CHAPTER XXVI. A TALE OF A GRANDFATHER
Archie was not a man who readily allowed himself to become worried,especially about people who were not in his own immediate circle offriends, but in the course of the next week he was bound to admit thathe was not altogether easy in his mind about his father-in-law's mentalcondition. He had read all sorts of things in the Sunday papers andelsewhere about the constant strain to which captains of industry aresubjected, a strain which sooner or later is only too apt to makethe victim go all blooey, and it seemed to him that Mr. Brewsterwas beginning to find the going a trifle too tough for his stamina.Undeniably he was behaving in an odd manner, and Archie, thoughno physician, was aware that, when the American business-man, thatrestless, ever-active human machine, starts behaving in an odd manner,the next thing you know is that two strong men, one attached to eacharm, are hurrying him into the cab bound for Bloomingdale.
He did not confide his misgivings to Lucille, not wishing to cause heranxiety. He hunted up Reggie van Tuyl at the club, and sought advicefrom him.
"I say, Reggie, old thing--present company excepted--have there been anyloonies in your family?"
Reggie stirred in the slumber which always gripped him in the earlyafternoon.
"Loonies?" he mumbled, sleepily. "Rather! My uncle Edgar thought he wastwins."
"Twins, eh?"
"Yes. Silly idea! I mean, you'd have thought one of my uncle Edgar wouldhave been enough for any man."
"How did the thing start?" asked Archie.
"Start? Well, the first thing we noticed was when he began wanting twoof everything. Had to set two places for him at dinner and so on. Alwayswanted two seats at the theatre. Ran into money, I can tell you."
"He didn't behave rummily up till then? I mean to say, wasn't sort ofjumpy and all that?"
"Not that I remember. Why?"
Archie's tone became grave.
"Well, I'll tell you, old man, though I don't want it to go any farther,that I'm a bit worried about my jolly old father-in-law. I believe he'sabout to go in off the deep-end. I think he's cracking under the strain.Dashed weird his behaviour has been the last few days."
"Such as?" murmured Mr. van Tuyl.
"Well, the other morning I happened to be in his suite--incidentally hewouldn't go above ten dollars, and I wanted twenty-five-and he suddenlypicked up a whacking big paper-weight and bunged it for all he wasworth."
"At you?"
"Not at me. That was the rummy part of it. At a mosquito on the wall, hesaid. Well, I mean to say, do chappies bung paper-weights at mosquitoes?I mean, is it done?"
"Smash anything?"
"Curiously enough, no. But he only just missed a rather decent picturewhich Lucille had given him for his birthday. Another foot to the leftand it would have been a goner."
"Sounds queer."
"And, talking of that picture, I looked in on him about a couple ofafternoons later, and he'd taken it down from the wall and laid it onthe floor and was staring at it in a dashed marked sort of manner. Thatwas peculiar, what?"
"On the floor?"
"On the jolly old carpet. When I came in, he was goggling at it in asort of glassy way. Absolutely rapt, don't you know. My coming in gavehim a start--seemed to rouse him from a kind of trance, you know--and hejumped like an antelope; and, if I hadn't happened to grab him, he wouldhave trampled bang on the thing. It was deuced unpleasant, you know. Hismanner was rummy. He seemed to be brooding on something. What ought I todo about it, do you think? It's not my affair, of course, but itseems to me that, if he goes on like this, one of these days he'll bestabbing someone with a pickle-fork."
To Archie's relief, his father-in-law's symptoms showed no signs ofdevelopment. In fact, his manner reverted to the normal once more, anda few days later, meeting Archie in the lobby of the hotel, he seemedquite cheerful. It was not often that he wasted his time talking to hisson-in-law, but on this occasion he chatted with him for several minutesabout the big picture-robbery which had formed the chief item of newson the front pages of the morning papers that day. It was Mr. Brewster'sopinion that the outrage had been the work of a gang and that nobody wassafe.
Daniel Brewster had spoken of this matter with strange earnestness, buthis words had slipped from Archie's mind when he made his way that nightto his father-in-law's suite. Archie was in an exalted mood. In thecourse of dinner he had had a bit of good news which was occupying histhoughts to the exclusion of all other matters. It had left him in acomfortable, if rather dizzy, condition of benevolence to all createdthings. He had smiled at the room-clerk as he crossed the lobby, and ifhe had had a dollar, he would have given it to the boy who took him upin the elevator.
He found the door of the Brewster suite unlocked which at any other timewould have struck him as unusual; but to-night he was in no frame ofmind to notice these trivialities. He went in, and, finding the roomdark and no one at home, sat down, too absorbed in his thoughts toswitch on the lights, and gave himself up to dreamy meditation.
There are certain moods in which one loses count of time, and Archiecould not have said how long he had been sitting in the deep arm-chairnear the window when he first became aware that he was not alone in theroom. He had closed his eyes, the better to meditate, so had not seenanyone enter. Nor had he heard the door open. The first intimationhe had that somebody had come in was when some hard substance knockedagainst some other hard object, producing a sharp sound which broughthim back to earth with a jerk.
He sat up silently. The fact that the room was still in darkness made itobvious that something nefarious was afoot. Plainly there was dirty workin preparation at the cross-roads. He stared into the blackness, and, ashis eyes grew accustomed to it, was presently able to see an indistinctform bending over something on the floor. The sound of rather stertorousbreathing came to him.
Archie had many defects which prevented him being the perfect man,but lack of courage was not one of them. His somewhat rudimentaryintelligence had occasionally led his superior officers during the warto thank God that Great Britain had a Navy, but even these stern criticshad found nothing to complain of in the manner in which he bounded overthe top. Some of us are thinkers, others men of action. Archie was a manof action, and he was out of his chair and sailing in the direction ofthe back of the intruder's neck before a wiser man would have completedhis plan of campaign. The miscreant collapsed under him with a squashysound, like the wind going out of a pair of bellows, and Archie, takinga firm seat on his spine, rubbed the other's face in the carpet andawaited the progress of events.
At the end of half a minute it became apparent that there was goingto be no counter-attack. The dashing swiftness of the assault hadapparently had the effect of depriving the marauder of his entire stockof breath. He was gurgling to himself in a pained sort of way and makingno effort to rise. Archie, feeling that it would be safe to get upand switch on the light, did so, and, turning after completing thismanoeuvre, was greeted by the spectacle of his father-in-law, seatedon the floor in a breathless and dishevelled condition, blinking at thesudden illumination. On the carpet beside Mr. Brewster lay a long knife,and beside the knife lay the handsomely framed masterpiece of J. B.Wheeler's fiancee, Miss Alice Wigmore. Archie stared at this collectiondumbly.
"Oh, what-ho!" he observed at length, feebly.
A distinct chill manifested itself in the region of Archie's spine. Thiscould mean only one thing. His fears had been realised. The strain ofmodern life, with all its hustle and excitement, had at last proved toomuch for Mr. Brewster. Crushed by the thousand and one anxieties andworries of a millionaire's existence, Daniel Brewster had gone off hisonion.
Archie was nonplussed. This was his first experience of this kind ofthing. What, he asked himself, was the proper procedure in a situationof this sort? What was the local rule? Where, in a word, did he go fromhere? He was still musing in an embarrassed and baffled way, havingtaken the precaution of kicking the knife under the sofa, when Mr.Brewster spoke. And there was in, both the
words and the method oftheir delivery so much of his old familiar self that Archie felt quiterelieved.
"So it's you, is it, you wretched blight, you miserable weed!" saidMr. Brewster, having recovered enough breath to be going on with. Heglowered at his son-in-law despondently. "I might have, expected it! IfI was at the North Pole, I could count on you butting in!"
"Shall I get you a drink of water?" said Archie.
"What the devil," demanded Mr. Brewster, "do you imagine I want with adrink of water?"
"Well--" Archie hesitated delicately. "I had a sort of idea that you hadbeen feeling the strain a bit. I mean to say, rush of modern life andall that sort of thing--"
"What are you doing in my room?" said Mr. Brewster, changing thesubject.
"Well, I came to tell you something, and I came in here and was waitingfor you, and I saw some chappie biffing about in the dark, and I thoughtit was a burglar or something after some of your things, so, thinking itover, I got the idea that it would be a fairly juicy scheme to land onhim with both feet. No idea it was you, old thing! Frightfully sorry andall that. Meant well!"
Mr. Brewster sighed deeply. He was a just man, and he could not butrealise that, in the circumstances, Archie had behaved not unnaturally.
"Oh, well!" he said. "I might have known something would go wrong."
"Awfully sorry!"
"It can't be helped. What was it you wanted to tell me?" He eyed hisson-in-law piercingly. "Not a cent over twenty dollars!" he said coldly.
Archie hastened to dispel the pardonable error.
"Oh, it wasn't anything like that," he said. "As a matter of fact, Ithink it's a good egg. It has bucked me up to no inconsiderabledegree. I was dining with Lucille just now, and, as we dallied with thefood-stuffs, she told me something which--well, I'm bound to say, itmade me feel considerably braced. She told me to trot along and ask youif you would mind--"
"I gave Lucille a hundred dollars only last Tuesday."
Archie was pained.
"Adjust this sordid outlook, old thing!" he urged. "You simply aren'tanywhere near it. Right off the target, absolutely! What Lucille told meto ask you was if you would mind--at some tolerably near date--beinga grandfather! Rotten thing to be, of course," proceeded Archiecommiseratingly, "for a chappie of your age, but there it is!"
Mr. Brewster gulped.
"Do you mean to say--?"
"I mean, apt to make a fellow feel a bit of a patriarch. Snowy hair andwhat not. And, of course, for a chappie in the prime of life like you--"
"Do you mean to tell me--? Is this true?"
"Absolutely! Of course, speaking for myself, I'm all for it. I don'tknow when I've felt more bucked. I sang as I came up here--absolutelywarbled in the elevator. But you--"
A curious change had come over Mr. Brewster. He was one of those men whohave the appearance of having been hewn out of the solid rock, but nowin some indescribable way he seemed to have melted. For a moment hegazed at Archie, then, moving quickly forward, he grasped his hand in aniron grip.
"This is the best news I've ever had!" he mumbled.
"Awfully good of you to take it like this," said Archie cordially. "Imean, being a grandfather--"
Mr. Brewster smiled. Of a man of his appearance one could hardly saythat he smiled playfully; but there was something in his expression thatremotely suggested playfulness.
"My dear old bean," he said.
Archie started.
"My dear old bean," repeated Mr. Brewster firmly, "I'm the happiest manin America!" His eye fell on the picture which lay on the floor. He gavea slight shudder, but recovered himself immediately. "After this," hesaid, "I can reconcile myself to living with that thing for the rest ofmy life. I feel it doesn't matter."
"I say," said Archie, "how about that? Wouldn't have brought the thingup if you hadn't introduced the topic, but, speaking as man to man, whatthe dickens WERE you up to when I landed on your spine just now?"
"I suppose you thought I had gone off my head?"
"Well, I'm bound to say--"
Mr. Brewster cast an unfriendly glance at the picture.
"Well, I had every excuse, after living with that infernal thing for aweek!"
Archie looked at him, astonished.
"I say, old thing, I don't know if I have got your meaning exactly, butyou somehow give me the impression that you don't like that jolly oldwork of Art."
"Like it!" cried Mr. Brewster. "It's nearly driven me mad! Every timeit caught my eye, it gave me a pain in the neck. To-night I felt as if Icouldn't stand it any longer. I didn't want to hurt Lucille's feelings,by telling her, so I made up my mind I would cut the damned thing out ofits frame and tell her it had been stolen."
"What an extraordinary thing! Why, that's exactly what old Wheeler did."
"Who is old Wheeler?"
"Artist chappie. Pal of mine. His fiancee painted the thing, and, whenI lifted it off him, he told her it had been stolen. HE didn't seemfrightfully keen on it, either."
"Your friend Wheeler has evidently good taste."
Archie was thinking.
"Well, all this rather gets past me," he said. "Personally, I've alwaysadmired the thing. Dashed ripe bit of work, I've always considered.Still, of course, if you feel that way--"
"You may take it from me that I do!"
"Well, then, in that case--You know what a clumsy devil I am--You cantell Lucille it was all my fault--"
The Wigmore Venus smiled up at Archie--it seemed to Archie with apathetic, pleading smile. For a moment he was conscious of a feeling ofguilt; then, closing his eyes and hardening his heart, he sprang lightlyin the air and descended with both feet on the picture. There was asound of rending canvas, and the Venus ceased to smile.
"Golly!" said Archie, regarding the wreckage remorsefully.
Mr. Brewster did not share his remorse. For the second time that nighthe gripped him by the hand.
"My boy!" he quavered. He stared at Archie as if he were seeing him withnew eyes. "My dear boy, you were through the war, were you not?"
"Eh? Oh yes! Right through the jolly old war."
"What was your rank?"
"Oh, second lieutenant."
"You ought to have been a general!" Mr. Brewster clasped his hand oncemore in a vigorous embrace. "I only hope," he added "that your son willbe like you!"
There are certain compliments, or compliments coming from certainsources, before which modesty reels, stunned. Archie's did.
He swallowed convulsively. He had never thought to hear these words fromDaniel Brewster.
"How would it be, old thing," he said almost brokenly, "if you and Itrickled down to the bar and had a spot of sherbet?"
THE END
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