Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich
CHAPTER FIVE
The Love Story of Mr. Peter Spillikins
Almost any day, on Plutoria Avenue or thereabouts, you may see little Mr.
Spillikins out walking with his four tall sons, who are practically as old as
himself.
To be exact, Mr. Spillikins is twenty-four, and Bob, the oldest of the boys,
must be at least twenty. Their exact ages are no longer known, because, by a
dreadful accident, their mother forgot them. This was at a time when the boys
were all at Mr. Wackem's Academy for Exceptional Youths in the foothills of
Tennessee, and while their mother, Mrs. Everleigh, was spending the winter on
the Riviera and felt that for their own sake she must not allow herself to have
the boys with her.
But now, of course, since Mrs. Everleigh has remarried and become Mrs.
Everleigh-Spillikins there is no need to keep them at Mr. Wackem's any longer.
Mr. Spillikins is able to look after them.
Mr. Spillikins generally wears a little top hat and an English morning coat.
The boys are in Eton jackets and black trousers, which, at their mother's wish,
are kept just a little too short for them. This is because Mrs.
Everleigh-Spillikins feels that the day will come some day—say fifteen years
hence—when the boys will no longer be children, and meantime it is so nice to
feel that they are still mere boys. Bob is the eldest, but Sib the youngest is
the tallest, whereas Willie the third boy is the dullest, although this has
often been denied by those who claim that Gib the second boy is just a trifle
duller. Thus at any rate there is a certain equality and good fellowship all
round.
Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is not to be seen walking with them. She is
probably at the race-meet, being taken there by Captain Cormorant of the United
States navy, which Mr. Spillikins considers very handsome of him. Every now and
then the captain, being in the navy, is compelled to be at sea for perhaps a
whole afternoon or even several days; in which case Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is
very generally taken to the Hunt Club or the Country Club by Lieutenant Hawk,
which Mr. Spillikins regards as awfully thoughtful of him. Or if Lieutenant Hawk
is also out of town for the day, as he sometimes has to be, because he is in the
United States army, Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is taken out by old Colonel Shake,
who is in the State militia and who is at leisure all the time.
During their walks on Plutoria Avenue one may hear the four boys addressing
Mr. Spillikins as "father" and "dad" in deep bull-frog voices.
"Say, dad," drawls Bob, "couldn't we all go to the ball game?"
"No. Say, dad," says Gib, "let's all go back to the house and play five-cent
pool in the billiard-room."
"All right, boys," says Mr. Spillikins. And a few minutes later one may see
them all hustling up the steps of the Everleigh-Spillikins's mansion, quite
eager at the prospect, and all talking together.
Now the whole of this daily panorama, to the eye that can read it, represents
the outcome of the tangled love story of Mr. Spillikins, which culminated during
the summer houseparty at Castel Casteggio, the woodland retreat of Mr. and Mrs.
Newberry.
But to understand the story one must turn back a year or so to the time when
Mr. Peter Spillikins used to walk on Plutoria Avenue alone, or sit in the
Mausoleum Club listening to the advice of people who told him that he really
ought to get married.
In those days the first thing that one noticed about Mr. Peter Spillikins was
his exalted view of the other sex. Every time he passed a beautiful woman in the
street he said to himself, "I say!" Even when he met a moderately beautiful one
he murmured, "By Jove!" When an Easter hat went sailing past, or a group of
summer parasols stood talking on a leafy corner, Mr. Spillikins ejaculated, "My
word!" At the opera and at tango teas his projecting blue eyes almost popped out
of his head.
Similarly, if he happened to be with one of his friends, he would murmur, "I
say, do look at that beautiful girl," or would exclaim, "I say, don't
look, but isn't that an awfully pretty girl across the street?" or at the opera,
"Old man, don't let her see you looking, but do you see that lovely girl in the
box opposite?"
One must add to this that Mr. Spillikins, in spite of his large and bulging
blue eyes, enjoyed the heavenly gift of short sight. As a consequence he lived
in a world of amazingly beautiful women. And as his mind was focused in the same
way as his eyes he endowed them with all the virtues and graces which ought to
adhere to fifty-dollar flowered hats and cerise parasols with ivory handles.
Nor, to do him justice, did Mr. Spillikins confine his attitude to his view
of women alone. He brought it to bear on everything. Every time he went to the
opera he would come away enthusiastic, saying, "By Jove, isn't it simply
splendid! Of course I haven't the ear to appreciate it—I'm not musical, you
know—but even with the little that I know, it's great; it absolutely puts me to
sleep." And of each new novel that he bought he said, "It's a perfectly
wonderful book! Of course I haven't the head to understand it, so I didn't
finish it, but it's simply thrilling." Similarly with painting, "It's one of the
most marvellous pictures I ever saw," he would say. "Of course I've no eye for
pictures, and I couldn't see anything in it, but it's wonderful!"
The career of Mr. Spillikins up to the point of which we are speaking had
hitherto not been very satisfactory, or at least not from the point of view of
Mr. Boulder, who was his uncle and trustee. Mr. Boulder's first idea had been to
have Mr. Spillikins attend the university. Dr. Boomer, the president, had done
his best to spread abroad the idea that a university education was perfectly
suitable even for the rich; that it didn't follow that because a man was a
university graduate he need either work or pursue his studies any further; that
what the university aimed to do was merely to put a certain stamp upon a man.
That was all. And this stamp, according to the tenor of the president's
convocation addresses, was perfectly harmless. No one ought to be afraid of it.
As a result, a great many of the very best young men in the City, who had no
need for education at all, were beginning to attend college. "It marked," said
Dr. Boomer, "a revolution."
Mr. Spillikins himself was fascinated with his studies. The professors seemed
to him living wonders.
"By Jove!" he said, "the professor of mathematics is a marvel. You ought to
see him explaining trigonometry on the blackboard. You can't understand a word
of it." He hardly knew which of his studies he liked best. "Physics," he said,
"is a wonderful study. I got five per cent in it. But, by Jove! I had to work
for it. I'd go in for it altogether if they'd let me."
But that was just the trouble—they wouldn't. And so in course of time Mr.
Spillikins was compelled, for academic reasons, to abandon his life work. His
last words about it were, "Gad! I nearly passed in trigonometry!" and he always
said afterwards that he had got a tremendous lot out of the university.
After that, as he had to leave the university, his trustee, Mr. Boulder, put
Mr. Spillikins into business. It was, of course, his own business, one of the
many enterprises for which Mr. Spillikins, ever since he was twenty-one, had
already been signing documents and countersigning cheques. So Mr. Spillikins
found himself in a mahogany office selling wholesale oil. And he liked it. He
said that business sharpened one up tremendously.
"I'm afraid, Mr. Spillikins," a caller in the mahogany office would say,
"that we can't meet you at five dollars. Four seventy is the best we can do on
the present market."
"My dear chap," said Mr. Spillikins, "that's all right. After all, thirty
cents isn't much, eh what? Dash it, old man, we won't fight about thirty cents.
How much do you want?"
"Well, at four seventy we'll take twenty thousand barrels."
"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins; "twenty thousand barrels. Gad! you want a
lot, don't you? Pretty big sale, eh, for a beginner like me? I guess uncle'll be
tickled to death."
So tickled was he that after a few weeks of oil-selling Mr. Boulder urged Mr.
Spillikins to retire, and wrote off many thousand dollars from the capital value
of his estate.
So after this there was only one thing for Mr. Spillikins to do, and
everybody told him so—namely to get married. "Spillikins," said his friends at
the club after they had taken all his loose money over the card table, "you
ought to get married."
"Think so?" said Mr. Spillikins.
Goodness knows he was willing enough. In fact, up to this point Mr.
Spillikins's whole existence had been one long aspiring sigh directed towards
the joys of matrimony.
In his brief college days his timid glances had wandered by an irresistible
attraction towards the seats on the right-hand side of the class room, where the
girls of the first year sat, with golden pigtails down their backs, doing
trigonometry.
He would have married any of them. But when a girl can work out trigonometry
at sight, what use can she possibly have for marriage? None. Mr. Spillikins knew
this and it kept him silent. And even when the most beautiful girl in the class
married the demonstrator and thus terminated her studies in her second year,
Spillikins realized that it was only because the man was, undeniably, a
demonstrator and knew things.
Later on, when Spillikins went into business and into society, the same fate
pursued him. He loved, for at least six months, Georgiana McTeague, the niece of
the presbyterian minister of St. Osoph's. He loved her so well that for her sake
he temporarily abandoned his pew at St. Asaph's, which was episcopalian, and
listened to fourteen consecutive sermons on hell. But the affair got no further
than that. Once or twice, indeed, Spillikins walked home with Georgiana from
church and talked about hell with her; and once her uncle asked him into the
manse for cold supper after evening service, and they had a long talk about hell
all through the meal and upstairs in the sitting-room afterwards. But somehow
Spillikins could get no further with it. He read up all he could about hell so
as to be able to talk with Georgiana, but in the end it failed: a young minister
fresh from college came and preached at St. Osoph's six special sermons on the
absolute certainty of eternal punishment, and he married Miss McTeague as a
result of it.
And, meantime, Mr. Spillikins had got engaged, or practically so, to Adelina
Lightleigh; not that he had spoken to her, but he considered himself bound to
her. For her sake he had given up hell altogether, and was dancing till two in
the morning and studying action bridge out of a book. For a time he felt so sure
that she meant to have him that he began bringing his greatest friend, Edward
Ruff of the college football team, of whom Spillikins was very proud, up to the
Lightleighs' residence. He specially wanted Adelina and Edward to be great
friends, so that Adelina and he might ask Edward up to the house after he was
married. And they got to be such great friends, and so quickly, that they were
married in New York that autumn. After which Spillikins used to be invited up to
the house by Edward and Adelina. They both used to tell him how much they owed
him; and they, too, used to join in the chorus and say, "You know, Peter, you're
awfully silly not to get married."
Now all this had happened and finished at about the time when the Yahi-Bahi
Society ran its course. At its first meeting Mr. Spillikins had met Dulphemia
Rasselyer-Brown. At the very sight of her he began reading up the life of Buddha
and a translation of the Upanishads so as to fit himself to aspire to live with
her. Even when the society ended in disaster Mr. Spillikins's love only burned
the stronger. Consequently, as soon as he knew that Mr. and Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown
were going away for the summer, and that Dulphemia was to go to stay with the
Newberrys at Castel Casteggio, this latter place, the summer retreat of the
Newberrys, became the one spot on earth for Mr. Peter Spillikins.
Naturally, therefore, Mr. Spillikins was presently transported to the seventh
heaven when in due course of time he received a note which said, "We shall be so
pleased if you can come out and spend a week or two with us here. We will send
the car down to the Thursday train to meet you. We live here in the simplest
fashion possible; in fact, as Mr. Newberry says, we are just roughing it, but I
am sure you don't mind for a change. Dulphemia is with us, but we are quite a
small party."
The note was signed "Margaret Newberry" and was written on heavy cream paper
with a silver monogram such as people use when roughing it.
The Newberrys, like everybody else, went away from town in the summertime.
Mr. Newberry being still in business, after a fashion, it would not have looked
well for him to remain in town throughout the year. It would have created a bad
impression on the market as to how much he was making.
In fact, in the early summer everybody went out of town. The few who ever
revisited the place in August reported that they hadn't seen a soul on the
street.
It was a sort of longing for the simple life, for nature, that came over
everybody. Some people sought it at the seaside, where nature had thrown out her
broad plank walks and her long piers and her vaudeville shows. Others sought it
in the heart of the country, where nature had spread her oiled motor roads and
her wayside inns. Others, like the Newberrys, preferred to "rough it" in country
residences of their own.
Some of the people, as already said, went for business reasons, to avoid the
suspicion of having to work all the year round. Others went to Europe to avoid
the reproach of living always in America. Others, perhaps most people, went for
medical reasons, being sent away by their doctors. Not that they were ill; but
the doctors of Plutoria Avenue, such as Doctor Slyder, always preferred to send
all their patients out of town during the summer months. No well-to-do doctor
cares to be bothered with them. And of course patients, even when they are
anxious to go anywhere on their own account, much prefer to be sent there by
their doctor.
"My dear madam," Dr. Slyder would say to a lady who, as he knew, was most
anxious to go to Virginia, "there's really nothing I can do for you." Here he
spoke the truth. "It's not a case of treatment. It's simply a matter of dropping
everything and going away. Now why don't you go for a month or two to some quiet
place, where you will simply do nothing?" (She never, as he knew, did
anything, anyway.) "What do you say to Hot Springs, Virginia?—absolute quiet,
good golf, not a soul there, plenty of tennis." Or else he would say, "My dear
madam, you're simply worn out. Why don't you just drop everything and go
to Canada?—perfectly quiet, not a soul there, and, I believe, nowadays quite
fashionable."
Thus, after all the patients had been sent away, Dr. Slyder and his
colleagues of Plutoria Avenue managed to slip away themselves for a month or
two, heading straight for Paris and Vienna. There they were able, so they said,
to keep in touch with what continental doctors were doing. They probably were.
Now it so happened that both the parents of Miss Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown
had been sent out of town in this fashion. Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's distressing
experience with Yahi-Bahi had left her in a condition in which she was utterly
fit for nothing, except to go on a Mediterranean cruise, with about eighty other
people also fit for nothing.
Mr. Rasselyer-Brown himself, though never exactly an invalid, had confessed
that after all the fuss of the Yahi-Bahi business he needed bracing up, needed
putting into shape, and had put himself into Dr. Slyder's hands. The doctor had
examined him, questioned him searchingly as to what he drank, and ended by
prescribing port wine to be taken firmly and unflinchingly during the evening,
and for the daytime, at any moment of exhaustion, a light cordial such as rye
whiskey, or rum and Vichy water. In addition to which Dr. Slyder had recommended
Mr. Rasselyer-Brown to leave town.
"Why don't you go down to Nagahakett on the Atlantic?" he said.
"Is that in Maine?" said Mr. Rasselyer-Brown in horror.
"Oh, dear me, no!" answered the doctor reassuringly. "It's in New Brunswick,
Canada; excellent place, most liberal licence laws; first class cuisine and a
bar in the hotel. No tourists, no golf, too cold to swim—just the place to enjoy
oneself."
So Mr. Rasselyer-Brown had gone away also, and as a result Dulphemia
Rasselyer-Brown, at the particular moment of which we speak, was declared by the
Boudoir and Society column of the Plutorian Daily Dollar to be staying
with Mr. and Mrs. Newberry at their charming retreat, Castel Casteggio.
The Newberrys belonged to the class of people whose one aim in the summer is
to lead the simple life. Mr. Newberry himself said that his one idea of a
vacation was to get right out into the bush, and put on old clothes, and just
eat when he felt like it.
This was why he had built Castel Casteggio. It stood about forty miles from
the city, out among the wooded hills on the shore of a little lake. Except for
the fifteen or twenty residences like it that dotted the sides of the lake it
was entirely isolated. The only way to reach it was by the motor road that wound
its way among leafy hills from the railway station fifteen miles away. Every
foot of the road was private property, as all nature ought to be. The whole
country about Castel Casteggio was absolutely primeval, or at any rate as
primeval as Scotch gardeners and French landscape artists could make it. The
lake itself lay like a sparkling gem from nature's workshop—except that they had
raised the level of it ten feet, stone-banked the sides, cleared out the brush,
and put a motor road round it. Beyond that it was pure nature.
Castel Casteggio itself, a beautiful house of white brick with sweeping
piazzas and glittering conservatories, standing among great trees with rolling
lawns broken with flower-beds as the ground sloped to the lake, was perhaps the
most beautiful house of all; at any rate, it was an ideal spot to wear old
clothes in, to dine early (at 7.30) and, except for tennis parties, motor-boat
parties, lawn teas, and golf, to live absolutely to oneself.
It should be explained that the house was not called Castel Casteggio because
the Newberrys were Italian: they were not; nor because they owned estates in
Italy: they didn't nor had travelled there: they hadn't. Indeed, for a time they
had thought of giving it a Welsh name, or a Scotch. But the beautiful country
residence of the Asterisk-Thomsons had stood close by in the same primeval
country was already called Penny-gw-rydd, and the woodland retreat of the
Hyphen-Joneses just across the little lake was called Strathythan-na-Clee, and
the charming chalet of the Wilson-Smiths was called Yodel-Dudel; so it seemed
fairer to select an Italian name.
"By Jove! Miss Furlong, how awfully good of you to come down!"
The little suburban train—two cars only, both first class, for the train went
nowhere except out into the primeval wilderness—had drawn up at the diminutive
roadside station. Mr. Spillikins had alighted, and there was Miss Philippa
Furlong sitting behind the chauffeur in the Newberrys' motor. She was looking as
beautiful as only the younger sister of a High Church episcopalian rector can
look, dressed in white, the colour of saintliness, on a beautiful morning in
July.
There was no doubt about Philippa Furlong. Her beauty was of that peculiar
and almost sacred kind found only in the immediate neighbourhood of the High
Church clergy. It was admitted by all who envied or admired her that she could
enter a church more gracefully, move more swimmingly up the aisle, and pray
better than any girl on Plutoria Avenue.
Mr. Spillikins, as he gazed at her in her white summer dress and wide picture
hat, with her parasol nodding above her head, realized that after all, religion,
as embodied in the younger sisters of the High Church clergy, fills a great
place in the world.
"By Jove!" he repeated, "how awfully good of you!"
"Not a bit," said Philippa. "Hop in. Dulphemia was coming, but she couldn't.
Is that all you have with you?"
The last remark was ironical. It referred to the two quite large steamer
trunks of Mr. Spillikins that were being loaded, together with his suit-case,
tennis racket, and golf kit, on to the fore part of the motor. Mr. Spillikins,
as a young man of social experience, had roughed it before. He knew what a lot
of clothes one needs for it.
So the motor sped away, and went bowling noiselessly over the oiled road, and
turning corners where the green boughs of the great trees almost swished in
their faces, and rounding and twisting among curves of the hills as it carried
Spillikins and Philippa away from the lower domain or ordinary fields and farms
up into the enchanted country of private property and the magic castles of
Casteggio and Penny-gw-rydd.
Mr. Spillikins must have assured Philippa at least a dozen times in starting
off how awfully good it was of her to come down in the motor; and he was so
pleased at her coming to meet him that Philippa never even hinted that the truth
was that she had expected somebody else on the same train. For to a girl brought
up in the principles of the High Church the truth is a very sacred thing. She
keeps it to herself.
And naturally, with such a sympathetic listener, it was not long before Mr.
Spillikins had begun to talk of Dulphemia and his hopes.
"I don't know whether she really cares for me or not," said Mr. Spillikins,
"but I have pretty good hope. The other day, or at least about two months ago,
at one of the Yahi-Bahi meetings—you were not in that, were you?" he said
breaking off.
"Only just at the beginning," said Philippa; "we went to Bermuda."
"Oh yes, I remember. Do you know, I thought it pretty rough at the end,
especially on Ram Spudd. I liked him. I sent him two pounds of tobacco to the
penitentiary last week; you can get it in to them, you know, if you know how."
"But what were you going to say?" asked Philippa.
"Oh yes," said Mr. Spillikins. And he realized that he had actually drifted
off the topic of Dulphemia, a thing that had never happened to him before. "I
was going to say that at one of the meetings, you know, I asked her if I might
call her Dulphemia."
"And what did she say to that?" asked Philippa.
"She said she didn't care what I called her. So I think that looks pretty
good, don't you?"
"Awfully good," said Philippa.
"And a little after that I took her slippers home from the Charity Ball at
the Grand Palaver. Archie Jones took her home herself in his car, but I took her
slippers. She'd forgotten them. I thought that a pretty good sign, wasn't it?
You wouldn't let a chap carry round your slippers unless you knew him pretty
well, would you, Miss Philippa?"
"Oh no, nobody would," said Philippa. This of course, was a standing
principle of the Anglican Church.
"And a little after that Dulphemia and Charlie Mostyn and I were walking to
Mrs. Buncomhearst's musical, and we'd only just started along the street, when
she stopped and sent me back for her music—me, mind you, not Charlie. That seems
to me awfully significant."
"It seems to speak volumes," said Philippa.
"Doesn't it?" said Mr. Spillikins. "You don't mind my telling you all about
this Miss Philippa?" he added.
Incidentally Mr. Spillikins felt that it was all right to call her Miss
Philippa, because she had a sister who was really Miss Furlong, so it would have
been quite wrong, as Mr. Spillikins realized, to have called Miss Philippa by
her surname. In any case, the beauty of the morning was against it.
"I don't mind a bit," said Philippa. "I think it's awfully nice of you to
tell me about it."
She didn't add that she knew all about it already.
"You see," said Mr. Spillikins, "you're so awfully sympathetic. It makes it
so easy to talk to you. With other girls, especially with clever ones, even with
Dulphemia. I often feel a perfect jackass beside them. But I don t feel that way
with you at all."
"Don't you really?" said Philippa, but the honest admiration in Mr.
Spillikin's protruding blue eyes forbade a sarcastic answer.
"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins presently, with complete irrelevance, "I hope
you don't mind my saying it, but you look awfully well in white—stunning." He
felt that a man who was affianced, or practically so, was allowed the smaller
liberty of paying honest compliments.
"Oh, this old thing," laughed Philippa, with a contemptuous shake of her
dress. "But up here, you know, we just wear anything." She didn't say that this
old thing was only two weeks old and had cost eighty dollars, or the equivalent
of one person's pew rent at St. Asaph's for six months.
And after that they had only time, so it seemed to Mr. Spillikins, for two or
three remarks, and he had scarcely had leisure to reflect what a charming girl
Philippa had grown to be since she went to Bermuda—the effect, no doubt, of the
climate of those fortunate islands—when quite suddenly they rounded a curve into
an avenue of nodding trees, and there were the great lawn and wide piazzas and
the conservatories of Castel Casteggio right in front of them.
"Here we are," said Philippa, "and there's Mr. Newberry out on the lawn."
"Now, here," Mr. Newberry was saying a little later, waving his hand, "is
where you get what I think the finest view of the place."
He was standing at the corner of the lawn where it sloped, dotted with great
trees, to the banks of the little lake, and was showing Mr. Spillikins the
beauties of Castel Casteggio.
Mr. Newberry wore on his short circular person the summer costume of a man
taking his ease and careless of dress: plain white flannel trousers, not worth
more than six dollars a leg, an ordinary white silk shirt with a rolled collar,
that couldn't have cost more than fifteen dollars, and on his head an ordinary
Panama hat, say forty dollars.
"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins, as he looked about him at the house and the
beautiful lawn with its great trees, "it's a lovely place."
"Isn't it?" said Mr. Newberry. "But you ought to have seen it when I took
hold of it. To make the motor road alone I had to dynamite out about a hundred
yards of rock, and then I fetched up cement, tons and tons of it, and boulders
to buttress the embankment."
"Did you really!" said Mr. Spillikins, looking at Mr. Newberry with great
respect.
"Yes, and even that was nothing to the house itself. Do you know, I had to go
at least forty feet for the foundations. First I went through about twenty feet
of loose clay, after that I struck sand, and I'd no sooner got through that
than, by George! I landed in eight feet of water. I had to pump it out; I think
I took out a thousand gallons before I got clear down to the rock. Then I took
my solid steel beams in fifty-foot lengths," here Mr. Newberry imitated with his
arms the action of a man setting up a steel beam, "and set them upright and
bolted them on the rock. After that I threw my steel girders across, clapped on
my roof rafters, all steel, in sixty-foot pieces, and then just held it easily,
just supported it a bit, and let it sink gradually to its place."
Mr. Newberry illustrated with his two arms the action of a huge house being
allowed to sink slowly to a firm rest.
"You don't say so!" said Mr. Spillikins, lost in amazement at the wonderful
physical strength that Mr. Newberry must have.
"Excuse me just a minute," broke off Mr. Newberry, "while I smooth out the
gravel where you're standing. You've rather disturbed it, I'm afraid."
"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spillikins.
"Oh, not at all, not at all," said his host. "I don't mind in the least. It's
only on account of McAlister."
"Who?" asked Mr. Spillikins.
"My gardener. He doesn't care to have us walk on the gravel paths. It scuffs
up the gravel so. But sometimes one forgets."
It should be said here, for the sake of clearness, that one of the chief
glories of Castel Casteggio lay in its servants. All of them, it goes without
saying, had been brought from Great Britain. The comfort they gave to Mr. and
Mrs. Newberry was unspeakable. In fact, as they themselves admitted, servants of
the kind are simply not to be found in America.
"Our Scotch gardener," Mrs. Newberry always explained "is a perfect
character. I don't know how we could get another like him. Do you know, my dear,
he simply won't allow us to pick the roses; and if any of us walk across the
grass he is furious. And he positively refuses to let us use the vegetables. He
told me quite plainly that if we took any of his young peas or his early
cucumbers he would leave. We are to have them later on when he's finished
growing them."
"How delightful it is to have servants of that sort," the lady addressed
would murmur; "so devoted and so different from servants on this side of the
water. Just imagine, my dear, my chauffeur, when I was in Colorado, actually
threatened to leave me merely because I wanted to reduce his wages. I think it's
these wretched labour unions."
"I'm sure it is. Of course we have trouble with McAlister at times, but he's
always very reasonable when we put things in the right light. Last week, for
example, I was afraid that we had gone too far with him. He is always accustomed
to have a quart of beer every morning at half-past ten—the maids are told to
bring it out to him, and after that he goes to sleep in the little arbour beside
the tulip bed. And the other day when he went there he found that one of our
guests who hadn't been told, was actually sitting in there reading. Of course he
was furious. I was afraid for the moment that he would give notice on the
spot."
"What would you have done?"
"Positively, my dear, I don't know. But we explained to him at once that it
was only an accident and that the person hadn't known and that of course it
wouldn't occur again. After that he was softened a little, but he went off
muttering to himself, and that evening he dug up all the new tulips and threw
them over the fence. We saw him do it, but we didn't dare say anything."
"Oh no," echoed the other lady; "if you had you might have lost him."
"Exactly. And I don't think we could possibly get another man like him; at
least, not on this side of the water."
"But come," said Mr. Newberry, after he had finished adjusting the gravel
with his foot, "there are Mrs. Newberry and the girls on the verandah. Let's go
and join them."
A few minutes later Mr. Spillikins was talking with Mrs. Newberry and
Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown, and telling Mrs. Newberry what a beautiful house she
had. Beside them stood Philippa Furlong, and she had her arm around Dulphemia's
waist; and the picture that they thus made, with their heads close together,
Dulphemia's hair being golden and Philippa's chestnut-brown, was such that Mr.
Spillikins had no eyes for Mrs. Newberry nor for Castel Casteggio nor for
anything. So much so that he practically didn't see at all the little girl in
green that stood unobtrusively on the further side of Mrs. Newberry. Indeed,
though somebody had murmured her name in introduction, he couldn't have repeated
it if asked two minutes afterwards. His eyes and his mind were elsewhere.
But hers were not.
For the Little Girl in Green looked at Mr. Spillikins with wide eyes, and
when she looked at him she saw all at once such wonderful things about him as
nobody had ever seen before.
For she could see from the poise of his head how awfully clever he was; and
from the way he stood with his hands in his side pockets she could see how manly
and brave he must be; and of course there was firmness and strength written all
over him. In short, she saw as she looked such a Peter Spillikins as truly never
existed, or could exist—or at least such a Peter Spillikins as no one else in
the world had ever suspected before.
All in a moment she was ever so glad that she accepted Mrs. Newberry's
invitation to Castel Casteggio and hadn't been afraid to come. For the Little
Girl in Green, whose Christian name was Norah, was only what is called a poor
relation of Mrs. Newberry, and her father was a person of no account whatever,
who didn't belong to the Mausoleum Club or to any other club, and who lived,
with Norah, on a street that nobody who was anybody lived upon. Norah had been
asked up a few days before out of the City to give her air—which is the only
thing that can be safely and freely given to poor relations. Thus she had
arrived at Castel Casteggio with one diminutive trunk, so small and shabby that
even the servants who carried it upstairs were ashamed of it. In it were a pair
of brand new tennis shoes (at ninety cents reduced to seventy-five) and a white
dress of the kind that is called "almost evening," and such few other things as
poor relations might bring with fear and trembling to join in the simple
rusticity of the rich.
Thus stood Norah looking at Mr. Spillikins.
As for him, such is the contrariety of human things, he had no eyes for her
at all.
"What a perfectly charming house this is," Mr. Spillikins was saying. He
always said this on such occasions, but it seemed to the Little Girl in Green
that he spoke with wonderful social ease.
"I am so glad you think so," said Mrs. Newberry (this was what she always
answered); "you've no idea what work it has been. This year we put in all this
new glass in the east conservatory, over a thousand panes. Such a tremendous
business!"
"I was just telling Mr. Spillikins," said Mr. Newberry, "about the work we
had blasting out the motor road. You can see the gap where it lies better from
here, I think, Spillikins. I must have exploded a ton and a half of dynamite on
it."
"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins; "it must be dangerous work eh? I wonder you
aren't afraid of it."
"One simply gets used to it, that's all," said Newberry, shrugging his
shoulders; "but of course it is dangerous. I blew up two Italians on the last
job." He paused a minute and added musingly, "Hardy fellows, the Italians. I
prefer them to any other people for blasting."
"Did you blow them up yourself?" asked Mr. Spillikins.
"I wasn't here," answered Mr. Newberry. "In fact, I never care to be here
when I'm blasting. We go to town. But I had to foot the bill for them all the
same. Quite right, too. The risk, of course, was mine, not theirs; that's the
law, you know. They cost me two thousand each."
"But come," said Mrs. Newberry, "I think we must go and dress for dinner.
Franklin will be frightfully put out if we're late. Franklin is our butler," she
went on, seeing that Mr. Spillikins didn't understand the reference, "and as we
brought him out from England we have to be rather careful. With a good man like
Franklin one is always so afraid of losing him—and after last night we have to
be doubly careful."
"Why last night?" asked Mr. Spillikins.
"Oh, it wasn't much," said Mrs. Newberry. "In fact, it was merely an
accident. Only it just chanced that at dinner, quite late in the meal, when we
had had nearly everything (we dine very simply here, Mr. Spillikins), Mr.
Newberry, who was thirsty and who wasn't really thinking what he was saying,
asked Franklin to give him a glass of hock. Franklin said at once, 'I'm very
sorry, sir, I don't care to serve hock after the entree!'"
"And of course he was right," said Dulphemia with emphasis. "Exactly; he was
perfectly right. They know, you know. We were afraid that there might be
trouble, but Mr. Newberry went and saw Franklin afterwards and he behaved very
well over it. But suppose we go and dress? It's half-past six already and we've
only an hour."
In this congenial company Mr. Spillikins spent the next three days.
Life at Castel Casteggio, as the Newberrys loved to explain, was conducted on
the very simplest plan. Early breakfast, country fashion, at nine o'clock; after
that nothing to eat till lunch, unless one cared to have lemonade or bottled ale
sent out with a biscuit or a macaroon to the tennis court. Lunch itself was a
perfectly plain midday meal, lasting till about 1.30, and consisting simply of
cold meats (say four kinds) and salads, with perhaps a made dish or two, and,
for anybody who cared for it, a hot steak or a chop, or both. After that one had
coffee and cigarettes in the shade of the piazza and waited for afternoon tea.
This latter was served at a wicker table in any part of the grounds that the
gardener was not at that moment clipping, trimming, or otherwise using.
Afternoon tea being over, one rested or walked on the lawn till it was time to
dress for dinner.
This simple routine was broken only by irruptions of people in motors or
motor boats from Penny-gw-rydd or Yodel-Dudel Chalet.
The whole thing, from the point of view of Mr. Spillikins or Dulphemia or
Philippa, represented rusticity itself.
To the Little Girl in Green it seemed as brilliant as the Court of
Versailles; especially evening dinner—a plain home meal as the others thought
it—when she had four glasses to drink out of and used to wonder over such
problems as whether you were supposed, when Franklin poured out wine, to tell
him to stop or to wait till he stopped without being told to stop; and other
similar mysteries, such as many people before and after have meditated upon.
During all this time Mr. Spillikins was nerving himself to propose to
Dulphemia Rasselyer-Brown. In fact, he spent part of his time walking up and
down under the trees with Philippa Furlong and discussing with her the proposal
that he meant to make, together with such topics as marriage in general and his
own unworthiness.
He might have waited indefinitely had he not learned, on the third day of his
visit, that Dulphemia was to go away in the morning to join her father at
Nagahakett.
That evening he found the necessary nerve to speak, and the proposal in
almost every aspect of it was most successful.
"By Jove!" Spillikins said to Philippa Furlong next morning, in explaining
what had happened, "she was awfully nice about it. I think she must have
guessed, in a way, don't you, what I was going to say? But at any rate she was
awfully nice—let me say everything I wanted, and when I explained what a fool I
was, she said she didn't think I was half such a fool as people thought me. But
it's all right. It turns out that she isn't thinking of getting married. I asked
her if I might always go on thinking of her, and she said I might."
And that morning when Dulphemia was carried off in the motor to the station,
Mr. Spillikins, without exactly being aware how he had done it, had somehow
transferred himself to Philippa.
"Isn't she a splendid girl!" he said at least ten times a day to Norah, the
Little Girl in Green. And Norah always agreed, because she really thought
Philippa a perfectly wonderful creature. There is no doubt that, but for a
slight shift of circumstances, Mr. Spillikins would have proposed to Miss
Furlong. Indeed, he spent a good part of his time rehearsing little speeches
that began, "Of course I know I'm an awful ass in a way," or, "Of course I know
that I'm not at all the sort of fellow," and so on.
But not one of them ever was delivered.
For it so happened that on the Thursday, one week after Mr. Spillikins's
arrival, Philippa went again to the station in the motor. And when she came back
there was another passenger with her, a tall young man in tweed, and they both
began calling out to the Newberrys from a distance of at least a hundred yards.
And both the Newberrys suddenly exclaimed, "Why, it's Tom!" and rushed off to
meet the motor. And there was such a laughing and jubilation as the two
descended and carried Tom's valises to the verandah, that Mr. Spillikins felt as
suddenly and completely out of it as the Little Girl in Green herself—especially
as his ear had caught, among the first things said, the words, "Congratulate us,
Mrs. Newberry, we're engaged."
After which Mr. Spillikins had the pleasure of sitting and listening while it
was explained in wicker chairs on the verandah, that Philippa and Tom had been
engaged already for ever so long—in fact, nearly two weeks, only they had agreed
not to say a word to anybody till Tom had gone to North Carolina and back, to
see his people.
And as to who Tom was, or what was the relation between Tom and the
Newberrys, Mr. Spillikins neither knew or cared; nor did it interest him in the
least that Philippa had met Tom in Bermuda, and that she hadn't known that he
even knew the Newberry's nor any other of the exuberant disclosures of the
moment. In fact, if there was any one period rather than another when Mr.
Spillikins felt corroborated in his private view of himself, it was at this
moment.
So the next day Tom and Philippa vanished together.
"We shall be quite a small party now," said Mrs. Newberry; "in fact, quite by
ourselves till Mrs. Everleigh comes, and she won't be here for a fortnight."
At which the heart of the Little Girl in Green was glad, because she had been
afraid that other girls might be coming, whereas she knew that Mrs. Everleigh
was a widow with four sons and must be ever so old, past forty.
The next few days were spent by Mr. Spillikins almost entirely in the society
of Norah. He thought them on the whole rather pleasant days, but slow. To her
they were an uninterrupted dream of happiness never to be forgotten.
The Newberrys left them to themselves; not with any intent; it was merely
that they were perpetually busy walking about the grounds of Castel Casteggio,
blowing up things with dynamite, throwing steel bridges over gullies, and
hoisting heavy timber with derricks. Nor were they to blame for it. For it had
not always been theirs to command dynamite and control the forces of nature.
There had been a time, now long ago, when the two Newberrys had lived, both of
them, on twenty dollars a week, and Mrs. Newberry had made her own dresses, and
Mr. Newberry had spent vigorous evenings in making hand-made shelves for their
sitting-room. That was long ago, and since then Mr. Newberry, like many other
people of those earlier days, had risen to wealth and Castel Casteggio, while
others, like Norah's father, had stayed just where they were.
So the Newberrys left Peter and Norah to themselves all day. Even after
dinner, in the evening, Mr. Newberry was very apt to call to his wife in the
dusk from some distant corner of the lawn:
"Margaret, come over here and tell me if you don't think we might cut down
this elm, tear the stump out by the roots, and throw it into the ravine."
And the answer was, "One minute, Edward; just wait till I get a wrap."
Before they came back, the dusk had grown to darkness, and they had
redynamited half the estate.
During all of which time Mr. Spillikins sat with Norah on the piazza. He
talked and she listened. He told her, for instance, all about his terrific
experiences in the oil business, and about his exciting career at college; or
presently they went indoors and Norah played the piano and Mr. Spillikins sat
and smoked and listened. In such a house as the Newberry's, where dynamite and
the greater explosives were everyday matters, a little thing like the use of
tobacco in the drawing-room didn't count. As for the music, "Go right ahead,"
said Mr. Spillikins; "I'm not musical, but I don't mind music a bit."
In the daytime they played tennis. There was a court at one end of the lawn
beneath the trees, all chequered with sunlight and mingled shadow; very
beautiful, Norah thought, though Mr. Spillikins explained that the spotted light
put him off his game. In fact, it was owing entirely to this bad light that Mr.
Spillikins's fast drives, wonderful though they were, somehow never got inside
the service court.
Norah, of course, thought Mr. Spillikins a wonderful player. She was glad—in
fact, it suited them both—when he beat her six to nothing. She didn't know and
didn't care that there was no one else in the world that Mr. Spillikins could
beat like that. Once he even said to her.
"By Gad! you don't play half a bad game, you know. I think you know, with
practice you'd come on quite a lot."
After that the games were understood to be more or less in the form of
lessons, which put Mr. Spillikins on a pedestal of superiority, and allowed any
bad strokes on his part to be viewed as a form of indulgence.
Also, as the tennis was viewed in this light, it was Norah's part to pick up
the balls at the net and throw them back to Mr. Spillikins. He let her do this,
not from rudeness, for it wasn't in him, but because in such a primeval place as
Castel Casteggio the natural primitive relation of the sexes is bound to
reassert itself.
But of love Mr. Spillikins never thought. He had viewed it so eagerly and so
often from a distance that when it stood here modestly at his very elbow he did
not recognize its presence. His mind had been fashioned, as it were, to connect
love with something stunning and sensational, with Easter hats and harem skirts
and the luxurious consciousness of the unattainable.
Even at that, there is no knowing what might have happened. Tennis, in the
chequered light of sun and shadow cast by summer leaves, is a dangerous game.
There came a day when they were standing one each side of the net and Mr.
Spillikins was explaining to Norah the proper way to hold a racquet so as to be
able to give those magnificent backhand sweeps of his, by which he generally
drove the ball halfway to the lake; and explaining this involved putting his
hand right over Norah's on the handle of the racquet, so that for just half a
second her hand was clasped tight in his; and if that half-second had been
lengthened out into a whole second it is quite possible that what was already
subconscious in his mind would have broken its way triumphantly to the surface,
and Norah's hand would have stayed in his—how willingly—! for the rest of their
two lives.
But just at that moment Mr. Spillikins looked up, and he said in quite an
altered tone.
"By Jove! who's that awfully good-looking woman getting out of the motor?"
And their hands unclasped. Norah looked over towards the house and said:
"Why, it's Mrs. Everleigh. I thought she wasn't coming for another week."
"I say," said Mr. Spillikins, straining his short sight to the uttermost,
"what perfectly wonderful golden hair, eh?" "Why, it's—" Norah began, and then
she stopped. It didn't seem right to explain that Mrs. Everleigh's hair was
dyed. "And who's that tall chap standing beside her?" said Mr. Spillikins.
"I think it's Captain Cormorant, but I don't think he's going to stay. He's
only brought her up in the motor from town." "By Jove, how good of him!" said
Spillikins; and this sentiment in regard to Captain Cormorant, though he didn't
know it, was to become a keynote of his existence.
"I didn't know she was coming so soon," said Norah, and there was weariness
already in her heart. Certainly she didn't know it; still less did she know, or
anyone else, that the reason of Mrs. Everleigh's coming was because Mr.
Spillikins was there. She came with a set purpose, and she sent Captain
Cormorant directly back in the motor because she didn't want him on the
premises.
"Oughtn't we to go up to the house?" said Norah.
"All right," said Mr. Spillikins with great alacrity, "let's go."
Now as this story began with the information that Mrs. Everleigh is at
present Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins, there is no need to pursue in detail the
stages of Mr. Spillikins's wooing. Its course was swift and happy. Mr.
Spillikins, having seen the back of Mrs. Everleigh's head, had decided instantly
that she was the most beautiful woman in the world; and that impression is not
easily corrected in the half-light of a shaded drawing-room; nor across a
dinner-table lighted only with candles with deep red shades; nor even in the
daytime through a veil. In any case, it is only fair to state that if Mrs.
Everleigh was not and is not a singularly beautiful woman, Mr. Spillikins still
doesn't know it. And in point of attraction the homage of such experts as
Captain Cormorant and Lieutenant Hawk speaks for itself.
So the course of Mr. Spillikins's love, for love it must have been, ran
swiftly to its goal. Each stage of it was duly marked by his comments to Norah.
"She is a splendid woman," he said, "so sympathetic. She always seems
to know just what one's going to say."
So she did, for she was making him say it.
"By Jove!" he said a day later, "Mrs. Everleigh's an awfully fine woman,
isn't she? I was telling her about my having been in the oil business for a
little while, and she thinks that I'd really be awfully good in money things.
She said she wished she had me to manage her money for her."
This also was quite true, except that Mrs. Everleigh had not made it quite
clear that the management of her money was of the form generally known as
deficit financing. In fact, her money was, very crudely stated, nonexistent, and
it needed a lot of management.
A day or two later Mr. Spillikins was saying, "I think Mrs. Everleigh must
have had great sorrow, don't you? Yesterday she was showing me a photograph of
her little boy—she has a little boy you know—"
"Yes, I know," said Norah. She didn't add that she knew that Mrs. Everleigh
had four.
"—and she was saying how awfully rough it is having him always away from her
at Dr. Something's academy where he is."
And very soon after that Mr. Spillikins was saying, with quite a quaver in
his voice,
"By Jove! yes, I'm awfully lucky; I never thought for a moment that she'd
have me, you know—a woman like her, with so much attention and everything. I
can't imagine what she sees in me."
Which was just as well.
And then Mr. Spillikins checked himself, for he noticed—this was on the
verandah in the morning—that Norah had a hat and jacket on and that the motor
was rolling towards the door.
"I say," he said, "are you going away?"
"Yes, didn't you know?" Norah said. "I thought you heard them speaking of it
at dinner last night. I have to go home; father's alone, you know."
"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spillikins; "we shan't have any more
tennis."
"Goodbye," said Norah, and as she said it and put out her hand there were
tears brimming up into her eyes. But Mr. Spillikins, being short of sight,
didn't see them.
"Goodbye," he said.
Then as the motor carried her away he stood for a moment in a sort of
reverie. Perhaps certain things that might have been rose unformed and
inarticulate before his mind. And then, a voice called from the drawing-room
within, in a measured and assured tone,
"Peter, darling, where are you?"
"Coming," cried Mr. Spillikins, and he came.
On the second day of the engagement Mrs. Everleigh showed to Peter a little
photograph in a brooch.
"This is Gib, my second little boy," she said.
Mr. Spillikins started to say, "I didn't know—" and then checked himself and
said, "By Gad! what a fine-looking little chap, eh? I'm awfully fond of boys."
"Dear little fellow, isn't he?" said Mrs. Everleigh. "He's really rather
taller than that now, because this picture was taken a little while ago."
And the next day she said, "This is Willie, my third boy," and on the day
after that she said, "This is Sib, my youngest boy; I'm sure you'll love him."
"I'm sure I shall," said Mr. Spillikins. He loved him already for being the
youngest.
And so in the fulness of time—nor was it so very full either, in fact, only
about five weeks—Peter Spillikins and Mrs. Everleigh were married in St. Asaph's
Church on Plutoria Avenue. And the wedding was one of the most beautiful and
sumptuous of the weddings of the September season. There were flowers, and
bridesmaids in long veils, and tall ushers in frock-coats, and awnings at the
church door, and strings of motors with wedding-favours on imported chauffeurs,
and all that goes to invest marriage on Plutoria Avenue with its peculiar
sacredness. The face of the young rector, Mr. Fareforth Furlong, wore the added
saintliness that springs from a five-hundred dollar fee. The whole town was
there, or at least everybody that was anybody; and if there was one person
absent, one who sat by herself in the darkened drawing-room of a dull little
house on a shabby street, who knew or cared?
So after the ceremony the happy couple—for were they not so?—left for New
York. There they spent their honeymoon. They had thought of going—it was Mr.
Spillikins's idea—to the coast of Maine. But Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins said that
New York was much nicer, so restful, whereas, as everyone knows, the coast of
Maine is frightfully noisy.
Moreover, it so happened that before the Everleigh-Spillikinses had been more
than four or five days in New York the ship of Captain Cormorant dropped anchor
in the Hudson; and when the anchor of that ship was once down it generally
stayed there. So the captain was able to take the Everleigh-Spillikinses about
in New York, and to give a tea for Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins on the deck of his
vessel so that she might meet the officers, and another tea in a private room of
a restaurant on Fifth Avenue so that she might meet no one but himself.
And at this tea Captain Cormorant said, among other things, "Did he kick up
rough at all when you told him about the money?"
And Mrs. Everleigh, now Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins, said, "Not he! I think he
is actually pleased to know that I haven't any. Do you know, Arthur, he's really
an awfully good fellow," and as she said it she moved her hand away from under
Captain Cormorant's on the tea-table.
"I say," said the Captain, "don't get sentimental over him."
So that is how it is that the Everleigh-Spillikinses came to reside on
Plutoria Avenue in a beautiful stone house, with a billiard-room in an extension
on the second floor. Through the windows of it one can almost hear the click of
the billiard balls, and a voice saying, "Hold on, father, you had your shot."