THAT MISERABLE MONEY
In the evening, after the Martin girls had gone to their rooms, Miss
Maggie and Mr. Smith faced the thing squarely.
“Of course,” he began with a sigh, “I’m really not out of the woods
at all. Blissfully happy as I am, I’m really deeper in the woods than
ever, for now I’ve got you there with me, to look out for. However
successfully John Smith might dematerialize into nothingness—Maggie
Duff can’t.”
“No, I know she can’t,” admitted Miss Maggie soberly.
“Yet if she marries John Smith she’ll have to—and if she doesn’t marry
him, how’s Stanley G. Fulton going to do his courting? He can’t come
here.”
“But he must!” Miss Maggie looked up with startled eyes. “Why, Mr.
Smith, you’ll _have_ to tell them—who you are. You’ll have to tell
them right away.”
The man made a playfully wry face.
“I shall be glad,” he observed, “when I shan’t have to be held off at
the end of a ‘Mr.’! However, we’ll let that pass—until we settle the
other matter. Have you given any thought as to _how_ I’m going to
tell Cousin Frank and Cousin James and Cousin Flora that I am Stanley
G. Fulton?”
“No—except that you must do it,” she answered decidedly. “I don’t think
you ought to deceive them another minute—not another minute.”
“Hm-m.” Mr. Smith’s eyes grew reflective. “And had you thought—as to
what would happen when I did tell them?”
“Why, n-no, not particularly, except that—that they naturally wouldn’t
like it, at first, and that you’d have to explain—just as you did to
me—why you did it.”
“And do you think they’ll like it any better—when I do explain? Think!”
Miss Maggie meditated; then, a little tremulously she drew in her
breath. She lifted startled eyes to his face.
“Why, you’d have to tell them that—that you did it for a test, wouldn’t
you?”
“If I told the truth—yes.”
“And they’d know—they couldn’t help knowing—that they had failed to
meet it adequately.”
“Yes. And would that help matters any—make things any happier, all
around?”
“No—oh, no,” she frowned despairingly.
“Would it do anybody any _real_ good, now? Think of that.”
“N-no,” she admitted reluctantly, “except that—that you’d be doing
right.”
“But _would_ I be doing right? And another thing—aside from the
mortification, dismay, and anger of my good cousins, have you thought
what I’d be bringing on you?”
“_Me!_”
“Yes. In less than half a dozen hours after the Blaisdells knew that
Mr. John Smith was Stanley G. Fulton, Hillerton would know it. And
in less than half a dozen more hours, Boston, New York, Chicago,—to
say nothing of a dozen lesser cities,—would know it—if there didn’t
happen to be anything bigger on foot. Headlines an inch high would
proclaim the discovery of the missing Stanley G. Fulton, and the fine
print below would tell everything that happened, and a great deal that
didn’t happen, in the carrying-out of the eccentric multi-millionaire’s
extraordinary scheme of testing his relatives with a hundred thousand
dollars apiece to find a suitable heir. Your picture would adorn the
front page of the yellowest of yellow journals, and—”
“_My_ picture! Oh, no, no!” gasped Miss Maggie.
“Oh, yes, yes,” smiled the man imperturbably. “You’ll be in it, too.
Aren’t you the affianced bride of Mr. Stanley G. Fulton? I can see them
now: ‘In Search of an Heir and Finds a Wife.’—‘Charming Miss Maggie
Duff Falls in Love with Plain John Smith,’ and—”
“Oh, no, no,” moaned Miss Maggie, shrinking back as if already the
lurid headlines were staring her in the face.
Mr. Smith laughed.
“Oh, well, it might not be so bad as that, of course. But you never can
tell. Undoubtedly there are elements for a pretty good story in the
case, and some man, with nothing more important to write up, is bound
to make the most of it somewhere. Then other papers will copy. There’s
sure to be unpleasant publicity, my dear, if the truth once leaks out.”
“But what—what _had_ you planned to do?” she faltered, shuddering
again.
“Well, I _had_ planned something like this: pretty quick, now,
Mr. Smith was to announce the completion of his Blaisdell data, and,
with properly grateful farewells, take his departure from Hillerton. He
would go to South America. There he would go inland on some sort of a
simple expedition with a few native guides and carriers, but no other
companion. Somewhere in the wilderness he would shed his beard and his
name, and would emerge in his proper person of Stanley G. Fulton and
promptly take passage for the States. Of course, upon the arrival in
Chicago of Mr. Stanley G. Fulton, there would be a slight flurry at
his appearance, and a few references to the hundred-thousand-dollar
gifts to the Eastern relatives, and sundry speculations as to the
why and how of the exploring trip. There would be various rumors and
alleged interviews; but Mr. Stanley G. Fulton never was noted for
his communicativeness, and, after a very short time, the whole thing
would be dismissed as probably another of the gentleman’s well-known
eccentricities. And there it would end.”
“Oh, I see,” murmured Miss Maggie, in very evident relief. “That would
be better—in some ways; only it does seem terrible not to—to tell them
who you are.”
“But we have just proved that to do that wouldn’t bring happiness
anywhere, and would bring misery everywhere, haven’t we?”
“Y-yes.”
“Then why do it?—particularly as by not doing it I am not defrauding
anybody in the least. No; that part isn’t worrying me a bit now—but
there is one point that does worry me very much.”
“What do you mean? What is it?”
“Yourself. My scheme gets Stanley G. Fulton back to life and Chicago
very nicely; but it doesn’t get Maggie Duff there worth a cent! Maggie
Duff can’t marry Mr. John Smith in Hillerton and arrive in Chicago as
the wife of Stanley G. Fulton, can she?”
“N-no, but he—he can come back and get her—if he wants her.” Miss
Maggie blushed.
“If he wants her, indeed!” (Miss Maggie blushed all the more at the
method and the fervor of Mr. Smith’s answer to this.) “Come back as
Mr. Stanley G. Fulton, you mean?” went on Mr. Smith, smiling at Miss
Maggie’s hurried efforts to smooth her ruffled hair. “Too risky, my
dear! He’d look altogether too much like—like Mr. John Smith.”
“But your beard will be gone—I wonder how I shall like you without a
beard.” She eyed him critically.
Mr. Smith laughed and threw up his hands with a doleful shrug.
“That’s what comes of courting as one man and marrying as another,” he
groaned. Then, sternly: “I’ll warn you right now, Maggie Duff, that
Stanley G. Fulton is going to be awfully jealous of John Smith if you
don’t look out.”
“He should have thought of that before,” retorted Miss Maggie, her eyes
mischievous. “But, tell me, wouldn’t you _ever_ dare to come—in
your proper person?”
“Never!—or, at least, not for some time. The beard would be gone, to be
sure; but there’d be all the rest to tattle—eyes, voice, size, manner,
walk—everything; and smoked glasses couldn’t cover all that, you know.
Besides, glasses would be taboo, anyway. They’d only result in making
me look more like John Smith than ever. John Smith, you remember, wore
smoked glasses for some time to hide Mr. Stanley G. Fulton from the
ubiquitous reporter. No, Mr. Stanley G. Fulton can’t come to Hillerton.
So, as Mahomet can’t go to the mountain, the mountain must come to
Mahomet.”
“Meaning—?” Miss Maggie’s eyes were growing dangerously mutinous.
“That you will have to come to Chicago—yes.”
“And court you? No, sir—thank you!”
Mr. Smith chuckled softly.
“I love you with your head tilted that way.” (Miss Maggie promptly
tilted it the other.) “Or that, either, for that matter,” continued Mr.
Smith genially. “However, speaking of courting—Mr. Fulton will do that,
all right, and endeavor to leave nothing lacking, either as to quantity
or quality. Think, now. Don’t you know any one in Chicago? Haven’t you
got some friend that you can visit?”
“No!” Miss Maggie’s answer was prompt and emphatic—too prompt and too
emphatic for unquestioning acceptance.
“Oh, yes, you have,” asserted the man cheerfully. “I don’t know her
name—but she’s there. She’s waving a red flag from your face this
minute! Now, listen. Well, turn your head away, if you like—if you can
listen better that way,” he went on tranquilly paying no attention to
her little gasp. “Well, all you have to do is to write the lady you’re
coming, and go. Never mind who she is—Mr. Stanley G. Fulton will find a
way to meet her. Trust him for that! Then he’ll call and meet you—and
be so pleased to see you! The rest will be easy. There’ll be a regular
whirlwind courtship then—calls, dinners, theaters, candy, books,
flowers! Then Mr. Stanley G. Fulton will propose marriage. You’ll be
immensely surprised, of course, but you’ll accept. Then we’ll get
married,” he finished with a deep sigh of satisfaction.
“_Mr. Smith_!” ejaculated Miss Maggie faintly.
“Say, _can’t_ you call me anything—” he began wrathfully, but
interrupted himself. “However, it’s better that you don’t, after all.
Because I’ve got to be ‘Mr. Smith’ as long as I stay here. But you wait
till you meet Mr. Stanley G. Fulton in Chicago! Now, what’s her name,
and where does she live?”
Miss Maggie laughed in spite of herself, as she said severely: “Her
name, indeed! I’m afraid Mr. Stanley G. Fulton is so in the habit of
having his own way that he forgets he is still Mr. John Smith. However,
there _is_ an old schoolmate,” she acknowledged demurely.
“Of course there is! Now, write her at once, and tell her you’re
coming.”
“But she—she may not be there.”
“Then get her there. She’s _got_ to be there. And, listen. I think
you’d better plan to go pretty soon after I go to South America. Then
you can be there when Mr. Stanley G. Fulton arrives in Chicago and
can write the news back here to Hillerton. Oh, they’ll get it in the
papers, in time, of course; but I think it had better come from you
first. You see—the reappearance on this earth of Mr. Stanley G. Fulton
is going to be of—of some moment to them, you know. There is Mrs.
Hattie, for instance, who is counting on the rest of the money next
November.”
“Yes, I know, it will mean a good deal to them, of course. Still, I
don’t believe Hattie is really expecting the money. At any rate, she
hasn’t said anything about it very lately—perhaps because she’s been
too busy bemoaning the pass the present money has brought them to.”
“Yes, I know,” frowned Mr. Smith, with a gloomy sigh. “That miserable
money!”
“No, no—I didn’t mean to bring that up,” apologized Miss Maggie
quickly, with an apprehensive glance into his face. “And it wasn’t
miserable money a bit! Besides, Hattie has—has learned her lesson, I’m
sure, and she’ll do altogether differently in the new home. But, Mr.
Smith, am I never to—to come back here? Can’t we come back—ever?”
“Indeed we can—some time, by and by, when all this has blown over,
and they’ve forgotten how Mr. Smith looks. We can come back then.
Meanwhile, you can come alone—a _very_ little. I shan’t let you
leave me very much. But I understand; you’ll have to come to see your
friends. Besides, there are all those playgrounds for the babies and
cleaner milk for the streets, and—”
“Cleaner milk for the streets, indeed!”
“Eh? What? Oh, yes, it _was_ the milk for the babies, wasn’t
it?” he teased. “Well, however that may be you’ll have to come back
to superintend all those things you’ve been wanting to do so long.
But”—his face grew a little wistful—“you don’t want to spend too much
time here. You know—Chicago has a few babies that need cleaner milk.”
“Yes, I know, I know!” Her face grew softly luminous as it had grown
earlier in the afternoon.
“So you can bestow some of your charity there; and—”
“It isn’t charity,” she interrupted with suddenly flashing eyes. “Oh,
how I hate that word—the way it’s used, I mean. Of course, the real
charity means love. Love, indeed! I suppose it was _love_ that
made John Daly give one hundred dollars to the Pension Fund Fair—after
he’d jewed it out of those poor girls behind his counters! And Mrs.
Morse went around everywhere telling how kind dear Mr. Daly was to
give so much to charity! _Charity_! Nobody wants charity—except
a few lazy rascals like those beggars of Flora’s! But we all want our
_rights_. And if half the world gave the other half its rights
there wouldn’t _be_ any charity, I believe.”
“Dear, dear! What have we here? A rabid little Socialist?” Mr. Smith
held up both hands in mock terror. “I shall be petitioning her for my
bread and butter, yet!”
“Nonsense! But, honestly, Mr. Smith, when I think of all that
money”—her eyes began to shine again—“and of what we can do with it,
I—I just can’t believe it’s so!”
“But you aren’t expecting that twenty millions are going to right all
the wrongs in the world, are you?” Mr. Smith’s eyes were quizzical.
“No, oh, no; but we can help _some_ that we know about. But it
isn’t that I just want to _give_, you know. We must get behind
things—to the causes. We must—”
“We must make the Mr. Dalys pay more to their girls before they pay
anything to pension funds, eh?” laughed Mr. Smith, as Miss Maggie came
to a breathless pause.
“Exactly!” nodded Miss Maggie earnestly. “Oh, can’t you _see_ what
we can do—with that twenty million dollars?”
Mr. Smith, his gaze on Miss Maggie’s flushed cheeks and shining eyes,
smiled tenderly. Then with mock severity he frowned.
“I see—that I’m being married for my money—after all!” he scolded.
“Pooh!” sniffed Miss Maggie, so altogether bewitchingly that Mr. Smith
gave her a rapturous kiss.