The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories

by George Barr McCutcheon

  Pettingill’s scheme for lighting the room was particularly happy. For the benefit of his walls and the four lovely Monets which Monty had purchased at his instigation, he had designed a ceiling screen of heavy rich glass in tones of white that grew into yellow and dull green. It served to conceal the lights in the daytime, and at night the glare of electricity was immensely softened and made harmonious by passing through it. It gave a note of quiet to the picture, which caused even these men and women, who had been here and there and seen many things, to draw in their breath sharply. Altogether the effect manifestly made an impression.

  Such an environment had its influence upon the company. It went far toward making the dinner a success. From far in the distance came the softened strains of Hungarian music, and never had the little band played the “Valse Amoureuse” and the “Valse Bleue” with the spirit it put into them that night. Yet the soft clamor in the dining-room insistently ignored the emotion of the music. Monty, bored as he was between the two most important dowagers at the feast, wondered dimly what invisible part it played in making things go. He had a vagrant fancy that without it there would have been no zest for talk, no noisy competition to overcome, no hurdles to leap. As it was, the talk certainly went well, and Mrs. Dan inspected the result of her work from time to time with smiling satisfaction. From across the table she heard Colonel Drew’s voice,—”Brewster evidently objects to a long siege. He is planning to carry us by assault.”

  Mrs. Dan turned to “Subway” Smith, who was at her right—the latest addition to her menagerie. “What is this friend of yours?” she asked. “I have never seen such complex simplicity. This new plaything has no real charm for him. He is breaking it to find out what it is made of. And something will happen when he discovers the sawdust.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about him,” said “Subway,” easily; “Monty’s at least a good sportsman. He won’t complain, whatever happens. He’ll accept the reckoning and pay the piper.”

  It was only toward the end of the evening that Monty found his reward in a moment with Barbara Drew. He stood before her, squaring his shoulders belligerently to keep away intruders, and she smiled up at him in that bewildering fashion of hers. But it was only for an instant, and then came a terrifying din from the dining-room, followed by the clamor of crashing glass. The guests tried for a moment to be courteously oblivious, but the noise was so startling that such politeness became farcical. The host, with a little laugh, went down the hall. It was the beautiful screen near the ceiling that had fallen. A thousand pieces of shattered glass covered the place. The table was a sickening heap of crushed orchids and sputtering candles. Frightened servants rushed into the room from one side just as Brewster entered from the other. Stupefaction halted them. After the first pulseless moment of horror, exclamations of dismay went up on all sides. For Monty Brewster the first sensation of regret was followed by a diabolical sense of joy.

  “Thank the Lord!” he said softly in the hush.

  The look of surprise he encountered in the faces of his guests brought him up with a jerk.

  “That it didn’t happen while we were dining,” he added with serene thankfulness. And his nonchalance scored for him in the idle game he was playing.

  CHAPTER VII

  A LESSON IN TACT

  Mr. Brewster’s butler was surprised and annoyed. For the first time in his official career he had unbent so far as to manifest a personal interest in the welfare of his master. He was on the verge of assuming a responsibility which makes any servant intolerable. But after his interview he resolved that he would never again overstep his position. He made sure that it should be the last offense. The day following the dinner Rawles appeared before young Mr. Brewster and indicated by his manner that the call was an important one. Brewster was seated at his writing-table, deep in thought. The exclamation that followed Rawles’s cough of announcement was so sharp and so unmistakably fierce that all other evidence paled into insignificance. The butler’s interruption came at a moment when Monty’s mental arithmetic was pulling itself out of a very bad rut, and the cough drove it back into chaos.

  “What is it,” he demanded, irritably. Rawles had upset his calculations to the extent of seven or eight hundred dollars.

  “I came to report h’an unfortunate condition h’among the servants, sir,” said Rawies, stiffening as his responsibility became more and more weighty. He had relaxed temporarily upon entering the room.

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “The trouble’s h’ended, sir.”

  “Then why bother me about it?”

  “I thought it would be well for you to know, sir. The servants was going to ask for ’igher wiges today, sir.”

  “You say they were going to ask. Aren’t they?” And Monty’s eyes lighted up at the thought of new possibilities.

  “I convinced them, sir, as how they were getting good pay as it is, sir, and that they ought to be satisfied. They’d be a long time finding a better place and as good wiges. They ’aven’t been with you a week, and here they are strikin’ for more pay. Really, sir, these American servants—”

  “Rawles, that’ll do!” exploded Monty. The butler’s chin went up and his cheeks grew redder than ever.

  “I beg pardon, sir,” he gasped, with a respectful but injured air.

  “Rawles, you will kindly not interfere in such matters again. It is not only the privilege, but the duty of every American to strike for higher pay whenever he feels like it, and I want it distinctly understood that I am heartily in favor of their attitude. You will kindly go back and tell them that after a reasonable length of service their wiges—I mean wages—shall be increased. AND DON’T MEDDLE AGAIN, Rawles.”

  Late that afternoon Brewster dropped in at Mrs. DeMille’s to talk over plans for the next dinner. He realized that in no other way could he squander his money with a better chance of getting its worth than by throwing himself bodily into society. It went easily, and there could be only one asset arising from it in the end—his own sense of disgust.

  “So glad to see you, Monty,” greeted Mrs. Dan, glowingly, coming in with a rush. “Come upstairs and I’ll give you some tea and a cigarette. I’m not at home to anybody.”

  “That’s very good of you, Mrs. Dan,” said he, as they mounted the stairs. “I don’t know what I’d do without your help.” He was thinking how pretty she was.

  “You’d be richer, at any rate,” turning to smile upon him from the upper landing. “I was in tears half the night, Monty, over that glass screen,” she said, after finding a comfortable place among the cushions of a divan. Brewster dropped into a roomy, lazy chair in front of her and handed her a cigarette, as he responded carelessly:

  “It amounted to nothing. Of course, it was very annoying that it should happen while the guests were still there.” Then he added, gravely: “In strict confidence, I had planned to have it fall just as we were pushing back our chairs, but the confounded thing disappointed me. That’s the trouble with these automatic climaxes; they usually hang fire. It was to have been a sort of Fall of Babylon effect, you know.”

  “Splendid! But like Babylon, it fell at the wrong time.”

  For a lively quarter of an hour they discussed people about town, liberally approving the slandered and denouncing the slanderers. A still busier quarter of an hour ensued when together they made up the list of dinner guests. He moved a little writing-table up to the divan, and she looked on eagerly while he wrote down the names she suggested after many puckerings of her fair, aristocratic brow, and then drew lines through them when she changed her mind. Mrs. DeMille handled her people without gloves in making up Monty’s lists. The dinners were not hers, and she could afford to do as she pleased with his; he was broad and tall and she was not slow to see that he was indifferent. He did not care who the guests were, or how they came; he merely wished to make sure of their presence. His only blunder was the rather diffident recommendation that Barbara Drew be asked again. If he observed that Mrs. Dan’s h
ead sank a little closer to the paper, he attached no importance to the movement; he could not see that her eyes grew narrow, and he paid no attention to the little catch in her breath.

  “Wouldn’t that be a little—just a little pronounced?” she asked, lightly enough.

  “You mean—that people might talk?”

  “She might feel conspicuously present.”

  “Do you think so? We are such good friends, you know.”

  “Of course, if you’d like to have her,” slowly and doubtfully, “why, put her name down. But you evidently haven’t seen that.” Mrs. Dan pointed to a copy of the Trumpet which lay on the table.

  When he had handed her the paper she said, “‘The Censor’ is growing facetious at your expense.”

  “I am getting on in society with a vengeance if that ass starts in to write about me. Listen to this”—she had pointed out to him the obnoxious paragraph—”If Brewster Drew a diamond flush, do you suppose he’d catch the queen? And if he caught her, how long do you think she’d remain Drew? Or, if she Drew Brewster, would she be willing to learn such a game as Monte?”

  The next morning a writer who signed himself “The Censor” got a thrashing and one Montgomery Brewster had his name in the papers, surrounded by fulsome words of praise.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE FORELOCK OF TIME

  One morning not long after the incidents just related, Brewster lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, deep in thought. There was a worried pucker on his forehead, half-hidden by the rumpled hair, and his eyes were wide and sleepless. He had dined at the Drews’ the evening before and had had an awakening. As he thought of the matter he could recall no special occurrence that he could really use as evidence. Colonel and Mrs. Drew had been as kind as ever and Barbara could not have been more charming. But something had gone wrong and he had endured a wretched evening.

  “That little English Johnnie was to blame,” he argued. “Of course, Barbara had a right to put any one she liked next to her, but why she should have chosen that silly ass is more than I know. By Jove, if I had been on the other side I’ll warrant his grace would have been lost in the dust.”

  His brain was whirling, and for the first time he was beginning to feel the unpleasant pangs of jealousy. The Duke of Beauchamp he especially disliked, although the poor man had hardly spoken during the dinner. But Monty could not be reconciled. He knew, of course, that Barbara had suitors by the dozen, but it had never occurred to him that they were even seriously considered. Notwithstanding the fact that his encounter with “The Censor” had brought her into undesirable notice, she forgave him everything after a moment’s consideration. The first few wrenches of resentment were overbalanced by her American appreciation of chivalry, however inspired. “The Censor” had gone for years unpunished; his coarse wit being aimed at every one who had come into social prominence. So pungent and vindictive was his pen that other men feared him, and there were many who lived in glass houses in terror of a fusilade. Brewster’s prompt and sufficient action had checked the pernicious attacks, and he became a hero among men and women. After that night there was no point to “The Censor’s” pen. Monty’s first qualms of apprehension were swept away when Colonel Drew himself hailed him the morning after the encounter and, in no unmeasured terms, congratulated him upon his achievement, assuring him that Barbara and Mrs. Drew approved, although they might lecture him as a matter of form.

  But on this morning, as he lay in his bed, Monty was thinking deeply and painfully. He was confronted by a most embarrassing condition and he was discussing it soberly with himself. “I’ve never told her,” he said to himself, “but if she doesn’t know my feeling she is not as clever as I think. Besides, I haven’t time to make love to her now. If it were any other girl I suppose I’d have to, but Babs, why, she must understand. And yet—damn that Duke!”

  In order to woo her properly he would be compelled to neglect financial duties that needed every particle of brain-energy at his command. He found himself opposed at the outset by a startling embarrassment, made absolutely clear by the computations of the night before. The last four days of indifference to finance on one side, and pampering the heart on the other, had proved very costly. To use his own expression, he had been “set back” almost eight thousand dollars. An average like that would be ruinous.

  “Why, think of it,” he continued. “For each day sacrificed to Barbara I must deduct something like twenty-five hundred dollars. A long campaign would put me irretrievably in the hole; I’d get so far behind that a holocaust couldn’t put me even. She can’t expect that of me, yet girls are such idiots about devotion, and of course she doesn’t know what a heavy task I’m facing. And there are the others—what will they do while I am out of the running? I cannot go to her and say, ‘Please, may I have a year’s vacation? I’ll come back next September.’ On the other hand, I shall surely neglect my business if she expects me to compete. What pleasure shall I get out of the seven millions if I lose her? I can’t afford to take chances. That Duke won’t have seven millions next September, it’s true, but he’ll have a prodigious argument against me, about the twenty-first or second.”

  Then a brilliant thought occurred to him which caused him to ring for a messenger-boy with such a show of impatience that Rawles stood aghast. The telegram which Monty wrote was as follows:

  SWEARENGEN JONES,

  Butte, Montana

  May I marry and turn all property over to wife, providing she will have me?

  MONTGOMERY BREWSTER.

  “Why isn’t that reasonable?” he asked himself after the boy had gone. “Making property over to one’s wife is neither a loan nor is it charity. Old Jones might call it needless extravagance, since he’s a bachelor, but it’s generally done because it’s good business.” Monty was hopeful.

  Following his habit in trouble, he sought Margaret Gray, to whom he could always appeal for advice and consolation. She was to come to his next dinner-party, and it was easy to lead up to the subject in hand by mentioning the other guests.

  “And Barbara Drew,” he concluded, after naming all the others. They were alone in the library, and she was drinking in the details of the dinner as he related them.

  “Wasn’t she at your first dinner?” she asked, quickly.

  He successfully affected mild embarrassment.

  “Yes.”

  “She must be very attractive.” There was no venom in Peggy’s heart.

  “She is attractive. In fact, she’s one of the best, Peggy,” he said, paving the way.

  “It’s too bad she seems to care for that little Duke.”

  “He’s a bounder,” he argued.

  “Well, don’t take it to heart. You don’t have to marry him,” and Peggy laughed.

  “But I do take it to heart, Peggy,” said Monty, seriously. “I’m pretty hard hit, and I want your help. A sister’s advice is always the best in a matter of this sort.”

  She looked into his eyes dully for an instant, not realizing the full importance of his confession.

  “You, Monty?” she said, incredulously.

  “I’ve got it bad, Peggy,” he replied, staring hard at the floor. She could not understand the cold, gray tone that suddenly enveloped the room. The strange sense of loneliness that came over her was inexplicable. The little something that rose in her throat would not be dislodged, nor could she throw off the weight that seemed pressing down upon her. He saw the odd look in her eyes and the drawn, uncertain smile on her lips, but he attributed them to wonder and incredulity. Somehow, after all these years, he was transformed before her very eyes; she was looking upon a new personality. He was no longer Montgomery, the brother, but she could not explain how and when the change crept over her. What did it all mean? “I am very glad if it will make you happy, Monty,” she said slowly, the gray in her lips giving way to red once more. “Does she know?”

  “I haven’t told her in so many words, Peggy, but—but I’m going to this evening,” he announced, lame
ly.

  “This evening?”

  “I can’t wait,” Monty said as he rose to go. “I’m glad you’re pleased, Peggy; I need your good wishes. And, Peggy,” he continued, with a touch of boyish wistfulness, “do you think there’s a chance for a fellow? I’ve had the very deuce of a time over that Englishman.”

  It was not quite easy for her to say, “Monty, you are the best in the world. Go in and win.”

  From the window she watched him swing off down the street, wondering if he would turn to wave his hand to her, his custom for years. But the broad back was straight and uncompromising. His long strides carried him swiftly out of sight, but it was many minutes before she turned her eyes, which were smarting a little, from the point where he was lost in the crowd. The room looked ashen to her as she brought her mind back to it, and somehow things had grown difficult.

  When Montgomery reached home he found this telegram from Mr. Jones: