WORK WANTED
It seemed to Archie, as he surveyed his position at the end of the
first month of his married life, that all was for the best in the best
of all possible worlds. In their attitude towards America, visiting
Englishmen almost invariably incline to extremes, either detesting all
that therein is or else becoming enthusiasts on the subject of the
country, its climate, and its institutions. Archie belonged to the
second class. He liked America and got on splendidly with Americans
from the start. He was a friendly soul, a mixer; and in New York, that
city of mixers, he found himself at home. The atmosphere of
good-fellowship and the open-hearted hospitality of everybody he met
appealed to him. There were moments when it seemed to him as though New
York had simply been waiting for him to arrive before giving the word
to let the revels commence.
Nothing, of course, in this world is perfect; and, rosy as were the
glasses through which Archie looked on his new surroundings, he had to
admit that there was one flaw, one fly in the ointment, one individual
caterpillar in the salad. Mr. Daniel Brewster, his father-in-law,
remained consistently unfriendly. Indeed, his manner towards his new
relative became daily more and more a manner which would have caused
gossip on the plantation if Simon Legree had exhibited it in his
relations with Uncle Tom. And this in spite of the fact that Archie, as
early as the third morning of his stay, had gone to him and in the most
frank and manly way, had withdrawn his criticism of the Hotel
Cosmopolis, giving it as his considered opinion that the Hotel
Cosmopolis on closer inspection appeared to be a good egg, one of the
best and brightest, and a bit of all right.
“A credit to you, old thing,” said Archie cordially.
“Don’t call me old thing!” growled Mr. Brewster.
“Right-o, old companion!” said Archie amiably.
Archie, a true philosopher, bore this hostility with fortitude, but it
worried Lucille.
“I do wish father understood you better,” was her wistful comment when
Archie had related the conversation.
“Well, you know,” said Archie, “I’m open for being understood any time
he cares to take a stab at it.”
“You must try and make him fond of you.”
“But how? I smile winsomely at him and what not, but he doesn’t
respond.”
“Well, we shall have to think of something. I want him to realise what
an angel you are. You _are_ an angel, you know.”
“No, really?”
“Of course you are.”
“It’s a rummy thing,” said Archie, pursuing a train of thought which
was constantly with him, “the more I see of you, the more I wonder how
you can have a father like—I mean to say, what I mean to say is, I wish
I had known your mother; she must have been frightfully attractive.”
“What would really please him, I know,” said Lucille, “would be if you
got some work to do. He loves people who work.”
“Yes?” said Archie doubtfully. “Well, you know, I heard him
interviewing that chappie behind the desk this morning, who works like
the dickens from early morn to dewy eve, on the subject of a mistake in
his figures; and, if he loved him, he dissembled it all right. Of
course, I admit that so far I haven’t been one of the toilers, but the
dashed difficult thing is to know how to start. I’m nosing round, but
the openings for a bright young man seem so scarce.”
“Well, keep on trying. I feel sure that, if you could only find
something to do, it doesn’t matter what, father would be quite
different.”
It was possibly the dazzling prospect of making Mr. Brewster quite
different that stimulated Archie. He was strongly of the opinion that
any change in his father-in-law must inevitably be for the better. A
chance meeting with James B. Wheeler, the artist, at the Pen-and-Ink
Club seemed to open the way.
To a visitor to New York who has the ability to make himself liked it
almost appears as though the leading industry in that city was the
issuing of two-weeks’ invitation-cards to clubs. Archie since his
arrival had been showered with these pleasant evidences of his
popularity; and he was now an honorary member of so many clubs of
various kinds that he had not time to go to them all. There were the
fashionable clubs along Fifth Avenue to which his friend Reggie van
Tuyl, son of his Florida hostess, had introduced him. There were the
businessmen’s clubs of which he was made free by more solid citizens.
And, best of all, there were the Lambs’, the Players’, the Friars’, the
Coffee-House, the Pen-and-Ink,—and the other resorts of the artist, the
author, the actor, and the Bohemian. It was in these that Archie spent
most of his time, and it was here that he made the acquaintance of J.
B. Wheeler, the popular illustrator.
To Mr. Wheeler, over a friendly lunch, Archie had been confiding some
of his ambitions to qualify as the hero of one of the
Get-on-or-get-out-young-man-step-lively-books.
“You want a job?” said Mr. Wheeler.
“I want a job,” said Archie.
Mr. Wheeler consumed eight fried potatoes in quick succession. He was
an able trencherman.
“I always looked on you as one of our leading lilies of the field,” he
said. “Why this anxiety to toil and spin?”
“Well, my wife, you know, seems to think it might put me one-up with
the jolly old dad if I did something.”
“And you’re not particular what you do, so long as it has the outer
aspect of work?”
“Anything in the world, laddie, anything in the world.”
“Then come and pose for a picture I’m doing,” said J. B. Wheeler. “It’s
for a magazine cover. You’re just the model I want, and I’ll pay you at
the usual rates. Is it a go?”
“Pose?”
“You’ve only got to stand still and look like a chunk of wood. You can
do that, surely?”
“I can do that,” said Archie.
“Then come along down to my studio to-morrow.”
“Right-o!” said Archie.