clock he had received a hasty note signed "Fidelia Oldaker," +penned in the fine, precise script of some young ladies' finishing +school—perhaps extinct now for fifty years—imploring him, if aught of +chivalry survived within his breast, to fetch his young grandfather and +dine with her that evening. Two men had inconsiderately succumbed, at +this eleventh hour, to the prevailing grip-epidemic, and the lady +threw herself confidently on the well-known generosity of the Bines +male—"like one of the big, stout nets those acrobatic people fall into +from their high bars," she concluded. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter was more than willing. He liked the Oldakers. +</p> +<p> +"They're the only sane folks I've met among your friends," he had told +his grandson. He had dined there frequently during the winter, and +professed to be enamoured of the hostess. That fragile but sprightly +bit of antiquity professed in turn to find Uncle Peter a very dangerous +man among the ladies. They flirted outrageously at every opportunity, +and Uncle Peter sent her more violets than many a popular <i>débutante</i> +received that winter. +</p> +<p> +Percival, with his new air of Wall Street operator, was inclined to +hesitate. +</p> +<p> +"You know I'm up early now, Uncle Peter, to get the day's run of the +markets before I go downtown, and a man can't do much in the way of +dinners when his mind is working all day. Perhaps Mauburn will go." +</p> +<p> +But Mauburn was taking Psyche and Mrs. Drelmer to the first night of a +play, and Percival was finally persuaded by the old man to relax, for +one evening, the austerity of his <i>régime</i>. +</p> +<p> +"But how your pa would love to see you so conscientious," he said, "and +you with Wall Street, or a good part of it, right under your heel, just +like <i>that</i>," and the old man ground his heel viciously into the +carpet. +</p> +<p> +When Percival found Shepler with Mrs. Van Geist and Miss Milbrey among +the Oldakers' guests, he rejoiced. Now he would talk to her without any +of that old awkward self-consciousness. He was even audacious enough to +insist that Mrs. Oldaker direct him to take Miss Milbrey out to dinner. +</p> +<p> +"I claim it as the price of coming, you know, when I was only an +afterthought." +</p> +<p> +"You shall be paid, sir," his hostess declared, "if you consider it pay +to sit beside an engaged girl whose mind is full of her <i>trousseau</i>. +And here's this captivating young scapegrace relative of yours. What +price does he demand for coming?" and she glanced up at Uncle Peter +with arch liberality in her bright eyes. +</p> +<p> +That gentleman bowed low—a bow that had been the admiration of the +smartest society in Marietta County, Ohio, fifty years and more ago. +</p> +<p> +"I'm paid fur coming by coming," he replied, urbanely. +</p> +<p> +"There, now!" cried his hostess, "that's pretty, and means something. +You shall take me in for that." +</p> +<p> +"I'll have to give you a credit-slip, ma'am. You've overpaid me." And +Mrs. Oldaker, with a coy fillip of her fan, called him a naughty boy. +</p> +<p> +"Here, Rulon," she called to Shepler, "are two young daredevils who've +been good enough to save me as many empty chairs. Now you shall take +out Cornelia, and this juvenile sprig shall relieve you of Avice +Milbrey. It's a providence. You engaged couples are always so dull when +you're banished from your own <i>ciel à deux</i>." +</p> +<p> +Shepler bowed and greeted the two men. Percival sought Miss Milbrey, +who was with her aunt at the other side of the old-fashioned room, a +room whose brocade hangings had been imported from England in the days +of the Georges, and whose furniture was fabricated in the time when +France was suffering its last kings. +</p> +<p> +He no longer felt the presence of anything overt between them. The girl +herself seemed to have regained the charming frankness of her first +manner with him. Their relationship was defined irrevocably. No +uncertainty of doubt or false seeming lurked now under the surface to +perplex and embarrass. The relief was felt at once by each. +</p> +<p> +"I'm to have the pleasure of taking you in, Miss Milbrey—hostess +issues special commands to that effect." +</p> +<p> +"Isn't that jolly! We've not met for an age." +</p> +<p> +"And I've such an appetite for talk with you, I fear I won't eat a +thing. If I'd known you were to be here I'd have taken the forethought +to eat a gored ox, or something—what is the proverb, 'better a dinner +of stalled ox where—'" +</p> +<p> +"'Where talk is,'" suggested Miss Milbrey, quickly. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, yes—.' than to have your own ox gored without a word of talk.' I +remember it perfectly now. And—there—we're moving on to this feast of +reason—" +</p> +<p> +"And the flow of something superior to reason," finished Shepler, who +had come over for Mrs. Van Geist. "Oldaker has some port that lay in +the wood in his cellar for forty years—and went around the world +between keel and canvas." +</p> +<p> +"That sounds good," said Percival, and then to Miss Milbrey, "But come, +let us reason together." His next sentiment, unuttered, was that the +soft touch of her hand under his arm was headier than any drink, how +ancient soever. +</p> +<p> +Throughout the dinner their entire absorption in each other was all but +unbroken. Percival never could remember who had sat at his left; and +Miss Milbrey's right-hand neighbour saw more than the winning line of +her profile but twice. Percival began— +</p> +<p> +"Do you know, I've never been able to classify you at all. I never +could tell how to take you." +</p> +<p> +"I'll tell you a secret, Mr. Bines; I think I'm not to be taken at all. +I've begun to suspect that I'm like one of those words that haven't any +rhyme—like 'orange' and 'month,' you know." +</p> +<p> +"But you find poetry in life? I do." +</p> +<p> +"Plenty of verse—not much poetry." +</p> +<p> +"How would you order life now, if the little old wishing-lady came to +your door and knocked?" +</p> +<p> +And they plunged forthwith, buoyed by youth's divine effrontery, into +mysteries that have vexed diners, not less than hermit sages, since +"the fog of old time" first obscured truth. Of life and death—the +ugliness of life, and the beauty of death— +</p> +<p> +"... even as death might smile, Petting the plumes of some surprised +soul," +</p> +<p> +quoted the girl. Of loving and hating, they talked; of trying and +failing—of the implacable urge under which men must strive in the face +of certain defeat—of the probability that men are purposely born +fools, since, if they were born wise they would refuse to strive; +whereupon life and death would merge, and naught would prevail but a +vast indifference. In fact, they were very deep, and affected to +consider these grave matters seriously. They affected that they never +habitually thought of lesser concerns. And they had the air of +listening to each other as if they were weighing the words judicially, +and were quite above any mere sensuous considerations of personality. +</p> +<p> +Once they emerged long enough to hear the hostess speaking, as it were +of yesterday, of a day when the new "German cotillion" was introduced, +to make a sensation in New York; of a time when the best ballrooms were +heated with wood stoves and lighted with lamps; and of a later but +apparently still remote time when the Assemblies were "really, quite +the smartest function of the season." +</p> +<p> +In another pause, they caught the kernel of a story being told by Uncle +Peter: +</p> +<p> +"The girl was a half-breed, but had a fair skin and the biggest shock +of hair you ever saw—bright yellow hair. She was awful proud of her +hair. So when her husband, Clem Dewler, went to this priest, Father +McNally, and complained that she <i>would</i> run away from the shack and +hang around the dance-halls down at this mining-camp, Father McNally +made up his mind to learn her a lesson. Well, he goes down and finds +her jest comin' out of Tim Healy's place with two other women. He +rushes up to her, catches hold of this big shock of hair that was +trailin' behind her, and before she knew what was comin' he whipped out +a big pair of sharp, shiny shears, and made as if he was going to give +her a hair-cut. At that she begins to scream, but the priest he +wouldn't let go. 'I'll cut it off,' he says, 'close,' he says, 'if you +don't swear on this crucifix to be a good squaw to Clem Dewler, and +never set so much as one of your little feet in these places again.' +She could feel the shears against her hair, and she was so scared she +swore like he told her. And so she was that afraid of losin' her fine +yellow hair afterward, knowin' Father McNally was a man that didn't +make no idle threats, that she kept prim and proper—fur a half-breed." +</p> +<p> +"That poor creature had countless sisters," was Miss Milbrey's comment +to Percival. And they fell together once more in deciding whether, +after all, the brightest women ever cease to believe that men are +influenced most by surface beauties. They fired each other's enthusiasm +for expressing opinions, and they took the opinions very seriously. Yet +of their meeting, to an observer, their talk would have seemed the part +least worth recording. +</p> +<p> +Twice Percival caught Shepler's regard bent upon them. It amused him to +think he detected signs of uneasiness back of the survey, cool, +friendly, and guarded as it was on the surface. +</p> +<p> +At parting, later, Percival spoke for the first time to Miss Milbrey of +her engagement. +</p> +<p> +"You must know that I wish you all the happiness you hope for yourself; +and if I were as lucky in love as Mr. Shepler has been, I surely would +never dare to gamble in anything else—you know the saying." +</p> +<p> +"And you, Mr. Bines. I've been hearing so much of your marriage. I hope +the rumour I heard to-day is true, that your engagement has been +announced." +</p> +<p> +He laughed. +</p> +<p> +"Come, now! That's all gossip, you know; not a word of truth in it, and +it's been very annoying to us both. Please demolish that rumour on my +authority next time you hear it, thoroughly, so they can make nothing +out of the pieces." +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey showed genuine disappointment. +</p> +<p> +"I had thought, naturally—" +</p> +<p> +"The only member of that household I could marry is not suited to my +age." +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey was puzzled. +</p> +<p> +"But, really, she's not so old." +</p> +<p> +"No, not so very old. Still, she's going on five, and you know how time +flies—and so much disparity in our ages—twenty-one years or so; no, +she was no wife for me, although I don't mind confessing that there has +been an affair between us, but—really you can't imagine what a +frivolous and trifling creature she is." +</p> +<p> +Miss Milbrey laughed now, rather painfully he fancied. +</p> +<p> +"You mean the baby? Isn't she a little dear?" +</p> +<p> +"I'll tell you something, just between us—the baby's mother is—well, +I like her—but she's a joke. That's all, a joke." +</p> +<p> +"I beg your pardon for talking of it. It had seemed so definite. +They're waiting for me—good night—<i>so</i> glad to have seen you—and, +nevertheless, she's a very <i>practical</i> joke!" +</p> +<p> +He watched her with frank, utter longing, as she moved over to Mrs. +Oldaker, tender, girlish, appealing, with the old air of timid +wistfulness, kept guard over by her woman's knowledge. His fingers +still curved, as if they were loth to forget the clasp of her warm, +firm little hand. She was gowned in white fleece, and she wore one pink +rose where she could bend her blue eyes down upon it. +</p> +<p> +And she was going to marry Shepler for his millions. She might even yet +regret that she had not waited for him, when his own name had been +written up as the wizard of markets, and the master of millions. Since +money was all she loved, he would show her that even in that he was +pre-eminent; though he would still have none of her. And as for +Shepler—he wondered if Shepler knew just what risks he might be taking +on. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, Mütterchen! Wasn't it the jolliest evening?" +</p> +<p> +They were in the carriage. +</p> +<p> +"Did you and Mr. Bines enjoy yourselves as much as you seemed to?" +</p> +<p> +"And isn't his grandfather an old dear? What an interesting little +story about that woman. I know just how she felt. You see, sir," she +turned to Shepler, "there is always a way to manage a woman—you must +find her weakness." +</p> +<p> +"He's a very unusual old chap," said Shepler. "I had occasion not long +since to tell him that a certain business plan he proposed was entirely +without precedent. His answer was characteristic. He said, 'We <i>make</i> +precedents in the West when we can't find one to suit us.' It seemed so +typical of the people to me. You never can tell what they may do. You +see they were started out of old ruts by some form of necessity, almost +every one of them, when they went West, and as necessity stimulates +only the brightest people to action, those Westerners are apt to be of +a pretty keen, active, and sturdy mental type. As this old chap says, +they never hang back for lack of precedents; they go ahead and make +them. They're not afraid to take sudden queer steps. But, really, I +like them both." +</p> +<p> +"So do I," said his betrothed. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH33"><!-- CH33 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXIII. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street +</h3> +<p> +At the beginning of April, the situation in the three stocks Percival +had bought so heavily grew undeniably tense. Consolidated Copper went +from 109 to 103 in a week. But Percival's enthusiasm suffered little +abatement from the drop. "You see," he reminded Uncle Peter, "it isn't +exactly what I expected, but it's right in line with it, so it doesn't +alarm me. I knew those fellows inside were bound to hammer it down if +they could. It wouldn't phase me a bit if it sagged to 95." +</p> +<p> +"My! My!" Uncle Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you +master this business certainly does win <i>me</i>. I tell you, it's a mighty +good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other +side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where +everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there, +everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the +best of it. I told that to one of them smarties last night. But you'll +put them in their place all right. You know both ends of the game and +the middle. We certainly got a right to be proud of you, son. Dan'l J. +liked big propositions himself—but, well, I'd just like to have him +see the nerve you've showed, that's all." +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter's professions of confidence were unfailing, and Percival +took new hope and faith in his judgment from them daily. +</p> +<p> +Nevertheless, as the weeks passed, and the mysterious insiders +succeeded in their design of keeping the stock from rising, he came to +feel a touch of anxiety. More, indeed, than he was able to communicate +to Uncle Peter, without confessing outright that he had lost faith in +himself. That he was unable to do, even if it were true, which he +doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the +Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old +man's confidence in the young man's acumen was invulnerable. No shaft +that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he +was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's faith in his +luck. +</p> +<p> +"You got your father's head in business matters," was Uncle Peter's +invariable response to any suggestion of failure. "I know that +much—spite of what all these gossips say—and that's all I <i>want</i> to +know. And of course you can't ever be no Shepler 'less you take your +share of chances. Only don't ask <i>my</i> advice. You're master of the +game, and we're all layin' right smack down on your genius fur it." +</p> +<p> +Whereupon the young man, with confidence in himself newly inflated, +would hurry off to the stock tickers. He had ceased to buy the stocks +outright, and for several weeks had bought only on margins. +</p> +<p> +"There was one rule in poker your pa had," said Uncle Peter. "If a hand +is worth calling on, it's worth raising on. He jest never <i>would</i> call. +If he didn't think a hand was worth raising, he'd bunch it in with the +discards, and wait fur another deal. I don't know much about the game, +but <i>he</i> said it was a sound rule, and if it was sound in poker, why +it's got to be sound in this game. That's all I can tell you. You know +what you hold, and if 'tain't a hand to lay down, it must be a hand to +raise on. Of course, if you'd been brash and ignorant in your first +calculations—if you'd made a fool of yourself at the start—but +shucks! you're the son of Daniel J. Bines, ain't you?" +</p> +<p> +The rule and the clever provocation had their effect. +</p> +<p> +"I'll raise as long as I have a chip left, Uncle Peter. Why, only +to-day I had a tip that came straight from Shepler, though he never +dreamed it would reach me. That Pacific Cable bill is going to be +rushed through at this session of Congress, sure, and that means enough +increased demand to send Consolidated back where it was. And then, when +it comes out that they've got those Rio Tinto mines by the throat, +well, this anvil chorus will have to stop, and those Federal Oil sharks +and Shepler will be wondering how I had the face to stay in." +</p> +<p> +The published rumours regarding Consolidated began to conflict very +sharply. Percival read them all hungrily, disregarding those that did +not confirm his own opinions. He called them irresponsible newspaper +gossip, or believed them to be inspired by the clique for its own ends. +</p> +<p> +He studied the history of copper until he knew all its ups and downs +since the great electrical development began in 1887. When Fouts, the +broker he traded most heavily with, suggested that the Consolidated +Company was skating on thin ice, that it might, indeed, be going +through the same experience that shattered the famous Secretan corner a +dozen years before, Percival pointed out unerringly the vital +difference in the circumstances. The Consolidated had reduced the +production of its controlled mines, and the price was bound to be +maintained. When his adviser suggested that the companies not in the +combine might cut the price, he brought up the very lively rumours of a +"gentlemen's agreement" with the "non-combine" producers. +</p> +<p> +"Of course, there's Calumet and Hecla. I know that couldn't be gunned +into the combination. They could pay dividends with copper at ten cents +a pound. But the other independents know which side of their stock is +spread with dividends, all right." +</p> +<p> +When it was further suggested that the Rio Tinto mines had sold ahead +for a year, with the result that European imports from the United +States had fallen off, and that the Consolidated could not go on for +ever holding up the price, Percival said nothing. +</p> +<p> +The answer to that was the secret negotiations for control of the +European output, which would make the Consolidated master of the copper +world. Instead of disclosing this, he pretended craftily to be +encouraged by the mere generally hopeful outlook in all lines. Western +Trolley, too, might be overcapitalised, and Union Cordage might also be +in the hands of a piratical clique; but the demand for trolley lines +was growing every day, and cordage products were not going out of +fashion by any means. +</p> +<p> +"You see," he said to his adviser, "here's what the most conservative +man in the Street says in this afternoon's paper. 'That copper must +necessarily break badly, and the whole boom collapse I do not believe. +There is enough prosperity to maintain a strong demand for the metal +through another year at least. As to Western Trolley and Union Cordage, +the two other stocks about which doubt is now being so widely expressed +in the Street, I am persuaded that they are both due to rise, not +sensationally, but at a healthy upward rate that makes them sound +investments!' +</p> +<p> +"There," said Percival, "there's the judgment of a man that knows the +game, but doesn't happen to have a dollar in either stock, and he +doesn't know one or two things that I know, either. Just hypothecate +ten thousand of those Union Cordage shares and five thousand Western +Trolley, and buy Consolidated on a twenty per cent margin. I want to +get bigger action. There's a good rule in poker: if your hand is worth +calling, it's worth raising." +</p> +<p> +"I like your nerve," said the broker. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I know some one who has a sleeve with something up it, that's +all." +</p> +<p> +By the third week in April, it was believed that his holdings of +Consolidated were the largest in the Street, excepting those of the +Federal Oil people. Uncle Peter was delighted by the magnitude of his +operations, and by his newly formed habits of industry. +</p> +<p> +"It'll be the makings of the boy," he said to Mrs. Bines in her son's +presence. "Not that I care so much myself about all the millions he'll +pile up, but it gives him a business training, and takes him out of the +pin-head class. I bet Shepler himself will be takin' off his silk hat +to your son, jest as soon as he's made this turn in copper—if he has +enough of Dan'l J.'s grit to hang on—and I think he has." +</p> +<p> +"They needn't wait another day for me," Percival told him later. "The +family treasure is about all in now, except ma's amethyst earrings, and +the hair watch-chain Grandpa Cummings had. Of course I'm holding what +I promised for Burman. But that rise can't hold off much longer, and +the only thing I'll do, from now on, is to hock a few blocks of the +stock I bought outright, and buy on margins, so's to get bigger +action." +</p> +<p> +"My! My! you jest do fairly dazzle me," exclaimed the old man, +delightedly. "Oh, I guess your pa wouldn't be at all proud of you if he +could see it. I tell you, this family's all right while you keep +hearty." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I'm not pushing my chest out any," said the young man, with +becoming modesty, "but I don't mind telling you it will be the biggest +thing ever pulled off down there by any one man." +</p> +<p> +"That's the true Western spirit," declared Uncle Peter, beside himself +with enthusiasm. "We do things big when we bother with 'em at all. We +ain't afraid of any pikers like Shepler, with his little two and five +thousand lots. Oh! I can jest hear 'em callin' you hard names down in +that Wall Street—Napoleon of Finance and Copper King and all like +that—in about thirty days!" +</p> +<p> +He accepted Percival's invitation that afternoon to go down into the +Street with him. They stopped for a moment in the visitors' gallery of +the Stock Exchange and looked down into the mob of writhing, +dishevelled, shouting brokers. In and out, the throng swirled upon +itself, while above its muddy depths surged a froth of hands in +frenzied gesticulation. The frantic movement and din of shrieks +disturbed Uncle Peter. +</p> +<p> +"Faro is such a lot quieter game," was his comment; "so much more ca'm +and restful. What a pity, now, 'tain't as Christian!" +</p> +<p> +Then they made the rounds of the brokers' offices in New, Broad, and +Wall Streets. +</p> +<p> +They reached the office of Fouts, in the, latter street, just as the +Exchange had closed. In the outer trading-room groups of men were still +about the tickers, rather excitedly discussing the last quotations. +Percival made his way toward one of them with a dim notion that he +might be concerned. He was relieved when he saw Gordon Blythe, suave +and smiling, in the midst of the group, still regarding the tape he +held in his hands. Blythe, too, had plunged in copper. He had been one +of the few as sanguine as Percival—and Blythe's manner now reassured +him. Copper had obviously not gone wrong. +</p> +<p> +"Ah, Blythe, how did we close? Mr. Blythe, my grandfather, Mr. Bines." +</p> +<p> +Blythe was the model of easy, indolent, happy middle-age. His tall hat, +frock coat with a carnation in the lapel, the precise crease of his +trousers, the spickness of his patent-leathers and his graceful +confidence of manner, proclaimed his mind to be free from all but the +pleasant things of life. He greeted Uncle Peter airily. +</p> +<p> +"Come down to see how we do it, eh, Mr. Bines? It's vastly engrossing, +on my word. Here's copper just closed at 93, after opening strong this +morning at 105. I hardly fancied, you know, it could fall off so many +of those wretched little points. Rumours that the Consolidated has made +large sales of the stuff in London at sixteen, I believe. One never can +be quite aware of what really governs these absurd fluctuations." +</p> +<p> +Percival was staring at Blythe in unconcealed amazement. He turned, +leaving Uncle Peter still chatting with him, and sought Fouts in the +inner office. When he came out ten minutes later Uncle Peter was +waiting for him alone. +</p> +<p> +"Your friend Mr. Blythe is a clever sort of man, jolly and +light-hearted as a boy." +</p> +<p> +"Let's go out and have a drink, before we go up-town." +</p> +<p> +In the <i>café</i> of the Savarin, to which he led Uncle Peter, they saw +Blythe again. He was seated at one of the tables with a younger man. +Uncle Peter and Percival sat down at a table near by. +</p> +<p> +Blythe was having trouble about his wine. +</p> +<p> +"Now, George," he was saying, "give us a real <i>lively</i> pint of wine. +You see, yourself, that cork isn't fresh; show it to Frank there, and +look at the wine itself—come now, George! Hardly a bubble in it! Tell +Frank I'll leave it to him, by Gad! if this bottle is right." +</p> +<p> +The waiter left with the rejected wine, and they heard Blythe resume to +his companion, with the relish of a connoisseur: +</p> +<p> +"It's simply a matter of genius, old chap—you understand?—to tell +good wine—that is really to discriminate finely. If a chap's not born +with the gift he's an ass to think he can acquire it. Sometime you've a +setter pup that looks fit—head good, nose all right—all the +markings—but you try him out and you know in half an hour he'll never +do in the world. Then it's better to take him out back of the barn and +shoot him, by Gad! Rather than have his strain corrupt the rest of the +kennel. He can't acquire the gift, and no more can a chap acquire this +gift. Ah! I was right, was I, George? Look how different that cork is." +</p> +<p> +He sipped the bubbling amber wine with cautious and exacting +appreciation. As the waiter would have refilled the glasses, Blythe +stopped him. +</p> +<p> +"Now, George, let me tell you something. You're serving at this moment +the only gentleman's drink. Do it right, George. Listen! Never refill a +gentleman's glass until it's quite empty. Do you know why? Think, +George! You pour fresh wine into stale wine and what have +you?—neither. I've taught you something, George. Never fill a glass +till it's empty." +</p> +<p> +"It beats me," said Uncle Peter, when Blythe and his companion had +gone, "how easy them rich codgers get along. That fellow must 'a' made +a study of wines, and nothing worse ever bothers him than a waiter +fillin' his glass wrong." +</p> +<p> +"You'll be beat more," answered Percival, "when I tell you this slump +in copper has just ruined him—wiped out every cent he had. He'd just +taken it off the ticker when we found him in Fouts's place there. He's +lost a million and a half, every cent he had in the world, and he has a +wife and two grown daughters." +</p> +<p> +"Shoo! you don't say! And I'd have sworn he didn't care a row of pins +whether copper went up or down. He was a lot more worried about that +champagne. Well, well! he certainly is a game loser. I got more respect +fur him now. This town does produce thoroughbreds, you can't deny +that." +</p> +<p> +"Uncle Peter, she's down to 93, and I've had to margin up a good bit. I +didn't think it could get below 95 at the worst." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I can't bother about them things. Just think of when she booms." +</p> +<p> +"I do—but say—do you think we better pinch our bets?" +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter finished his glass of beer. +</p> +<p> +"Lord! don't ask <i>me</i>," he replied, with the unconcern of perfect +trust. "Of course if you've lost your nerve, or if you think all these +things you been tellin' me was jest some one foolin' you—" +</p> +<p> +"No, I know better than that, and I haven't lost my nerve. After all, +it only means that the crowd is looking for a bigger rake-off." +</p> +<p> +"Your pa always kept <i>his</i> nerve," said Uncle Peter. "I've known him to +make big money by keepin' it when other men lost theirs. Of course he +had genius fur it, and you're purty young yet—" +</p> +<p> +"I only thought of it for a minute. I didn't really mean it." +</p> +<p> +They read the next afternoon that Gordon Blythe had been found dead of +asphyxiation in a little down-town hotel under circumstances that left +no doubt of his suicide. +</p> +<p> +"That man wa'n't so game as we thought," said Uncle Peter. "He's left +his family to starve. Now your pa was a game loser fur fair. Dan'l J. +would'a' called fur another deck." +</p> +<p> +"And copper's up two points to-day," said Percival, cheerfully. He had +begun to be depressed with forebodings of disaster, and this slight +recovery was cheering. +</p> +<p> +"By the way," he continued, "there may be another gas-jet blown out in +a few days. That party, you know, our friend from Montana, has been +selling Consolidated right and left. Where do you suppose she got any +such tip as that? Well, I'm buying and she's selling, and we'll have +that money back. She'll be wiped off the board when Consolidated +soars." +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH34"><!-- CH34 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXIV. +</h2> + +<h3> +How the Chinook Came to Wall Street +</h3> +<p> +The loss of much money is commonly a subject to be managed with brevity +and aversion by one who sits down with the right reverence for sheets +of clean paper. To bewail is painful. To affect lightness, on the other +hand, would, in this age, savour of insincerity, if not of downright +blasphemy. More than a bare recital of the wretched facts, therefore, +is not seemly. +</p> +<p> +The Bines fortune disappeared much as a heavy fall of snow melts under +the Chinook wind. +</p> +<p> +That phenomenon is not uninteresting. We may picture a far-reaching +waste of snow, wind-furrowed until it resembles a billowy white sea +frozen motionless. The wind blows half a gale and the air is full of +fine ice-crystals that sting the face viciously. The sun, lying low on +the southern horizon, seems a mere frozen globe, with lustrous pink +crescents encircling it. +</p> +<p> +One day the wind backs and shifts. A change portends. Even the herds of +half-frozen range cattle sense it by some subtle beast-knowledge. They +are no longer afraid to lie down as they may have been for a week. The +danger of freezing has passed. The temperature has been at fifty +degrees below zero. Now, suddenly it begins to rise. The air is +scarcely in motion, but occasionally it descends as out of a +blast-furnace from overhead. To the southeast is a mass of dull black +clouds. Their face is unbroken. But the upper edges are ragged, torn by +a wind not yet felt below. Two hours later its warmth comes. In ten +minutes the mercury goes up thirty-five degrees. The wind comes at a +thirty-mile velocity. It increases in strength and warmth, blowing with +a mighty roar. +</p> +<p> +Twelve hours afterward the snow, three feet deep on a level, has +melted. There are bald, brown hills everywhere to the horizon, and the +plains are flooded with water. The Chinook has come and gone. In this +manner suddenly went the Bines fortune. +</p> +<p> +April 30th, Consolidated Copper closed at 91. Two days later, May 2d, +the same ill-fated stock closed at 5l—a drop of forty points. Roughly +the decline meant the loss of a hundred million dollars to the fifteen +thousand share-holders. From every city of importance in the country +came tales more or less tragic of holdings wiped out, of ruined +families, of defalcations and suicides. The losses in New York City +alone were said to be fifty millions. A few large holders, reputed to +enjoy inside information, were said to have put their stock aside and +"sold short" in the knowledge of what was coming. Such tales are always +popular in the Street. +</p> +<p> +Others not less popular had to do with the reasons for the slump. Many +were plausible. A deal with the Rothschilds for control of the Spanish +mines had fallen through. Or, again, the slaughter was due to the +Shepler group of Federal Oil operators, who were bent on forcing some +one to unload a great quantity of the stock so that they might absorb +it. The immediate causes were less recondite. The Consolidated Company, +so far from controlling the output, was suddenly shown to control +actually less than fifty per cent of it. Its efforts to amend or repeal +the hardy old law of Supply and Demand had simply met with the +indifferent success that has marked all such efforts since the first +attempted corner in stone hatchets, or mastodon tusks, or whatever it +may have been. In the language of one of its newspaper critics, the +"Trust" had been "founded on misconception and prompted along lines of +self-destruction. Its fundamental principles were the restriction of +product, the increase of price, and the throttling of competition, a +trinity that would wreck any combination, business, political, or +social." +</p> +<p> +With this generalisation we have no concern. As to the copper +situation, the comment was pat. It had been suddenly disclosed, not +only that no combination could be made to include the European mines, +but that the Consolidated Company had an unsold surplus of 150,000,000 +pounds of copper; that it was producing 20,000,000 pounds a month more +than could be sold, and that it had made large secret sales abroad at +from two to three cents below the market price. +</p> +<p> +As if fearing that these adverse conditions did not sufficiently ensure +the stock's downfall, the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators beat +it down further with what was veritably a golden sledge. That is, they +exported gold at a loss. At a time when obligations could have been met +more cheaply with bought bills they sent out many golden cargoes at an +actual loss of three hundred dollars on the half million. As money was +already dear, and thus became dearer, the temptation and the means to +hold copper stock, in spite of all discouragements, were removed from +the paths of hundreds of the harried holders. +</p> +<p> +Incidentally, Western Trolley had gone into the hands of a receiver, a +failure involving another hundred million dollars, and Union Cordage +had fallen thirty-five points through sensational disclosures as to +its overcapitalisation. +</p> +<p> +Into this maelstrom of a panic market the Bines fortune had been sucked +with a swiftness so terrible that the family's chief advising member +was left dazed and incredulous. +</p> +<p> +For two days he clung to the ticker tape as to a life line. He had +committed the millions of the family as lightly as ever he had staked a +hundred dollars on the turn of a card or left ten on the change-tray +for his waiter. +</p> +<p> +Then he had seen his cunningly built foundations, rested upon with +hopes so high for three months, melt away like snow when the blistering +Chinook comes. +</p> +<p> +It has been thought wise to adopt two somewhat differing similes in the +foregoing, in order that the direness of the tragedy may be +sufficiently apprehended. +</p> +<p> +The morning of the first of the two last awful days, he was called to +the office of Fouts and Hendricks by telephone. +</p> +<p> +"Something going to happen in Consolidated to-day." +</p> +<p> +He had hurried down-town, flushed with confidence. He knew there was +but one thing <i>could</i> happen. He had reached the office at ten and +heard the first vicious little click of the ticker—that beating heart +of the Stock Exchange—as it began the unemotional story of what men +bought and sold over on the floor. Its inventor died in the poorhouse, +but Capital would fare badly without his machine. Consolidated was down +three points. The crowd about the ticker grew absorbed at once. Reports +came in over the telephone. The bears had made a set for the stock. It +began to slump rapidly. As the stock was goaded down, point by point, +the crowd of traders waxed more excited. +</p> +<p> +As the stock fell, the banks requested the brokers to margin up their +loans, and the brokers, in turn, requested Percival to margin up his +trades. The shares he had bought outright went to cover the shortage in +those he had bought on a twenty per cent margin. Loans were called +later, and marginal accounts wiped out with appalling informality. +</p> +<p> +Yet when Consolidated suddenly rallied three points just at the close +of the day's trading, he took much comfort in it as an omen of the +morrow. That night, however, he took but little satisfaction in Uncle +Peter's renewed assurances of trust in his acumen. Uncle Peter, he +decided all at once, was a fatuous, doddering old man, unable to +realise that the whole fortune was gravely endangered. And with the +gambler's inveterate hope that luck must change he forbore to undeceive +the old man. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter went with him to the office next morning, serenely +interested in the prospects. +</p> +<p> +"You got your pa's way of taking hold of big propositions. That's all I +need to know," he reassured the young man, cheerfully. +</p> +<p> +Consolidated Copper opened that day at 78, and went by two o'clock to +51. +</p> +<p> +Percival watched the decline with a conviction that he was dreaming. He +laughed to think of his relief when he should awaken. The crowd surged +about the ticker, and their voices came as from afar. Their acts all +had the weird inconsequence of the people we see in dreams. Yet +presently it had gone too far to be amusing. He must arouse himself and +turn over on his side. In five minutes, according to the dream, he had +lost five million dollars as nearly as he could calculate. Losing a +million a minute, even in sleep, he thought, was disquieting. +</p> +<p> +Then upon the tape he read another chapter of disaster. Western Trolley +had gone into the hands of a receiver,—a fine, fat, promising stock +ruined without a word of warning; and while he tried to master this +news the horrible clicking thing declared that Union Cordage was +selling down to 58,—a drop of exactly 35 points since morning. +</p> +<p> +Fouts, with a slip of paper in his hand, beckoned him from the door of +his private office. He went dazedly in to him,—and was awakened from +the dream that he had been losing a fortune in his sleep. +</p> +<p> +Coming out after a few moments, he went up to Uncle Peter, who had been +sitting, watchful but unconcerned, in one of the armchairs along the +wall. The old man looked up inquiringly. +</p> +<p> +"Come inside, Uncle Peter!" +</p> +<p> +They went into the private office of Fouts. Percival shut the door, and +they were alone. +</p> +<p> +"Uncle Peter, Burman's been suspended on the Board of Trade; Fouts just +had this over his private wire. Corn broke to-day." +</p> +<p> +"That so? Oh, well, maybe it was worth a couple of million to find out +Burman plays corn like he plays poker; 'twas if you couldn't get it fur +any less." +</p> +<p> +"Uncle Peter, we're wiped out." +</p> +<p> +"How, wiped out? What do you mean, son?" +</p> +<p> +"We're done, I tell you. We needn't care a damn now where copper goes +to. We're out of it—and—Uncle Peter, we're broke." +</p> +<p> +"Out of copper? Broke? But you said—" He seemed to be making an effort +to comprehend. His lack of grasp was pitiful. +</p> +<p> +"Out of copper, but there's Western Trolley and that Cordage stock—" +</p> +<p> +"Everything wiped out, I tell you—Union Cordage gone down thirty-five +points, somebody let out the inside secrets—and God only knows how far +Western Trolley's gone down." +</p> +<p> +"Are you all in?" +</p> +<p> +"Every dollar—you knew that. But say," he brightened out of his +despair, "there's the One Girl—a good producer—Shepler knows the +property—Shepler's in this block—" and he was gone. +</p> +<p> +The old man strolled out into the trading-room again. A curious grim +smile softened his square jaw for a moment. He resumed his comfortable +chair and took up a newspaper, glancing incidentally at the crowd of +excited men about the tickers. He had about him that air of repose +which comes to big men who have stayed much in big out-of-door +solitudes. +</p> +<p> +"Ain't he a nervy old guy?" said a crisp little money-broker to Fouts. +"They're wiped out, but you wouldn't think he cared any more about it +than Mike the porter with his brass polish out there." +</p> +<p> +The old man held his paper up, but did not read. +</p> +<p> +Percival rushed in by him, beckoning him to the inner room. +</p> +<p> +"Shepler's all right about the One Girl. He'll take a mortgage on it +for two hundred thousand if you'll recommend it—only he can't get the +money before to-morrow. There's bound to be a rally in this stock, and +we'll go right back for some of the hair of the—why,—what's the +matter—Uncle Peter!" +</p> +<p> +The old man had reeled, and then weakly caught at the top of the desk +with both hands for support. +</p> +<p> +"Ruined!" he cried, hoarsely, as if the extent of the calamity had just +borne in upon him. "My God! Ruined, and at my time of life!" He seemed +about to collapse. Percíval quickly helped him into a chair, where he +became limp. +</p> +<p> +"There, I'm all right. Oh, it's terrible! and we all trusted you so. I +thought you had your pa's brains. I'd 'a' trusted you soon's I would +Shepler, and now look what you led us into—fortune gone—broke—and +all your fault!" +</p> +<p> +"Don't, Uncle Peter—don't, for God's sake—not when I'm down! I can't +stand it!" +</p> +<p> +"Gamble away your own money—no, that wa'n't enough—take your poor +ma's share and your sister's, and take what little I had to keep me in +my old age—robbed us all—that's what comes of thinkin' a damned +tea-drinkin' fop could have a thimble-full of brains!" +</p> +<p> +"Don't, please,—not just now—give it to me good later—to-morrow—all +you want to!" +</p> +<p> +"And here I'm come to want in my last days when I'm too feeble to work. +I'll die in bitter privation because I was an old fool, and trusted a +young one." +</p> +<p> +"Please don't, Uncle Peter!" +</p> +<p> +"You led us in—robbed your poor ma and your sister. I told you I +didn't know anything about it and you talked me into trusting you—I +might 'a' known better." +</p> +<p> +"Can't you stop awhile—just a moment?" +</p> +<p> +"Of course I don't matter. Maybe I can hold a drill, or tram ore, or +something, but I can't support your ma and Pishy like they ought to be, +with my rheumatiz comin' on again, too. And your ma'll have to take in +boarders, and do washin' like as not, and think of poor Pishy—prob'ly +she'll have to teach school or clerk in a store—poor Pish—she'll be +lucky now if she can marry some common scrub American out in them +hills—like as not one of them shoe-clerks in the Boston Cash Store at +Montana City! And jest when I was lookin' forward to luxury and palaces +in England, and everything so grand! How much you lost?" "That's right, +no use whining! Nearly as I can get the round figures of it, about +twelve million." +</p> +<p> +"Awful—awful! By Cripes! that man Blythe that done himself up the +other night had the right of it. What's the use of living if you got to +go to the poorhouse?" +</p> +<p> +"Come, come!" said Percival, alarm over Uncle Peter crowding out his +other emotions. "Be a game loser, just as you said pa would be. Sit up +straight and make 'em bring on another deck." +</p> +<p> +He slapped the old man on the back with simulated cheerfulness; but the +despairing one only cowered weakly under the blow. +</p> +<p> +"We can't—we ain't got the stake for a new deck. Oh, dear! think of +your ma and me not knowin' where to turn fur a meal of victuals at our +time of life." +</p> +<p> +Percival was being forced to cheerfulness in spite of himself. +</p> +<p> +"Come, it isn't as bad as that, Uncle Peter. We've got properties left, +and good ones, too." +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter weakly waved the hand of finished discouragement. "Hush, +don't speak of that. Them properties need a manager to make 'em pay—a +plain business man—a man to stay on the ground and watch 'em and +develop 'em with his brains—a young man with his health! What good am +I—a poor, broken-down old cuss, bent double with +rheumatiz—almost—I'm ashamed of you fur suggesting such a thing!" +</p> +<p> +"I'll do it myself—I never thought of asking you." +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter emitted a nasal gasp of disgust. +</p> +<p> +"You—you—you'd make a purty manager of anything, wouldn't you! As if +you could be trusted with anything again that needs a schoolboy's +intelligence. Even if you had the brains, you ain't got the taste nor +the sperrit in you. You're too lazy—too triflin'. <i>You</i>, a-goin' back +there, developin' mines, and gettin' out ties, and lumber, and breeding +shorthorns, and improvin' some of the finest land God ever made—<i>you</i> +bein' sober and industrious, and smart, like a business man has got to +be out there nowadays. That ain't any bonanza country any more; 1901 +ain't like 1870; don't figure on that. You got to work the low-grade +ore now for a few dollars a ton, and you got to work it with brains. +No, sir, that country ain't what it used to be. There might 'a' been a +time when you'd made your board and clothes out there when things come +easier. Now it's full of men that hustle and keep their mind on their +work, and ain't runnin' off to pink teas in New York. It takes a man +with some of the brains your pa had to make the game pay now. But +<i>you</i>—don't let me hear any more of <i>that</i> nonsense!" +</p> +<p> +Percival had entered the room pale. He was now red. The old man's +bitter contempt had flushed him into momentary forgetfulness of the +disaster. +</p> +<p> +"Look here, Uncle Peter, you've been telling me right along I <i>did</i> +have my father's head and my father's ways and his nerve, and God knows +what I <i>didn't</i> have that he had!" +</p> +<p> +"I was fooled,—I can't deny it. What's the use of tryin' to crawl out +of it? You did fool me, and I own up to it; I thought you had some +sense, some capacity; but you was only like him on the surface; you +jest got one or two little ways like his, that's all—Dan'l J. now was +good stuff all the way through. He might 'a' guessed wrong on copper, +but he'd 'a' saved a get-away stake or borrowed one, and he'd 'a' piked +back fur Montana to make his pile right over—and he'd 'a' <i>made</i> it, +too—that was the kind of man your pa was—he'd 'a' made it!" +</p> +<p> +"I <i>have</i> saved a get-away stake." +</p> +<p> +"Your pa had the head, I tell you—and the spirit—" +</p> +<p> +"And, by God, I'll show you I've got the head. You think because I wanted +to live here, and because I made this wrong +play that I'm like all these pinheads you've seen around here. I'll +show you different!—I'll fool you." +</p> +<p> +"Now don't explode!" said the old man, wearily. "You meant well, poor +fellow—I'll say that fur you; you got a good heart. But there's lots +of good men that ain't good fur anything in particular. You've got a +good heart—yes—you're all right from the neck down." +</p> +<p> +"See here," said Percival, more calmly, "listen: I've got you all into +this thing, and played you broke against copper; and I'm going to get +you out—understand that?" +</p> +<p> +The old man looked at him pityingly. +</p> +<p> +"I tell you I'm going to get you out. I'm going back there, and get +things in action, and I'm going to stay by them. I've got a good idea +of these properties—and you hear me, now—I'll finish with a +bank-roll that'll choke Red Bank Cañon." +</p> +<p> +Fouts knocked and came in. +</p> +<p> +"Now you go along up-town, Uncle Peter. I want a few minutes with Mr. +Fouts, and I'll come to your place at seven." +</p> +<p> +The old man arose dejectedly. +</p> +<p> +"Don't let me interfere a minute with your financial operations. I'm +too old a man to be around in folks' way." +</p> +<p> +He slouched out with his head bent. +</p> +<p> +A moment later Percival remembered his last words, also his reference +to Blythe. He was seized with fear for what he might do in his despair. +Uncle Peter would act quickly if his mind had been made up. +</p> +<p> +He ran out into Wall Street, and hurried up to Broadway. A block off on +that crowded thoroughfare he saw the tall figure of Uncle Peter turning +into the door of a saloon. He might have bought poison. He ran the +length of the block and turned in. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter stood at one end of the bar with a glass of creamy beer in +front of him. At the moment Percival entered he was enclosing a large +slab of Swiss cheese between two slices of rye bread. +</p> +<p> +He turned and faced Percival, looking from him to his sandwich with +vacant eyes. +</p> +<p> +"I'm that wrought up and distressed, son, I hardly know what I'm doin'! +Look at me now with this stuff in my hands." +</p> +<p> +"I just wanted to be sure you were all right," said Percival, greatly +relieved. +</p> +<p> +"All right," the old man repeated. "All right? My God,—ruined! There's +nothin' left to do now." +</p> +<p> +He looked absently at the sandwich, and bit a generous semicircle into +it. +</p> +<p> +"I don't see how you can eat, Uncle Peter. It's so horrible!" +</p> +<p> +"I don't myself; it ain't a healthy appetite—can't be—must be some +kind of a fever inside of me—I s'pose—from all this trouble. And now +I've come to poverty and want in my old age. Say, son, I believe there's jest one +thing you can do to keep me from goin' crazy." +</p> +<p> +"Name it, Uncle Peter. You bet I'll do it!" +</p> +<p> +"Well, it ain't much—of course I wouldn't expect you to do all them +things you was jest braggin' about back there—about goin' to work the +properties and all that—you would do it if you could, I know—but it +ain't that. All I ask is, don't play this Wall Street game any more. If +we can save out enough by good luck to keep us decently, so your ma +won't have to take boarders, why, don't you go and lose that, too. +Don't mortgage the One Girl. I may be sort of superstitious, but +somehow, I don't believe Wall Street is your game. Course, I don't say +you ain't got a game—of some kind—but I got one of them presentiments +that it ain't Wall Street." "I don't believe it is, Uncle Peter—I +won't touch another share, and I won't go near Shepler again. We'll +keep the One Girl." +</p> +<p> +He called a cab for the old man, and saw him started safely off +up-town. +</p> +<p> +At the hotel Uncle Peter met Billy Brue flourishing an evening paper +that flared with exclamatory headlines. +</p> +<p> +"It's all in the papers, Uncle Peter!" +</p> +<p> +"Dead broke! Ain't it awful, Billy!" +</p> +<p> +"Say, Uncle Peter, you said you'd raise hell, and you done it. You done +it good, didn't you?" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH35"><!-- CH35 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXV. +</h2> + +<h3> +The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken +</h3> +<p> +At seven Percival found Uncle Peter at his hotel, still in abysmal +depths of woe. Together they went to break the awful news to the +unsuspecting Mrs. Bines and Psyche. +</p> +<p> +"If you'd only learned something useful while you had the chance," +began Uncle Peter, dismally, as they were driven to the Hightower, "how +to do tricks with cards, or how to sing funny songs, like that little +friend of yours from Baltimore you was tellin' me about. Look at him, +now. He didn't have anything but his own ability. He could tell you +every time what card you was thinkin' about, and do a skirt dance and +give comic recitations and imitate a dog fight out in the back yard, +and now he's married to one of the richest ladies in New York. Why +couldn't you 'a' been learnin' some of them clever things, so you could +'a' married some good-hearted woman with lots of money—but no—" Uncle +Peter's tones were bitter to excess—"you was a rich man's son and +raised in idleness—and now, when the rainy day's come, you can't even +take a white rabbit out of a stove-pipe hat!" +</p> +<p> +To these senile maunderings Percival paid no attention. When they came +into the crowd and lights of the Hightower, he sent the old man up +alone. +</p> +<p> +"You go, please, and break it to them, Uncle Peter. I'd rather not be +there just at first. I'll come along in a little bit." +</p> +<p> +So Uncle Peter went, protesting that he was a broken old man and a +cumberer of God's green earth. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines and Psyche had that moment sat down to dinner. Uncle Peter's +manner at once alarmed them. +</p> +<p> +"It's all over," he said, sinking into a chair. +</p> +<p> +"Why, what's the matter, Uncle Peter?" +</p> +<p> +"Percival has—" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines arose quickly, trembling. +</p> +<p> +"There—I just knew it—it's all over?—he's been struck by one of +those terrible automobiles—Oh, take me to where he is!" +</p> +<p> +"He ain't been run over—he's gone broke-lost all our money; every last +cent." +</p> +<p> +"He hasn't been run over and killed?" +</p> +<p> +"He's ruined us, I tell you, Marthy,—lost every cent of our money in +Wall Street." +</p> +<p> +"Hasn't he been hurt at all?—not even his leg broke or a big gash in +his head and knocked senseless?" +</p> +<p> +"That boy never had any sense. I tell you he's lost all our money." +</p> +<p> +"And he ain't a bit hurt—nothing the matter with him?" +</p> +<p> +"Ain't any more hurt than you or me this minute." +</p> +<p> +"You're not fooling his mother, Uncle Peter?" +</p> +<p> +"I tell you he's alive and well, only he's lost your money and Pish's +and mine and his own." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines breathed a long, trembling sigh of relief, and sat down to +the table again. +</p> +<p> +"Well, no need to scare a body out of their wits—scaring his mother to +death won't bring his money back, will it? If it's gone it's gone." +</p> +<p> +"But ma, it <i>is</i> awful!" cried Psyche. "Listen to what Uncle Peter +says. We're poor! Don't you understand? Perce has lost all our money." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines was eating her soup defiantly. +</p> +<p> +"Long's he's got his health," she began. +</p> +<p> +"And me windin' up in the poorhouse," whined Uncle Peter. +</p> +<p> +"Think of it, ma! Oh, what shall we do?" +</p> +<p> +Percival entered. Uncle Peter did not raise his head. Psyche stared at +him. His mother ran to him, satisfied herself that he was sound in wind +and limb, that he had not treacherously donned his summer underwear, +and that his feet were not wet. Then she led him to the table. +</p> +<p> +"Now you sit right down here and take some food. If you're all right, +everything is all right." +</p> +<p> +With a weak attempt at his old gaiety he began: "Really, Mrs. +Crackenthorpe—" but he caught Psyche's look and had to stop. +</p> +<p> +"I'm sorry, sis, clear into my bones. I made an ass of myself—a +regular fool right from the factory." +</p> +<p> +"Never mind, my son; eat your soup," said his mother. And then, with +honest intent to comfort him, "Remember that saying of your pa's, 'it +takes all kinds of fools to make a world.'" +</p> +<p> +"But there ain't any fool like a damn fool!" said Uncle Peter, shortly. +"I been a-tellin' him." +</p> +<p> +"Well, you just let him alone; you'll spoil his appetite, first thing +you know. My son, eat your soup, now before it gets cold." +</p> +<p> +"If I only hadn't gone in so heavy," groaned Percival. "Or, if I'd only +got tied up in some way for a few weeks—something I could tide over." +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said Uncle Peter, with a cheerful effort at sarcasm, "it's +always easy to think up a lot of holes you <i>could</i> get out of—some +different kind of a hole besides the one you're in. That's all some +folks can do when they get in one hole, they say, 'Oh, if I was only in +that other one, now, how slick I could climb out!' I ain't ever met a +person yet was satisfied with the hole they was in. Always some +complaint to make about 'em." +</p> +<p> +"And I had a chance to get out a week ago." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, and you wouldn't take it, of course—you knew too much—swellin' +around here about bein' a Napoleon of finance—and a Shepler and a +Wizard of Wall Street, and all that kind of guff—and you wouldn't take +your chance, and old Mr. Chance went right off and left you, that's +what. I tell you, what some folks need is a breed of chances that'll +stand without hitchin'." +</p> +<p> +Percival braced himself and began on his soup. +</p> + +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp422.jpg"><img src="illp422_th.jpg" width="150" +alt="<I>'Remember That Saying of Your Pa's—It Takes All Kinds of Fools to Make a World.'<I>"></a> +</p> + +<p> +"Never you mind, Uncle Peter. You remember what I told you." +</p> +<p> +"That takes a different man from what you are. If your pa was alive +now—" +</p> +<p> +"But what are we going to do?" cried Psyche. +</p> +<p> +"First thing you'll do," said Uncle Peter, promptly, "you go write a +letter to that beau of your'n, tellin' him it's all off. You don't want +to let him be the one to break it because you lost your money, do you? +You go sign his release right this minute." +</p> +<p> +"Yes—you're right, Uncle Peter—I suppose it must be done—but the +poor fellow really cares for me." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, of course," answered the old man, "it'll fairly break his heart. +You do it just the same!" +</p> +<p> +She withdrew, and presently came back with a note which she despatched +to Mauburn. +</p> +<p> +Percival and his mother had continued their dinner, the former shaking +his head between the intervals of the old man's lashings, and appearing +to hold silent converse with himself. +</p> +<p> +This was an encouraging sign. It is a curious fact that people never +talk to themselves except triumphantly. In moments of real despair we +are inwardly dumb. But observe the holders of imaginary conversations. +They are conquerors to the last one. They administer stinging rebukes +that leave the adversary writhing. They rise to Alpine heights of pure +wisdom and power, leaving him to flounder ignobly in the mire of his +own fatuity. +</p> +<p> +They achieve repartee the brilliance of which dazzles him to +contemptible silence. If statistics were at hand we should doubtless +learn that no man has ever talked to himself save by way of +demonstrating his own godlike superiority, and the tawdry impotence of +all obstacles and opponents. Percival talked to himself and mentally +lived the next five years in a style that reduced Uncle Peter to +grudging but imperative awe for his superb gifts of administration. He +bathed in this imaginary future as in the waters of omnipotence. As +time went on he foresaw the shafts of Uncle Peter being turned back +upon him with such deadliness that, by the time the roast came, his +breast was swelling with pity for that senile scoffer. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter had first declared that the thought of food sickened him. +Prevailed upon at last by Mrs. Bines to taste the soup, he was soon +eating as those present had of late rarely seen him eat. +</p> +<p> +"'Tain't a natural appetite, though," he warned them. "It's a kind of a +mania before I go all to pieces, I s'pose." +</p> +<p> +"Nonsense! We'll have you all right in a week," said Percival. "Just +remember that I'm going to take care of you." +</p> +<p> +"My son can do anything he makes up his mind to," declared Mrs. +Bines—"just anything he lays out to do." +</p> +<p> +They talked until late into the night of what he should "lay out" to +do. +</p> +<p> +Meantime the stronghold of Mauburn's optimism was being desperately +stormed. +</p> +<p> +In an evening paper he had read of Percival's losses. The afternoon +press of New York is not apt to understate the facts of a given case. +The account Mauburn read stated that the young Western millionaire had +beggared his family. +</p> +<p> +Mauburn had gone to his room to be alone with this bitter news. He had +begun to face it when Psyche's note of release came. While he was +adjusting this development, another knock came on his door. It was the +same maid who had brought Psyche's note. This time she brought what he +saw to be a cablegram. +</p> +<p> +"Excuse me, Mr. Mauburn,—now this came early to-day and you wasn't in +your room, and when you came in Mrs. Ferguson forgot it till just now." +</p> +<p> +He tore open the envelope and read: +</p> +<p> +"Male twins born to Lady Casselthorpe. Mother and sons doing finely. +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"HINKIE." +</p> +<p> +Mauburn felt the rock foundations of Manhattan Island to be crumbling +to dust. For an hour he sat staring at the message. He did not talk to +himself once. +</p> +<p> +Then he hurriedly dressed, took the note and the cablegram, and sought +Mrs. Drelmer. +</p> +<p> +He found that capable lady gowned for the opera. She received his bits +of news with the aplomb of a resourceful commander. +</p> +<p> +"Now, don't go seedy all at once—you've a chance." +</p> +<p> +"Hang it all, Mrs. Drelmer, I've not. Life isn't worth living—" +</p> +<p> +"Tut, tut! Death isn't, either!" +</p> +<p> +"But we'd have been so nicely set up, even without the title, and now +Bines, the clumsy ass, has come this infernal cropper, and knocked +everything on the head. I say, you know, it's beastly!" +</p> +<p> +"Hush, and let me think!" +</p> +<p> +He paced the floor while his matrimonial adviser tapped a white kidded +foot on the floor, and appeared to read plans of new battle in a +mother-of-pearl paper-knife which she held between the tips of her +fingers. +</p> +<p> +"I have it—and we'll do it quickly!—Mrs. Wybert!" +</p> +<p> +Mauburn's eyes opened widely. +</p> +<p> +"That absurd old Peter Bines has spoken to me of her three times +lately. She's made a lot more money than she had in this same copper +deal, and she'd a lot to begin with. I wondered why he spoke so +enthusiastically of her, and I don't see now, but—" +</p> +<p> +"Well?" +</p> +<p> +"She'll take you, and you'll be as well set up as you were before. +Listen. I met her last week at the Critchleys. She spoke of having seen +you. I could see she was dead set to make a good marriage. You know she +wanted to marry Fred Milbrey, but Horace and his mother wouldn't hear +of it after Avice became engaged to Rulon Shepler. I'm in the +Critchleys' box to-night and I understand she's to be there. Leave it +to me. Now it's after nine, so run along." +</p> +<p> +"But, Mrs. Drelmer, there's that poor girl—she cares for me, and I +like her immensely, you know—truly I do—and she's a trump—see where +she says here she couldn't possibly leave her people now they've come +down—even if matters were not otherwise impossible." +</p> +<p> +"Well, you see they're not only otherwise impossible, but every wise +impossible. What could you do? Go to Montana with them and learn to be +an Indian? Don't for heaven's sake sentimentalise! Go home and sleep +like a rational creature. Come in by eleven to-morrow. Even without the +title you'll be a splendid match for Mrs. Wybert, and she must have a +tidy lot of millions after this deal." +</p> +<p> +Sorely distressed, he walked back to his lodgings in Thirty-second +Street. Wild, Quixotic notions of sacrifice flooded his mood of +dejection. If the worst came, he could go West with the family and +learn how to do something. And yet—Mrs. Wybert. Of course it must be +that. The other idea was absurd—too wild for serious consideration. He +was thirty years old, and there was only one way for an English +gentleman to live—even if it must break the heart of a poor girl who +had loved him devotedly, and for whom he had felt a steady and genuine +affection. He passed a troubled night. +</p> +<p> +Down at the hotel of Peter Bines was an intimation from Mrs. Wybert +herself, bearing upon this same fortuity. When Uncle Peter reached +there at 2 A.M., he found in his box a small scented envelope which he +opened with wonder. +</p> +<p> +Two enclosures fell out. One was a clipping from an evening paper, +announcing the birth of twin sons to Lord Casselthorpe. The other was +the card he had left with Mrs. Wybert on the day of his call; his name +on one side, announcing him; on the other the words he had written: +</p> +<p> +"Sell Consolidated Copper all you can until it goes down to 65. Do this +up to the limit of your capital and I will make good anything you lose. +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"PETER BINES." +</p> +<p> +He read the note: +</p> +<p> +"ARLINGHAM HOTEL—7.30. +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"MR. PETER BINES: +</p> +<p> +"<i>Dear Sir</i>:—You funny old man, you. I don't pretend to understand +your game, but you may rely on my secrecy. I am more grateful to you +than words can utter—and I will always be glad to do anything for +you. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Yours very truly</i>, +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"BLANCHE CATHERTON WYBERT. +</p> +<p> +"P. S. About that other matter—him you know—you will see from this +notice I cut from the paper that the party won't get any title at all +now, so a dead swell New York man is in every way more eligible. In +fact the other party is not to be thought of for one moment, as I am +positive you would agree with me." +</p> +<hr> +<p> +He tore the note and the card to fine bits. +</p> +<p> +"It does beat all," he complained later to Billy Brue. "Put a beggar on +horseback and they begin right away to fuss around because the bridle +ain't set with diamonds—give 'em a little, and they want the whole +ball of wax!" +</p> +<p> +"That's right," said Billy Brue, with the quick sympathy of the +experienced. "That guy that doped me, he wa'n't satisfied with my good +thirty-dollar wad. Not by no means! He had to go take my breast-pin +nugget from the Early Bird." +</p> +<p> +At eleven o'clock the next morning Mauburn waited in Mrs. Drelmer's +drawing-room for the news she might have. +</p> +<p> +When that competent person sailed in, he saw temporary defeat written +on her brow. His heart sank to its low level of the night before. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I saw the creature," she began, "and it required no time at all +to reach a very definite understanding with her. I had feared it might +be rather a delicate matter, talking to her at once, you know—and we +needed to hurry—but she's a woman one can talk to. She's made heaps of +money, and the poor thing is society-mad—<i>so</i> afraid the modish world +won't take her at her true value—but she talked very frankly about +marriage—really she's cool-headed for all the fire she seems to +have—and the short of it is that she's determined to marry some one of +the smart men here in New York. The creature's fascinated by the very +idea." +</p> +<p> +"Did you mention me?" +</p> +<p> +"You may be sure I did, but she'd read the papers, and, like so many of +these people, she has no use at all for an Englishman without a title. +Of course I couldn't be too definite with her, but she understood +perfectly, and she let me see she wouldn't hear of it at all. So she's +off the list. But don't give up. Now, there's—" +</p> +<p> +But Mauburn was determinedly downcast. +</p> +<p> +"It's uncommon handsome of you, Mrs. Drelmer, really, but we'll have to +leave off that, you know. If a chap isn't heir to a peerage or a city +fortune there's no getting on that way." +</p> +<p> +"Why, the man is actually discouraged. Now you need some American +pluck, old chap. An American of your age wouldn't give up." +</p> +<p> +"But, hang it all! an American knows how to do things, you know, and +like as not he'd nothing to begin with, by Jove! Now I'd a lot to begin +with, and here it's all taken away." +</p> +<p> +"Look at young Bines. He's had a lot taken away, but I'll wager he +makes it all back again and more too before he's forty." +</p> +<p> +"He might in this country; he'd never do it at home, you know." +</p> +<p> +"This country is for you as much as for him. Now, there's Augusta +Hartong—those mixed-pickle millionaires, you know. I was chatting with +Augusta's mother only the other day, and if I'd only suspected this—" +</p> +<p> +"Awfully kind of you, Mrs. Drelmer, but it's no use. I'm fairly played +out. I shall go to see Miss Bines, and have a chat with her people, you +know." +</p> +<p> +"Now, for heaven's sake, don't make a silly of yourself, whatever you +do! Mind, the girl released you of her own accord!" +</p> +<p> +"Awfully obliged. I'll think about it jolly well, first. See you soon. +Good-bye!" And Mauburn was off. +</p> +<p> +He was reproaching himself. "That poor girl has been eating her heart +out for a word of love from me. I'm a brute!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH36"><!-- CH36 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXVI. +</h2> + +<h3> +The God in the Machine +</h3> +<p> +Uncle Peter next morning was up to a late breakfast with the stricken +family. Percival found him a trifle less bitter, but not less convinced +in his despair. The young man himself had recovered his spirits +wonderfully. The utter collapse of the old man, always so reliant +before, had served to fire all his latent energy. He was now voluble +with plans for the future; not only determined to reassure Uncle Peter +that the family would be provided for, but not a little anxious to +justify the old man's earlier praise, and refute his calumnies of the +night before. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bines, so complacent overnight, was the most disconsolate one of +the group. With her low tastes she was now regarding the loss of the +fortune as a calamity to the worthy infants of her own chosen field. +</p> +<p> +"And there, I'd promised to give five thousand dollars to the new home +for crippled children, and five thousand to St. John's Guild for the +floating hospitals this summer—just yesterday—and I do declare, I +just couldn't stay in New York without money, and see those poor babies +suffer." +</p> +<p> +"You couldn't stay in New York without money. Mrs. Good-thing," said +her son,—"not even if you couldn't see a thing; but don't you welsh +on any of your plays—we'll make that ten thousand good if I have to +get a sand-bag, and lay out a few of these lads around here some dark +night." +</p> +<p> +"But anyway you can't do much to relieve them. I don't know but what +it's honester to be poor while the authorities allow such goings on." +</p> +<p> +"You have the makings of a very dangerous anarchist in you, ma. I've +seen that for some time. But we're an honest family all right now, with +the exception of a few properties that I'll have to sit up with +nights—sit right by their sick-beds and wake them up to take their +meddy every half hour—" +</p> +<p> +"Now, my son, don't you get to going without your sleep," began his +mother. +</p> +<p> +"And wasn't it lucky about my sending that note to George!" said +Psyche. "Here in this morning's paper we find he isn't going to be Lord +Casselthorpe, after all. What <i>could</i> I have done if we hadn't lost the +money?" From which it might be inferred that certain people who had +declared Miss Bines to be very hard-headed were not so far wrong as +the notorious "casual observer" is very apt to be. +</p> +<p> +"Never you mind, sis," said her brother, cheerfully, "we'll be all +right yet. You wait a little, and hear Uncle Peter take back what he's +said about me. Uncle Peter, I'll have you taking off that hat of yours +every time you get sight of me, in about a year." +</p> +<p> +He went again over the plans. The income from the One Girl was to be +used in developing the other properties: the stock ranch up on the +Bitter Root, the other mines that had been worked but little and with +crude appliances; the irrigation and land-improvement enterprises, and +the big timber tracts. +</p> +<p> +"I got something of an idea of it when Uncle Peter took me around +summer before last, and I learned a lot more getting the stuff together +with Coplen. Now, I'm ready to buckle down to it." He looked at Uncle +Peter, hungry for a word of encouragement to soothe the hurts the old +man had put upon him. +</p> +<p> +But all Uncle Peter would say was, "That <i>sounds</i> very well," +compelling the inference that he regarded sound and substance as +phenomena not necessarily related. +</p> +<p> +"But give me a chance, Uncle Peter. Just don't jump on me too hard for +a year!" +</p> +<p> +"Well, I know that country. There's big chances for a young man with +brains—understand?—that has got all the high-living nonsense blasted +out of his upper levels—but it takes work. You <i>may</i> do +something—there <i>are</i> white blackbirds—but you're on a nasty piece +of road-bed—curves all down on the outside—wheels flatted under every +truck, and you've had her down in the corner so long I doubt if you can +even slow up, say nothin' of reversin'. And think of me gettin' fooled +that way at <i>my</i> time of life," he continued, as if in confidence to +himself. "But then, I always was a terrible poor judge of human +nature." +</p> +<p> +"Well, have your own way; but I'll fool you again, while you're +coppering me. You watch, that's all I ask. Just sit around and talk +wise about me all you want to, but watch. Now, I must go down and get +to work with Fouts. Thank the Lord, we didn't have to welsh either, any +more than Mrs. Give-up there did." +</p> +<p> +"You won't touch any more stock; you won't get that money from +Shepler?" +</p> +<p> +"I won't; I won't go near Shepler, I promise you. Now you'll believe me +in one thing, I know you will, Uncle Peter." He went over to the old +man. +</p> +<p> +"I want to thank you for pulling me up on that play as you did last +night. You saved me, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say. But +for you I'd have gone in and dug the hole deeper." He made the old man +shake hands with him—though Uncle Peter's hand remained limp and +cheerless. "You can shake on that, at least. You saved me, and I thank +you for it." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I'm glad you got <i>some</i> sense," answered the old man, +grudgingly. "It's always the way in that stock game. There's always +goin' to be a big killing made in Wall Street to-morrow, only to-morrow +never comes. Reminds me of Hollings's old turtle out at +Spokane—Hollings that keeps the Little Gem restaurant. He's got an +enormous big turtle in his cellar that he's kept to my knowledge fur +fifteen years. Every time he gets a little turtle from the coast he +takes a can of red paint down cellar, and touches up the sign on old +Ben's back—they call the turtle Ben, after Hollings's father-in-law +that won't do a thing but lay around the house all the time, and kick +about the meals. Well, the sign on Ben's back is, 'Green Turtle Soup +To-morrow,' and Ben is drug up to the sidewalk in front of the Little +Gem. And Hollings does have turtle-soup next day, but it's always the +little turtles that's killed, and old Ben is hiked back to his boudoir +until another killing comes off. It's a good deal like that in Wall +Street; there's killings made, but the big fellers with the signs on +their back don't worry none." +</p> +<p> +"You're right, Uncle Peter. It certainly wasn't my game. Will you come +down with me?" +</p> +<p> +"Me? Shucks, no! I'm jest a poor, broken old man, now. I'm goin' down +to the square if I can walk that fur, and set on a bench in the sun." +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter did succeed in walking as far as Madison Square. He walked, +indeed, with a step of amazing springiness for a man of his years. But +there, instead of reposing in the sun, he entered a cab and was driven +to the Vandevere Building, where he sent in his name to Rulon Shepler. +</p> +<p> +He was ushered into Shepler's office after a little delay. The two men +shook hands warmly. Uncle Peter was grinning now with rare +enjoyment—he who had in the presence of the family shown naught but +broken age and utter despondency. +</p> +<p> +"You rough-housed the boy considerable yesterday." +</p> +<p> +"I never believed the fellow would hold on," said Shepler. "I'm sure +you're right in a way about the West. There isn't another man in this +</p> +<p> +He handed the old man a dozen or so certified checks on as many +different banks. Each check had many figures on it. Uncle Peter placed +them in his old leather wallet. +</p> +<p> +"I knew he'd plunge," he said, taking the chair proffered him, near +Shepler's desk. "I knew he was a natural born plunger, and I knew that +once he gets an idea in his head you can't blast it out; makes no +difference what he starts on he'll play the string out. His pa was jest +that way. Then of course he wa'n't used to money, and he was ignorant +of this game, and he didn't realise what he was doin'. He sort of +distrusted himself along toward the last—but I kept him swelled up +good and plenty." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I'm glad it's over, Mr. Bines. Of course I concede the relative +insignificance of money to a young man of his qualities—" +</p> +<p> +"Not its relative insignificance, Mr. Shepler—it's plain damned +insignificance, if you'll excuse the word. If that boy'd gone on he'd +'a' been one of what Billy Brue calls them high-collared Clarences—no +good fur anything but to spend money, and get apoplexy or worse by +forty. As it is now, he'll be a man. He's got his health turned on like +a steam radiator, he's full of responsibility, and he's really +long-headed." +</p> +<p> +"How did he take the loss?" +</p> +<p> +"He acted jest like a healthy baby does when you take one toy away from +him. He cries a minute, then forgets all about it, and grabs up +something else to play with. His other toy was bad. What he's playin' +with now will do him a lot of good." +</p> +<p> +"He's not discouraged, then—he's really hopeful?" +</p> +<p> +"That ain't any name fur it. Why, he's actin' this mornin' jest like +the world's his oyster—and every month had an 'r' in it at that." +</p> +<p> +"I'm delighted to hear it. I've always been taken with the chap; and +I'm very glad you read him correctly. It seemed to me you were taking a +risk. It would have broken the spirit of most men." +</p> +<p> +"Well, you see I knew the stock. It's pushin', fightin' stock. My +grandfather fought his way west to Pennsylvania when that country was +wilder'n Africa, and my father fought his way to Ohio when that was the +frontier. I seen some hard times myself, and this boy's father was a +fighter, too. So I knew the boy had it in him, all right. He's got his +faults, but they don't hurt him none." +</p> +<p> +"Will he return West?" +</p> +<p> +"He will that—and the West is the only place fur him. He was gettin' +bad notions about his own country here from them folks that's always +crackin' up the 'other side' 'sif there wa'n't any 'this side,' worth +speakin' of in company. This was no place fur him. Mr. Shepler, this +whole country is God's country. I don't talk much about them things, +but I believe in God—a man has to if he lives so much alone in them +wild places as I have—and I believe this country is His favourite. I +believe He set it apart fur great works. The history of the United +States bears me out so fur. And I didn't want any of my stock growin' +up without feelin' that he had the best native land on earth, and +without bein' ready to fight fur it at the drop of the hat. And jest +between you and me, I believe we can raise that kind in the West +better'n you can here in New York. You got a fine handsome town here, +it's a corkin' good place to see—and get out of—but it ain't any +breedin' place—there ain't the room to grow. Now we produce everything +in the West, includin' men. Here you don't do anything but +consume—includin' men. If the West stopped producin' men fur you, +you'd be as bad off as if it stopped producin' food. You can't grow a +big man on this island any more than you can grow wheat out there on +Broadway. You're all right. You folks have your uses. I ain't like one +of these crazy Populists that thinks you're rascals and all like that; +but my point is that you don't get the fun out of life. You don't get +the big feelin's. Out in the West they're the flesh and blood and bone; +and you people here, meanin' no disrespect—you're the dimples and +wrinkles and—the warts. You spend and gamble back and forth with that +money we raise and dig out of the ground, and you think you're gettin' +the best end of it, but you ain't. I found that out thirty-two years +ago this spring. I had a crazy fool notion then to go back there even +when I hadn't gone broke—and I done well to go. And that's why I +wanted that boy back there. And that's why I'm mighty proud of him, to +see he's so hot to go and take hold, like I knew he would be." +</p> +<p> +"That's excellent. Now, Mr. Bines, I like him and I dare say you've +done the best thing for him, unusual as it was. But don't grind him. +Might it not be well to ease up a little after he's out there? You +might let it be understood that I am willing to finance any of those +propositions there liberally—" +</p> +<p> +"No, no—that ain't the way to handle him. Say, I don't expect to quit +cussin' him fur another thirty days yet. I want him to think he ain't +got a friend on earth but himself. Why, I'd have made this play just as +I have done, Mr. Shepler, if there hadn't been a chance to get back a +cent of it—if we'd had to go plumb broke—back to the West in an +emigrant car, with bologna and crackers to eat, that's what I'd have +done. No, sir, no help fur him!" +</p> +<p> +"Aren't you a little hard on him?" +</p> +<p> +"Not a bit; don't I know the stock, and know just what he needs? Most +men you couldn't treat as I'm treatin' him; but with him, the harder +you bear down on him the more you'll get out of him. That was the way +with his pa—he was a different man after things got to comin' too easy +fur him. This fellow, the way I'm treatin' him, will keep his head even +after he gets things comin' easy again, or I miss my guess. He thinks I +despise him now. If you told him I was proud of him, I almost believe +you could get a bet out of him, sick as he is of gamblin'." +</p> +<p> +"Has he suspected anything?" +</p> +<p> +"Sure, not! Why, he just thanked me about an hour ago fur savin' +him—made me shake hands with him—and I could see the tears back in +his eyes." +</p> +<p> +The old man chuckled. +</p> +<p> +"It was like Len Carey's Nigger Jim. Len had Jim set apart on the +plantation fur his own nigger. They fished and went huntin' and +swimmin' together. One day they'd been swimmin', and was lyin' up on +the bank. Len got thinkin' he'd never seen any one drown. He knew Jim +couldn't swim a lick, so he thought he'd have Jim go drown. He says to +him, 'Jim, go jump off that rock there!' That was where the deep hole +was. Jim was scar't, but he had to go. After he'd gone down once, Len +says to him, 'Drown, now, you damn nigger!' and Jim come up and went +down twice more. Then Len begun to think Jim was worth a good bit of +money, and mebbe he'd be almighty walloped if the truth come out, so he +dives in after Jim and gets him shore, and after while he brought him +to. Anyway, he said, Jim had already sure-enough drowned as fur as +there was any fun in it. Well, Len Carey is an old man now, and Jim is +an old white-headed nigger still hangin' around the old place, and when +Len goes back there to visit his relatives, old Nigger Jim hunts him up +with tears in his eyes, and thanks Mister Leonard fur savin' his life +that time. Say, I felt this mornin' like Len Carey must feel them times +when Jim's thankin' him." +</p> +<p> +Shepler laughed. +</p> +<p> +"You're a rare man, Mr. Bines. I'll hope to have your cheerful, easy +views of life if I ever lose my hold here in the Street. I hope I'll +have the old Bines philosophy and the young Bines spirit. That reminds +me," he continued as Uncle Peter rose to go, "we've been pretty +confidential, Mr. Bines, and I don't mind telling you I was a bit +afraid of that young man until yesterday. Oh, not on the stock +proposition. On another matter. You may have noticed that night at the +Oldakers'—well, women, Mr. Bines, are uncertain. I know something +about markets and the ways of a dollar, but all I know about women is +that they're good to have. You can't know any more about them, because +they don't know any more themselves. Just between us, now, I never felt +any too sure of a certain young woman's state of mind until copper +reached 51 and Union Cordage had been blown up from inside." +</p> +<p> +They parted with warm expressions of good-will, and Uncle Peter, in +high spirits at the success of his machinations, had himself driven +up-town. +</p> +<p> +The only point where his plans had failed was in Mrs. Wybert's refusal +to consider Mauburn after the birth of the Casselthorpe twins. Yet he +felt that matters, in spite of this happening, must go as he wished +them to. The Englishman-Uncle Peter cherished the strong anti-British +sentiment peculiar to his generation—would surely never marry a girl +who was all but penniless, and the consideration of an alliance with +Mrs. Wybert, when the fortune should be lost, had, after all, been an +incident—a means of showing the girl, if she should prove to be too +deeply infatuated with Mauburn for her own peace of mind—how unworthy +and mercenary he was; for he had meant, in that event, to disillusion +her by disclosing something of Mrs. Wybert's history—the woman Mauburn +should prefer to her. He still counted confidently on the loss of the +fortune sufficing to break the match. +</p> +<p> +When he reached the Hightower that night for dinner, he found Percival +down-stairs in great glee over what he conceived to be a funny +situation. +</p> +<p> +"Don't ask me, Uncle Peter. I couldn't get it straight; but as near as +I could make out, Mauburn came up here afraid the blow of losing him +was going to kill sis with a broken heart, and sis was afraid the blow +was going to kill Mauburn, because she wouldn't have married him +anyway, rich or poor, after he'd lost the title. They found each other +out some way, and then Mauburn accused her of being heartless, of +caring only for his title, and she accused him of caring only for her +money, and he insisted she ought to marry him anyway, but she wouldn't +have it because of the twins—" +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter rubbed his big brown hands with the first signs of +cheerfulness he had permitted Percival to detect in him. +</p> +<p> +"Good fur Pish—that's the way to take down them conceited +Britishers—" +</p> +<p> +"But then they went at matters again from a new standpoint, and the +result is they've made it up." +</p> +<p> +"What? Has them precious twin Casselthorpes perished?" +</p> +<p> +"Not at all, both doing finely—haven't even had colic—growing +fast—probably learned to say 'fancy, now,' by this time. But Mauburn's +going West with us if we'll take him." +</p> +<p> +"Get out!" +</p> +<p> +"Fact! Say, it must have been an awful blow to him when he found sis +wouldn't think of him at all without his title, even if she was broke. +They had a stormy time of it from all I can hear. He said he was strong +enough to work and all that, and since he'd cared for her, and not for +her money, it was low down of her to throw him over; then she said she +wouldn't leave her mother and us, now that we might need her, not for +him or any other man—and he said that only made him love her all the +more, and then he got chesty, and said he was just as good as any +American, even if he never would have a title; so pretty soon they got +kind of interested in each other again, and by the time I came home it +was all over. They ratified the preliminary agreement for a merger." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I snum!" +</p> +<p> +"That's right, go ahead and snum. I'd snum myself if I knew how—it +knocked me. Better come up-stairs and congratulate the happy couple." +</p> +<p> +"Shoo, now! I certainly am mighty disappointed in that fellow. Still he +<i>is</i> well spotted, and them freckles mean iron in the blood. Maybe we +can develop him along with the other properties." +</p> +<p> +They found Psyche already radiant, though showing about her eyes traces +of the storm's devastations. Mauburn was looking happy; also defiant +and stubborn. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines," he said to Uncle Peter, "I hope you'll side with me. I +know something about horses, and I've nearly a thousand pounds that +I'll be glad to put in with you out there if you can make a place for +me." +</p> +<p> +The old man looked him over quizzically. Psyche put her arm through +Mauburn's. +</p> +<p> +"I'd <i>have</i> to marry some one, you know, Uncle Peter!" +</p> +<p> +"Don't apologise, Pish. There's room for men that can work out there, +Mr. Mauburn, but there ain't any vintages or trouserings to speak of, +and the hours is long." +</p> +<p> +"Try me, Mr. Bines!" +</p> +<p> +"Well, come on! If you can't skin yourself you can hold a leg while +somebody else skins. But you ain't met my expectations, I'll say that." +And he shook hands cordially with the Englishman. +</p> +<p> +"I say, you know," said Mauburn later to Psyche, "why <i>should</i> I skin +myself? Why should I be skinned at all, you know?" +</p> +<p> +"You shouldn't," she reassured him. "That's only Uncle Peter's way of +saying you can help the others, even if you can't do much yourself at +first. And won't Mrs. Drelmer be delighted to know it's all settled?" +</p> +<p> +"Well," said Uncle Peter to Percival, later in the evening, "Pish has +done better than you have here. It's a pity you didn't pick out some +good sensible girl, and marry her in the midst of your other doings." +</p> +<p> +"I couldn't find one that liked cats. I saw a lot that suited every +other way but I always said to myself, 'Remember Uncle Peter's +warning!' so I'd go to an animal store and get a basket of kittens and +take them around, and not one of the dozen stood your test. Of course +I'd never disregard your advice." +</p> +<p> +"Hum," remarked Uncle Peter, in a tone to be noticed for its extreme +dryness. "Too bad, though—you certainly need a wife to take the +conceit out of you." +</p> +<p> +"I lost that in the Street, along with the rest." +</p> +<p> +"Well, son, I ain't no ways alarmed but what you'll soon be on your +feet again in that respect—say by next Tuesday or Wednesday. I wish +the money was comin' back as easy." +</p> +<p> +"Well, there are girls in Montana City." +</p> +<p> +"You could do worse. That reminds me—I happened to meet Shepler to-day +and he got kind of confidential,—talkin' over matters. He said he'd +never really felt sure about the affections of a certain young woman, +especially after that night at the Oldakers'—he'd never felt dead sure +of her until you went broke. He said you never could know anything +about a woman—not really." +</p> +<p> +"He knows something about that one, all right, if he knows she wouldn't +have any use for me now. Shepler's coming on with the ladies. I feel +quite hopeful about him." +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH37"><!-- CH37 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXVII. +</h2> + +<h3> +The Departure of Uncle Peter—And Some German Philosophy +</h3> +<p> +The Bineses, with the exception of Psyche, were at breakfast a week +later. Miss Bines had been missing since the day that Mr. and Mrs. +Cecil G. H. Mauburn had left for Montana City to put the Bines home in +order. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Peter and Mrs. Bines had now determined to go, leaving Percival +to follow when he had closed his business affairs. +</p> +<p> +"It's like starting West again to make our fortune," said Uncle Peter. +He had suffered himself to regain something of his old cheerfulness of +manner. +</p> +<p> +"I wish you two would wait until they can get the car here, and go back +with me," said Percival. "We can go back in style even if we didn't +save much more than a get-away stake." +</p> +<p> +But his persuasions were unavailing. +</p> +<p> +"I can't stand it another day," said Mrs. Bines, "and those letters +keep coming in from poor suffering people that haven't heard the news." +</p> +<p> +"I'm too restless to stay," declared Uncle Peter. "I declare, with +spring all greenin' up this way I'd be found campin' up in Central Park +some night and took off to the calaboose. I just got to get out again +where you can feel the wind blow and see a hundred miles and don't have +to dodge horseless horse-cars every minute. It's a wonder one of 'em +ain't got me in this town. You come on in the car, and do the style fur +the family. One of them common Pullmans is good enough fur Marthy and +me. And besides, I got to get Billy Brue back. He's goin' plumb daft +lookin' night and day fur that man that got his thirty dollars and his +breastpin. He says there'll be an ambulance backed up at the spot where +he meets him—makes no difference if it's right on Fifth Avenue. +Billy's kind of nearsighted at that, so I'm mortal afraid he'll make a +mistake one of these nights and take some honest man's money and +trinkets away from him." +</p> +<p> +"Well, here's a <i>Sun</i> editorial to take back with us," said Percival; +"you remember we came East on one." He read aloud: +</p> +<p> +"The great fall in the price of copper, Western Trolley, and cordage +stocks has ruined thousands of people all over this country. These +losses are doubtless irreparable so far as the stocks in question are +concerned. The losers will have to look elsewhere for recovery. That +they will do so with good courage is not to be doubted. It might be +argued with reasonable plausibility that Americans are the greatest +fatalists in the world; the readiest to take chances and the least +given to whining when the cards go against them. +</p> +<p> +"A case in point is that of a certain Western family whose fortune has +been swept away by the recent financial hurricane. If ever a man liked +to match with Destiny, not 'for the beers,' but for big stakes, the +young head of the family in question appears to have been that man. He +persisted in believing that the power and desire of the rich men +controlling these three stocks were great enough to hold their +securities at a point far above their actual value. In this persistence +he displayed courage worthy of a better reward. A courage, moreover +—the gambler's courage—that is typically American. Now he has had a +plenty of that pleasure of losing which, in Mr. Fox's estimation, comes +next to the pleasure of winning. +</p> +<p> +"From the point of view of the political economist or the moralist, +thrift, saving, and contentment with a modest competence are to be +encouraged, and the propensity to gamble is to be condemned. We stand +by the copy-book precepts. Yet it is only honest to confess that there +is something of this young American's love for chances in most of us. +American life is still so fluid, the range of opportunity so great, the +national temperament so buoyant, daring, and hopeful, that it is easier +for an American to try his luck again than to sit down snugly and enjoy +what he has. The fun and the excitement of the game are more than the +game. There are Americans and plenty of them who will lose all they +have in some magnificent scheme, and make much less fuss about it than +a Paris shopkeeper would over a bad twenty-franc piece. +</p> +<p> +"Our disabled young Croesus from the West is a luminous specimen of the +type. The country would be less interesting without his kind, and, on +the whole, less healthy—for they provide one of the needed ferments. +May the young man make another fortune in his own far West—and come +once more to rattle the dry bones of our Bourse!" +</p> +<p> +"He'll be too much stuck on Montana by the time he gets that fortune," +observed Uncle Peter. +</p> +<p> +"I will <i>that,</i> Uncle Peter. Still it's pleasant to know we've won +their good opinion." +</p> +<p> +"Excuse me fur swearin', Marthy," said Uncle Peter, turning to Mrs. +Bines, "but he can win a better opinion than that in Montana fur a damn +sight less money." +</p> +<p> +"That editor is right," said Mrs. Bines, "what he says about American +life being 'fluid.' There's altogether too much drinking goes on here, +and I'm glad my son quit it." +</p> +<p> +Percival saw them to the train. +</p> +<p> +"Take care of yourself," said Uncle Peter at parting. "You know I ain't +any good any more, and you got a whole family, includin' an Englishman, +dependin' on you—we'll throw him on the town, though, if he don't +take out his first papers the minute I get there." +</p> +<p> +His last shot from the rear platform was: +</p> +<p> +"Change your name back to 'Pete,' son, when you get west of Chicago. +'Tain't anything fancy, but it's a crackin' good business name fur a +hustler!" +</p> +<p> +"All right, Uncle Peter,—and I hope I'll have a grandson that thinks +as much of it as I do of yours." +</p> +<p> +When they had gone, he went back to the work of final adjustment. He +had the help of Coplen, whom they had sent for. With him he was busy +for a week. By lucky sales of some of the securities that had been +hypothecated they managed to save a little; but, on the whole, it was +what Percival described it, "a lovely autopsy." +</p> +<p> +At last the vexatious work was finished, and he was free again. At the +end of the final day's work he left the office of Fouts in Wall Street, +and walked up Broadway. He went slowly, enjoying the freedom from care. +It was the afternoon of a day when the first summer heat had been felt, +and as he loitered before shop windows or walked slowly through that +street where all move quickly and most very hurriedly, a welcome little +breeze came up from the bay to fan him and encourage his spirit of +leisure. +</p> +<p> +At Union Square, when he would have taken a car to go the remainder of +the distance, he saw Shepler, accompanied by Mrs. Van Geist and Miss +Milbrey, alight from a victoria and enter a jeweller's. +</p> +<p> +He would have passed on, but Miss Milbrey had seen him, and stood +waiting in the doorway while Shepler and Mrs. Van Geist went on into +the store. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines—I'm <i>so</i> glad!" +</p> +<p> +She stood, flushed with pleasure, radiant in stuff of filmy pink, with +little flecks at her throat and waist of the first tender green of new +leaves. She was unaffectedly delighted to see him. +</p> +<p> +"You are Miss Spring?" he said when she had given him her hand—"and +you've come into all your mother had that was worth inheriting, haven't +you?" +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines, shall we not see you now? I wanted so much to talk with you +when I heard everything. Would it be impertinent to say I sympathised +with you?" +</p> +<p> +He looked over her shoulder, in where Shepler and Mrs. Van Geist were +inspecting a tray of jewels. +</p> +<p> +"Of course not impertinent—very kind—only I'm really not in need of +any sympathy at all. You won't understand it; but we don't care so much +for money in the West—for the loss of it—not so much as you New +Yorkers would. Besides we can always make a plenty more." +</p> +<p> +The situation was, emphatically, not as he had so often dreamed it when +she should marvel, perhaps regretfully, over his superiority to her +husband as a money-maker. His only relief was to belittle the +importance of his loss. +</p> +<p> +"Of course we've lost everything, almost—but I've not been a bit +downcast about it. There's more where it came from, and no end of fun +going after it. I'm looking forward to the adventures, I can tell you. +And every one will be glad to see me there; they won't think the less +of me, I assure you, because I've made a fluke here!" +</p> +<p> +"Surely, Mr. Bines, no one here could think less of you. Indeed, I +think more of you. I think it's fine and big to go back with such +courage. Do you know, I wish I were a man—I'd show them!" +</p> +<p> +"Really, Miss Milbrey—" +</p> +<p> +He looked over her shoulder again, and saw that Shepler was waiting for +her. +</p> +<p> +"I think your friends are impatient." +</p> +<p> +"They can wait. Mr. Bines, I wonder if you have quite a correct idea of +all New York people." +</p> +<p> +"Probably not; I've met so few, you know." +</p> +<p> +"Well, of course,—but of those you've met?" +</p> +<p> +"You can't know what my ideas are." +</p> +<p> +"I wish we might have talked more—I'm sure—when are you leaving?" +</p> +<p> +"I shall leave to-morrow." +</p> +<p> +"And we're leaving for the country ourselves. Papa and mamma go +to-morrow—and, Mr. Bines, I <i>should</i> have liked another talk with +you—I wish we were dining at the Oldakers' again." +</p> +<p> +He observed Shepler strolling toward them. +</p> +<p> +"I shall be staying with Aunt Cornelia a few days after to-morrow." +</p> +<p> +Shepler came up. +</p> +<p> +"And I shall be leaving to-morrow, Miss Milbrey." +</p> +<p> +"Ah, Bines, glad to see you!" +</p> +<p> +The accepted lover looked Miss Milbrey over with rather a complacent +air—with the unruffled confidence of assured possession. Percival +fancied there was a look almost of regret in the girl's eyes. +</p> +<p> +"I'm afraid," said Shepler, "your aunt doesn't want to be kept waiting. +And she's already in a fever for fear you won't prefer the necklace she +insists you ought to prefer." +</p> +<p> +"Tell Aunt Cornelia, please, that I shall be along in just a moment." +"She's quite impatient, you know," urged Shepler. +</p> +<p> +Percival extended his hand. +</p> +<p> +"Good-bye, Miss Milbrey. Don't let me detain you. Sorry I shall not see +you again." +</p> +<p> +She gave him her hand uncertainly, as if she had still something to +say, but could find no words for it. +</p> +<p> +"Good-bye, Mr. Bines." +</p> +<p> +"Good-bye, young man," Shepler shook hands with him cordially, "and the +best of luck to you out there. I shall hope to hear good reports from +you. And mind, you're to look us up when you're in town again. We shall +always be glad to see you. Good-bye!" +</p> +<p> +He led the girl back to the case where the largest diamonds reposed +chastely on their couches of royal velvet. +</p> +<p> +Percival smiled as he resumed his walk—smiled with all that bitter +cynicism which only youth may feel to its full poignance. Yet, +heartless as she was, he recalled that while she talked to him he had +imprinted an imaginary kiss deliberately upon her full scarlet lips. +And now, too, he was forced to confess that, in spite of his very +certain knowledge about her, he would actually prefer to have +communicated it through the recognised physical media. He laughed +again, more cheerfully. +</p> +<p> +"The spring has gotten a strangle-hold on my judgment," he said to +himself. +</p> +<p> +At dinner that night he had the company of that estimable German +savant, the Herr Doctor von Herzlich. He did not seek to incur the +experience, but the amiable doctor was so effusive and interested that +he saw no way of avoiding it gracefully. Returned from his +archaeological expedition to Central America, the doctor was now on his +way back to Marburg. +</p> +<p> +"I pleasure much in your news," said the cheerful man over his first +glass of Rhine wine with the olive in it. "You shall now, if I have +misapprehended you not, develop a new strongness of the character." +</p> +<p> +Percival resigned himself to listen. He was not unfamiliar with the lot +of one who dines with the learned Von Herzlich. +</p> +<p> +"Now he's off," he said to himself. +</p> +<p> +"Ach! It is but now that you shall begin to live. Is it not that while +you planned the money-amassing you were deferring to live—ah, +yes—until some day when you had so much more? Yes? A common +thought-failure it is—a common failure of the to-take-thoughtedness of +life—its capacities and the intentions of the scheme under which we +survive. Ach! So few humans learn that this invitation to live +specifies not the hours, like a five-o'clock. It says—so well as +Father-Mother Nature has learned to write the words to our unseeing +eyes—'at once,' but we ever put off the living we are invited to at +once—until to-morrow-next day, next year—until this or that be done +or won. So now you will find this out. Before, you would have waited +for a time that never came—no matter the all-money you gathered. +</p> +<p> +"Nor yet, my young friend, shall you take this matter to be of a +seriousness, to be sorrow-worthy. If you take of the courage, you shall +find the world to smile to your face, and father-mother you. You recall +what the English Huxley says—Ah! what fine, dear man, the good +Huxley—he says, yes, in the 'Genealogy of the Beasts,' 'It is a +probable hypothesis that what the world is to organisms in general, +each organism is to the molecules of which it is composed.' So you +laugh at the world, the world it laugh back 'ha! ha! +ha!'—then—soly—all your little molecules obediently respond—you +thrill with the happiness—with the power—the desire—the +capacity—you out-go and achieve. Yes? So fret not. Ach! we fret so +much of what it shall be unwise to fret of. It is funny to fret. Why? +Why fret? Yet but the month last, they have excavated at Nippur, from +the pre-Sargonic strata, a lady and a gentleman of the House of Ptah. +What you say in New York—'a damned fine old family,' yes, is it not? I +am read their description, and seen of the photographs. +</p> +<p> +"They have now the expressions of indifference—of disinterest—without +the prejudice—as if they say, 'Ach! those troubles of ours, three +thousand eight hundred years in the B.C.—nearly come to six thousand +years before now—Ach! those troubles,' say this philosophic-now lady +and gentleman, of the House of Ptah of Babylonia—'such a +silliness—those troubles and frets; it was not the while-worth that we +should ever have sorrowed, because the scheme of time and creation is +suchly big; had we grasped but its bigness, and the littleness of our +span, should we have felt griefs? Nay, nay—<i>nit</i>,' like the +street-youths say—would say the lady and gentleman now so passionless +as to have philosophers become. And you, it should mean to you much. +Humans are funniest when they weep and tremble before, like you say, +'the facts in the case.' Ha! I laugh to myself at them often when I +observe. Their funniness of the beards and eyebrows, the bald head, of +the dress, the solemnities of manner, as it were they were persons of +weight. Ah, they are of their insignificance so loftily unconscious. +Was it not great skill—to compel the admiration of the love-worthiest +scientist—to create a unit of a numberless mass of units and then to +enable it to feel each one the importance of the whole, as if each part +were big as the whole? So you shall not fret I say. +</p> +<p> +"If the fret invade you, you shall do well to lie out in the friendly +space, and look at this small topspinning of a world through the glass +that reduces. +</p> +<p> +Yes? You had thought it of such bigness—its concerns of a sublime +tragicness? Yet see now, these funny little animals on the surface of +the spinning-ball. How frantic, as if all things were about to +eventuate, remembering not that nothing ends. So? Observe the marks of +their silliness, their unworthiness. You have reduced the ball to so +big as a melon, yes? Watch the insects run about in the craziness, +laughing, crying, loving their loves, hating their hates, fearing, +fretting—killing one the other in such funny little clothes, made for +such funny little purpose precisely—falling sick over the +money-losings—and the ball so small, but one of such many—as many +stars under the earth, remember, as above it. +</p> +<p> +"So! you are back to earth; you are a human like the rest, so foolish, +so funny as any—so you say, 'Well, I shall not be more troubled again +yet. I play the same game, but it is only a game, a little game to last +an afternoon—I play my part—yes—the laughing part, crying +part—loving, hating, killing part—what matter if I say it is good?' +If the Maker there be to look down, what joys him most—the coward who +fears and frets, and the whine makes for his soul or body? Ach! no, it +is the one who say, it is <i>good</i>—I could not better have done +myself—a great game, yes—'let her rip,' like you West-people +remark—'let her rip—you cannot lose <i>me</i>,' like you say also. Ach, +so! And then he say, the great Planner of it,' Ach! I am understood at +last—good!—bright man that,' like you say, also—'bright man that—it +is of a pleasure to see him do well!' +</p> +<p> +"So, my young friend, you shall pleasure yourself still much yet. It is +of an excellence to pleasure one's self judiciously. The lotus is a +leguminous plant—so excellent for the salad—not for the roast. You +have of the salad overeaten—you shall learn of your successful +capacity for it—you shall do well, then. You have been of the reckless +deportment—you may still be of it. That is not the matter. You shall +be reckless as you like—but without your stored energy surplus to harm +you. Your environment from the now demands of you the faculties you +will most pleasure yourself in developing. You shall produce what you +consume. The gods love such. Ach, yes!" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH38"><!-- CH38 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXVIII. +</h2> + +<h3> +Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring +</h3> +<p> +He awoke early, refreshed and intensely alive. With the work done he +became conscious of a feeling of disassociation from the surroundings +in which he had so long been at home. Many words of the talkative +German were running in his mind from the night before. He was glad the +business was off his mind. He would now go the pleasant journey, and +think on the way. +</p> +<p> +His trunks were ready for the car; and before he went down-stairs his +hand-bag was packed, and the preparations for the start completed. +When, after his breakfast, he read the telegram announcing that the car +had been delayed twenty-four hours in Chicago, he was bored by the +thought that he must pass another day in New York. He was eager now to +be off, and the time would hang heavily. +</p> +<p> +He tried to recall some forgotten detail of the business that might +serve to occupy him. But the finishing had been thorough. +</p> +<p> +He ran over in his mind the friends with whom he could spend the time +agreeably. He could recall no one he cared to see. He had no longer an +interest in the town or its people. +</p> +<p> +He went aimlessly out on to Broadway in the full flood of a spring +morning, breathing the fresh air hungrily. It turned his thought to +places out of the grime and clamour of the city; to woods and fields +where he might rest and feel the stimulus of his new plans. He felt +aloof and sufficient unto himself. +</p> +<p> +He swung on to an open car bound north, and watched without interest +the early quick-moving workers thronging south on the street, and +crowding the cars that passed him. At Forty-second Street, he changed +to a Boulevard car that took him to the Fort Lee Ferry at One Hundred +and Twenty-fifth Street. +</p> +<p> +Out on the shining blue river he expanded his lungs to the clean, sweet +air. Excursion boats, fluttering gay streamers, worked sturdily up the +stream. Little yachts, in fresh-laundered suits of canvas, darted +across their bows or slanted in their wakes, looking like white +butterflies. The vivid blue of the sky was flecked with bits of broken +fleece, scurrying like the yachts below. Across the river was a +high-towering bank of green inviting him over its summit to the +languorous freshness beyond. +</p> +<p> +He walked off the boat on the farther side and climbed a series of +steep wooden stairways, past a tiny cataract that foamed its way down +to the river. When he reached the top he walked through a stretch of +woods and turned off to the right, down a cool shaded road that wound +away to the north through the fresh greens of oak and chestnut. +</p> +<p> +He was entranced at once by the royal abandon of spring, this wondrous +time of secret beginnings made visible. The old earth was become as a +young wife from the arms of an ardent spouse, blushing into new life +and beauty for the very joy of love. He breathed the dewy freshness, +and presently he whistled the "Spring Song" of Mendelssohn, that +bubbling, half-joyous, half-plaintive little prayer in melody. +</p> +<p> +He was well into the spirit of the time and place. His soul sang. The +rested muscles of his body and mind craved the resistance of obstacles. +He rejoiced. He had been wise to leave the city for the fresh, +unspoiled country—the city with all its mean little fears, its petty +immoralities, and its very trifling great concerns. He did not analyse, +more than to remember, once, that the not reticent German would approve +his mood. He had sought the soothing quiet with the unfailing instinct +of the wounded animal. +</p> +<p> +The mysterious green life in the woods at either side allured him with +its furtive pulsing. But he kept to the road and passed on. He was not +yet far enough from the town. +</p> +<p> +Some words from a little song ran in his mind as he walked: +</p> +<pre> + "The naked boughs into green leaves slipped, + The longing buds into flowers tripped, + The little hills smiled as if they were glad, + The little rills ran as if they were mad. + + "There was green on the earth and blue in the sky, + The chrysalis changed to a butterfly, + And our lovers, the honey-bees, all a-hum, + To hunt for our hearts began to come." +</pre> +<p> +When he came to a village with an electric car clanging through it, he +skirted its borders, and struck off through a woodland toward the +river. Even the village was too human, too modern, for his early-pagan +mood. +</p> +<p> +In the woods he felt that curious thrill of stealth, that impulse to +cautious concealment, which survives in man from the remote days when +enemies beset his forest ways. On a southern hillside he found a +dogwood-tree with its blossomed firmament of white stars. In low, moist +places the violets had sprung through the thatch of leaves and were +singing their purple beauties all unheard. Birds were nesting, and +squirrels chattered and scolded. +</p> +<p> +Under these more obvious signs and sounds went the steady undertone of +life in root and branch and unfurling leaf—provoking, inciting, making +lawless whomsoever it thrilled. +</p> +<p> +He came out of the wood on to another road that ran not far from the +river, and set off again to the north along the beaten track. +</p> +<p> +In an old-fashioned garden in front of a small house a girl bent over a +flower bed, working with a trowel. +</p> +<p> +He stopped and looked at her over the palings. She was freshly pretty, +with yellow hair blown about her face under the pushed back sunbonnet +of blue. The look in her blue eyes was the look of one who had heard +echoes; who had awakened with the spring to new life and longings, +mysterious and unwelcome, but compelling. +</p> +<p> +She stood up when he spoke; her sleeves were turned prettily back upon +her fair round arms. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, the road turns to the left, a bit ahead." +</p> +<p> +She was blushing. +</p> +<p> +"You are planting flower seeds." +</p> +<p> +"Yes; so many flowers were killed by the cold last winter." +</p> +<p> +"I see; there must a lot of them have died here, but their souls didn't +go far, did they now?" +</p> +<p> +She went to digging again in the black moist earth. He lingered. The +girl worked on, and her blush deepened. He felt a lawless impulse to +vault the palings, and carry her off to be a flower for ever in some +wooded glade near by. He dismissed it as impracticable. His intentions +would probably be misconstrued. +</p> +<p> +"I hope your garden will thrive. It has a pretty pattern to follow." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you!" +</p> +<p> +He raised his hat and passed on, thinking; thinking of all the old dead +flowers, and their pretty souls that had gone to bloom in the heaven of +the maid's face. +</p> +<p> +Before the road turned to the left he found a path leading over to the +top of the palisade. There on a little rocky shelf, hundreds of feet +above the river, he lay a long time in the spring sun, looking over to +the farther shore, where the city crept to the south, and lost its +sharp lines in the smoky distance. There he smoked and gave himself up +to the moment. He was glad to be out of that rush. He could see matters +more clearly now—appraise values more justly. He was glad of +everything that had come. Above all, glad to go back and carry on that +big work of his father's—his father who had done so much to redeem the +wilderness—and incidentally he would redeem his own manhood. +</p> +<p> +It will be recalled that the young man frequently expressed himself +with regrettable inelegance; that he habitually availed himself, +indeed, of a most infelicitous species of metaphor. It must not be +supposed that this spring day in the spring places had reformed his +manner of delivery. When he chose to word his emotions it was still +done in a manner to make the right-spoken grieve. Thus, going back +toward the road, after reviewing his great plans for the future, he +spoke aloud: "I believe it's going to be a good game." +</p> +<p> +When he became hungry he thought with relief that he would not be +compelled to seek one of those "hurry-up" lunch places with its clamour +and crowd. What was the use of all that noise and crowding and piggish +hurry? A remark of the German's recurred to him: +</p> +<p> +"It is a happy man who has divined the leisure of eternity, so he feels +it, like what you say, 'in his bones.'" +</p> +<p> +When he came out on the road again he thought regretfully of the pretty +girl and her flower bed. He would have liked to go back and suggest +that she sing to the seeds as she put them to sleep in their earth +cradle, to make their awakening more beautiful. +</p> +<p> +But he turned down the road that led away from the girl, and when he +came to a "wheelman's rest," he ate many sandwiches and drank much +milk. +</p> +<p> +The face of the maid that served him had been no heaven for the souls +of dead flowers. Still she was a girl; and no girl could be wholly +without importance on such a day. So he thought the things he would +have said to her if matters had been different. +</p> +<p> +When he had eaten, he loafed off again down the road. Through the long +afternoon he walked and lazed, turning into strange lanes and by-roads, +resting on grassy banks, and looking far up. He followed Doctor von +Herzlich's directions, and, going off into space, reduced the earth, +watching its little continents and oceans roll toward him, and viewing +the antics of its queer inhabitants in fancy as he had often in fact +viewed a populous little ant-hill, with its busy, serious citizens. +Then he would venture still farther—away out into timeless space, +beyond even the starry refuse of creation, and insolently regard the +universe as a tiny cloud of dust. +</p> +<p> +When the shadows stretched in the dusky languor of the spring evening, +he began to take his bearings for the return. He heard the hum and +clang of an electric car off through a chestnut grove. +</p> +<p> +The sound disturbed him, bringing premonitions of the city's unrest. He +determined to stay out for the night. It was restful—his car would not +arrive until late the next afternoon—there was no reason why he should +not. He found a little wayside hotel whose weather-beaten sign was +ancient enough to promise "entertainment for man and beast." +</p> +<p> +"Just what I want," he declared. "I'm both of them—man and beast." +</p> +<p> +Together they ate tirelessly of young chickens broiled, and a green +salad, and a wonderful pie, with a bottle of claret that had stood back +of the dingy little bar so long that it had attained, at least as to +its label, a very fair antiquity. +</p> +<p> +This time the girl was pretty again, and, he at once discovered, not +indisposed to light conversation. Yet she was a shallow creature, with +little mind for the subtler things of life and the springtime. He +decided she was much better to look at than to talk to. With a just +appreciation of her own charms she appeared to pose perpetually before +an imaginary mirror, regaling him and herself with new postures, +tossing her brown head, curving her supple waist, exploiting her +thousand coquetries. He was pained to note, moreover, that she was more +than conscious of the red-cheeked youth who came in from the carriage +shed, whistling. +</p> +<p> +When the man and the beast had been appeased they sat out under a +blossomed apple-tree and smoked together in a fine spirit of amity. +</p> +<p> +He was not amazed when, in the gloom, he saw the red-cheeked youth with +both arms about the girl—nor was he shocked at detecting instantly +that her struggles were meant to be futile against her assailant's +might. The birds were mating, life was forward, and Nature loves to be +democratically lavish with her choicest secrets. Why not, then, the +blooming, full curved kitchen-maid and the red-cheeked boy-of-all-work? +</p> +<p> +He smoked and saw the night fall. The dulled bronze jangle of cow-bells +came soothingly to him. An owl called a little way off. Swallows +flashed by in long graceful flights. A bat circled near, indecisively, +as if with a message it hesitated to give. Once he heard the flute-like +warble of a skylark. +</p> +<p> +He was under the clean, sharp stars of a moonless night. His keen +senses tasted the pungent smoke and the softer feminine fragrance of +the apple-blossoms. His nerves were stilled to pleasant ease, except +when the laugh of the girl floated to him from the grape-arbour back of +the house. That disturbed him to fierce longings—the clear, high +measure of a woman's laugh floating to him in the night. And once she +sang—some song common to her class. It moved him as her laugh did, +making him vibrate to her, as when a practised hand flutters the +strings of a harp. He was glad without knowing why when she stopped. +</p> +<p> +At ten o'clock he went in from under the peering little stars and fell +asleep in an ancient four-poster. He dreamed that he had the world, a +foot-ball, clasped to his breast, and was running down the field for a +gain of a hundred yards. Then, suddenly, in place of the world, it was +Avice Milbrey in his grasp, struggling frantically to be free; and +instead of behaving like a gentleman he flung both arms around her and +kissed her despite her struggles; kissed her time after time, until she +ceased to strive against him, and lay panting and helpless in his arms. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH39"><!-- CH39 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXIX. +</h2> + +<h3> +An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured +</h3> +<p> +He was awakened by the unaccustomed silence. As he lay with his eyes +open, his first thought was that all things had stopped—the world had +come to its end. Then remembrance came, and he stretched in lazy +enjoyment of the stillness and the soft feather bed upon which he had +slept. Finding himself too wide awake for more sleep, he went over to +the little gable window and looked out. The unfermented wine of another +spring day came to his eager nostrils. The little ball had made another +turn. Its cheek was coming once more into the light. Already the east +was flushing with a wondrous vague pink. The little animals in the city +over there, he thought, would soon be tumbling out of their beds to +begin another of their funny, serious days of trial and failure; to +make ready for another night of forgetfulness, when their absurd little +ant-hill should turn again away from the big blazing star. He sat a +long time at the window, looking out to the east, where the light was +showing; meditating on many idle, little matters, but conscious all the +time of great power within himself. +</p> +<p> +He felt ready now for any conflict. The need for some great immediate +action pressed upon him. He did not identify it. Something he must +do—he must have action—and that at once. He was glad to think how +Uncle Peter would begin to rejoice in him—secretly at first, and then +to praise him. He was equal to any work. He could not begin it quickly +enough. That queer need to do something at once was still pressing, +still unidentified. +</p> +<p> +By five he was down-stairs. The girl, fresh as a dew-sprayed rose in +the garden outside, brought him breakfast of fruit, bacon and eggs, +coffee and waffles. He ate with relish, delighting meantime in the +girl's florid freshness, and even in the assertive, triumphant whistle +of the youth busy at his tasks outside. +</p> +<p> +When he set out he meant to reach the car and go back to town at once. +Yet when he came to the road over which he had loitered the day before, +he turned off upon it with slower steps. There was a confusing whirl of +ideas in his brain, a chaos that required all his energy to feed it, so +that the spring went from his step. +</p> +<p> +Then all at once, a new-born world cohered out of the nebula, and the +sight of its measured, orderly whirling dazed him. He had been seized +with a wish—almost an intention, so stunning in its audacity that he +all but reeled under the shock. It seemed to him that the thing must +have been germinated in his mind without his knowledge; it had lain +there, gathering force while he rested, now to burst forth and dazzle +him with its shine. All that undimmed freshness of longing he had felt +the day before-all the unnamed, unidentified, nameless desires—had +flooded back upon him, but now no longer aimless. They were acutely +definite. He wanted Avice Milbrey,—wanted her with an intensity as +unreasoning as it was resistless. This was the new world he had watched +swimming out of the chaos in his mind, taking its allotted orbit in a +planetary system of possible, rational, matter-of-course proceedings. +</p> +<p> +And Avice Milbrey was to marry Shepler, the triumphant money-king. +</p> +<p> +He sat down by the roadside, well-nigh helpless, surrendering all his +forces to the want. +</p> +<p> +Then there came upon him to reinforce this want a burning sense of +defeat. He remembered Uncle Peter's first warnings in the mine about +"cupboard love;" the gossip of Higbee: "If you were broke, she'd have +about as much use for you—" all the talk he had listened to so long +about marriage for money; and, at the last, Shepler's words to Uncle +Peter: "I was uncertain until copper went to 51." Those were three wise +old men who had talked, men who knew something of women and much of the +world. And they were so irritating in their certainty. What a fine play +to fool them all! +</p> +<p> +The sense of defeat burned into him more deeply. He had been +vanquished, cheated, scorned, shamefully flouted. The money was +gone—all of Uncle Peter's complaints and biting sarcasms came back to +him with renewed bitterness; but his revenge on Uncle Peter would be in +showing him a big man at work, with no nonsense about him. But Shepler, +who was now certain, and Higbee, who had always been +certain,—especially Shepler, with his easy sense of superiority with a +woman over any poor man. That was a different matter. There was a thing +to think about. And he wanted Avice Milbrey. He could not, he decided, +go back without her. +</p> +<p> +Something of the old lawless spirit of adventure that had spurred on +his reckless forbears urged him to carry the girl back with him. She +didn't love him. He would take her in spite of that; overpower her; +force her to go. It was a revenge of superb audacity. Shepler had not +been sure of her until now. Well, Shepler might be hurled from that +certainty by one hour of determined action. +</p> +<p> +The great wild wish narrowed itself into a definite plan. He recalled +the story Uncle Peter had told at the Oldakers' about the woman and her +hair. A woman could be coerced if a man knew her weakness. He could +coerce her. He knew it instinctively; and the instinctive belief +rallied to its support a thousand little looks from her, little +intonations of her voice, little turnings of her head when they had +been together. In spite of her calculations, in spite of her love of +money, he could make her feel her weakness. He was a man with the +power. +</p> +<p> +It was heady wine for the morning. He described himself briefly as a +lunatic, and walked on again. But the crazy notion would not be gone. +The day before he had been passive. Now he was active, acutely aware of +himself and all his wants. He walked a mile trying to dismiss the idea. +He sat down again, and it flooded back upon him with new force. +</p> +<p> +Her people were gone. She had even intimated a wish to talk with him +again. It could be done quickly. He knew. He felt the primitive +superiority of man's mere brute force over woman. He gloried in his +knotted muscles and the crushing power of his desires. +</p> +<p> +Afterward, she would reproach him bitterly. They would both be unhappy. +It was no matter. It was the present, the time when he should be +living. He would have her, and Shepler—Shepler might have had the One +Girl mine—but this girl, never! +</p> +<p> +Again he tried faithfully to walk off the obsession. Again were his +essays at sober reason unavailing. +</p> +<p> +His mind was set as it had been when he bought the stocks day after day +against the advice of the best judges in the Street. He could not turn +himself back. There must be success. There could not be a giving +up—and there must not be failure. +</p> +<p> +Hour after hour he alternately walked and rested, combating and +favouring the mad project. It was a foolish little world, and people +were always waiting for another time to begin the living of life. The +German had quoted Martial: "To-morrow I will live, the fool says; +to-day itself's too late. The wise lived yesterday." +</p> +<p> +If he did go away alone he knew he would always regret it. If he +carried her triumphantly off, doubtless his regret for that would +eventually be as great. The first regret was certain. The latter was +equally plausible; but, if it came, would it not be preferable to the +other? To have held her once—to have taken her away, to have triumphed +over her own calculations, and, best of all, to have triumphed over the +money-king resting fatuously confident behind his wealth, dignifying no +man as rival who was not rich. The present, so, was more than any +possible future, how dire soever it might be. +</p> +<p> +He was mad to prove to her—and to Shepler—that she was more a woman +than either had supposed,—a woman in spite of herself, weak, +unreasoning; to prove to them both that a determined man has a vital +power to coerce which no money may ever equal. +</p> +<p> +Not until five o'clock had he by turns urged and fought himself to the +ferry. By that time he had given up arguing. He was dwelling entirely +upon his plan of action. Strive and grope as he would, the thing had +driven him on relentlessly. His reason could not take him beyond the +reach of its goad. Far as he went he loved her even farther. She +belonged to him. He would have her. He seemed to have been storing, the +day before, a vast quantity of energy that he was now drawing lavishly +upon. For the time, he was pure, raw force, needing, to be resistless, +only the guidance of a definite purpose. +</p> +<p> +He crossed the ferry and went to the hotel, where he shaved and +freshened himself. He found Grant, the porter, waiting for him when he +went downstairs, and gave him written directions to the railroad people +to have the car attached to the Chicago Express leaving at eight the +next morning; also instructions about his baggage. +</p> +<p> +"I expect there will be two of us, Grant; see that the car is well +stocked; and here, take this; go to a florist's and get about four +dozen pink roses—<i>la France</i>—can you remember?—pink—don't take any +other colour, and be sure they're fresh. Have breakfast ready by the +time the train starts." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Mistah Puhs'val!" said Grant, and added to himself, "Yo' suttiny +do ca'y yo'se'f mighty han'some, Mistah Man!" +</p> +<p> +Going out of the hotel, he met Launton Oldaker, with whom he chatted a +few moments, and then bade good-bye. +</p> +<p> +Oldaker, with a sensitive regard for the decencies, refrained from +expressing the hearty sympathy he felt for a man who would henceforth +be compelled to live out of the world. +</p> +<p> +Percival walked out to Broadway, revolving his plan. He saw it was but +six o'clock. He could do nothing for at least an hour. When he noted +this he became conscious of his hunger. He had eaten nothing since +morning. He turned into a restaurant on Madison Square and ordered +dinner. When he had eaten, he sat with his coffee for a final smoke of +deliberation. He went over once more the day's arguments for and +against the novel emprise. He had become insensible, however, to all +the dissenting ones. As a last rally, he tried to picture the +difficulties he might encounter. He faced all he could imagine. +</p> +<p> +"By God, I'll do it!" +</p> +<p> +"<i>Oui, monsieur!</i>" said the waiter, who had been standing dreamily +near, startled into attention by the spoken words. +</p> +<p> +"That's all—give me the check." +</p> +<p> +As he went out the door, a young woman passed him, looking him straight +in the eyes. From her light swishing skirts came the faint perfume of +the violet. It chilled the steel of his resolution. +</p> +<p> +He entered a carriage. It was a hot, humid night. Already the mist was +making grey softness of the air, dulling the street lights to ruddy +orange. Northward, over the breast of Murray Hill a few late carriages +trickled down toward him. Their wheels, when they passed, made swift +reflections in the damp glare of the asphalt. +</p> +<p> +He was pent force waiting to be translated into action. +</p> +<p> +He drove first to the Milbrey house, on the chance that she might be at +home. Jarvis answered his ring. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Milbrey is with Mrs. Van Geist, sir." +</p> +<p> +Jarvis spoke regretfully. Pie had reasons of his own for believing that +the severance of the Milbrey relationship with Mr. Bines had been +nothing short of calamitous. +</p> +<p> +He rang Mrs. Van Geist's bell, five minutes later. +</p> +<p> +"The ladies haven't come back, sir. I don't know where they might be. +Perhaps at the Valners', in Fifty-second Street, sir." +</p> +<p> +He rang the Valners' bell. +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Van Geist and Miss Milbrey? They left at least half an hour ago, +sir." +</p> +<p> +"Go down the avenue slowly, driver!" +</p> +<p> +At Fortieth Street he looked down to the middle of the block. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Van Geist, alone, was just alighting from her coupé. +</p> +<p> +He signalled the driver. +</p> +<p> +"Go to the other address again, in Thirty-seventh Street." +</p> +<p> +Jarvis opened the door. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir—thank you, sir—Miss Milbrey is in, sir. I'll see, sir." +</p> +<p> +He crossed the Rubicon of a door-mat and stood in the unlighted hall. +At the far end he saw light coming from a door that he knew opened into +the library. +</p> +<p> +Jarvis came into the light. Behind him appeared Miss Milbrey in the +doorway. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Milbrey says will you enter the library, Mr. Bines?" +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH40"><!-- CH40 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XL. +</h2> + +<h3> +Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty +</h3> +<p> +He walked quickly back. At the doorway she gave him her hand, which he +took in silence. "Why—Mr. Bines!—you wouldn't have surprised me last +night. To-night I pictured you on your way West." +</p> +<p> +Her gown was of dull blue dimity. She still wore her hat, an arch of +straw over her face, with ripe red cherries nodding upon it as she +moved. He closed the door behind him. +</p> +<p> +"Do come in. I've been having a solitary rummage among old things. It +is my last night here. We're leaving for the country to-morrow, you +know." +</p> +<p> +She stood by the table, the light from a shaded lamp making her colour +glow. +</p> +<p> +Now she noted that he had not spoken. She turned quickly to him as if +to question. +</p> +<p> +He took a swift little step toward her, still without speaking. She +stepped back with a sudden instinct of fright. +</p> +<p> +He took two quick steps forward and grasped one of her wrists. He spoke +in cool, even tones, but the words came fast: +</p> +<p> +"I've come to marry you to-night; to take you away with me to that +Western country. You may not like the life. You may grieve to death for +all I know—but you're going. I won't plead, I won't beg, but I am +going to take you." +</p> +<p> +She had begun to pull away in alarm when he seized her wrist. His grasp +did not bruise, it did not seem to be tight; but the hand that held it +was immovable. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines, you forget yourself. Really, this is—" +</p> +<p> +"Don't waste time. You can say all that needs to be said—I'll give you +time for that before we start—but don't waste the time saying all +those useless things. Don't waste time telling me I'm crazy. Perhaps I +am. We can settle that later." +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines—how absurd! Oh! let me go! You're hurting my wrist! +Oh!—don't—don't—don't! Oh!" +</p> +<p> +When he felt the slender wrist trying to writhe from his grasp he had +closed upon it more tightly, and thrusting his other arm quickly behind +her, had drawn her closely to him. Her cries and pleadings were being +smothered down on his breast. Her struggles met only the unbending, +pitiless resistance of steel. +</p> +<p> +"Don't waste time, I tell you—can't you understand? Be sensible,—talk +if you must—only talk sense." +</p> +<p> +"Let me go at once—I demand it—quick—oh!" +</p> +<p> +"Take this hat off!" +</p> +<p> +He forced the wrist he had been holding down between them, so that she +could not free the hand, and, with his own hand thus freed, he drew out +the two long hat-pins and flung the hat with its storm-tossed cherries +across the room. Still holding her tightly, he put the free hand on her +brow and thrust her head back, so that she was forced to look up at +him. +</p> +<p> +"Let me see you—I want to see your eyes—they're my eyes now." +</p> +<p> +Her head strained against his hand to be down again, and all her +strength was exerted to be away. She found she could not move in any +direction. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, you're hurting my neck. What <i>shall</i> I do? I can't scream—think +what it would mean!—you're hurting my neck!" +</p> +<p> +"You are hurting your <i>own</i> neck—stop it!" +</p> +<p> +He kissed her face, softly, her cheeks, her eyes, her chin. +</p> +<p> +"I've loved you so—don't—what's the use? Be sensible. My arms have +starved for you so—do you think they're going to loosen now? Avice +Milbrey—Avice Milbrey—Avice Milbrey!" +</p> +<p> +His arms tightened about her as he said the name over and over. +</p> +<p> +"That's poetry—it's all the poetry there is in the world. It's a verse +I say over in the night. You can't understand it yet—it's too deep for +you. It means I must have you—and the next verse means that you must +have me—a poor man—be a poor man's wife—and all the other +verses—millions of them—mean that I'll never give you up—and there's +a lot more verses for you to write, when you understand—meaning that +you'll never give <i>me</i> up—and there's one in the beginning means I'm +going to carry you out and marry you to-night—<i>now</i>, do you +understand?—right off—this very night!" +</p> +<p> +"Oh! Oh! this is so terrible! Oh, it's <i>so</i> awful!" +</p> +<p> +Her voice broke, and he felt her body quiver with sobs. Her face was +pitifully convulsed, and tears welled in her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Let me <i>go</i>—let—me—<i>go</i>!" +</p> +<p> +He released her head, but still held her closely to him. Her sobs had +become uncontrollable. +</p> +<p> +"Here—" he reached for the little lace-edged handkerchief that lay +beside her long gloves and her purse, on the table. +</p> +<p> +She took it mechanically. +</p> +<p> +"Please—oh, <i>please</i> let me go—I beg you." She managed it with +difficulty between the convulsions that were rending her. +</p> +<p> +He put his lips down upon the soft hair. +</p> +<p> +"I <i>won't</i>—do you understand that? Stop talking nonsense." +</p> +<p> +He thought there would be no end to the sobs. +</p> +<p> +"Have it out, dear—there's plenty of time." +</p> +<p> +Once she seemed to have stopped the tears. He turned her face up to his +own again, and softly kissed her wet eyes. Her full lips were parted +before him, but he did not kiss them. The sobs came again. +</p> +<p> +"There—there!—it will soon be over." +</p> +<p> +At last she ceased to cry from sheer exhaustion, and when, with his +hand under her chin, he forced up her head again, she looked at him a +full minute and then closed her eyes. +</p> +<p> +He kissed their lids. +</p> +<p> +There came from time to time the involuntary quick little indrawings of +breath,—the aftermath of her weeping. +</p> +<p> +He held her so for a time, while neither spoke. She had become too weak +to struggle. +</p> +<p> +"My arms have starved for you so," he murmured. She gave no sign. +</p> +<p> +"Come over here." He led her, unresisting, around to the couch at the +other side of the table. +</p> +<p> +"Sit here, and we'll talk it over sensibly, before you get ready." +</p> +<p> +When he released her, she started quickly up toward the door that led +into the hall. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Don't</i> do that—please don't be foolish." +</p> +<p> +He locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. Then he went over to +the big folding-doors, and satisfied himself they were locked from the +other side. He went back and stood in front of her. She had watched him +with dumb terror in her face. +</p> +<p> +"Now we can talk—but there isn't much to be said. How soon can you be +ready?" +</p> +<p> +"You <i>are</i> crazy!" +</p> +<p> +"Possibly—believe what you like." +</p> +<p> +"How did you ever <i>dare?</i> Oh, how <i>awful!</i>" +</p> +<p> +"If you haven't passed that stage, I'll hold you again." +</p> +<p> +"No, no—<i>please</i> don't—please stand up again. Sit over there,—I can +think better." +</p> +<p> +"Think quickly. This is Saturday, and to-morrow is their busy day. They +may not sit up late to-night." +</p> +<p> +She arose with a little shrug of desperation that proclaimed her to be +in the power of a mad man. She looked at her face in the oval mirror, +wiping her eyes and making little passes and pats at her disordered +hair. He went over to her. +</p> +<p> +"No, no—please go over there again. Sit down a moment—let me think. +I'll talk to you presently." +</p> +<p> +There was silence for five minutes. He watched her, while she narrowed +her eyes in deep thought. +</p> +<p> +Then he looked at his watch. +</p> +<p> +"I can give you an hour, if you've anything to say before it's +done—not longer." +</p> +<p> +She drew a long breath. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines, are you mad? Can't you be rational?" +</p> +<p> +"I haven't been irrational, I give you my word, not once since I came +here." +</p> +<p> +He looked at her steadily. All at once he saw her face go crimson. She +turned her eyes from his with an effort. +</p> +<p> +"I'm going back to Montana in the morning. I want you to marry me +to-night—I won't even wait one more day—one more hour. I know it's a +thing you never dreamt of—marrying a poor man. You'll look at it as +the most disgraceful act of folly you could possibly commit, and so +will every one else here—but you'll <i>do</i> it. To-morrow at this time +you'll be half-way to Chicago with me." +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines,—I'm perfectly reasonable and serious—I mean it—are you +quite sure you didn't lose your wits when you lost your money?" +</p> +<p> +"It <i>may</i> be considered a witless thing to marry a girl who would marry +for money—but never mind <i>that</i>—I'm used to taking chances." +</p> +<p> +She glanced up at him, curiously. +</p> +<p> +"You know I'm to marry Mr. Shepler the tenth of next month." +</p> +<p> +"Your grammar is faulty—tense is wrong—You should say 'I <i>was</i> to +have married Mr. Shepler.' I'm fastidious about those little things, I +confess." +</p> +<p> +"How can you jest?" +</p> +<p> +"I can't. Don't think this is any joke. <i>He'll</i> find out." +</p> +<p> +"Who will find out,—what, pray?" +</p> +<p> +"He will. He's already said he was afraid there might have been some +nonsense between you and me, because we talked that evening at the +Oldakers'. He told my grandfather he wasn't at all sure of you until +that day I lost my money." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I see—and of course you'd like your revenge—carrying me off from +him just to hurt him." +</p> +<p> +"If you say that I'll hold you in my arms again." He started toward +her. "I've loved you <i>so</i>, I tell you—all the time—all the time." +</p> +<p> +"Or perhaps it's a brutal revenge on me,—after thinking I'd only marry +for money." +</p> +<p> +"I've loved you always, I tell you." +</p> +<p> +He came up to her, more gently now, and took up her hand to kiss it. He +saw the ring. +</p> +<p> +"Take his ring off!" +</p> +<p> +She looked up at him with an amused little smile, but did not move. He +reached for the hand, and she put it behind her. +</p> +<p> +"Take it off," he said, harshly. +</p> +<p> +He forced her hand out, took off the ring with its gleaming stone, none +too gently, and laid it on the table behind him. Then he covered the +hand with kisses. +</p> +<p> +"Now it's my hand. Perhaps there was a little of both those feelings +you accuse me of—perhaps I <i>did</i> want to triumph over both you and +Shepler—and the other people who said you'd never marry for anything +but money—but do you think I'd have had either one of those desires if +I hadn't loved you? Do you think I'd have cared how many Sheplers you +married if I hadn't loved you so, night and day?—always turning to you +in spite of everything,—loving you always, under everything—always, I +tell you." +</p> +<p> +"Under what—what 'everything'?" +</p> +<p> +"When I was sure you had no heart—that you couldn't care for any man +except a rich man—that you would marry only for money." +</p> +<p> +"You thought that?" +</p> +<p> +"Of course I thought it." +</p> +<p> +"What has changed you?" +</p> +<p> +"Nothing. I'm going to change it now by proving differently. I shall +take you against your will—but I shall make you love me—in the end. I +know you—you're a woman, in spite of yourself!" +</p> +<p> +"You were entirely right about me. I would even have married you +because of the money—" +</p> +<p> +"Tell me what it is you're holding back—don't wait." +</p> +<p> +"Let me think—don't talk, please!" +</p> +<p> +She sat a long time silent, motionless, her eyes fixed ahead. At length +she stirred herself to speak. +</p> +<p> +"You were right about me, partly—and partly wrong. I don't think I can +make you understand. I've always wanted so much from life—so much more +than it seemed possible to have. The only thing for a girl in my +position and circumstances was to make what is called a good marriage. +I wanted what that would bring, too. I was torn between the desires—or +rather the natural instincts and the trained desires. I had ideals +about loving and being loved, and I had the material ideals of my +experience in this world out here. +</p> +<p> +"I was untrue to each by turns. Here—I want to show you something." +</p> +<p> +She took up a book with closely written pages. +</p> +<p> +"I came here to-night—I won't conceal from you that I thought of you +when I came. It was my last time here, and you had gone, I supposed. Among other +things I had out this old diary to burn, and I had found +this, written on my eighteenth birthday, when I came out—the fond, +romantic, secret ideal of a foolish girl—listen: +</p> +<p> +"The Soul of Love wed the Soul of Truth and their daughter, Joy, was +born: who was immortal and in whom they lived for ever!' +</p> +<p> +"You see—that was the sort of moonshine I started in to live. Two or +three times I was a grievous disappointment to my people, and once or +twice, perhaps, I was disappointed myself. I was never quite sure what +I wanted. But if you think I was consistently mercenary you are +mistaken. "I shall tell you something more—something no one knows. +There was a man I met while that ideal was still strong and beautiful +to me—but after I'd come to see that here, in this life, it was not +easily to be kept. He was older than I, experienced with women—a lover +of women, I came to understand in time. I was a novelty to him, a fresh +recreation—he enjoyed all those romantic ideals of mine. I thought +then he loved me, and I worshipped him. He was married, but constantly +said he was about to leave his wife, so she would divorce him. I +promised to come to him when it was done. He had married for money and +he would have been poor again. I didn't mind in the least. I tell you +this to show you that I could have loved a poor man, not only well +enough to marry him, but to break with the traditions, and brave the +scandal of going to him in that common way. With all I felt for him I +should have been more than satisfied. But I came in time to see that he +was not as earnest as I had been. He wasn't capable of feeling what I +felt. He was more cowardly than I—or rather, I was more reckless than +he. I suspected it a long time; I became convinced of it a year ago and +a little over. He became hateful to me. I had wasted my love. Then he +became funny. But—you see—I am not altogether what you believed me. +Wait a bit longer, please. +</p> +<p> +"Then I gave up, almost—and later, I gave up entirely. And when my +brother was about to marry that woman, and Mr. Shepler asked me to +marry him, I consented. It seemed an easy way to end it all. I'd quit +fondling ideals. And you had told me I must do anything I could to keep +Fred from marrying that woman—my people came to say the same +thing—and so—" +</p> +<p> +"If he had married her—if they were married now—then you would feel +free to marry me?" +</p> +<p> +"You would still be the absurdest man in New York—but we can't discuss +that. He isn't going to marry her." +</p> +<p> +"But he <i>has</i> married her—" +</p> +<p> +"What do you mean?" +</p> +<p> +"I supposed you knew—Oldaker told me as I left the hotel. He and your +father were witnesses. The marriage took place this afternoon at the +Arlingham." +</p> +<p> +"You're not deceiving me?" +</p> +<p> +"Come, come!—<i>girl!</i>" +</p> +<p> +"Oh, <i>pardon</i> me! please! Of course I didn't mean it—but you stunned +me. And papa said nothing to me about it before he left. The money must +have been too great a temptation to him and to Fred. She has just made +some enormous amount in copper stock or something." +</p> +<p> +"I know, she had better advice than I had. I'd like to reward the man +who gave it to her." +</p> +<p> +"And I was sure you were going to marry that other woman." +</p> +<p> +"How could you think so?" +</p> +<p> +"Of course I'm not the least bit jealous—it isn't my disposition; but +I <i>did</i> think Florence Akemit wasn't the woman to make you happy—of +course I liked her immensely—and there were reports going +about—everybody seemed so sure—and you were with her so much. Oh, how +I did <i>hate</i> her!" +</p> +<p> +"I tell you she is a joke and always was." +</p> +<p> +"It's funny—that's exactly what I told Aunt Cornelia about that—that +man." +</p> +<p> +"Let's stop joking, then." +</p> +<p> +"How absurd you are—with my plans all made and the day set—" +</p> +<p> +There was a knock at the door. He went over and unlocked it. Jarvis was +there. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Shepler, Miss Avice." +</p> +<p> +They looked at each other. +</p> +<p> +"Jarvis, shut that door and wait outside." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Mr. Bines." +</p> +<p> +"You can't see him." +</p> +<p> +"But I must,—we're engaged, don't you understand?—of course I must!" +</p> +<p> +"I tell you I won't let you. Can't you understand that I'm not talking +idly?" +</p> +<p> +She tried to evade him and reach the door, but she was caught again in +his arms—held close to him. +</p> +<p> +"If you like he shall come in now. But he's not going to take you away +from me, as he did in that jeweller's the other night—and you can't +see him at all except as you are now." +</p> +<p> +She struggled to be free. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, you're so <i>brutal</i>!" +</p> +<p> +"I haven't begun yet—" +</p> +<p> +He drew her toward the door. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, not that—don't open it—I'll tell him—yes, I will!" +</p> +<p> +"I'm taking no more chances, and the time is short." +</p> +<p> +Still holding her closely with one arm, he opened the door. The man +stared impassively above their heads—a graven image of +unconsciousness. +</p> +<p> +"Jarvis." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir." +</p> +<p> +"Miss Milbrey wishes you to say to Mr. Shepler that she is engaged—" +</p> +<p> +"That I'm ill," she interrupted, still making little struggles to twist +from his grasp, her head still bent down. +</p> +<p> +"That she is engaged with Mr. Bines, Jarvis, and can't see him. Say it +that way—'Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't see +you.'". +</p> + +<a name="image-6"><!-- Image 6 --></a> +<p class="ctr"> +<a href="illp492.jpg"><img src="illp492_th.jpg" width="150" +alt="'Say It That Way--Miss Milbrey is Engaged With Mr. Bines and Can't See You.'"></a> +</p> + +<p> +"Yes, sir!" +</p> +<p> +He remained standing motionless, as he had been, his eyes still fixed +above them. But the eyes of Jarvis, from long training, did hot require +to be bent upon those things they needed to observe. They saw something +now that was at least two feet below their range. +</p> +<p> +The girl made a little move with her right arm, which was imprisoned +fast between them, and which some intuition led her captor not to +restrain. The firm little hand worked its way slowly up, went +creepingly over his shoulder and bent tightly about his neck. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir," repeated Jarvis, without the quiver of an eyelid, and went. +</p> +<p> +He closed the door with his free hand, and they stood as they were +until they heard the noise of the front door closing and the soft +retreating footsteps of the butler. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, you were mean—<i>mean</i>—to shame me so," and floods of tears came +again. +</p> +<p> +"I hated to do it, but I <i>had</i> to; it was a critical moment. And you +couldn't have made up your mind without it." +</p> +<p> +She sobbed weakly in his arms, but her own arm was still tight about +his neck. He felt it for the first time. +</p> +<p> +"But I <i>had</i> made up my mind—I did make it up while we talked." +</p> +<p> +They were back on the couch. He held her close and she no longer +resisted, but nestled in his arms with quick little sighs, as if +relieved from a great strain. He kissed her forehead and hair as she +dried her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Now, rest a little. Then we shall go." +</p> +<p> +"I've so much to tell you. That day at the jeweller's—well, what could +I do but take one poor last little look of you—to keep?" +</p> +<p> +"Tell me if you care for me." +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I do, I do, I do care for you. I <i>have</i>—ever since that day we +walked in the woods. I do, I <i>do</i>!" +</p> +<p> +She threw her head back and gave him her lips. +</p> +<p> +She was crying again and trying to talk. +</p> +<p> +"I did care for you, and that day I thought you were going to say +something, but you didn't—you were so distant and troubled, and seemed +not even to like me—though I felt sure you loved me. I had thought +you were going to tell me, and I'd have accepted—yes, for the +money—though I liked you so much. Why, when I first met you in that +mine and thought you were a workman, I'm not sure I wouldn't have +married you if you had asked me. But it was different again when I +found out about you. And that day in the woods I thought something had +come between us. Only after dinner you seemed kinder, and I knew at +once you thought better of me, and might even seek me—I knew it in the +way a woman knows things she doesn't know at all. I went into the +library with a candle to look into the mirror, almost sure you were +going to come. Then I heard your steps and I was so glad—but it wasn't +you-I'd been mistaken again-you still disliked me. I was so +disappointed and hurt and heartsick, and he kissed me and soothed me. +And after that directly I saw through him, and I knew I truly did love +you just as I'd wanted to love the man who would be my husband—only +all that nonsense about money that had been dinned into me so long kept +me from seeing it at first. But I was sure you didn't care for me when +they talked so about you, and that—you never <i>did</i> care for her, did +you—you <i>couldn't</i> have cared for her, could you?—and yet, after that +night, I'd such a queer little feeling as if you <i>had</i> come for me, and +had seen—" +</p> +<p> +"Surely a gentleman never sees anything he wasn't meant to see." +</p> +<p> +"I'm so glad—I should have been <i>so</i> ashamed—" +</p> +<p> +They were still a moment, while he stroked her hair. +</p> +<p> +"They'll be turning in early to-night, having to get up to-morrow and +preach sermons—what a dreary place heaven must be compared with this!" +</p> +<p> +She sat up quickly. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, I'd forgotten. How awful it is. <i>Isn't</i> it awful?" +</p> +<p> +"It will soon be over." +</p> +<p> +"But think of my people, and what's expected of me—think of Mr. +Shepler." +</p> +<p> +"Shepler's doing some hard thinking for himself by this time." +</p> +<p> +"Really, you're a dreadful person—" +</p> +<p> +There was a knock. +</p> +<p> +"The cabman outside, sir, says how long is he to wait, sir?" +</p> +<p> +"Tell him to wait all night if I don't come; tell him if he moves off +that spot I'll have his license taken away. Tell him I'm the mayor's +brother." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir." +</p> +<p> +"And, Jarvis, who's in the house besides you?" +</p> +<p> +"Miss Briggs, the maid, sir—but she's just ready to go out, sir." +</p> +<p> +"Stop her—say Miss Milbrey wishes to ask a favour of her; and Jarvis." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir!" +</p> +<p> +"Go put on that neat black street coat of yours that fits you so +beautifully in the back, and a purple cravat, and your shiny hat, and +wait for us with Briggs. We shall want you in a moment." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Mr. Bines." +</p> +<p> +She looked at him wonderingly. +</p> +<p> +"We need two witnesses, you know. I learned that from Oldaker just +now." +</p> +<p> +"But do give me a <i>moment</i>, everything is all so whirling and hazy." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I know—like the solar system in its nebulous state. Well, hurry +and make those worlds take shape. I can give you sixty seconds to find +that I'm the North Star. Ach! I have the Doctor von Herzlich been +ge-speaking with—come, come! What's the use of any more delay? I've +wasted nearly three hours here now, dilly-dallying along. But then, a +woman never does know her own mind. +</p> +<p> +"Put a thing before her—all as plain as the multiplication table—and +she must use up just so much good time telling a man that he's +crazy—and shedding tears because he won't admit that two times two are +thirty-seven." She was silent and motionless for another five minutes, +thinking intently. "Come, time's up." +</p> +<p> +She arose. +</p> +<p> +"I'm ready. I shall marry you, if you think I'm the woman to help you +in that big, new life of yours. They meant me not to know about Fred's +marriage until afterward." +</p> +<p> +He kissed her. +</p> +<p> +"I feel so rested and quiet now, as if I'd taken down a big old gate +and let the peace rush in on me. I'm sure it's right. I'm sure I can +help you." +</p> +<p> +She picked up her hat and gloves. +</p> +<p> +"Now I'll go bathe my eyes and fix my hair." +</p> +<p> +"I can't let you out of my sight, yet. I'm incredulous. Perhaps in +seventy-five or eighty years—" +</p> +<p> +"I thought you were so sure." +</p> +<p> +"While I can reach you, yes." +</p> +<p> +She gave a low, delicious little laugh. She reached both arms up around +him, pulled down his head and kissed him. +</p> +<p> +"There—<i>boy!</i>" +</p> +<p> +She took up the hat again. +</p> +<p> +"I'll be down in a moment." +</p> +<p> +"I'll be up in three, if you're not." +</p> +<p> +When she had gone he picked up an envelope and put a bill inside. +</p> +<p> +"Jarvis," he called. +</p> +<p> +The butler came up from below, dressed for the street. +</p> +<p> +"Jarvis, put this envelope in the inside of that excellent black coat +of yours and hand it—afterward—to the gentleman we're going to do +business with." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Mr. Bines." +</p> +<p> +"And put your cravat down in the back, Jarvis—it makes you look +excited the way it is now." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir; thank you, sir!" +</p> +<p> +"Is Briggs ready?" "She's waiting, sir." +</p> +<p> +"Go out and get in the carriage, both of you." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, sir!" +</p> +<p> +He stood in the hallway waiting for her. It was a quarter-past ten. In +another moment she rustled softly down to him. +</p> +<p> +"I'm trusting so much to you, and you're trusting so much to me. It's +<i>such</i> a rash step!" +</p> +<p> +"Must I—" +</p> +<p> +"No, I'm going. Couldn't we stop and take Aunt Cornelia?" +</p> +<p> +"Aunt Cornelia won't have a chance to worry about this until it's all +over. We'll stop there then, if you like." +</p> +<p> +"We'll try Doctor Prendle, then. He's almost sure to be in." +</p> +<p> +"It won't make any difference if he isn't. We'll find one. Those horses +are rested. They can go all night if they must." +</p> +<p> +"I have Grandmother Loekermann's wedding-ring—of course you didn't +fetch one. Trust a man to forget anything of importance." +</p> +<p> +His grasp of her hand during the ride did not relax. +</p> + +<br><br><br> +<a name="CH41"><!-- CH41 --></a> +<h2> + CHAPTER XLI. +</h2> + +<h3> +The New Argonauts +</h3> +<p> +Mrs. van Geist came flustering out to the carriage. +</p> +<p> +"You and Briggs may get out here, Jarvis. There, that's for you, and +that's for Briggs—and thank you both very much!" +</p> +<p> +"Child, child! what does it mean?" +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Bines is my husband, Mütterchen, and we're leaving for the West in +the morning." +</p> +<p> +The excitement did not abate for ten minutes or so. "And do say +something cheerful, dear," pleaded Avice, at parting. +</p> +<p> +"You mad child—I was always afraid you might do something like this; +but I <i>will</i> say I'm not altogether <i>sure</i> you've acted foolishly." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you, you dear old Mütterchen! and you'll come to see us—you +shall see how happy I can be with this—this boy—this Lochinvar, +Junior—I'm sure Mrs. Lochinvar always lived happily ever after." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Van Geist kissed them both. +</p> +<p> +"Back to Thirty-seventh Street, driver." +</p> +<p> +"I shall want you at seven-thirty sharp, to-morrow morning," he said, +as they alighted. "Will you be here, sure?" +</p> +<p> +"Sure, boss!" +</p> +<p> +"You'll make another one of those if you're on time." +</p> +<p> +The driver faced the bill toward the nearest street-light and scanned +it. Then he placed it tenderly in the lining of his hat, and said, +fervently: +</p> +<p> +"I'll <i>be</i> here, gent!" +</p> +<p> +"My trunks," Avice reminded him. +</p> +<p> +"And, driver, send an express wagon at seven sharp. Do you understand, +now?" +</p> +<p> +"Sure, gent, I'll have it here at seven, and be here at seven-thirty." +</p> +<p> +They went in. +</p> +<p> +"You've sent Briggs off, and I've all that packing and unpacking to +do." +</p> +<p> +"You have a husband who is handy at those things." +</p> +<p> +They went up to her room where two trunks yawned open. +</p> +<p> +Under her directions and with her help he took out the light summer +things and replaced them with heavier gowns, stout shoes, golf-capes, +and caps. +</p> +<p> +"We'll be up on the Bitter Root ranch this summer, and you'll need +heavy things," he had told her. +</p> +<p> +Sometimes he packed clumsily, and she was obliged to do his work over. +In these intervals he studied with interest the big old room and her +quaint old sampler worked in coloured worsteds that had faded to greys +and dull browns: <i>"La Nuit Porte Conseil."</i> +</p> +<p> +"Grandma Loekermann did it at the convent, ages ago," she told him. +</p> +<p> +"What a cautious young thing she must have been!" +</p> +<p> +She leaned against his shoulder. +</p> +<p> +"But she eloped with her true love, young Annekje Van Schoule; left the +home in Hickory Street one night, and went far away, away up beyond One +Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, somewhere, and then wrote them about +it." +</p> +<p> +"And left the sampler?" +</p> +<p> +"She had her husband—she didn't need any old sampler after that—<i>Le +mariage porte conseil, aussi, monsieur.</i> And now, you've married your +wife with her wedding-ring, that came from Holland years and years +ago." +</p> +<p> +It was after midnight when they began to pack. When they finished it +was nearly four. +</p> +<p> +She had laid out a dark dress for the journey, but he insisted that she +put it in a suit-case, and wear the one she had on. +</p> +<p> +"I shouldn't know you in any other—and it's the colour of your eyes. I +want that colour all over the place." +</p> +<p> +"But we shall be travelling." +</p> +<p> +"In our own car. That car has been described in the public prints as a +'suite of palatial apartments with all modern conveniences.'" +</p> +<p> +"I forgot." +</p> +<p> +"We shall be going West like the old '49-ers, seeking adventure and +gold." +</p> +<p> +"Did they go in their private cars?" +</p> +<p> +"Some of them went in rolling six-horse Concords, and some walked, and +some of them pushed their baggage across in little hand-carts, but they +had fun at it—and we shall have to work as hard when we get there." +</p> +<p> +"Dear me! And I'm so tired already. I feel quite done up." +</p> +<p> +She threw herself on the wide divan, and he fixed pillows under her +head. +</p> +<p> +"You boy! I'm glad it's all over. Let's rest a moment." +</p> +<p> +He leaned back by her, and drew her head on to his arm. +</p> +<p> +"I'm glad, too. It's the hardest day's work I ever did. Are you +comfortable? Rest." +</p> +<p> +"It's so good," she murmured, nestling on his shoulder. +</p> +<p> +"Uncle Peter took his honeymoon in a big wagon drawn by a mule team, +two hundred miles over the 'Placerville and Red Dog Trail—over the +mountains from California to Nevada. But he says he never had so happy +a time." +</p> +<p> +"He's an old dear! I'll kiss him—how is it you say—'good and plenty.' +Did our Uncle Peter elope, too?" +</p> +<p> +He chuckled. +</p> +<p> +"Not exactly. It was more like abduction complicated with assault and +battery. Uncle Peter is pretty direct in his methods. The young lady's +family thought she could do better with a bloated capitalist who owned +three-eighths of a saw-mill. But Uncle Peter and she thought she +couldn't. So Uncle Peter had to lick her father and two brothers before +he could get her away. He would have licked the purse-proud rival, too, +but the rival ran into the saw-mill he owned the three-eighths of, and +barricaded the whole eight-eighths—the-five-eighths that didn't belong +to him at all, you understand—and then he threatened through a chink +to shoot somebody if Uncle Peter didn't go off about his business. So +Uncle Peter went, not wanting any unnecessary trouble. I've always +suspected he was a pretty ready scrapper in those days, but the poor +old fellow's getting a bit childish now, with all this trouble about +losing the money, and the hard time he had in the snow last winter. By +the way, I forgot to ask, and it's almost too late now, but do you like +cats?" +</p> +<p> +"I adore them—aren't kittens the <i>dearest?"</i> +</p> +<p> +"Well—you're healthy—and your nose doesn't really fall below the +specifications, though it doesn't promise that you're any <i>too</i> +sensible,—but if you can make up for it by your infatuation for cats, +perhaps it will be all right. Of course I couldn't keep you, you know, +if you weren't very fond of cats, because Uncle Peter'd raise a row—" +</p> +<p> +She was quite still, and he noted from the change in her soft breathing +that she slept. With his free hand he carefully shook out a folded +steamer rug and drew it over her. +</p> +<p> +For an hour he watched her, feeling the arm on which she lay growing +numb. He reviewed the day and the crowded night. He <i>could</i> do +something after all. Among other things, now, he would drop a little +note to Higbee and add the news of his marriage as a postscript. She +was actually his wife. How quickly it had come. His heart was full of a +great love for her, but he could not quite repress the pride in his +achievement—and Shepler had not been sure until he was poor! +</p> +<p> +He lost consciousness himself for a little while. +</p> +<p> +When he awoke the cold light of the morning was stealing in. He was +painfully cramped, and chilled from the open window. From outside came +the loud chattering of sparrows, and far away he could hear wagons as +they rattled across a street of Belgian blocks from asphalt to asphalt. +The light had been late in coming, and he could see a sullen grey sky, +full of darker clouds. +</p> +<p> +Above the chiffonier he could see the ancient sampler. +</p> +<p> +<i>"La Nuit Porte Conseil."</i> It was true. +</p> +<p> +In the cold, pitiless light of the morning a sudden sickness of +doubting seized him. She would awake and reproach him bitterly for +coercing her. She had been right, the night before,—it was madness. +They had talked afterward so feverishly, as if to forget their +situation. Now she would face it coldly after the sleep. +</p> +<p> +<i>"La Nuit Porte Conseil."</i> Had he not been a fool? And he loved her so. +He would have her anyway—no matter what she said, now. +</p> +<p> +She stirred, and her wide-open eyes were staring up at him—staring +with hurt, troubled wonder. The amazement in them grew—she could not +understand. +</p> +<p> +He stopped breathing. His embrace of her relaxed. +</p> +<p> +And then he saw remembrance—recognition—welcome—and there blazed +into her eyes such a look of whole love as makes men thrill to all +good; such a look as makes them know they are men, and dare all great +deeds to show it. Like a sunrise, it flooded her face with dear, +wondrous beauties,—and still she looked, silent, motionless,—in an +ecstasy of pure realisation. Then her arms closed about his neck with a +swift little rushing, and he—still half-doubting, still curious—felt +himself strained to her. Still more closely she clung, putting out with +her intensity all his misgiving. +</p> +<p> +She sought his lips with her own—eager, pressing. +</p> +<p> +"Kiss me—kiss me—kiss me! Oh, it's all true—all true! My best-loved +dream has come all true! I have rested so in your arms. I never knew +rest before. I can't remember when I haven't awakened to doubt, and +worry, and heart-sickness. And now it's peace—dear, dear, dearest +dear, for ever and ever and ever." +</p> +<p> +They sat up. +</p> +<p> +"Now we shall go—get me away quickly." +</p> +<p> +It was nearly seven. Outside the sky was still all gloom. +</p> +<p> +In the rush of her reassurance he had forgotten his arm. It hung limp +from his shoulder. +</p> +<p> +"It was cramped." +</p> +<p> +"And you didn't move it?" +</p> +<p> +They beat it and kneaded it gaily together, until the fingers were full +of the rushing blood and able again to close warmly over her own little +hand. +</p> +<p> +"Now go, and let me get ready. I won't be long." +</p> +<p> +He went below to the library, and in the dim grey light picked up a +book, "The Delights of Delicate Eating." He tried another, "101 +Sandwiches." The next was "Famous Epicures of the 17th Century." On the +floor was her diary. He placed it on the table. He heard her call him +from the stairs: +</p> +<p> +"Bring me up that ring from the table, please!" +</p> +<p> +He went up and handed it to her through the narrowly opened door. +</p> +<p> +As he went down the stairs he heard the bell ring somewhere below, and +went to the door. +</p> +<p> +"Baggage!" +</p> +<p> +The two trunks were down and out. "They're to go on this car, attached +to the Chicago Express." He wrote the directions on one of his cards +and paid the man. +</p> +<p> +At seven-thirty the bell rang again. The cabman was there. +</p> +<p> +"Seven-thirty, gent!" +</p> +<p> +"Avice!" +</p> +<p> +"I'm coming. And there are two bags I wish you'd get from my room." He +let her pass him and went up for them. +</p> +<p> +She went into the library and, taking up the diary, tore out a sheet, +marked heavily upon it with a pencil around the passage she had read +the evening before, and sealed it in an envelope. She addressed it to +her father, and laid it, with a paper-weight on it, upon "The Delights +of Delicate Eating," where he would be sure to find it. +</p> +<p> +The book itself she placed on the wood laid ready in the grate to +light, touched a match to the crumpled paper underneath and put up the +blower. She stood waiting to see that the fire would burn. +</p> +<p> +Over the mantel from its yellow canvas looked above her head the +humourously benignant eyes of old Annekje Van Schoule, who had once +removed from Maspeth Kill on Long Island to New Haarlem on the Island +of Manhattan, and carried there, against her father's will, the +yellow-haired girl he had loved. His face now seemed to be pretending +unconsciousness of the rashly acted scenes he had witnessed—lest, if +he betrayed his consciousness, he should be forced, in spite of +himself, to disclose his approval—a thing not fitting for an elderly, +dignified Dutch burgher to do. +</p> +<p> +"Avice!" +</p> +<p> +"Coming!" +</p> +<p> +She took up a little package she had brought with her and went out to +meet him. +</p> +<p> +"There's one errand to do," she said, as they entered the carriage, +"but it's on our way. Have him go up Madison Avenue and deliver this." +</p> +<p> +She showed him the package addressed: "Mr. Rulon Shepler, Personal." +</p> +<p> +"And this," she said, giving him an unsealed note. "Read it, please!" +</p> +<p> +He read: +</p> +<p> +"DEAR RULON SHEPLER:—I am sure you know women too well to have thought +I loved you as a wife should love her husband. And I know your bigness +too well to believe you will feel harshly toward me for deciding that I +could not marry you. I could of course consistently attribute my change +to consideration for you. I should have been very little comfort to +you. If I should tell you just the course I had mapped out for +myself—just what latitude I proposed to claim—I am certain you would +agree with me that I have done you an inestimable favour. +</p> +<p> +"Yet I have not changed because I do not love you, but because I do +love some one else with all my heart; so that I claim no credit except +for an entirely consistent selfishness. But do try to believe, at the +same time, that my own selfishness has been a kindness to you. I send +you a package with this hasty letter, and beg you to believe that I +shall remain—and am now for the first time— +</p> +<p> +"Sincerely yours, +</p> +<p class="ctr"> +"AVICE MILBREY BINES. +</p> +<p> +"P.S. I should have preferred to wait and acquaint you with my change +of intention before marrying, but my husband's plans were made and he +would not let me delay." +</p> +<p> +He sealed the envelope, placed it securely under the cord that bound +the package, and their driver delivered it to the man who opened +Shepler's door. As their train emerged from the cut at Spuyten Duyvil +and sped to the north along the Hudson, the sun blazed forth. +</p> +<p> +"There, boy,—I knew the sun must shine to-day." +</p> +<p> +They had finished their breakfast. One-half of the pink roses were on +the table, and one from the other half was in her hair. +</p> +<p> +"I ordered the sun turned on at just this point," replied her husband, +with a large air. "I wanted you to see the last of that town under a +cloud, so you might not be homesick so soon." +</p> +<p> +"You don't know me. You don't know what a good wife I shall be." +</p> +<p> +"It takes nerve to reach up for a strange support and then kick your +environment out from under you—as Doctor von Herzlich would have said +if he'd happened to think of it." +</p> +<p> +"But you shall see how I'll help you with your work; I was capable of +it all the time." +</p> +<p> +"But I had to make you. I had to pick you up just as I did that first +time, and again down in the mine—and you were frightened because you +knew this time I wouldn't let you go." +</p> +<p> +"Only half-afraid you wouldn't—the other half I was afraid you would. +They got all mixed up—I don't know which was worse." +</p> +<p> +"Well, I admit I foozled my approach on that copper stock—but I won +you—really my winnings in Wall Street are pretty dazzling after all, +for a man who didn't know the ropes;—there's a mirror directly back of +you, Mrs. Bines, if you wish to look at them—with a pink rose over +that kissy place just at their temple." +</p> +<p> +She turned and looked, pretending to be quite unimpressed. +</p> +<p> +"I always was capable of it, I tell you,—boy!" +</p> +<p> +"What hurt me worst that night, it showed you could love <i>some</i> +one—you did have a heart—but you couldn't love me." +</p> +<p> +She did not seem to hear at first, nor to comprehend when she went back +over his words. Then she stared at him in sudden amazement. +</p> +<p> +He saw his blunder and looked foolish. +</p> +<p> +"I see—thank you for saying what you did last night—and you didn't +mind—you came to me anyway, in spite of <i>that</i>." +</p> +<p> +She arose, and would have gone around the table to him, but he met her +with open arms. +</p> +<p> +"Oh, you boy! you do love me,—you do!" +</p> +<p> +"I must buy you one of those nice, shiny black ear-trumpets at the +first stop. You can't have been hearing at all well.... See, +sweetheart,—out across the river. That's where our big West is, over +that way—isn't it fresh and green and beautiful?—and how fast you're +going to it—you and your husband. I believe it's going to be a good +game... for us both... my love..." +</p> +<h2> +THE END. +</h2> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spenders, by Harry Leon Wilson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPENDERS *** + +This file should be named 8spnd10h.htm or 8spnd10h.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8spnd11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8spnd10ah.htm + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Steve Flynn, Virginia Paque, Peter Klumper, +Tonya Allen, Thierry Alberto and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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