"You may be sure I did, but she"d read the papers, and, like so many of these people, she has no use at all for an Englishman without a t.i.tle.
Of course I couldn"t be too definite with her, but she understood perfectly, and she let me see she wouldn"t hear of it at all. So she"s off the list. But don"t give up. Now, there"s--"
But Mauburn was determinedly downcast.
"It"s uncommon handsome of you, Mrs. Drelmer, really, but we"ll have to leave off that, you know. If a chap isn"t heir to a peerage or a city fortune there"s no getting on that way."
"Why, the man is actually discouraged. Now you need some American pluck, old chap. An American of your age wouldn"t give up."
"But, hang it all! an American knows how to do things, you know, and like as not he"d nothing to begin with, by Jove! Now I"d a lot to begin with, and here it"s all taken away."
"Look at young Bines. He"s had a lot taken away, but I"ll wager he makes it all back again and more too before he"s forty."
"He might in this country; he"d never do it at home, you know."
"This country is for you as much as for him. Now, there"s Augusta Hartong--those mixed-pickle millionaires, you know. I was chatting with Augusta"s mother only the other day, and if I"d only suspected this--"
"Awfully kind of you, Mrs. Drelmer, but it"s no use. I"m fairly played out. I shall go to see Miss Bines, and have a chat with her people, you know."
"Now, for heaven"s sake, don"t make a silly of yourself, whatever you do! Mind, the girl released you of her own accord!"
"Awfully obliged. I"ll think about it jolly well, first. See you soon.
Good-bye!" And Mauburn was off.
He was reproaching himself. "That poor girl has been eating her heart out for a word of love from me. I"m a brute!"
CHAPTER x.x.xVI.
The G.o.d in the Machine
Uncle Peter next morning was up to a late breakfast with the stricken family. Percival found him a trifle less bitter, but not less convinced in his despair. The young man himself had recovered his spirits wonderfully. The utter collapse of the old man, always so reliant before, had served to fire all his latent energy. He was now voluble with plans for the future; not only determined to rea.s.sure Uncle Peter that the family would be provided for, but not a little anxious to justify the old man"s earlier praise, and refute his calumnies of the night before.
Mrs. Bines, so complacent overnight, was the most disconsolate one of the group. With her low tastes she was now regarding the loss of the fortune as a calamity to the worthy infants of her own chosen field.
"And there, I"d promised to give five thousand dollars to the new home for crippled children, and five thousand to St. John"s Guild for the floating hospitals this summer--just yesterday--and I do declare, I just couldn"t stay in New York without money, and see those poor babies suffer."
"You couldn"t stay in New York without money. Mrs. Good-thing," said her son,--"not even if you couldn"t see a thing; but don"t you welsh on any of your plays--we"ll make that ten thousand good if I have to get a sand-bag, and lay out a few of these lads around here some dark night."
"But anyway you can"t do much to relieve them. I don"t know but what it"s honester to be poor while the authorities allow such goings on."
"You have the makings of a very dangerous anarchist in you, ma. I"ve seen that for some time. But we"re an honest family all right now, with the exception of a few properties that I"ll have to sit up with nights--sit right by their sick-beds and wake them up to take their meddy every half hour--"
"Now, my son, don"t you get to going without your sleep," began his mother.
"And wasn"t it lucky about my sending that note to George!" said Psyche. "Here in this morning"s paper we find he isn"t going to be Lord Ca.s.selthorpe, after all. What _could_ I have done if we hadn"t lost the money?" From which it might be inferred that certain people who had declared Miss Bines to be very hard-headed were not so far wrong as the notorious "casual observer" is very apt to be.
"Never you mind, sis," said her brother, cheerfully, "we"ll be all right yet. You wait a little, and hear Uncle Peter take back what he"s said about me. Uncle Peter, I"ll have you taking off that hat of yours every time you get sight of me, in about a year."
He went again over the plans. The income from the One Girl was to be used in developing the other properties: the stock ranch up on the Bitter Root, the other mines that had been worked but little and with crude appliances; the irrigation and land-improvement enterprises, and the big timber tracts.
"I got something of an idea of it when Uncle Peter took me around summer before last, and I learned a lot more getting the stuff together with Coplen. Now, I"m ready to buckle down to it." He looked at Uncle Peter, hungry for a word of encouragement to soothe the hurts the old man had put upon him.
But all Uncle Peter would say was, "That _sounds_ very well,"
compelling the inference that he regarded sound and substance as phenomena not necessarily related.
"But give me a chance, Uncle Peter. Just don"t jump on me too hard for a year!"
"Well, I know that country. There"s big chances for a young man with brains--understand?--that has got all the high-living nonsense blasted out of his upper levels--but it takes work. You _may_ do something--there _are_ white blackbirds--but you"re on a nasty piece of road-bed--curves all down on the outside--wheels flatted under every truck, and you"ve had her down in the corner so long I doubt if you can even slow up, say nothin" of reversin". And think of me gettin" fooled that way at _my_ time of life," he continued, as if in confidence to himself. "But then, I always was a terrible poor judge of human nature."
"Well, have your own way; but I"ll fool you again, while you"re coppering me. You watch, that"s all I ask. Just sit around and talk wise about me all you want to, but watch. Now, I must go down and get to work with Fouts. Thank the Lord, we didn"t have to welsh either, any more than Mrs. Give-up there did."
"You won"t touch any more stock; you won"t get that money from Shepler?"
"I won"t; I won"t go near Shepler, I promise you. Now you"ll believe me in one thing, I know you will, Uncle Peter." He went over to the old man.
"I want to thank you for pulling me up on that play as you did last night. You saved me, and I"m more grateful to you than I can say. But for you I"d have gone in and dug the hole deeper." He made the old man shake hands with him--though Uncle Peter"s hand remained limp and cheerless. "You can shake on that, at least. You saved me, and I thank you for it."
"Well, I"m glad you got _some_ sense," answered the old man, grudgingly. "It"s always the way in that stock game. There"s always goin" to be a big killing made in Wall Street to-morrow, only to-morrow never comes. Reminds me of Hollings"s old turtle out at Spokane--Hollings that keeps the Little Gem restaurant. He"s got an enormous big turtle in his cellar that he"s kept to my knowledge fur fifteen years. Every time he gets a little turtle from the coast he takes a can of red paint down cellar, and touches up the sign on old Ben"s back--they call the turtle Ben, after Hollings"s father-in-law that won"t do a thing but lay around the house all the time, and kick about the meals. Well, the sign on Ben"s back is, "Green Turtle Soup To-morrow," and Ben is drug up to the sidewalk in front of the Little Gem. And Hollings does have turtle-soup next day, but it"s always the little turtles that"s killed, and old Ben is hiked back to his boudoir until another killing comes off. It"s a good deal like that in Wall Street; there"s killings made, but the big fellers with the signs on their back don"t worry none."
"You"re right, Uncle Peter. It certainly wasn"t my game. Will you come down with me?"
"Me? Shucks, no! I"m jest a poor, broken old man, now. I"m goin" down to the square if I can walk that fur, and set on a bench in the sun."
Uncle Peter did succeed in walking as far as Madison Square. He walked, indeed, with a step of amazing springiness for a man of his years. But there, instead of reposing in the sun, he entered a cab and was driven to the Vandevere Building, where he sent in his name to Rulon Shepler.
He was ushered into Shepler"s office after a little delay. The two men shook hands warmly. Uncle Peter was grinning now with rare enjoyment--he who had in the presence of the family shown naught but broken age and utter despondency.
"You rough-housed the boy considerable yesterday."
"I never believed the fellow would hold on," said Shepler. "I"m sure you"re right in a way about the West. There isn"t another man in this section who"d have plunged as he did. Really, Mr. Bines, the Street"s never known anything like it. Here are those matters."
He handed the old man a dozen or so certified checks on as many different banks. Each check had many figures on it. Uncle Peter placed them in his old leather wallet.
"I knew he"d plunge," he said, taking the chair proffered him, near Shepler"s desk. "I knew he was a natural born plunger, and I knew that once he gets an idea in his head you can"t blast it out; makes no difference what he starts on he"ll play the string out. His pa was jest that way. Then of course he wa"n"t used to money, and he was ignorant of this game, and he didn"t realise what he was doin". He sort of distrusted himself along toward the last--but I kept him swelled up good and plenty."
"Well, I"m glad it"s over, Mr. Bines. Of course I concede the relative insignificance of money to a young man of his qualities--"
"Not its relative insignificance, Mr. Shepler--it"s plain d.a.m.ned insignificance, if you"ll excuse the word. If that boy"d gone on he"d "a" been one of what Billy Brue calls them high-collared Clarences--no good fur anything but to spend money, and get apoplexy or worse by forty. As it is now, he"ll be a man. He"s got his health turned on like a steam radiator, he"s full of responsibility, and he"s really long-headed."
"How did he take the loss?"
"He acted jest like a healthy baby does when you take one toy away from him. He cries a minute, then forgets all about it, and grabs up something else to play with. His other toy was bad. What he"s playin"
with now will do him a lot of good."
"He"s not discouraged, then--he"s really hopeful?"