She listened to him in speechless amazement, not quite sure of her ears.
"Of course, I sha"n"t permit my name to be mentioned in the matter," he explained hastily. "That would be foolish, my dear. I shall have it clearly understood that d.i.c.k is backing the thing himself--on borrowed money, if needs be. Now, you see, Miss Colgate is a very clever young leading woman and--"
"Leading woman?" queried Mrs. Bingle, blinking. She had laid down her embroidery.
"Stage expression," said he loftily. "It means one who plays--er--plays leads. Ahem! That is to say, one who takes a princ.i.p.al part in the show. Miss Colgate is regarded as--"
It was then that Mrs. Bingle found her voice. After ten minutes, he succeeded in changing the subject. In all his acquaintance with his wife, he had never known her to be so scathing in the matter of words.
She succeeded in causing him to feel extremely small and sheepish, for after all there was a world of justice and common sense in what she had to say concerning his inspired offer to engage in an enterprise that was as far from his understanding as the North Pole is from the South.
"But," he managed to insert, weakly, "it"s only to help d.i.c.k out, to encourage genius, to--"
"Genius your Granny!" she exclaimed. "Don"t you suppose that these regular theatre managers know genius when they see it?"
"Some of the best plays ever written have never seen the light of day,"
said he.
"Then how does any one know that they were good plays, if they never were played? Tell me that, Thomas Bingle."
"My dear, I am only repeating what history tells--"
"Well, answer this question then: what do you know about a play? Where do you get your wonderful knowledge of dramatic composition?"
"I think you will acknowledge that I know my Shakespeare pretty well,"
he said stiffly.
"But Richard Flanders isn"t Shakespeare, Thomas. He"s a reporter on a daily paper. Now, for goodness" sake, be sensible. Don"t make a fool of yourself, dear. I know what"s best for you. I--"
"I"m merely proposing to FINANCE the thing, Mary," he argued. "I"m doing it because I like d.i.c.k and I want him to succeed. I do not set myself up as a real manager. I"m what d.i.c.k calls an "angel." He says--"
"Well of all the--Do you mean to say that big, strapping fellow called you an angel?"
"Theatrical expression," he said.
"I shouldn"t have been surprised if you"d said that Miss Fairweather called you an angel, but when it comes to--Oh, dear, what an awful thing for one man to call another!"
"Now, see here, Mary, you don"t under--"
But she interrupted him again and he sat back limply to wait for an opportunity to get in the statement that he wanted most of all to make to her--which, when the time came for him to speak, was this:
"Well, well, dear, we"ll let the matter rest for a day or two. I only thought you"d be interested in the experiment--you and I together, you know--something new and thrilling. We could have a lot of fun planning and secretly watching the play grow from day to day, and discussing costumes and scenery, and meeting real actors and actresses, and seeing the inside workings of the stage, and the green room--and the dressing-rooms, and all that, you know. It"s something we used to talk about and wonder about, don"t you remember? Remember how we used to sit up in the balcony and wonder what was really happening behind the--"
"Indeed I do!" she cried, and her eyes sparkled. "I"ve always wanted to have a peep behind the scenes and--" She had the good sense to stop before she compromised herself beyond recovery--but she looked extremely guilty.
"We"ll talk it over to-morrow," said he. "It might be a relief to us to have something like this to occupy our thoughts in case we--we actually have to give Kathleen up to--By the way, d.i.c.k tells me he is sailing for Europe to-morrow. I wonder what it means."
"Mr. Force? Is she going with him?"
"Yes. For three months."
She reflected. "I"ll tell you what it means, Tom," she said, leaning forward to lay her hand upon his knee. "He has told her everything."
"I don"t believe it!"
"You mark my words, Tom. He has told her. They are going abroad to thrash it all out, that"s the long and short of it."
"I wonder," said Mr. Bingle, wide-eyed and sober. Long afterward he came out of his reverie, and said: "I forgot to tell you that Swanson spoke to me yesterday about his sister"s latest. I was awfully sorry for the poor chap, my dear. He seemed most anxious to see the child comfortably settled. His sister is a scrub-woman in the Metropolitan Life Building. It appears that she has been supplying families with children for the past ten or twelve years. Her husband is a most unfeeling brute. He says that the babies interfere with her work, and so she has to either give them up altogether or let the charity inst.i.tutions take care of "em for her. She goes on faithfully having "em every year, and he goes on objecting to them. Swanson says she has managed to keep two of the older ones, but the last five or six she has been obliged to dispose of. Now, this new one is a bright little thing, he says--quite the flower of the flock. The woman"s husband, it seems, has been out of work for seven years, and curses dreadfully about the child. The poor woman spoke to Swanson last week, asking him to see if we wouldn"t take this one to raise. Swanson is sure that if we took it now we could be practically certain that it would never acquire the Swedish dialect. Of course--"
"You did not give him any encouragement, did you, Tom?" she cried sharply.
"Well, not--er--exactly," he said, looking away.
"Well, don"t!" she exclaimed. "You know I have my heart set on having a French baby next."
"So you have," he said brightly. "I"ll not forget it, my dear. As a matter of fact, I spoke to Rouquin, our foreign exchange manager, about it not long ago. He is quite French, my dear. He says there will be no trouble about it. It will be no trick at all to get a French baby. He says he already knows of a half-dozen actual descendants of the n.o.bility, aged from one year up to ten, any one of which we can call our own by simply saying the word."
"He shall be called Richelieu. d.i.c.k for short," mused Mrs. Bingle.
"I thought we contemplated a girl," said he.
"It is always possible for us to change our minds, isn"t it, Tom?"
"Certainly, my dear. We"ll have a boy if you like. In a pinch, we can always change the gender at the last minute. Let"s not give it another thought. I"ll take it up with Rouquin the first time I"m in town. As for Swanson"s sister"s child--well, never mind. We sha"n"t have it. He says its name is Ole at present but I suppose it could be called Richelieu if taken in time. Still that"s neither here nor there. I"ve been thinking lately, my dear, that we ought to call our next boy Joseph--after his grand-uncle, don"t you see. We owe that much to poor old Uncle Joe. Will you bear it in mind?"
"We COULD call the next one Josephine," she said.
He grinned. "Uncle Joe would turn over in his grave," said he.
That evening Mr. Force telephoned to Seawood.
"That you, Bingle?" came in rather m.u.f.fled tones over the wire.
"Yes, this is Mr. Bingle."
"This is Force. We are sailing to-morrow for--"
"I can"t hear you. Stand a little closer to the "phone, please."
"I say we are sailing to-morrow for Europe. I"m standing close to it, Bingle. There"s some one in the next booth. I can"t yell, you know. I--"
"Where are you?"
"At the Plaza. I just wanted to tell you that I"ve fixed everything up with the detective agency. Not a word of that little matter will ever become public. Their lips have been sealed."
Mr. Bingle"s heart swelled. "Do you mean that the matter is--er--permanently closed? Are you going to let me keep her?"
"Certainly NOT! What kind of a father do you think I am? Now I"ll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to be particularly careful about that child while I"m away. Don"t let anything happen to her. Take the best of care of her, Bingle. I shall hold you personally responsible.
And see here, there"s another point on which I want to be especially firm. I don"t want her to be thrown with the other children any more than can be helped. I--What"s that?"