All the morning papers spread themselves on the story and thereby gained
the respect of those present at the meeting whose names were mentioned.
Only one of the journals featured Grace Goodchild. Two dwelt strongly on
the ten-thousand-dollar coupon and on the fact that the wealth of those
present at the Granite Presbyterian Church aggregated $3,251,280,000.
One pure-food featurer played up the ideal meal, and two the hope that
at last charity would be discriminating.
At 9.14 A.M. messages began to rain down on H. R. They came by livened
youth, by telephone, and by secretaries.
"Why," asked the Fitz-Marlton, "was not our chef considered enough? Why
drag in others?"
"How does it happen that our fifty-thousand-dollars-a-year Piccolini,
who possesses eighteen decorations from crowned heads, is not one of the
Public Menu Commission? Don't you want the best?" This came from the
Vandergilt in writing that looked like ornamental spaghetti.
"Please call at your earliest convenience and see what we give for
$17.38 in the way of a substantial breakfast," laconically invited Herr
Bummerlich of the Pastoral.
Caspar Weinpusslacher called in person. He asked, reproachfully:
"How it comes, Mr. Rutchers, that your best friend--"
"Weinie," interrupted H. R., "this will cost you two thousand five
hundred tickets for your thirty-cent meal. You are put down as one of
the best three restaurateurs, together with Perry's and the
Robespierre."
"But say, Mr. Rutchers, two thousand five hundred--" began Weinie,
trying to look angry at the extortion. He was rich now; he was even one
of the sights of New York.
"Three thousand! That's what your haggling has done," cut in H. R., with
the cold determination that made him so formidable.
"All right!" And Caspar ran out of the room. A terrible man, this. But
Frau Weinpusslacher would be in society now.
"I trust you will not be misled by _newspaper scientists_ into fool
dietetics," wrote McAppen Dix, M.D., the hygiene expert of an afternoon
paper.
H. R. promptly stopped reading the letters and told one of his
stenographers, "Reply to all telephone inquiries that the personnel of
the commission has not yet been definitely decided upon."
The three highest-salaried chefs in New York, their emoluments duly
quadrupled by the reporters after eating sample ideal luncheons, the
three best restaurateurs, and the three leading experts on stomachic
functions had their names printed as "Probable Public Menu Commission"
by the afternoon prints.
Doubtless in order not to be accused of plagiarism each afternoon paper
published a different set of names. Tentative menus also were given, to
be repudiated by H. R. and by indignant competitors in the next
morning's papers.
That is how, in its glorious march to charity, all New York began to
take an interest in menus. It was the first symptom of an awakened civic
conscience and intelligent humanitarianism. "Tell me what you eat and I
will tell you what you are," long ago observed Brillat-Savarin. H. R.
wrote it for the reporters. It furnished the text for learned editorial
sermons.
When Andrew Barrett ventured to express his admiration, H. R. murmured:
"Plausible, persistent, and picturesque."
"I don't quite get you," said Barrett.
"Watch me and learn," retorted H. R.
Other men have disregarded persistence, but H. R. did not. He kept up
the firing; no broadside, but one big gun at a time--once a day. As a
result, the H. R. plan for feeding the hungry of New York assumed a
serious aspect. The right bill of fare would change potential Socialists
into sensible citizens. This was so obviously true that everybody said
no living man could do it. But everybody anxiously looked for the
publication of the Public Menu Commission's report. It thus became news
plus suspense.
The moment H. R. had selected the personnel of the commission he went to
the Goodchild house.
"Frederick, tell Miss Goodchild to come down at once. I have only a
minute to stay. Make haste!"
The imperturbable English menial actually ran.
Grace rushed down in alarm. Frederick's incoherent words had made her
fear it was a message from her dressmaker telling why it was absolutely
impossible to have it ready in time as promised under oath.
She petrified herself when she beheld the man who had made her famous.
She did this in order not to betray her glad relief.
"Oh!"
"Grace!" exclaimed H. R., fervently. He quickly approached her, took her
hand and led her into her own drawing-room. He then waved his disengaged
left at all the chairs with an air that said, "I give all this
magnificence to you!" He waved again and commanded, "Sit down!"
She obeyed, but he did not let go her right hand. He sat beside her.
Just as she was about to pull it away indignantly he patted it twice
very kindly and himself laid it on her own lap.
Her anger was on the very brink of turning itself into oratory when he
stood up, squarely before her, clenched his fists in order to hold
himself in a vanadium-steel clutch, and whispered, huskily:
"Merciful Heaven, but you're beautiful!"
The vocal storm, checked for an instant by his extraordinary exhibition
of self-control, gave him time to go on: "Don't look at me! Don't you
know how beautiful you are? It isn't fair!"
He turned from her, walked over to one of the windows, and stared out of
it.
It showed more than self-control. It showed respect. And there are times
when a New York girl likes to feel that the man who wishes to marry her
also respects her. Grace knew it would be absurd to ring for a
policeman; as absurd as to encourage H. R. to stay. And she really had
not studied him cold-bloodedly. She looked at his back and wondered.
Presently H. R. turned from the window and with a semblance of composure
said to her:
"If you will scold me, or laugh at me, or turn your back on me, I'll
find it easier to speak calmly."
Since such was the case, she decided not to do any of the things he
desired her to do. She also said nothing. It is a very wise woman who,
being beautiful, can keep her mouth shut.
"Grace, you and I are now at the door of the church. Our wedding will be
positively a national event. Have you read the papers? Did you see what
I have undertaken to do for your sake?"
She turned away her head. But she heard him say, with the calmness of a
man who is sure of himself, and therefore to be respected:
"I am cool again. You may turn your head this way."
Her foot was tap-tapping the polar-bear skin eighty-four times to the
minute. She was trying to find a way of getting rid of him once for all.
She did not desire more sensational newspaper articles, and she realized
that she must be more than careful if she was not to supply the material
for them. She was clever enough to realize that this was not a man to be
shooed away, chickenwise. What had seemed so easy to do was in truth an
appalling problem.
"Listen, Grace. For your sake I gave to New York free sandwiches."
She sniffed before she could help it.
"You are right," he admitted, "even if it made you famous"--she was
unmoved--"and me rich!"
She started slightly. She had never thought of the business end of his
crusade. The motive is everything, in love as in murder.
"You are right," he pursued. "But, really, I am not bragging about it.
But now I'm going to give free dinners. Millions are affected-- I mean
millions of dollars, not people. But I must have your help. Even your
da--
"Sir!" began the loyal daughter, angrily.
"_Dad_, I was going to say, not _damn_, as you naturally assumed," he
explained, with dignity. "Even dad is on the Mammoth Hunger Feast
Commission. I put him on. When he sees I got the other bank presidents
he'll stay on. But I'll tell you why I came to see you--"
"Uninvited," she frowned.
"Of course. I haven't asked for the latch-key. By the way, is this house
big enough for the wedding reception?" he pondered, anxiously.
"It is--for mine," she said, pointedly. Then she wondered why she didn't
order him away. The reason was that she couldn't. He wasn't that kind of
man!
"That's good," he exclaimed with relief. "Well, I want you to sell
tickets. You read about the tickets for the Mammoth Hunger Feast?"
"No! And I don't wish to know anything about it."
"Quite so," he said, approvingly. "That being the case, you know all
about it. The tickets are to be sold by the one hundred perfectly
beautiful girls in New York. You head the list."
She turned her face to him, a sneer on her lips. But before she could
speak he said, apologetically:
"I know it isn't a subtle compliment. It happens to be a fact. There is
going to be tremendous pressure brought to bear on me for places on the
corps. I tell you this because your best friends will drive you crazy
asking you to use your influence with me. People who decry favoritism
always expect favors. I'd do anything for you. But I can't have any but
perfectly beautiful ones. I simply can't!"
She looked at him with irrepressible interest. Then, remembering her
position, said, coldly, "Will you please leave now and never come back?"
He went on: "It is going to make enemies for you. That will be your
first payment for being famous. You will be Number One of the perfectly
beautiful hundred because God made you what you are and not because you
are my wife--"
"I am not!"
"--to be. You didn't let me finish. Tell your friends you can't. If they
pester you, tell 'em flatly you won't. And for Heaven's sake don't use
the photograph of your pearls any more, nor the Crane portrait. Use the
picture _Vogue_ had last week. Or get some fresh ones and give La Touche
an order to supply 'em to the reporters. They won't cost you a cent that
way, because they print his name. Good-by, Grace."
He held out his hand. She quickly put hers behind her back. His face
thereat lighted up.
"Ah, you love me!" he exclaimed. "It was only a question of time,
Empress. And you will never know how much I love you until you realize
what it costs me to go away from here, unkissing, unkissed, and yet
without regrets! But some day--" He paused, and then, with a fierce
hunger that made his voice thick, "Some day I'll _eat_ you!"
He walked out. She made an instinctive movement toward him, but checked
herself. As he left the room she confronted the mirror and looked at
herself.
It brought the usual mood of kindliness.
She forgave him.
She rang for Frederick. "The Menaud motor, at once!" and went up-stairs
to telephone. If the reporters had to use photographs, she couldn't stop
them.
Ten minutes later she had kindly given La Touche the photographer
eighteen poses.
La Touche thanked her with the perfervid sincerity of a man whose
irreducible minimum is forty-eight dollars a dozen. Then he asked,
anxiously:
"In case the reporters--"
"I suppose they'd get them, anyhow." She spoke cynically.
"Not unless they stole 'em," he denied, dignifiedly. "We never give any
out without permission. Of course they'd use snapshots, which are not
always--er--artistic."
Remembering that she had been snapped when she had a veil on and also
with her mouth open, as all mouths must be in active speech, she told
him in a bored tone:
"It doesn't interest me."
"Thank you, mademoiselle! Thank you!" effusively exclaimed the artist.
"It is no wonder--"
She turned on him a cold, haughty stare.
He was all confusion.
"_Pardon!_ I--I-- Monsieur Rutgers--" he stammered. "I--I-- He--"
She left the shop, a vindictive look in her wonderful eyes. She hated
H. R. Was she merely the advertised vulgarity of that unspeakable man
whom her family so foolishly had not jailed? What had he made of her?
She might not mind being called beautiful by the newspapers, but--
The photographer's liveried flunky on the sidewalk opened the door of
her motor.
Nine pedestrians, two of them male, stopped.
"That's Grace Goodchild!" hissed one of the women, tensely.
"See her?" loudly asked another.
In the time consumed between the opening of the car's door and her
taking her seat eleven more New-Yorkers gathered about the Menaud.
"Home!" she snapped, angrily.
The photographer's flunky stepped away to tell the chauffeur. Instantly
a young man's head was thrust through the window of the car. Behind him
crowded a dozen disgusting beasts--female.
"You're a pippin!" came from the young man's face a foot from her own.
She shrank back. "Say, _he's_ right! I wisht I was in his--" Then the
motor started and nearly, but, alas! not quite, decapitated the
loathsome compatriot.
If this was fame, she didn't wish any of it, she decided.
"I hate him!" she said to the cut-glass flower-holder. "He has given me
this absurd notoriety and-- What delays us?"
She looked out of the window.
They were halted at Thirty-fourth Street. Presently the traffic
policeman's whistle blew. The motor started again.
She looked at the policeman. He instantly touched his helmet to her. And
she saw also that he nodded eagerly to his mounted colleague across the
street.
The man on horseback also saluted her militarily!
She bowed to him. She had to, being well-bred. She also smiled. She was
of the logical sex.
"Nevertheless, I hate--" But she left her thought unfinished in her
quick desire to lie to herself.
"The policeman must know papa," she said, aloud, to show H. R. what she
thought of him.
And that made her wonder what H. R. had up his sleeve now. What did he
mean by saying that her troubles were only beginning and that she soon
would feel the heavy price of fame? What absurd thing was that about the
perfectly beautiful hundred and the tickets and the Beauty Commission
and the free sandwiches--hateful word!--and the free dinners, and the--
She almost ran up to her room, pretending not to hear the voices of her
tea-drinking friends in the Dutch room. In her boudoir she quickly read
all the newspaper clippings. She learned all about the Mammoth Hunger
Feast because, this being the second time, she now read intelligently,
instead of looking for a certain name.
If H. R. could do all he said he would, he would be a wonder. And he was
a very clever chap, anyhow.
Her father must be wrong.
Mr. Goodchild himself could never get the newspapers to say about him
all the nice things they said about H. R. And Bishop Phillipson and the
fathers of girls she knew, and people she had heard of and painters and
novelists and--er--people were helping H. R.
The tickets and the ten-thousand-dollar coupons and the ideal menu!
"He _is_ clever!" she admitted, and smiled. Then she decided, "If he
makes me ridiculous--" and frowned. "I could kill him!" she said,
calmly, as befits a Christian assassin. That desire compelled her to
think of H. R. and of what he had said from their first meeting at the
bank. He had said much and had done more. In the end she spoke aloud:
"I wonder if he really loves me?"
A knock at the door was the only answer--a servant who came to tell her
that Mrs. Goodchild wished her to know they were waiting for her
downstairs in the Dutch room.
"Very well," she said to the servant. To herself she said, firmly, "Even
if he loves me and is everything he should be I can never marry a man
who has made me feel like a theatrical poster!"
Her determination was adamantine. To break it H. R. must be more than
clever.