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THE FIFTH WHEEL
[Illustration: "'Why, Breck, don't be absurd! I wouldn't _marry_ you for
anything in the world'"--_Page 24_]
THE
FIFTH WHEEL
_A NOVEL_
BY
OLIVE HIGGINS PROUTY
AUTHOR OF
"BOBBIE, GENERAL MANAGER"
[Illustration]
_WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JAMES MONTGOMERY FLAGG_
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1916, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_Copyright, 1915, 1916, by_
THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages._
DEDICATED
TO
MY MOTHER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. RUTH VARS COMES OUT 1
II. BRECKENRIDGE SEWALL 10
III. EPISODE OF A SMALL DOG 18
IV. A BACK-SEASON DÉBUTANTE 27
V. THE UNIMPORTANT FIFTH WHEEL 36
VI. BRECK SEWALL AGAIN 44
VII. THE MILLIONS WIN 50
VIII. THE HORSE-SHOW 56
IX. CATASTROPHE 69
X. A UNIVERSITY TOWN 80
XI. A WALK IN THE RAIN 90
XII. A DINNER PARTY 101
XIII. LUCY TAKES UP THE NARRATIVE 112
XIV. BOB TURNS OUT A CONSERVATIVE 124
XV. ANOTHER CATASTROPHE 135
XVI. A FAMILY CONFERENCE 142
XVII. RUTH GOES TO NEW YORK 156
XVIII. A YEAR LATER 166
XIX. RUTH RESUMES HER OWN STORY 177
XX. THE FIFTH WHEEL GAINS WINGS 181
XXI. IN THE SEWALL MANSION 198
XXII. THE PARADE 206
XXIII. AN ENCOUNTER WITH BRECK 212
XXIV. THE OPEN DOOR 222
XXV. MOUNTAIN CLIMBING 232
XXVI. THE POT OF GOLD 239
XXVII. VAN DE VERE'S 248
XXVIII. A CALL FROM BOB JENNINGS 258
XXIX. LONGINGS 266
XXX. AGAIN LUCY NARRATES 274
XXXI. RUTH DRAWS CONCLUSIONS 282
XXXII. BOB DRAWS CONCLUSIONS TOO 291
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'Why, Breck, don't be absurd! I wouldn't _marry_ you
for anything in the world'" _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
"'Men seem to want to make just nice soft pussy-cats
out of us, with ribbons round our necks, and hear
us purr'" 128
"Straight ahead she gazed; straight ahead she rode;
unafraid, eager, hopeful; the flag her only staff" 170
"I was the only one in her whole establishment whom
she wasn't obliged to treat as a servant and menial" 202
THE FIFTH WHEEL
CHAPTER I
RUTH VARS COMES OUT
I spend my afternoons walking alone in the country. It is sweet and
clean out-of-doors, and I need purifying. My wanderings disturb Lucy.
She is always on the lookout for me, in the hall or living-room or on
the porch, especially if I do not come back until after dark.
She needn't worry. I am simply trying to fit together again the
puzzle-picture of my life, dumped out in terrible confusion in
Edith's sunken garden, underneath a full September moon one midnight
three weeks ago.
Lucy looks suspiciously upon the portfolio of theme paper I carry
underneath my arm. But in this corner of the world a portfolio of theme
paper and a pile of books are as common a part of a girl's paraphernalia
as a muff and a shopping-bag on a winter's day on Fifth Avenue. Lucy
lives in a university town. The university is devoted principally to the
education of men, but there is a girls' college connected with it, so
if I am caught scribbling no one except Lucy needs to wonder why.
I have discovered a pretty bit of woods a mile west of Lucy's house, and
an unexpected rustic seat built among a company of murmurous young pines
beside a lake. Opposite the seat is an ecstatic little maple tree, at
this season of the year flaunting all the pinks and reds and yellows of
a fiery opal. There, sheltered by the pines, undisturbed except by a
scurrying chipmunk or two or an inquisitive, gray-tailed squirrel, I sit
and write.
I heard Lucy tell Will the other day (Will is my intellectual
brother-in-law) that she was really anxious about me. She believed I was
writing poetry! "And whenever a healthy, normal girl like Ruth begins to
write poetry," she added, "after a catastrophe like hers, look out for
her. Sanitariums are filled with such."
Poetry! I wish it were. Poetry indeed! Good heavens! I am writing a
defense.
I am the youngest member of a large grown-up family, all married now
except myself and a confirmed bachelor brother in New York. We are the
Vars of Hilton, Massachusetts, cotton mill owners originally, but now a
little of everything and scattered from Wisconsin to the Atlantic Ocean.
I am a New England girl, not the timid, resigned type one usually thinks
of when the term is used, but the kind that goes away to a fashionable
boarding-school when she is sixteen, has an elaborate coming-out party
two years later, and then proves herself either a success or a failure
according to the number of invitations she receives and the frequency
with which her dances are cut into at the balls. She is supposed to feel
grateful for the sacrifices that are made for her début, and the best
way to show it is by becoming engaged when the time is right to a man
one rung higher up on the social ladder than she.
I had no mother to guide me through these intricacies. My pilot was my
ambitious sister-in-law, Edith, who married Alec when I was fifteen,
remodeled our old 240 Main Street, Hilton, Mass., into a very grand and
elegant mansion and christened it The Homestead. Hilton used to be just
a nice, typical New England city. It had its social ambitions and
discontents, I suppose, but no more pronounced than in any community of
fifty or sixty thousand people. It was the Summer Colony with its
liveried servants, expensive automobiles, and elaborate entertaining
that caused such discontent in Hilton.
I've seen perfectly happy and good-natured babies made cross and
irritable by putting them into a four-foot-square nursery yard. The wall
of wealth and aristocracy around Hilton has had somewhat the same effect
upon the people that it confines. If a social barrier of any sort
appears upon the horizon of my sister-in-law Edith, she is never happy
until she has climbed over it. She was in the very midst of scaling that
high and difficult barrier built up about Hilton by the Summer
Colonists, when she married Alec.
It didn't seem to me a mean or contemptible object. To endeavor to place
our name--sunk into unjust oblivion since the reverses of our
fortune--in the front ranks of social distinction, where it belonged,
impressed me as a worthy ambition. I was glad to be used in Edith's
operations. Even as a little girl something had rankled in my heart,
too, when our once unrestricted fields and hills gradually became posted
with signs such as, "Idlewold, Private Grounds," "Cedarcrest, No
Picnickers Allowed," "Grassmere, No Trespassing."
I wasn't eighteen when I had my coming-out party. It was decided, and
fully discussed in my presence, that, as young as I was, chance for
social success would be greater this fall than a year hence, when the
list of débutantes among our summer friends promised to be less
distinguished. It happened that many of these débutantes lived in Boston
in the winter, which isn't very far from Hilton, and Edith had already
laid out before me her plan of campaign in that city, where she was
going to give me a few luncheons and dinners during the month of
December, and possibly a Ball if I proved a success.
If I proved a success! No young man ever started out in business with
more exalted determination to make good than I. I used to lie awake
nights and worry for fear the next morning's mail would not contain some
cherished invitation or other. And when it did, and Edith came bearing
it triumphantly up to my room, where I was being combed, brushed and
polished by her maid, and kissed me ecstatically on the brow and
whispered, "You little winner, you!" I could have run up a flag for
relief and joy.
I kept those invitations stuck into the mirror of my dressing-table
as if they were badges of honor. Edith used to make a point of having
her luncheon and dinner guests take off their things in my room. I
knew it was because of the invitations stuck in the mirror, and I was
proud to be able to return something for all the money and effort she
had expended.
It appeared incumbent upon me as a kind of holy duty to prove myself a
remunerative investment. The long hours spent in the preparation of my
toilette; the money paid out for my folderols; the deceptions we had to
resort to for the sake of expediency; everything--schemes, plans and
devices--all appeared to me as simply necessary parts of a big and
difficult contest I had entered and must win. It never occurred to me
then that my efforts were unadmirable. When at the end of my first
season Edith and I discovered to our delight, when the Summer Colony
returned to our hills, that our names had become fixtures on their
exclusive list of invitations, I felt as much exaltation as any
runner who ever entered a Marathon and crossed the white tape among
the first six.
There! That's the kind of New England girl I am. I offer no excuses. I
lay no blame upon my sister-in-law. There are many New England girls
just like me who have the advantage of mothers--tender and solicitous
mothers too. But even mothers cannot keep their children from catching
measles if there's an epidemic--not unless they move away. The social
fever in my community was simply raging when I was sixteen, and of
course I caught it.
Even my education was governed by the demands of society. The
boarding-school I went to was selected because of its reputation for
wealth and exclusiveness. I practised two hours a day on the piano, had
my voice trained, and sat at the conversation-French table at school,
because Edith impressed upon me that such accomplishments would be found
convenient and convincing. I learned to swim and dive, play tennis and
golf, ride horseback, dance and skate, simply because if I was efficient
in sports I would prove popular at summer hotels, country clubs and
winter resorts. Edith and I attended symphony concerts in Boston every
Friday afternoon, and opera occasionally, not because of any special
passion for music, but to be able to converse intelligently at dinner
parties and teas.
It was not until I had been out two seasons that I met Breckenridge
Sewall. When Edith introduced me to society I was younger than the other
girls of my set, and to cover up my deficiency in years I affected a
veneer of worldly knowledge and sophistication that was misleading. It
almost deceived myself. At eighteen I had accepted as a sad truth the
wickedness of the world, and especially that of men. I was very blasé,
very resigned--at least the two top layers of me were. Down underneath,
way down, I know now I was young and innocent and hopeful. I know now
that my first meeting with Breckenridge Sewall was simply one of the
stratagems that the contest I had entered required of me. I am convinced
that there was no thought of anything but harmless sport in my
encounter.
Breckenridge Sewall's mother was the owner of Grassmere, the largest and
most pretentious estate that crowns our hills. Everybody bowed down to
Mrs. Sewall. She was the royalty of the Hilton Summer Colony. Edith's
operations had not succeeded in piercing the fifty thousand dollar
wrought-iron fence that surrounded the acres of Grassmere. We had never
been honored by one of Mrs. F. Rockridge Sewall's heavily crested
invitations. We had drunk tea in the same drawing-room with her; we had
been formally introduced on one occasion; but that was all. She imported
most of her guests from New York and Newport. Even the Summer Colonists
considered an invitation from Mrs. Sewall a high mark of distinction.
Her only son Breckenridge was seldom seen in Hilton. He preferred
Newport, Aix les Bains, or Paris. It was reported among us girls that he
considered Hilton provincial and was distinctly bored at any attempt to
inveigle him into its society. Most of us had never met him, but we all
knew him by sight. Frequently during the summer months he might be seen
speeding along the wide state road that leads out into the region of
Grassmere, seated in his great, gray, deep-purring monster, hatless,
head ducked down, hair blown straight back and eyes half-closed to
combat the wind.
One afternoon Edith and I were invited to a late afternoon tea at
Idlewold, the summer residence of Mrs. Leonard Jackson. I was wearing a
new gown which Edith had given me. It had been made at an expensive
dressmaker's of hers in Boston. I remember my sister-in-law exclaimed as
we strolled up the cedar-lined walk together, "My, but you're stunning
in that wistaria gown. It's a joy to buy things for you, Ruth. You set
them off so. I just wonder who you'll slaughter _this_ afternoon."
It was that afternoon that I met Breckenridge Sewall.
It was a week from that afternoon that two dozen American Beauties
formed an enormous and fragrant center-piece on the dining-room table at
old 240 Main Street. Suspended on a narrow white ribbon above the roses
Edith had hung from the center light a tiny square of pasteboard. It
bore in engraved letters the name of Breckenridge Sewall.
The family were deeply impressed when they came in for dinner. The
twins, Oliver and Malcolm, who were in college at the time, were
spending part of their vacation in Hilton; and my sister Lucy was there
too. There was quite a tableful. I can hear now the Oh's and Ah's as I
sat nonchalantly nibbling a cracker.
"Not too fast, Ruth, not too fast!" anxious Alec had cautioned.
"For the love o' Mike! Hully G!" had ejaculated Oliver and Malcolm,
examining the card.
"O Ruth, tell us about it," my sister Lucy in awed tones had exclaimed.
I shrugged. "There's nothing to tell," I said. "I met Mr. Sewall at a
tea not long ago, as one is apt to meet people at teas, that's all."
Edith from the head of the table, sparkling, too joyous even to attempt
her soup, had sung out, "I'm proud of you, rascal! You're a wonder, you
are! Listen, people, little sister here is going to do something
splendid one of these days--she is!"