"If you want Hannibal, perhaps papa would oblige you. I certainly would do all I could to persuade him."
CHAPTER VI.
"HOW THE WOMEN STARE!"
The next day Archie Weil lunched with Lawrence Gouger. He wanted to talk with his friend about the young author and auth.o.r.ess. Gouger listened with interest to the story he had to relate, and nodded approval when it appeared that Archie had behaved admirably thus far in relation to Miss Millicent.
"Do you know anything about Mr. Fern?" he asked, when the other had reached a period.
"Nothing."
"Well, neither did I, a week ago, but I have taken pains to inform myself. He is a highly respectable elderly party, who deals in wool. He married a very beautiful lady, who has now been dead eight or ten years and he lives altogether in the society of his two daughters. If you succeed in getting Millicent"s book on the counters you will earn his everlasting grat.i.tude. They say he is not literary enough himself to be a judge of its merits, and if she has fifty copies to present to the family friends it will probably be all he will ask."
Mr. Weil uttered a low whistle.
"I don"t know what the family friends will say of it," he replied, "but I call it pretty warm stuff. If the list includes many prudes they will hardly thank the girl for sending such a firebrand into their houses."
"Pshaw!" said Gouger. "The world is getting used to that sort of thing, and they won"t mind it a bit. Besides, they will be so lost in admiration of their cousin"s name on the cover that they will think of nothing else. What did you make out of her? Is she as innocent as I predicted?"
Archie poured out a gla.s.s of Ba.s.s" ale and sipped it slowly.
"Quite," he said, as he put it down on the table. "And she"s no dunce, either." He went on to tell of the trap he had fallen into. "I"m dying with impatience to get her and Roseleaf together. They"d make an idealic couple."
Mr. Gouger inquired what he was waiting for.
"Oh, I want to do the thing right," said Weil. "I want to learn her as thoroughly as I can, before I bring him upon the stage. It will take three or four evenings more to hear the rest of her novel, and another to discuss it. I shall get around to him in about a fortnight, at the rate things are going. He will keep. What do you suppose he is doing now? Writing poetry! He sent a piece a few days ago to the _Century_, and they accepted it."
"He will be gray when it appears," said the critic. "It takes a long time for anything to see the light in that publication."
"But in this case an exception will be made," said Weil. "They have a.s.sured him that it will come out in their very next issue. He will be so proud to see his name in print that I expect to find difficulty in holding him back. A poet who appears in the Century has certainly stepped a little higher on the ladder."
The critic agreed to this, and remarked that such a man as Roseleaf should give his whole attention to poetry.
"Wait!" cried Archie. "Give him time. See him after he has fallen head over ears in love with charming Millicent Fern. There is something in him, I feel sure, and between that dear girl and myself we will bring it out. By-the-way, there is a character I want you to meet," he added, as Mr. Walker Boggs came into the room. "You have never had the pleasure, I think, though you have heard me speak of him."
Mr. Boggs had his attention attracted by a waiter who was sent for the purpose and came with great willingness to occupy a seat with Mr. Weil and his friend.
"We were talking of a New York merchant just now," said Archie, when the introductions were over, "and it occurs to me that you, who know almost everybody, may have some knowledge of him. He is in the wool business, I hear, and I think you once told me you had done something in that way.
His name is Wilton Fern, and he lives at Midlands."
"Do I know anything about him?" echoed Mr. Boggs. "I should say so. He was my partner for seven years, and I still have a little stake left in the concern, on which I am drawing interest."
Mr. Weil showed his astonishment at this statement. What a very small world it was, after all! Then, after pledging his friend not to mention that he had ever discussed the matter with him, he went guardedly into the particulars of Miss Millicent"s book, and of his having called at the house for the purpose of pa.s.sing judgment upon it.
"I didn"t know that was in your line," replied Boggs.
"Well, it was this way," answered Archie. "Mr. Gouger"s decision didn"t exactly suit the young lady, as it was not very favorable. Mine will be quite to her taste, as I view her abilities in a more favorable light.
Now tell us all about the family, as the only one of them I have met is Miss Millicent. Why, this is a regular find, old man! You should have told me a week ago that you possessed all this information that I have been aching to get hold of."
Thus adjured, Mr. Boggs entered upon his story. From which it appeared that he knew the Ferns, root and branch, and had dined with them dozens of times.
"What sort of a chap is the pater?" asked Weil.
"A very well-kept man of nearly seventy, with a great deal of what is called "breeding" in his manner, and a face like the portrait of a French marquis cut out of a seventeenth century frame. He doesn"t look like a business man at all, and between ourselves he"s not much of a one. All the money he ever made--saving my apparent egotism--was when I was in the concern. I"ve heard he"s got a big mortgage on his residence and is going down hill generally. Too bad; nice fellow; sorry for him; such is life."
Archie asked if Boggs would do him a personal and particular favor, if it would not cause him much trouble; and on being answered in the affirmative, said he would esteem it a great honor if he could be introduced to Mr. Fern by that gentleman"s former business a.s.sociate.
"I suppose I shall run across him at Midlands, some evening," he said, "and get one of those presentations that are the most aggravating things in the world. I don"t want that to happen, and the best way, to use an elegant phrase, is to take the bull by the horns, or in this case, the sheep by the tail. Will you make an accidental call on him to-morrow afternoon and let me be of the party?"
Mr. Boggs responded that he would be delighted. And this matter being settled, all parties could give more direct attention to their lunch than they had been doing for the preceding ten minutes.
"You must have heard of my friend Boggs, in the days when he was a figure on the streets of this town," said Weil, presently, returning to what he knew was the favorite subject of that personage. "You"ve lived here for twenty years, and of course the name of Walker Boggs is familiar to you."
Mr. Gouger looked a good counterfeit of complete mystification for some seconds, and then a gleam as of sudden recollection shot across his face.
"Certainly, certainly!" he said. "Mr. Boggs was what is popularly known as a lady killer, if I am not mistaken. You got married, did you not, Mr. Boggs, some ten or eleven years ago?"
The party addressed acknowledged the practical correctness of the date.
"Why, it comes back as plain as day," said the critic. "The _Herald_ had a page about you, including your portrait and some verses by a well known poet. It said your marriage had cast a gloom over Manhattan Island and some of the up-river counties."
Mr. Boggs gloomily nodded, to show that the statement was true. Then he touched his most rotund portion with a significant look.
"I"m a widower now," he said, "and nothing but this--_this_--stands in my way. As Shakespeare says, ""Tis not as deep as a well, nor as wide as a church door, but--" The ladies never look at me now, and all on account of this d--d flesh, which hangs like a millstone around my neck."
Cutt & Slashem"s critic, ignoring the peculiar character of the metaphor used, remarked politely that he thought no lady of sense would put great stress on such an insignificant matter.
"Insignificant!" echoed Boggs. "I"ll bet it"s fifty inches around, come! And it"s not the "ladies of sense" I"m after. Quite the contrary."
One of Archie Weil"s explosive laughs followed this statement, which caused an expression of mild injury to settle over the countenance of Mr. Boggs.
"You"re getting on toward forty, and you ought to quit," said Weil.
"Confound the women! Let them go."
"That"s well enough to talk about," replied Boggs, gruffly. "How would you like to follow your own advice?"
Weil uttered an exclamation.
"I? I have precious little to do with them, I a.s.sure you. For a man of my correct habits I have the worst name of any one I know. Everybody insinuates things about me, and they can prove nothing."
"We"ll ask Isaac Leveson about that," sneered Boggs. "By-the-way, that wouldn"t be a bad place to take young Roseleaf to, when you get to instructing him in earnest. I met the young fellow on the avenue last night and walked around with him for a couple of hours. He"s a darling!"
"Roseleaf?" cried both the other gentlemen, in one breath.