The Spenders Part 26

The young man stared at his mother until he had mastered her meaning.

Then he put both hands to his head and turned to the sideboard as if to conceal his emotion.

"That's it," he said, as he busied himself with a tall gla.s.s and the cracked ice. "It's that 'no-breakfast' fad. I didn't think you knew about it. The fact is," he continued, pouring out a measure of brandy, and directing the butler to open a bottle of soda, "we all eat too much. After a night of sound sleep we awaken refreshed and buoyant, all our forces replenished; thirsty, of course, but not hungry"--he sat down to the table and placed both hands again to his head--"and we have no need of food. Yet such is the force of custom that we deaden ourselves for the day by tanking up on coa.r.s.e, loathsome stuff like bacon. Ugh! Any one would think, the way you two eat so early in the day, that you were a couple of cave-dwellers,--the kind that always loaded up when they had a chance because it might be a week before they got another."

He drained his gla.s.s and brightened visibly.

"Now, why not be reasonable?" he continued, pleadingly. "You know there is plenty of food. I have observed it being brought into town in huge wagon-loads in the early morning on many occasions. Why do you want to eat it all at one sitting? No one's going to starve you. Why stupefy yourselves when, by a little nervy self-denial, you can remain as fresh and bright and clear-headed as I am at this moment? Why doesn't a fire make its own escape, Mrs. Carstep-Jamwuddle?"

"I don't believe you feel right, either. I just know you've got an awful headache right now. Do let the man give you a nice piece of this steak."

"Don't, I beg of you, Lady Ashmorton! The suggestion is extremely repugnant to me. Besides, I'm behaving this way because I arose with the purely humourous fancy that my head was a fine large accordeon, and that some meddler had drawn it out too far. I'm sportively pretending that I can press it back into shape. Now you and sis never get up with any such light poetic notion as that. You know you don't--don't attempt to deceive me." He glanced over the table with swift disapproval.

"Strawberries, oatmeal, rolls, steak three inches thick, bacon, omelette--oh, that I should live to see this day! It's disgraceful! And at your age--before your own innocent woman-child, and leading her into the same excesses. Do you know what that breakfast is? No; I'll tell you. That breakfast is No. 78 in that book of Mrs. Rorer's, and she expressly warns everybody that it can be eaten safely only by steeple-climbers, piano-movers, and sea-captains. Really, Mrs.

Wrangleberry, I blush for you."

"I don't care how you go on. You ain't looked well for months."

"But think of my great big heart--a heart like an ox,"--he seemed on the verge of tears--"and to think that you, a woman I have never treated with anything but respect since we met in Honduras in the fall of '93--to think _you_ should throw it up to my own face that I'm not beautiful. Others there are, thank G.o.d, who can look into a man's heart and prize him for what he is--not condemn him for his mere superficial blemishes."

"And I just know you've got in with a fast set. I met Mr. Milbrey yesterday in the corridor--"

"Did he tell you how to make a lovely asparagus short-cake or something?"

"He told me those men you go with so much are dreadful gamblers, and that when you all went to Palm Beach last February you played poker for money night and day, and you told me you went for your health!"

"Oh, he did, did he? Well, I didn't get anything else. He's a dear old soul, if you've got the copper handy. If that man was a woman he'd be a warm neighbourhood gossip. He'd be the nice kind old lady that _starts_ things, that's what Hoddy Milbrey would be."

"And you said yourself you played poker most of the time when you went to Aiken on the car last month."

"To be honest with you, ma, we did play poker. Say, they took it off of me so fast I could feel myself catching cold."

"There, you see--and you really ought to wear one of those chamois-skin chest protectors in this damp climate."

"Well, we'll see. If I can find one that an ace-full won't go through I'll s.n.a.t.c.h it so quick the man'll think he's being robbed. Now I'll join you ladies to the extent of some coffee, and then I want to know what you two would rather do this summer _than_."

"Of course," said Psyche, "no one stays in town in summer."

"Exactly. And I've chartered a steam yacht as big as this hotel--all but--But what I want to know is whether you two care to bunk on it or whether you'd rather stay quietly at some place, Newport perhaps, and maybe take a cruise with me now and then."

"Oh, that would be good fun. But here's ma getting so I can't do a thing with her, on account of all those beggars and horrid people down in the slums."

Mrs. Bines looked guilty and feebly deprecating. It was quite true that in her own way she had achieved a reputation for prodigality not inferior to that acquired by her children in ways of their own.

"You know it's so, ma," the daughter went on, accusingly. "One night last winter when you were away we dined at the Balldridge's, in Eighty-sixth Street, and the pavements were so sleety the horses couldn't stand, so Colonel Balldridge brought us home in the Elevated, about eleven o'clock. Well, at one of the stations a big policeman got on with a little baby all wrapped up in red flannel. He'd found it in an area-way, nearly covered with snow--where some one had left it, and he was taking it down to police-headquarters, he said. Well, ma went crazy right away. She made him undo it, and then she insisted on holding it all the way down to Thirty-third Street. One man said it might be President of the United States, some day; and Colonel Balldridge said, 'Yes, it has unknown possibilities--it may even be a President's wife'--just like that. But I thought ma would be demented.

It was all fat and so warm and sleepy it could hardly hold its eyes open, and I believe she'd have kept it then and there if the policeman would have let her. She made him promise to get it a bottle of warm milk the first thing, and borrowed twenty dollars of the colonel to give to the policeman to get it things with, and then all the way down she talked against the authorities for allowing such things--as if they could help it--and when we got home she cried--you _know_ you did, ma--and you pretended it was toothache--and ever since then she's been perfectly daft about babies. Why, whenever she sees a woman going along with one she thinks the poor thing is going to leave it some place; and now she's in with those charity workers and says she won't leave New York at all this summer."

"I don't care," protested the guilty mother, "it would have frozen to death in just a little while, and it's done so often. Why, up at the Catholic Protectory they put out a basket at the side door, so a body can leave their baby in it and ring the bell and run away; and they get one twice a week sometimes; and this was such a sweet, fat little baby with big blue eyes, and its forehead wrinkled, and it was all puckered up around its little nose--"

"And that isn't the worst of it," the relentless daughter broke in.

"She gets begging letters by the score and gives money to all sorts of people, and a man from the Charities Organisation, who had heard about it, came and warned her that they were impostors--only she doesn't care. Do you know, there was a poor old blind woman with a dismal, wheezy organ down at Broadway and Twenty-third Street--the organ would hardly play at all, and just one wretched tune--only the woman wasn't blind at all we found out--and ma bought her a nice new organ that cost seventy-five dollars and had it taken up to her. Well, she found out through this man from the Organisation that the woman had p.a.w.ned the new organ for twenty dollars and was still playing on the old one. She didn't want a new one because it was too cheerful; it didn't make people sad when they heard it, like her old one did. And yesterday ma bought an Indian--"

"A what?" asked her brother, in amazement.

"An Indian--a tobacco sign."

"You don't mean it? One of those lads that stand out in front and peer under their hands to see what palefaces are moving into the house across the street? Say, ma, what you going to do with him? There isn't much room here, you know."

"I didn't buy him for myself," replied Mrs. Bines, with dignity; "I wouldn't want such an object."

"She bought it," explained his sister, "for an Italian woman who keeps a little tobacco-shop down in Rivington Street. A man goes around to repaint them, you know, but hers was so battered that this man told her it wasn't worth painting again, and she'd better get another, and the woman said she didn't know what to do because they cost twenty-five dollars and one doesn't last very long. The bad boys whittle him and throw him down, and the people going along the street put their shoes up to tie them and step on his feet, and they scratch matches on his face, and when she goes out and says that isn't right they tell her she's too fresh. And so ma gave her twenty-five dollars for a new one."

"But she has to support five children, and her husband hasn't been able to work for three years, since he fell through a fire-escape where he was sleeping one hot night," pleaded Mrs. Bines, "and I think I'd rather stay here this summer. Just think of all those poor babies when the weather gets hot. I never thought there were so many babies in the world."

"Well, have your own way," said her son. "If you've started out to look after all the babies in New York you won't have any time left to play the races, I'll promise you that."

"Why, my son, I never--"

"But sis here would probably rather do other things."

"I think," said Psyche, "I'd like Newport--Mrs. Drelmer says I shouldn't think of going any place else. Only, of course, I can't go there alone. She says she would be glad to chaperone me, but her husband hasn't had a very good year in Wall Street, and she's afraid she won't be able to go herself."

"Maybe," began Mrs. Bines, "if you'd offer--"

"Oh! she'd be offended," exclaimed Psyche.

"I'm not so sure of that," said her brother, "not if you suggest it in the right way--put it on the ground that you'll be quite helpless without her, and that she'd oblige you world without end and all that.

The more I see of people here the more I think they're quite reasonable in little matters like that. They look at them in the right light. Just lead up to it delicately with Mrs. Drelmer and see. Then if she's willing to go with you, your summer will be provided for; except that we shall both have to look in upon Mrs. Juzzlebraggin here now and then to see that she doesn't overplay the game and get sick herself, and make sure that they don't get her vaccination mark away from her. And, ma, you'll have to come off on the yacht once or twice, just to give it tone."

It appeared that Percival had been right in supposing that Mrs. Drelmer might be led to regard Psyche's proposal in a light entirely rational.

She was reluctant, at first, it is true.

"It's awfully dear of you to ask me, child, but really, I'm afraid it will be quite impossible. Oh!--for reasons which you, of course, with your endless bank-account, cannot at all comprehend. You see we old New York families have a secure position _here_ by right of birth; and even when we are forced to practice little economies in dress and household management it doesn't count against us--so long as we _stay_ here. Now, Newport is different. One cannot economise gracefully there--not even one of _us_. There are quiet and very decent places for those of us that must. But at Newport one must not fall behind in display. A sense of loyalty to the others, a _n.o.blesse oblige_, compels one to be as lavish as those flamboyant outsiders who go there. One doesn't want them to report, you know, that such and such families of our smart set are falling behind for lack of means. So, while we of the real stock are chummy enough here, where there is only _us_ in a position to observe ourselves, there is a sort of tacit agreement that only those shall go to Newport who are able to keep up the pace. One need not, for one season or so, be a cottager; but, for example, in the matter of dress, one must be sinfully lavish. Really, child, I could spend three months in the Engadine for the price of one decent month at Newport; the parasols, gloves, fans, shoes, 'frillies'--enough to stock the Rue de la Paix, to say nothing of gowns--but why do I run on? Here am I with a few little simple summer things, fit enough indeed for the quiet place we shall reach for July and August, but ab-so-lute-ly impossible for Newport--so say no more about it, dear. You're a sweet--but it's madness to think of it."

"And I had," reported Psyche to her mother that night, "such a time getting her to agree. At first she wouldn't listen at all. Then, after I'd just fairly begged her, she admitted she might because she's taken such a fancy to me and hates to leave me--but she was sensitive about what people might say. I told her they'd never have a chance to say a word; and she was anxious Perce shouldn't know, because she says he's so cynical about New York people since that Milbrey girl made such a set for him; and at last she called me a dear and consented, though she'd been looking forward to a quiet summer. To-morrow early we start out for the shops."

So it came that the three members of the Bines family pursued during the summer their respective careers of diversion under conditions most satisfactory to each.

The steam yacht _Viluca_, chartered by Percival, was put into commission early in June. Her first cruise of ten days was a signal triumph. His eight guests were the men with whom he had played poker so tirelessly during the winter. Perhaps the most illuminating log of that cruise may be found in the reply of one of them whom Percival invited for another early in July.

"Much obliged, old man, but I haven't touched a drop now in over three weeks. My doctor says I must let it be for at least two months, and I mean to stick by him. Awfully kind of you, though!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee