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."