# The Road to Fortune

Extracted from The Green Book magazine, October 1918, pp. 667–682. Accompanying illustrations by R. L. Lambdin may be omitted. [The Adventures of Mrs. Middleton's Husband #3]
PETER MIDDLETON truly loved the adorable Mrs. Peter Middleton, but he couldn't stand living on her money; so he departed, vowing he'd not come back till he had money of his own. These stories of Peter's adventures in search of fortune are among the best the author of “Toward Morning” ever wrote.
The Road to Fortune
By I. A. R. WYLIE
Illustrated by R. L. Lambdin
“ALL the winners! All the winners! Ha'penny, sir?”
Peter Middleton answered with a shake of the head.
“Do you take me for a winner, boy?” he inquired sourly; and then as the disappointed urchin shot off in another direction, he added in a bitter sotto voce: “And if I had a halfpenny, I shouldn't buy your idiotic paper; I should buy a bun—a currant bun.”
He sighed hungrily. Sheer inability to decide on his next move kept him lingering on the curb of the quiet side of Picadilly Circus, which for the benefit of those who have never found a quiet side, might be farther described as the archway nearly opposite the Criterion. As a consequence Mr. Peter Middleton had a restaurant to his right, to his left and in front of him; and to his oversensitive nostrils the murky atmosphere was redolent with all the perfumes of the kitchen. A handsomely appointed limousine, having scraped the curb and splashed his carefully creased trousers with mud, jerked his thoughts into a new groove.
“Beastly plutocrats!” he muttered. “The world's full of them, and they all have motorcars. Ugh!” Then he caught the eye of a constable who was watching him with stately interest.
“Want to cross, sir?”
“I don't know,” said Peter. “I wish I did. Do you think I should be happier on the other side, Mr. Charon?”
“That's your business, sir. Most people knows where they want to go to. You'll get your toes run over there.”
“Thanks. If I had anywhere to go to, I dare say I should want to go to it, Charon.”
The officer regarded him suspiciously.
“You give over calling me names,” said the law indignantly, “or I'll run you in.”
“Don't do that. There's an old lady with ten parcels signaling frantically from the other side of Lethe. Now, I am sure—”
“You move on!”
“Oh, very well,” said Peter, sighing. “I'll move along Shaftesbury Avenue. I might as well.”
NOW, branching off Shaftesbury Avenue there are quiet little backwaters with any number of mysterious little restaurants packed away in snug corners and labeled with delicious-sounding French names which make the Britisher's heart beat faster with memories of that dear, delightful, wicked Paris—of his dreams. And inside, everything is just what you could wish, fascinating, inexpensive food served with a certain air of debonair smartness which makes you feel as though you were in real Bohemia—very much brushed up and toned down for your special benefit. Before one of these abodes Peter Middleton came to an instinctive halt. The concierge touched his cap—for in this volume-bound edition of Bohemia there is actually a concierge.
“Long time since we've had the pleasure, sir.”
“I suppose so. But you should see your confrère at the Ritz. He's gone into mourning for me.”
“Indeed, sir!” said the man blankly.
Peter groaned.
“I'm getting light-headed,” he assured himself, “absolutely light-headed. What shall I do?”
Eventually he started off down the street with the quick, resolute step of a man who had come to a desperate, unshakable decision. In half an hour he was back again, minus his overcoat and plus the air of considerably increased self-respect which usually goes with an inheritance.
“I thought I'd give you a look-up, after all,” he said genially as he passed through the swinging door.
INSIDE, the place was full, and after much searching amid densely occupied tables Peter came to a halt by the window, where a gentleman behind the barricade of a financial supplement sat in solitary possession. Peter did not hesitate.
“If you have no objection, sir, I'll sit down here,” he said. “Otherwise I shall fall down; and I don't want to create a sensation.”
“Drunk?” said the invisible one.
“You're the second person who has made that suggestion within the last hour. But I'm not. I'm hungry. May I?”
“It will be my pleasure.” He spoke with a foreign accent. His manner was suave, and reminded Peter unaccountably of the olives which he was devouring with businesslike gusto behind the newspaper. Peter sat down. During the ten minutes in which he studied the menu he had a feeling that the brown eyes were fixed intently on his face. When he looked up, he met them, and they disappeared behind inscrutable lids.
“Ham,” said Peter curtly. “” When the waiter disappeared, Peter's vis-à-vis folded up his paper and pushed the hors-d'œuvres across the table.
“Might as well begin with that,” he suggested.
“No, thanks,” said Peter.
“Proud?”
Peter chuckled.
“As Lucifer.”
“Out of a job, eh?”
“How did you know?” said Peter, too astonished to be annoyed.
“You said you were hungry. In this country when a man is hungry, he is starving. Ordinary people who wear good clothes, they are never hungry. They do not know what real hunger is. They are always what you might call oversatisfied; and when they say they are hungry, they mean comfortable. And also in cold weather they wear overcoats.” He nodded earnestly.
“You seem to notice most things,” Peter said, attacking a roll and butter with reckless impatience. “A sort of student of humanity, eh?”
“It is my business.”
“Oh!” said Peter.
The man drew a visiting-card from the recess of his inner pocket and laid it reverently on the table.
“My name and my business,” he said. “You will perceive—'Mr. Samuel Johnson, private business transacted, shadowings, divorce-cases, blackmail, strict secrecy guaranteed.' Yes, that is the official description. In real life I do everything. I lock up the family skeleton; I blackmail the blackmailer; I find out w'y Mr. Smith has left England and w'y Mrs. Smith has gone abroad. I will tell what your cook does with the butcher's bills. I will find a crime where there is none and cover up the tracks where there is. I will make anybody believe anything.”
“You ought to go into Parliament,” Peter observed with a wistful eye on the waiter. “I wish you'd make me believe I had a hundred pounds in my pocket.”
Mr. Johnson leaned across the table, which he tapped with a dirty fingernail.
“I will put a hundred pounds in your pocket,” he said.
Peter's jaw dropped.
“I believe you are cadging for votes or something,” he said. “Let me inform you that I am not a householder and never likely to be.”
“My dear young friend, I do not ask for a householder. I look for a gentleman—a poor gentleman. Now, I perceive you are both. You are hungry, but you have shaved, and your trousers are creased to perfection. That means sacrifice—”
“Intelligence,” Peter interposed. “By a certain patent manipulation with an ordinary mattress and a reasonable pair of trousers one can produce marvelous results on creases. It's my own idea—the only one I've ever had.”
“Ah, that is what I mean. The shaving stands for self-sacrifice, the trousers for resource. For me a gentleman must have both. You have both. And you are handsome. Oh,”—he waved a dirty hand in defiance of Peter's expostulations,—“I have eyes in my head, and I tell you what I see, because you must understand w'y I give a hundred pounds to you. Yes, I give a hundred pounds to you.”
“All for mes beaux yeux?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, that's the first good they've done me.” The waiter with the belated ham arrived, and Peter lost interest.
“SHALL I not explain?” the little gentleman asked disappointedly.
“Oh, by all means. It wants explaining.”
Mr. Johnson bent forward.
“As you may suppose, I work behind the scenes,” he began. “I am not for show—I am what you call too obvious. No, I am the stage-manager. I bring my company together.” He tapped Peter mysteriously on the arm. “I need all sorts for my company: cads and ruffians, mountebanks and burglars, ladies—and gentlemen.”
“What do you want with 'gentlemen'?” Peter inquired with sternness.
“That is what I will tell you. Now, in a little villa near Mentone, I have a client—a millionaire with much money. Now, my millionaire has gout in both legs and a daughter. And the daughter has a will and a temper. That suggests nothing to you? No? But I will tell you. The lady has fallen in love. The father writes to me: 'I can do nothing. I am an invalid. My daughter will allow no one to interfere—the chaperons pack their trunks twenty-four hours after their arrival. Send me some one who will distract her attention from the scoundrel, some one who will keep an eye on her and see that she comes to no harm. He must be a gentleman or she will find him out; he must be a man, or she will not look at him.' That is the case as my millionaire writes it to me. What do you think?”
PETER leaned back. From a two-penny packet of cigarettes—his last earthly investment—he selected one weedy specimen and lighted it lugubriously.
“Do you mean to suggest that I should act as a sort of counter-irritant?” he asked.
“For a hundred pounds down—and a hundred pounds more when the lady is safe back in America. All expenses paid—”
“It wont do,” Peter interrupted.
Mr. Johnson spread out expostulating hands.
“It will. You are too modest—”
“I'm not modest. I'm the other thing. She'll fall in love with me—yes, she will. It's happened before, and it's awful—beastly! I haven't got over the caddish feeling yet. No, thanks, Mr. Johnson. I'm ready to do most things—I'll be President of a South American Republic if you want me; but I wont tackle any job to do with a woman; that's sure.”
He got up. Mr. Johnson remained seated.
“You don't understand,” he said gently. “What do I ask of you? That you should be a gentleman. You will play tennis, you will golf, you will ride, you will motor, you will distract her. When you have distracted, you will go away. You will kill lions in South Africa—voilà!”
“But supposing—” Peter began. “Supposing I am a scoundrel? Supposing I made the most of my opportunities? Supposing I—I refused to go?”
Mr. Johnson smiled.
“I have been in my profession twenty years,” he said. “I have the best testimonials from the worst members of the aristocracy—and I have learnt many things. I have learnt that a scoundrel is never hungry—and he never pawns his overcoat. He steals some one else's. You are not a scoundrel, my friend.”
There was a moment's silence. Peter was slowly visualizing things. Two hundred pounds meant a start in life—a chance of regaining the many things that he had lost. After all—
“All I ask is that you should be a gentleman,” Mr. Johnson repeated monotonously. Peter glanced at him, and then at his cigarette. He threw it down with a groan of disgust. Like a flash, a gold case was extended across the table.
“Best Régie,” said Mr. Johnson.
Peter hesitated—then helped himself and was lost.
“I believe I'm being a beastly cad,” he said.
“You are a gentleman and a business man,” said Mr. Johnson, with the air of conferring a knighthood. “It's a deal. Shake hands, Mr.——”
“Call me Guy Mannering,” said Peter Middleton.
IN a pleasant little bay between Mentone and Monte Carlo there is a little villa—very white and dainty—built in a lovely garden, like a diamond in a setting of emerald. The villa changes its name every winter according to the nationality of the owner. Sometimes it is called “Mon Répos,” and then the owner, you may be sure, is English; and sometimes “Salve,” and then the owner is French; and sometimes “Mentone Lodge,” and then the owner is German. But it is always beautiful. Mrs. Middleton had called it “Washington,” pure and simple, and there was always a little American flag flying defiantly from the staff outside on the edge of the cliff.
So there was not much doubt about Mrs. Middleton, and if there had been, she herself would have dispelled it immediately. Even as she sat there in the midst of the rose bower which had been her chief addition to the villa, she exhaled Young America at its best; and her very silence was pregnant with crisp colloquialisms which the girl seated opposite her voiced with considerable energy. Compared to her hostess, however, she was as the night is to the day, as a red rose to a white. She had coal-black hair, and eyes that looked black even though we are told that such things don't exist outside halfpenny novelettes. She had rather a pale complexion and a very square jaw, which at the moment described was decidedly “set,” so that her whole appearance was more alarming than enchanting.
“I reckon this life is about the biggest humbug outside a canned-meat factory that I know of,” she was saying bitterly. “Here I am rolling in dollars, and I can't have the man I've set my heart on. There you are—you got him, and you couldn't keep him. We might as well have been on the top floor of a Tenderloin tenement, for all the good things are to us.”
Mrs. Middleton sighed.
“That's right,” she agreed. “But it's our fault, all the same. It's the fault of our unholy hanker after things we haven't got and oughtn't to have. Now we've both got dollars. That's legitimate enough. Our papas piled them, and it's up to us to unpile them as satisfactorily as we can. But that doesn't satisfy us. We have hankers—you after a title, and Yours Truly after an English gentleman.”
“A what?” inquired Miss Lizbeth Crumm with interest.
“An English gentleman. Queer, wasn't it? But I made up my mind and Papa was all there about it. He has the collector-of-rare-antiquities hanker, and he'd rather track down the Lost Lady from the Louvre than boss an oil-trust. So we set out. He told me afterward it was quite the lengthiest job he'd ever managed. It seemed the real old genuine article is getting rare. There were any number of fakes—sort of reconstructed ruby articles, you know—all the ingredients there, but the wrong color all the same—and a good many with fine names and no color at all. But at last I found Peter.” She drew a deep sigh of recollection. “We both made up our minds about him in a moment. A lot of toughs had set on some poor fellow, and Peter came in cool as an iceberg and wiped them all up as easy as you can eat a box of candies. Papa wanted to roll him up in dollar bills and carry him home in triumph, but he slunk off as though he had been caught pickpocketing. I said to Papa: 'That's the man I'm going to marry.' And Papa said: 'You shall, my dear.' And I did.”
“And he married you for your dollars?” suggested Lizbeth with an air of gloomy triumph.
“He did nothing of the sort,” retorted Mrs. Middleton. “He married me in spite of them. My dear, you have no idea what really humiliating scenes I had to go through before he accepted me. I fairly had to apologize for the dollars. You see, he had gotten some queer old-fashioned idea about not living on your wife's money; and of course, being a gentleman, he hadn't a cent himself. However, Papa answered that there were all signs of the genuine article, so I worked hard, and we were married.” She paused, with her bright eyes lifted skyward as though they saw there endless vistas of remembered bliss. “We had our honeymoon round this way,” she added softly.
“And then you found him out,” said Lizbeth Crumm, determinedly lugubrious.
“I did not. But I found out that I hadn't done the square thing by poor Peter. The money made him sick. It was a sort of nightmare to him. It haunted him, and the doctor told me he was going all to pieces over it; and so—and so I quarreled with him and sent him packing.”
“My!” said Miss Crumm. She got up and stood staring at her hostess with a open-eyed wonder tinged with commiseration, which made her appearance decidedly more prepossessing. “Oh, well! You don't want to swamp Monte Carlo about it,” she added, roughly sympathetic. “You've only got to lift your little finger, and he'll come back.”
Mrs. Middleton wiped a tear from the end of her long lashes.
“You don't know Peter,” she said. “He's as obstinate as a dromedary. Besides, I was real, right-down nasty. I rubbed in the dollars, Lizzy, and what with the state of his liver and other complications, he went off like a skyrocket. And he said he'd never come back until he could buy me up—twice over.”
Her voice broke. Miss Crumm laid a brown, sympathetic paw on the quivering shoulders.
“Nowadays,” she said, “folks make their pile in their sleep—”
“Peter might—in his sleep,” Mrs. Middleton interrupted with a sob and a laugh. “He never could in a waking state. He hasn't got the business instinct of a grasshopper.”
“I've heard a story about a grasshopper—” Miss Crumm began, and then started violently. “My! It's five o'clock, and I promised the Count I'd be at the flagstaff a quarter of an hour ago: I must just fly. Susan, you're not disapproving, are you?”
Mrs. Middleton brushed away the last sign of grief and rose determinedly.
“I ought to tell your father,” she said.
“Then I should probably be lynched on the spot, and you wouldn't like that. Besides, it's his own fault, Susan. He wont allow Count Bonacorsa inside the garden, though he knows the Count's family goes back to goodness knows when. Papa's so frightfully obstinate.”
“Perhaps it runs in the family,” suggested Mrs. Middleton,
“Nonsense! I'm all right. I simply want to do as I like. Could anything be more reasonable? Now, to-morrow, for instance, Papa is trotting out a Mr. Mannering and I shall be expected to golf with him, play tennis with him, walk with and finally marry him—I know Papa. But I sha'n't.” Her eyes blazed. “I wont!”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Middleton soothingly. “Besides—what about Tom Edwardes, Lizbeth?”
The girl glanced at her out of the corners of her eyes—a trifle less self-confident, a trifle uneasy.
“Oh, Tom!” she said with large disparagement. “Tom hangs about like a sulky Teddy-bear. But that's all over, of course. It never was anything—a silly boy-and-girl affair. Nothing could ever come of it. It's just silly of him to be so crazy as to suppose it could. Papa would thrust him out, neck and crop too, if he thought it worth while. But he knows it isn't. There's one thing Papa and I are agreed about—it's the only thing, so it's worth mentioning: Whoever it is, he's got to be somebody. Papa's plumped for the second son of a duke, and I for an Italian count. And there you are.”
“And there's the Count,” said Mrs. Middleton, sighing. “I suppose he got tired of waiting. I wonder where love comes in.”
“Oh, love!' said Miss Lizbeth Crumm scornfully.
COUNT BONACORSA introduced himself with grace and the pleasant ease of a man of breeding. He had, in fact, as he explained, become tired of waiting and had ventured to pay his respects to Madame Middleton, his near neighbor, and his fiancée's friend. Mrs. Middleton softened. He had none of the allures and affectations of the wicked foreign nobleman of fiction. His clothes were well cut and simple, and his expression agreeable if somewhat weary. She perceived also that when Lizbeth went in to fetch her hat there was nothing either very loverlike or admiring in the languid glance which followed Lizbeth's somewhat lanky, unformed figure into the house. Mrs. Middleton sighed, and the Count turned deferentially.
“You are Miss Crumm's friend,” he said in his deliberate way. “That will excuse, I hope, my addressing myself to you in this fashion. You are aware of the state of things between Miss Crumm and myself, are you not? I have asked her to be my wife, and Mr. Crumm has, if I may so express myself, kicked me downstairs. Now, you have influence with him. Will you not speak a word for me?”
“I don't know you, Count,” Mrs. Middleton said.
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
“What shall I do? I cannot turn my heart inside out for you. As to my family and position, of that you can be easily assured—”
“And financially, Count?”
He smiled.
“I am poor. I am a nobleman. Poverty is our last virtue.”
“That's a snub,” said Mrs. Middleton without offense. She was silent a moment, and then she lifted her pretty face and looked at him.
“See here, Count,” she began, “I'm Lizbeth's friend. I've looked after her and mothered her ever since we graduated together over in the States. I'm older than she is, and I'm married—and marriage is the best broom for cobwebs that I know of. I like you well enough as far as appearance goes, but if I am to help you, you've got to answer one question, fair and square. Will you?”
“To the best of my powers, Madame.”
“Then, why do you want to marry Lizbeth?”
“Surely that is obvious?”
“That's pretty, but not an answer. I want to know, because Lizbeth's the dearest girl on earth, gold through and through; but she's in the rough still, and you don't strike me as the man to care for the polishing business. Is it the other gold you're after, Count?”
He looked at her with perfect frankness.
“Since you insist—yes. I owe so much sacrifice to my family.”
“Sacrifice! And Lizbeth?”
“Miss Crumm is not marrying me for myself, either,” was the unmoved answer. “We have each something which the other wants. It is an honest exchange.”
Lizbeth appeared in the doorway, singing in the rough, untutored voice of girlhood.
“It's horrid! It's wicked!” Mrs. Middleton said. “Lizbeth's a child; she doesn't know life yet.”
“No one ever does, till it's over,” the Count returned sardonically.
Mrs. Middleton said no more. But after she had kissed Lizbeth good-by and waved to them from the gate, her face darkened with stern purpose.
“Well, whoever it is, it isn't going to be you, Count,” she said to the latter's disappearing figure. “If I have anything to say in the matter, it will be Tom Edwardes or—or this Mr. Mannering,” she said as a casual afterthought.
“YOU go on as you've begun, sir,” said Mr. Mortimer Crumm, shifting a white-swathed limb from the chair to the ground and grimacing horribly. “You keep that Italian scoundrel off. Don't let him come near my daughter. Do you hear, sir?”
“I hear perfectly, sir,” said. Peter. “But I doubt my abilities. I am beginning to notice something in Miss “Crumm's manner which suggests weariness in my forms of entertainment.”
“I don't care. You've got to keep her going,” Mr. Crumm burst in testily. “Tennis, golf, riding, swimming—anything you like; but don't give her time to breathe. And if I get her back to New York safely, I'll give you an extra two hundred and fifty dollars. Got that in your head?”
“Oh, yes sir! Quite easily this time, thank you.”
“That's good— Oh—eh, good morning, child!”
He submitted grimly to his daughter's perfunctory morning kiss. Lizbeth, fresh and bearing that somewhat too polished appearance of youth, held out a cold hand in Peter's direction.
“I hope you slept well.”
“Very well, thanks.”
“Had breakfast?”
“I—eh—waited to keep you company.”
“Say, that's real kind of you,” she commented ironically.
Under Mr. Crumm's gloomily watchful eye they attacked the ham and eggs in somewhat offensive silence. Peter's appetite, nevertheless, proved more than excellent. At his third helping, Lizbeth looked up at him with real interest.
“Mentone seems to agree with you,” she said.
“Yes. Well, you see, I've been hungry so long—”
“Hungry?” she interrupted.
“That is to say—I haven't had a square meal—” He coughed. “I've been doing a 'cure,'” he explained lamely. 'Abstinence, and all that, you know. Beastly bore, but excellent thing—for the—eh—liver—and all that, you know.”
Lizbeth looked at him in affronted silence. Then she got up.
“It's a lovely morning,” she observed coldly. “It might do your—your constitution good to go for a long walk, Mr. Mannering.”
“Oh, I should be delighted,” he assented, deserting the third helping with frantic enthusiasm. “It's really awfully good of you—”
“I didn't say I was going,” she interrupted acidly.
“Oh!” He stood there, smiling at her, nonplused but determined. “I'd just as soon play tennis,” he assured her. “It's the very morning for a game, don't you think?”
She surveyed his tall, upright figure and pleasant face with an ungracious resignation.
“Oh, very well,” she said, sighing. “I suppose I'd better.”
They went out onto the lawn together, and Peter put up the net unaided, but persistently cheerful and triumphantly deft in his management of the rusty mechanism. Lizbeth continued to inspect him, somberly distrustful.
“I guess you're the most terribly energetic man I've met this side of the Atlantic,” she observed as he scooped up a couple of balls and offered them to her. “I'm wondering, is it me or the game you're so devoted to?” she added with the arrogance of millions and youth combined.
“Oh, the game, of course,” he hastened to explain. “At least—I mean—it is so awfully healthy, don't-you think?”
She made no answer. She stalked over to her side of the court, and her first ball took a direction which suggested malice. Peter dodged it, and her second was returned with acrimonious precision. After that they played in dogged, heated silence. Peter, fired by temper, recovered his form; Miss Elizabeth Crumm, fired also by temper, lost hers completely. Moreover something on the other side of the garden suddenly caught her attention at a critical moment, and she volleyed so wildly that Peter glanced over his shoulder. He saw nothing but a pale gray Hamburg just above the line of rosebushes. It disappeared, and Lizbeth flung her racket viciously into the net.
“It's no good, Mr. Mannering,” she said. “I can't play this morning; I'm in a bad temper. I've got a headache. I'm going for a walk—alone.”
“Oh, very well,” Peter agreed limply. “I'm awfully sorry. I believe I've been a horrid bore.”
She did not deny the suggestion. She walked off, and presently her garden-hat disappeared in the direction taken by the Hamburg. Peter remained behind to pick up the balls. He was feeling heated and foolish, and Mr. Crumm's thunder-charged voice, coming through the open window, did not tend to calm the waters of his discontent.
“Why aren't you playing?” Mr. Crumm demanded wrathfully. “Where is she?”
“'She'—meaning your daughter, Miss Elizabeth Crumm—has gone for a walk,” Peter returned with bitterness.
“Walk? Of course. She always goes for walks, and I wont have it. You shouldn't have allowed her. You're a blamed fool, sir!”
Peter drew himself up, erect and flushed.
“Look here, Mr. Crumm,” he said, “if you wanted a robber-knight out of the ninth century, you should have said so. Nowadays a man can't force an unwilling woman to play tennis at the end of a poker. You may not be aware of it, but it isn't done, really it isn't!”
“I don't care a red cat!” Mr. Crumm retorted. “I expect you to earn your money like any other honest man!”
“Oh, confound the money!” said Peter under his breath. However, he picked up his hat. “I'll go after her,” he said sullenly.
BY the time he had reached the gate, both the Hamburg and the flower-decorated Leghorn had disappeared. A young man was seated on the rustic bench outside, his hat tipped over his eyes, his arms folded in Napoleonic majesty. He stared at Peter, and the stare was returned, not rudely but with hesitating inquiry.
“Pouvez vous me dire—” Peter began at last in his best French.
The young man unfolded himself.
“Say, if you're an Englishman, you can trot out the beauties of your native tongue,” he drawled. “I'm an American. I guess I'll understand all right.”
“Thanks. I only wanted to know if you had seen a lady with—er—flowers and things in her hat—”
“I have, young man.” The American got up. The lofty patronage of his tone was scarcely justified by his face, which was young and boyishly pink and white. But his shoulders were supernatural and like the cut of his trousers calculated to inspire awe in the heart of the boldest beholder. “If you mean Miss Lizbeth Crumm, she's gone down to the bay,” he added unrelentingly. “And that Count fellow has gone with her.”
“Thanks very much. Then I'll just go after them.”
Peter lifted his hat and prepared to descend the narrow footpath which led down toward the sea. To his amazement and annoyance, the stranger swung round and kept leisurely pace beside him.
“You'll excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I'd like a word with you. You're another of 'em, I guess?”
“What on earth do you mean? Really, I haven't time—besides—”
“I've waited three whole days,” was the cool interruption, “and I guess I'm real fed up with things. My name's Tom Edwardes, from New York. What's yours?”
“'Pon my word—” Peter began with rising exasperation.
“Dook, count, earl, baronet—which is it? I've sized it up as a dook. I guess nothing less would open Mortimer Crumm's sacred portals. Anyhow, I want to know. I want to know exactly where I stand. I'm sick to death of this rotten game. I'm getting reckless.”
Peter Middleton stopped short.
“I don't care how reckless you are,” he said, “but I wish to goodness you would go and be reckless somewhere else. There's Monte Carlo within twenty miles, and the deep sea within a few yards. You can take your choice. Only leave me alone.”
“Not till I've done, sir.” The young American took his stand broadly across the path, his fists clenched, his eyes blazing. “I know who you are and what you're after. Money! That's all you care for! All you think about! And you haven't got the pluck and decency to pile it up for yourself. You come crawling after an innocent young girl, lying and humbugging—”
“Look here,” Peter interrupted sharply, “I've had enough. There's probably a lot of truth in what you say, and I wont stand it. Are you going to let me pass?”
“No.”
THEY confronted each other in an electric-charged silence. Peter squared himself. He was conscious of an acute sense of relief. The smothered exasperation and self-disgust of the last week had come to a head; he was going to fight somebody—kill somebody, if possible; and he felt that the opportunity was the last consolation that the world held for him.
“It seems that I have to thrash you, my Yankee friend,” Peter said cheerfully.
“You're welcome to try, sir,” Mr. Tom Edwardes retorted with the utmost politeness.
After that no more was said, and they went about their preparations with an Anglo-Saxon perception of the fitness of things. No one was in sight; a little strip of greensward offered an excellent battleground. Mr. Tom Edwardes selected the positions with strict impartiality.
“I guess you can start now, My Lord,” he said. “I'm ready.”
Without his coat he proved a normally built young man, muscular and wiry, whose jaw suggested a more than sufficient reserve of obstinacy and self-confidence. At the end of the first round Peter realized that he had his work cut out for him. At the end of the second, the effects of the recent 'cure' had begun to make themselves unpleasantly conspicuous. His head swam, and his heart pumped thunderously against his ribs. His sparring became uneffectual; his well directed uppercuts missed his opponent's chin with monotonous regularity. The third round had only just begun when Peter passed suddenly and completely into darkness. It was a comparatively pleasant state, and the sensation of water being splashed into his face roused him to an annoyed consciousness of his own existence. He opened one eye in weary inquiry and discovered that Tom Edwardes was bending over him, his good-natured, boyish face white with anxious regret.
“Say, Dook, you're not hurt?” he stammered. “I'm real sorry, I—I—didn't mean it—”
“You ought to have meant it,” said Peter. “It was a first-rate knockout.” He dragged himself up weakly into a sitting position and rubbed his arm. “I'm soft all over,” he lamented. “Soft as an india-rubber ball with all the bounce knocked out of it.”
“I'm real sorry,” the boy repeated earnestly. “If it hadn't been for Lizbeth—”
“Oh, bother Lizbeth!” Peter growled. “Chaperon her yourself, you young idiot!”
“Chaperon?”
Peter looked up at him with grim amusement.
“That surprises you, doesn't it? Yes, I'm Miss Lizbeth Crumm's chaperon at the rate of two hundred dollars a week, and my business is to keep off ineligible counts. You've knocked out the wrong man, Mr. Edwardes.”
“Gee!” said Mr. Edwardes. He collapsed at his victim's side. “Then you don't want to marry Lizbeth?”
“I not only don't want to, but I can't. I'm married.”
“Married!” Edwardes began to laugh. He laughed wildly until he caught sight of Peter's face; whereupon he became preternaturally serious. “I say, I'm downright ashamed. If you'd only explained a bit—”
“I didn't want to. It gave me a real pleasure to hit at something. Marrying Miss Lizbeth may be delightful, but chaperoning—no, you're welcome to it.”
A deep flush of enthusiasm spread over the boy's face.
“Oh, I can understand! You don't appreciate her,” he stammered eagerly. “You don't know her as I do—I've known her ever since we were kiddies. We've always been such pals together, and—it was practically settled when they came over. And then they got the title mania—all our American women get it—it's a sort of Republican measles—and of course I was nowhere. And ever since, I've been hanging round with a marriage license from the consulate in my pocket, waiting for a chance to duck that Italian organ-grinder and carry her off.” He looked shyly at Middleton's injured profile. “Say, you're married! You know what the woman means to a fellow, don't you?”
“Yes,” said Peter somberly.
“Or perhaps you don't. Perhaps—say, I'm being tactless, aren't I?”
Peter laughed.
“Not a bit. I know what a woman means. All too well! But take my advice. Don't marry one with money. Sooner or later it comes between you. It's bound to. It's a sort of horrible poison which you can't shake off.”
TOM EDWARDES considered the advice in silence.
“I guess you're right, sir,” he said. “But I'm not going to lose Lizbeth because of her money. I don't care for it. I don't want it. I can keep my wife with my own work—”
“Then do it!” Peter exclaimed almost angrily. “If you can do that, you lucky young dog, then bolt with her! Carry her off and shut your doors in the face of her father and all his millions—”
“But I can't,” Edwardes broke in, “I'm broke. This trip has just done for me. If I could hold out another week—”
Middleton plunged his hands into his pockets and drew out a handful of hundred-franc bills and thrust them upon the amazed youth.
“Take them!” he said recklessly. “The chaperon's wedding-gift. I've saved my charge from the Count, and you can have her and all the money with my blessing. I've earned it. Don't expostulate, I loathe the sight of it!”
“I can't.” The square jaw had hardened. “It's real fine of you, sir, but I can't.”
“Oh, return it to me, by all means, if you must,” said Peter negligently. “Guy Mannering is my name. You can always find me through my publishers—literary person, you know. And now off with you both.”
“Supposing she wont—”
“She will. Measles aren't eternal—even the Republican sort. Sweep her off her feet. Don't give her time to breathe. That's Papa Crumm's best advice, and he ought to know.”
“And the organ-grinder fellow?”
“Oh, hang him!”
Edwardes smiled wistfully.
“I wish I could,” he said.
Both men were silent, each deep in his own thoughts. The man from New York was concocting ways and means. Peter was busy rearranging his finances. By strict economy he believed he might be able to get back to England, though what he was going to do when he got there was less clear. “Make another ass of myself,” he supposed bitterly. At that precise moment the boy beside him gripped his arm.
“What's that?” he exclaimed excitedly. Middleton followed the pointing finger, then sprang to his feet.
“It looks like an overturned boat—and some one in the water—”
“Two people!”
“One of them is in distress—”
“A woman—”
The next minute Middleton, regardless of bruised and stiffened limbs, was racing wildly down the path, the man from New York hot at his heels.
WHEN they had successfully fished Miss Lizbeth and Count Bonacorsa from the doubtful dangers of five feet of placid water, there was an awkward silence. Miss Lizbeth ignored her rescuers. She looked at the Count, and her expression should have withered.
“You are a coward!” she said simply.
Bonacorsa shrugged his shoulders. In spite of a limp, bedraggled appearance, he had retained something of his languid dignity and unalterable self-confidence.
“My good lady,” he said, “I saw that you could swim as admirably as you do all things. I myself am an indifferent sportsman. And there was the dynasty to be considered.”
“Oh!” said Miss Lizbeth. She turned her back on all three and stalked up the path in the direction of Washington Villa, a bedraggled figure of wrath and indignation. Half an hour later, while drying her hair before Mrs. Middleton's fire, she explained matters.
“Yes, it's all off,” she said cheerfully. “We quarreled. You see, he kept on telling me how he wanted to marry me, and I said: 'Well, why don't you?' And he said: 'Not without your father's consent.' And I said: 'Why not?' And then it came out he was thinking of my dot or whatever you call it. Well, that was too much for me.”
“But, my dear child, you knew—”
“Oh, yes, I knew inside, all right, but it's one thing to know inside, and another to have it rubbed under your nose. Anyhow, I got annoyed. I told him to row back, and when he wouldn't, I was real angry. And then the boat upset.”
“And Tom and Mr. Mannering rescued you?”
“They did nothing of the sort. I could have managed perfectly well without them. Men are so interfering! And Tom nearly hugged the life out of me.” She threw back her dark young head with a movement of conviction. “You know, I've made up my mind, Susan! I shall never marry.”
“No, I shouldn't if I were you,” said Mrs. Middleton.
“Unless I married Mr. Mannering to spite Tom,” Lizbeth added viciously. Then she sighed. “You know, I am real sorry about Mr. Mannering. I think he must be like your Peter—so proud and reticent and all that. Anyone with half an eye could see how smitten he is. The way he hangs round me is just too pathetic! He wants to speak, and yet he can't. I can see the struggle written all over his poor face. It's his pride and the money, you know. Poor dear! I've a good mind to propose to him myself.”
Mrs. Middleton shook her head sadly.
“Don't do that, Lizbeth,” she said. “That was what I did, and it always ends badly.”
“But he is so unhappy—and so nice,” Lizbeth broke in. “Look—I snapshotted him the other day and brought a print to show you. It's in my bag—if it isn't all sodden.” From a once dainty but now much damaged reticule she produced a cardcase and from the cardcase a photo which she placed on Mrs. Middleton's knee. “That's him!” she proclaimed, ungrammatical but triumphant.
MRS. MIDDLETON picked up the picture; but she said nothing. She leaned back in her chair, and her eyes closed for a minute. All the color had died out of her fair cheeks. When she spoke at last, her voice had so changed that the girl looked up in blank astonishment.
“It's—it's not the money, Lizbeth,” she said at last. “It's something else—something worse. That's Peter, Lizbeth.” She got up and stood swaying unsteadily on her feet. “Oh, poor Peter!”
“Peter? Why, that's Mr. Mannering—Guy Mannering!”
“Whatever he calls himself, he is my husband.”
Lizbeth sprang up, open-mouthed with consternation.
“But Susan!” There was no answer. Mrs. Middleton buried her face in her arms against the mantelshelf, and something like a sob of physical pain broke the stillness. “Susan, it's absurd! And even if it isn't, all I said is, of course. It's nothing.”
“Why shouldn't it be true? Men forget so quickly—”
“Then they're scoundrels! every one of them!” exclaimed Miss Lizbeth explosively. “And I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea. Oh, the villain! Oh, you poor, dear, sweet thing! I'd like to—”
But that moment Mrs. Middleton's French maid appeared at the door.
“If you please, Madame, zere is a Monsieur who inquires after Mees Lizbeth. He wishes to speak to 'er. 'E says 'e is Monsieur Mannering.”
There was a blank silence. Mrs. Middleton looked up, white-faced but determined.
“Tell him—” she began faintly.
Miss Lizbeth Crumm took her by the shoulders and propelled her gently but firmly across the room through the curtains into the adjoining boudoir.
“You leave this to me,” she said. “I'm going to clear up this business all by my lonesome. Now, you stay quietly there. You can peep if you like, and you can listen with all your ears. But remember if you sniff once, we're lost!”
Then she drew the curtains briskly into their place.
“Show Monsieur Mannering in here,” she said.
MR. MANNERING did not look his best as he entered. His clothes, though dry, bore traces of recent immersion, and his expression was troubled and ill at ease. It did not brighten as Miss Lizbeth came toward him, gracious and confident in spite of flowing disordered hair.
“Oh, Mr. Mannering,” she said softly. “However shall I thank you?”
He flushed a little, but held out his hand with real warmth.
“Oh, it was nothing, Miss Lizbeth! Mr. Edwardes did everything.” He hesitated and then blurted out: “Miss Lizbeth, I have come on a most difficult, a most awkward errand. I don't know how to begin. I feel myself altogether unfit. I—I hope you will have patience and hear me out—”
“Couldn't I help you?” she said softly.
“You?”
“Wouldn't it help a little if I told you that I know what you are going to say?”
“Miss Lizbeth!” he exclaimed in joyous relief. “If only—”
She laid her hands gently on his shoulders. She looked up at him through an unromantic tangle of black hair with a world of most romantic and tender understanding in her dark eyes.
“Oh, Guy, do you think I am so blind? Do you think I haven't seen all the struggle and temptation and longing that has been going on in your poor, tortured heart? Oh, Guy, women are far-seeing. How I have felt for you. And to-day, in that hour of danger, when you were on the verge of breakdown, I knew then that I must help you—break down the barriers for you! Guy, money is nothing to me. What is wealth compared to the love of a good strong man?”
“Miss Lizbeth—” he burst out.
“Oh, my dear! Don't think me unwomanly!”
“I don't think about you at all!” he exclaimed desperately. “I mean—I think—I think it's awful! It serves me right! I knew this would happen.” He drew back from her, pale with horror, his eyes full of miserable remorse. “Miss Lizbeth, I'm honored, deeply honored. But it's all a mistake, a dreadful mistake, for which I should be soundly thrashed. I'm—I'm married!”
The effect was not the expected one. For a moment she clasped her hand to her forehead as though overwhelmed by a poignant flash of agony. Then she came toward him, her hands outstretched, the very image of tender, compassionate womanhood.
“My poor Guy! My poor fellow! All is clear to me. Your silence, your suffering—ah, how I understand!”
“You don't understand at all,” he interrupted with the sullen rudeness of despair. “I love my wife better than anything on earth.”
“Then what on earth are you doing here?”
HER complete change of tone should have acted like a douche of cold water. But he mistook the tremble of her voice for tears, the flash in her eyes for indignation. He looked upon her as upon a vengeful, insulted Medusa.
“I am earning my living,” he said truculently,
“How, pray?”
“By looking after you.” He plunged his hands into his pockets after the manner of embarrassed Englishmen. “I've been your chaperon for two whole weeks at two hundred dollars a week. I dare say it was a caddish sort of thing to do. I dare say I knew it all along or I shouldn't have changed my name. And I'm most infernally sorry!”
She turned away.
“So this is Papa's doing,” she said in smothered tones.
“Yes. At least—look here, Miss Lizbeth! It's all been a silly mistake, as I said. Of course, I know, you didn't really care a rap for me, did you? It was just pity—and—and all that. And there's Tom, the finest fellow on earth, and devoted to you. This very afternoon he knocked me down because he thought I was another edition of the Count—”
“Did he?” interrupted Miss Lizbeth with genuine interest. “Is that why your face is queer on the right side?”
He nodded, and suddenly warmed to his subject with the enthusiasm of hope.
“I should say so! And I've come from him with a message. He's got a twenty-two horsepower Mercedes down on the road by the flagstaff, and he says if you're not there in twenty minutes, he's coming to fetch you. You'll be in Monte Carlo by five o'clock, married by six and on your way to Bremen by seven, on board to-morrow morning and in New York in a week.”
She gasped.
“Say, you are in a hurry to get rid of me. Is this arrangement part of your chaperonage, Mr.—whoever you are?”
“Confound the chaperonage!” said Peter gayly. “Edwardes loves you, and I'll swear at the bottom of all that title-loving rubbish, you love him too, and for once the chaperon's on the right side. Hurry along or we shall have the Mercedes in the garden.”
“And my clothes?”
“You can pick them up on the way.”
“Out of the Atlantic, I suppose? Well, I guess I'll think about it while I put my hair up. Mrs. Middleton will look after you.”
“Mrs. who?” he said slowly.
“Mrs. Middleton—Susan Middleton, my great friend with the husband who's queer in his head.” She glanced at him over her shoulders. “Did you say the flagstaff in twenty minutes?”
“Yes,” said Peter like a man in a dream.
WHEN the door closed, he stared about him in panic-stricken remembrance. Then suddenly his face softened, grew wonderfully tender. There was a little soiled and very damp cambric handkerchief lying on the mantelshelf. He picked it up and examined the monogram carefully—for handkerchiefs do not always belong to the right person—kissed it, thrust it into his pocket and crept like a thief toward the window. At that moment the boudoir curtains, which throughout the momentous interview had been undergoing stormy convulsions, were thrust aside.
“Peter,” said Mrs. Middleton.
“Susan!” he gasped.
“I was listening all the time,” she said brokenly. “I couldn't help it. I was so awfully afraid!”
“Susan, you didn't suppose—”
“Yes, I did. How could I tell? haven't seen you for years—”
“Four weeks, dear.”
“—and I thought my heart was going to break.”
She was weeping on his shoulder. Mr. Peter Middleton's eyes were also moist.
“It's no good, Susan,” he said huskily. “I've got to keep my promise to myself. I must!”
“I know, you dreadful, obstinate old donkey.”
“And I haven't made my pile yet, and I—I don't think I ever shall.”
“I don't think so either.” She looked up at him with a sudden burst of delicious laughter. “Unless you start a matrimonial agency, Peter. Listen, what was that? Wasn't it a motor-horn?”
“It sounded like it.”
“Then she's gone. You'll never dare go near Mr. Crumm again. He'll shoot you on sight.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And there isn't a train to Monte Carlo before nine.”
“Susan!”
She put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him.
“Then—then wont you stay to supper first, Peter?” she asked softly.
THE fourth of “The Adventures of Mrs. Middleton's Husband,” will be told under the title “The Princess and the Mask,” in the next—the November—issue of The Green Book Magazine.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1959, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 64 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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