"No," said Mr. Epps. "I don"t smoke."
There was one Broadway theatre in which it was impossible to obtain seats unless they were applied for weeks in advance. The leading lady in the company playing there was not so important a personage that she could deny herself the pleasant sensation of being a real woman, and the author of the play was not so high and mighty that one had to use a ten-foot pole in touching him.
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Sheridan Flanders paid frequent visits to the home of Mr. Bingle. The beautiful and popular Miss Colgate, the sensation of the early season and a certain candidate for stellar honours, never came to see the young Bingles without betraying a spirit of generosity which sometimes caused Mr. Bingle to sit up half the night treating stomach-aches of all ages and degrees. She brought candy and cakes and fruit for the children, and flowers for Mr. Bingle. She would have come laden with more substantial and less pernicious presents but for the gentle objections of her old friend and benefactor. In the face of his kindly protests, she abandoned certain well-meant, even cherished ideas, and was often sore at heart.
d.i.c.k Flanders had found a producer after all. His hopes, considerably dashed by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, were at a low ebb when a practically unknown manager from the Far West concluded that there was more to his play than the wise men of the East were able to discern at a glance. With more sense than intelligence, the Westerner leaped into the heart of New York with a new play by a new author and scored a success from the opening night. Amy Colgate, an unknown actress, became famous in a night, so to speak. After the holidays, there would be a company playing the piece in Chicago, and another doing the "big stands" throughout the length and breadth of the land. So much for Mr. Flanders" play and Miss Amy Colgate.
Mr. Bingle never ceased congratulating himself and his two successful friends on the fact that he had not invested a cent of the Hooper fortune in the production. For, said he, if he had put a penny into it, the Hooper heirs would now be dividing the profits with Flanders.
"Luck was with us for once, d.i.c.k," he was p.r.o.ne to repeat. "A week later and we would have been desperately involved. I would have put up the initial ten thousand dollars for the production and you would have been saddled with Geoffrey and his sisters, perhaps for life--and I can"t imagine anything more unnecessary than that. Yes, sir, the smash came just in the nick o" time. What at first appeared to you to be a calamity turned out to be a G.o.d-send, my boy. The Supreme Court behaved handsomely by you."
This always brought out a vigorous protest from Mr. and Mrs. Flanders.
They stoutly maintained that Mr. Bingle was an original partner in the enterprise, and, when it came right down to tacks, had put quite as much capital into the business as either of them. They contended that he should have a share in the royalties, if not in the profits.
"As a matter of fact, Mr. Bingle, you made so many valuable suggestions in respect to the play--dialogues, construction and so forth--that you really ought to take some of the consequences," said Flanders. "It isn"t fair to put all the blame upon me. For instance, who was responsible for cutting out that scene in the second act?"
"Mrs. Bingle," said the other promptly. "She thought it was too suggestive."
"Well, it certainly was you, sir, who advised me to make more of the scene between Deborah and the old gentleman in the last act. As you know, it is now the great scene in the play. You will not pretend to deny--"
"Advice is one thing, d.i.c.k, and following it is quite another. No, you can"t make me believe that I did anything toward writing that play. A man who didn"t know the difference between a cue line and a back drop can"t very well be indicted for complicity. To tell you the truth, Mrs.
Flanders, I don"t know to this day what those initials, "L. U. E."
stand for, and a lot of other initials as well. Pride kept me from inquiring. I didn"t want to expose my ignorance about a thing that you and d.i.c.k talked about so glibly. What does "L. U. E." mean?"
""Left Upper Entrance," Mr. Bingle," said she with a laugh.
"Well, I"m glad the mystery is revealed at last. I"ve laid awake nights trying to conjure up words to fit those letters. "R. U. E." means "right," I suppose. Dear me, how simple it seems, after all."
"Now, see here, Mr. Bingle," Flanders would say, "you went into partnership with me last winter, that"s the long and short of it. It wasn"t your fault that you couldn"t put up the money according to our agreement, but I want to say to you that if it hadn"t been for your encouragement and advice I never would have finished the play and I certainly could not have sc.r.a.ped up the courage to get married when I did. Amy and I have always looked upon you as a partner in our success.
Now, I"ll tell you precisely what we"ve decided upon as a fair division of the royalties that I am receiving. You are to take the author"s royalty from the number three company--the one that is to play the "road" for this season and next. It is to be a three cornered arrangement. Amy helped to develop the play, so she is to have the royalty from the Chicago company, while I shall receive all that comes out of the New York run. This arrangement will hold good for two seasons. After that, we"ll make a new arrangement, taking in the stock rights, moving pictures and--"
But Mr. Bingle would listen to no more. Always when Flanders got just so far in his well-meant, earnest propositions, the object of his concern would stop him in such a gentle, dignified manner that the young playwright would flush with the consciousness that he had given offence to an honest soul.
Mr. Bingle defeated every enterprise on the part of his few friends that had the appearance of charity. He accepted their good intentions, he delighted in their thoughtfulness and esteem, but he never permitted them to go beyond a certain well-defined line. The argument that he had been generous, even philanthropic, in his days of prosperity was invariably met by the quaint contention that while the Good Book teaches charity, the dictionary makes a point of defining it, and "you can"t spell charity, my friend, with the letters that are allotted to generosity. So don"t quote the Bible to me."
He put a stop to the cunning schemes of Diggs and Watson, who, with Melissa"s connivance, began a regular and systematic attempt to smuggle bacon, eggs, b.u.t.ter and potatoes into the kitchen. This project of theirs at first comprehended vegetables of every description and fruits as well, but the sagacious house-maid vetoed anything so wholesale as all that. She agreed that the accidental delivery of a side of bacon, or a mistake in the counting of a dozen eggs, or the overweighing and undercharging of a pound of b.u.t.ter, or the perfectly natural error of sending a peck and a half of potatoes when only a peck was ordered, might escape the keen observation of Mr. Bingle, but that anything more noticeable would cause the good gentleman to take his trade elsewhere.
As she said to the distressed Diggs one evening, after carefully observing that the kitchen door was closed: "When I order a half ton of coal from you for the parlour stove, there"s no sense in you weighing it out by ounces. Guess at it, and then after you"ve guessed as near right as you know how, double the amount. Mr. Bingle isn"t going to weigh the coal, you know. And when it comes to rice and hominy and cooking apples and all such things, just let your imagination do the measuring. If a pound of coffee happens to look like a pound and a half to you, don"t forget the extra cups you used to have every afternoon at Seawood. And if I should happen to send for the cheapest tea you"ve got in stock, don"t overlook the fact that there is an expensive kind. Once in a while you might make ME a present of a couple of dozen oranges, some bananas and nuts, and you might sometimes ask Mr. Bingle to sample a new brand of smoking tobacco you"re thinking of carrying."
"But we sha"n"t carry tobaccos," said Mr. Diggs, who aside from being a good soul was also British.
"All the more reason why you should be THINKING of carrying "em, isn"t it, you stupid?"
Mr. Bingle saw the opening performance of the Flanders play and went behind the scenes afterward. He did this, he explained, so that he could describe his sensations to Mrs. Bingle. He was introduced to all of the players and they were so uniformly polite that he fell into a fine fury the next morning on reading the newspaper review in which they were described as "unintentionally adequate."
He knew as well as every one else that it would be impossible for him to keep the children on the salary he was receiving at the bank. He knew that the day was not far off when he would have to give them up.
His fellow bookkeepers harangued him from morning till night. They made themselves obnoxious with their everlasting talk about being unable to support families one-fourth the size of his; and one or two slyly inquired whether he hadn"t "salted away" a part of the Hooper money for a perpetual spell of rainy weather. In justice to the children themselves it would be necessary for him, before long, to set about finding suitable, respectable homes for them. It was this unhappy sense of realisation that put the new furrows in his brow and took the colour out of his cheek, the l.u.s.tre from his eyes.
One day he was approached by Rouquin, volatile and cheery as in the days of old. The sprightly Frenchman was beaming with friendliness and good spirits. He conveyed a startling bit of personal news to Mr.
Bingle without the slighest trace of shame or embarra.s.sment.
"Well, Mr. Bingle, I have married her," he said shrugging his shoulders in a manner that might have signified either extreme satisfaction with himself or lamentation over the inevitable. "The day before yesterday.
I am now a proud and happy father, old friend."
"Father?" murmured Mr. Bingle, bewildered. "You--mean bridegroom, Rouquin."
"So I do," cried Rouquin amiably. "But you forget Napoleon--little Napoleon," he went on gaily.
"You have married Napoleon"s mother?"
"Le diable! But who else, M"sieur? The charming, adorable Mademoiselle Vallemont. Ah, my good friend, I am so happy. I am--"
"Vallemont? But Madame Rousseau--you seem to forget that she is the mother of Napoleon. You--"
"Nevertheless," said Rouquin, with a gay sweep of his hand before laying it tenderly upon his heart, "I have married the mother of Napoleon. Alas, my good friend, Madame Rousseau is no more. She died when she was but one day old. And her excellent husband, the splendid Jean, he also is a thing of the past. Now there is no one left but Madame Rouquin and me and that adorable Napoleon. Vive l"Emperor! Come, M"sieur, congratulate me. See! This cablegram provides Napoleon with a father. But for what this little bit of paper says, the poor enfant might have gone fatherless to his grave. See! It says here that my wife has died. Read for yourself, M"sieur. It is in French, but what matter?
I shall translate. "Raoul Rouquin: Blanche died to-day. Good luck."
See, it is signed "Pierre." Pierre he is my brother. He lives in Paris.
Ah, so long have I waited! You may never know my despair--never, M"sieur. But my wife she has died, so all is well. The day before yesterday I was married. I take--"
"For heaven"s sake, Rouquin," gasped Mr. Bingle; "not so fast! I don"t know what you are talking about."
"Ah, it is so simple," sighed Rouquin, looking upon Mr. Bingle with pity in his eyes. "Can you not see? So long as my wife was alive I could not be married. Is that not plain to you? Then she dies. Quick!
Instantly I am married. Voila! It is so simple."
Mr. Bingle comprehended at last. "I see. You have had a wife in Paris all these years, eh?"
"Mon Dieu! Yes, all these years," groaned Rouquin, rolling his eyes.
"See! See what my brother Pierre says: "Blanche died to-day. Good luck." Good luck! Mon Dieu, M"sieur, is it possible that you do not know what "good luck" means?"
"And you have married Madame Rous--or whatever her name is?"
"So quick as that!" cried Rouquin, snapping his fingers. "And now, M"sieur, when may I come to take little Napoleon home to his mother?"
Thus it came about that Napoleon was the first to go. Amid great pomp and ceremony, he departed from the home of the many Bingles on a bright, clear day in December, shortly after banking hours, attended by his own mother and father.
CHAPTER XVI
ANOTHER CHRISTMAS EVE
Christmas was drawing near. The Bingle children, accustomed to manifold and expensive presents, were in a state of doubt and hope combined. The older ones realised that while Santa would not pa.s.s them by without a sign, there was every reason to believe that he would not deliver the things for which they slyly pet.i.tioned, the things they most desired.
They had been brought up to receive all that they expected and the prospect ahead for them was not rea.s.suring from the viewpoint their intelligence forced them to take. There were secret lamentations and not a few surly discussions in the absence of Mr. Bingle.
Melissa took the older boys to task for some of the things they said about their foster father. Frederick was the chief offender. He knew that Mr. Bingle"s pocket-book was the real Santa Claus, and he wanted a pair of skates and a hockey outfit. Something told him that he would be compelled to accept in lieu of these necessities a silly overcoat or a pair of shoes from the cheap department store up the street. He was too young and no doubt too selfish to admit that he was by way of outgrowing his clothes at least once if not twice a year, or that there is such a spectre as wear and tear. He became sullen, irritable and not infrequently rude to Mr. Bingle. Once when Melissa sharply rebuked him for his ingrat.i.tude, he came back at her with an argument that baffled her for the time being: he could not see why Mr. Bingle had been so good to Kathleen. Why had she been given a rich, happy home while he and all of the others were brought to a place like this? Melissa, finding no immediate response to this, boxed his ears.
The younger members of the brood were not involved in this graceless agitation. The complaints stopped with Guinivere. Harold, Rosemary and Rutherford were too young to realise the state of dest.i.tution into which the family had fallen. They were quite happy, contented and, so far, unaware of the gravity of a situation which was more or less apparent to their elders. Frederick, Marie Louise and Wilberforce formed the higher group of malcontents, and their mutterings reached the acute ears of a second and less formidable group composed of Reginald, Henrietta and Guinivere. The influence of the three older children, envied and imitated by the next three in order of age, was responsible for the inclusion of this second group in the general tendency toward unruliness and resentfulness.