Chapter XXXVIII. At Shandy's

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

On a late-summer evening in New York the atmosphere surrounding a
certain corner table at Shandy's cheap restaurant in Fourteenth
Street was stirred by a sense of excitement.

The corner table in question was the favourite meeting place of
a group of young men of the G. Selden type, who usually took
possession of it at dinner time--having decided that Shandy's
supplied more decent food for fifty cents, or even for twenty-five,
than was to be found at other places of its order. Shandy's was
"about all right," they said to each other, and patronised it
accordingly, three or four of them generally dining together, with a
friendly and adroit manipulation of "portions" and "half portions"
which enabled them to add variety to their bill of fare.

The street outside was lighted, the tide of passers-by was less
full and more leisurely in its movements than it was during the
seething, working hours of daylight, but the electric cars swung past
each other with whiz and clang of bell almost unceasingly, their
sound being swelled, at short intervals, by the roar and rumbling
rattle of the trains dashing by on the elevated railroad. This,
however, to the frequenters of Shandy's, was the usual accompaniment
of every-day New York life and was regarded as a rather cheerful sort
of thing.

This evening the four claimants of the favourite corner table
had met together earlier than usual. Jem Belter, who "hammered" a
typewriter at Schwab's Brewery, Tom Wetherbee, who was "in a downtown
office," Bert Johnson, who was "out for the Delkoff," and Nick
Baumgarten, who having for some time "beaten" certain streets as
assistant salesman for the same illustrious machine, had been
recently elevated to a "territory" of his own, and was therefore in
high spirits.

"Say!" he said. "Let's give him a fine dinner. We can make it
between us. Beefsteak and mushrooms, and potatoes hashed brown. He
likes them. Good old G. S. I shall be right glad to see him. Hope
foreign travel has not given him the swell head."

"Don't believe it's hurt him a bit. His letter didn't sound
like it. Little Georgie ain't a fool," said Jem Belter.

Tom Wetherbee was looking over the letter referred to. It had
been written to the four conjointly, towards the termination of
Selden's visit to Mr. Penzance. The young man was not an ardent or
fluent correspondent; but Tom Wetherbee was chuckling as he read the
epistle.

"Say, boys," he said, "this big thing he's keeping back to tell
us when he sees us is all right, but what takes me is old George
paying a visit to a parson. He ain't no Young Men's Christian
Association."

Bert Johnson leaned forward, and looked at the address on the
letter paper.

"Mount Dunstan Vicarage," he read aloud. "That looks pretty
swell, doesn't it?" with a laugh. "Say, fellows, you know Jepson at
the office, the chap that prides himself on reading such a lot? He
said it reminded him of the names of places in English novels. That
Johnny's the biggest snob you ever set your tooth into. When I told
him about the lord fellow that owns the castle, and that George
seemed to have seen him, he nearly fell over himself. Never had any
use for George before, but just you watch him make up to him when he
sees him next."

People were dropping in and taking seats at the tables. They
were all of one class. Young men who lived in hall bedrooms. Young
women who worked in shops or offices, a couple here and there, who,
living far uptown, had come to Shandy's to dinner, that they might go
to cheap seats in some theatre afterwards. In the latter case, the
girls wore their best hats, had bright eyes, and cheeks lightly
flushed by their sense of festivity. Two or three were very pretty
in their thin summer dresses and flowered or feathered head gear,
tilted at picturesque angles over their thick hair. When each one
entered the eyes of the young men at the corner table followed her
with curiosity and interest, but the glances at her escort were
always of a disparaging nature.

"There's a beaut!" said Nick Baumgarten. "Get onto that pink
stuff on her hat, will you. She done it because it's just the colour
of her cheeks."

They all looked, and the girl was aware of it, and began to
laugh and talk coquettishly to the young man who was her
companion.

"I wonder where she got Clarence?" said Jem Belter in sarcastic
allusion to her escort. "The things those lookers have fastened on
to them gets me."

"If it was one of us, now," said Bert Johnson. Upon which they
broke into simultaneous good-natured laughter.

"It's queer, isn't it," young Baumgarten put in, "how a fellow
always feels sore when he sees another fellow with a peach like that?
It's just straight human nature, I guess."

The door swung open to admit a newcomer, at the sight of whom
Jem Belter exclaimed joyously: "Good old Georgie! Here he is,
fellows! Get on to his glad rags."

"Glad rags" is supposed to buoyantly describe such attire as,
by its freshness or elegance of style, is rendered a suitable
adornment for festive occasions or loftier leisure moments. "Glad
rags" may mean evening dress, when a young gentleman's wardrobe can
aspire to splendour so marked, but it also applies to one's best and
latest-purchased garb, in contradistinction to the less ornamental
habiliments worn every day, and designated as "office clothes."

G. Selden's economies had not enabled him to give himself into
the hands of a Bond Street tailor, but a careful study of cut and
material, as spread before the eye in elegant coloured illustrations
in the windows of respectable shops in less ambitious quarters, had
resulted in the purchase of a well-made suit of smart English cut.
He had a nice young figure, and looked extremely neat and
tremendously new and clean, so much so, indeed, that several persons
glanced at him a little admiringly as he was met half way to the
corner table by his friends.

"Hello, old chap! Glad to see you. What sort of a voyage? How
did you leave the royal family? Glad to get back?"

They all greeted him at once, shaking hands and slapping him on
the back, as they hustled him gleefully back to the corner table and
made him sit down.

"Say, garsong," said Nick Baumgarten to their favourite waiter,
who came at once in answer to his summons, "let's have a porterhouse
steak, half the size of this table, and with plenty of mushrooms and
potatoes hashed brown. Here's Mr. Selden just returned from visiting
at Windsor Castle, and if we don't treat him well, he'll look down on
us."

G. Selden grinned. "How have you been getting on, Sam?" he
said, nodding cheerfully to the man. They were old and tried
friends. Sam knew all about the days when a fellow could not come
into Shandy's at all, or must satisfy his strong young hunger with a
bowl of soup, or coffee and a roll. Sam did his best for them in the
matter of the size of portions, and they did their good-natured
utmost for him in the affair of the pooled tip.

"Been getting on as well as can be expected," Sam grinned back.
"Hope you had a fine time, Mr. Selden?"

"Fine! I should smile! Fine wasn't in it," answered Selden.
"But I'm looking forward to a Shandy porterhouse steak, all the
same."

"Did they give you a better one in the Strawnd?" asked
Baumgarten, in what he believed to be a correct Cockney accent.

"You bet they didn't," said Selden. "Shandy's takes a lot of
beating." That last is English.

The people at the other tables cast involuntary glances at them.
Their eager, hearty young pleasure in the festivity of the occasion
was a healthy thing to see. As they sat round the corner table, they
produced the effect of gathering close about G. Selden. They
concentrated their combined attention upon him, Belter and Johnson
leaning forward on their folded arms, to watch him as he talked.

"Billy Page came back in August, looking pretty bum," Nick
Baumgarten began. "He'd been painting gay Paree brick red, and he'd
spent more money than he'd meant to, and that wasn't half enough.
Landed dead broke. He said he'd had a great time, but he'd come home
with rather a dark brown taste in his mouth, that he'd like to get
rid of."

"He thought you were a fool to go off cycling into the country,"
put in Wetherbee, "but I told him I guessed that was where he was
'way off. I believed you'd had the best time of the two of you."

"Boys," said Selden, "I had the time of my life." He said it
almost solemnly, and laid his hand on the table. "It was like one of
those yarns Bert tells us. Half the time I didn't believe it, and
half the time I was ashamed of myself to think it was all happening
to me and none of your fellows were in it."

"Oh, well," said Jem Belter, "luck chases some fellows, anyhow.
Look at Nick, there."

"Well," Selden summed the whole thing up, "I just fell into it
where it was so deep that I had to strike out all I knew how to keep
from drowning."

"Tell us the whole thing," Nick Baumgarten put in; "from
beginning to end. Your letter didn't give anything away."

"A letter would have spoiled it. I can't write letters anyhow.
I wanted to wait till I got right here with you fellows round where I
could answer questions. First off," with the deliberation befitting
such an opening, "I've sold machines enough to pay my expenses, and
leave some over."

"You have? Gee whiz! Say, give us your prescription. Glad I
know you, Georgy!"

"And who do you suppose bought the first three?" At this point,
it was he who leaned forward upon the table--his climax being a
thing to concentrate upon. "Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter--Miss
Bettina! And, boys, she gave me a letter to Reuben S., himself, and
here it is."

He produced a flat leather pocketbook and took an envelope from
an inner flap, laying it before them on the tablecloth. His
knowledge that they would not have believed him if he had not brought
his proof was founded on everyday facts. They would not have doubted
his veracity, but the possibility of such delirious good fortune.
What they would have believed would have been that he was playing a
hilarious joke on them. Jokes of this kind, but not of this
proportion, were common entertainments.

Their first impulse had been towards an outburst of laughter,
but even before he produced his letter a certain truthful seriousness
in his look had startled them. When he laid the envelope down each
man caught his breath. It could not be denied that Jem Belter turned
pale with emotion. Jem had never been one of the lucky ones.

"She let me read it," said G. Selden, taking the letter from its
envelope with great care. "And I said to her: `Miss Vanderpoel,
would you let me just show that to the boys the first night I go to
Shandy's?' I knew she'd tell me if it wasn't all right to do it.
She'd know I'd want to be told. And she just laughed and said: `I
don't mind at all. I like "the boys." Here is a message to them.
`Good luck to you all.' "

"She said that?" from Nick Baumgarten.

"Yes, she did, and she meant it. Look at this."

This was the letter. It was quite short, and written in a
clear, definite hand.

"DEAR FATHER: This will be brought to you by Mr. G. Selden, of
whom I have written to you. Please be good to him.

"Affectionately,

"BETTY."

Each young man read it in turn. None of them said anything just
at first. A kind of awe had descended upon them-- not in the least
awe of Vanderpoel, who, with other multi- millionaires, were served
up each week with cheerful neighbourly comment or equally neighbourly
disrespect, in huge Sunday papers read throughout the land--but awe
of the unearthly luck which had fallen without warning to good old
G. S., who lived like the rest of them in a hall bedroom on ten per,
earned by tramping the streets for the Delkoff.

"That girl," said G. Selden gravely, "that girl is a winner from
Winnersville. I take off my hat to her. If it's the scheme that
some people's got to have millions, and others have got to sell
Delkoffs, that girl's one of those that's entitled to the millions.
It's all right she should have 'em. There's no kick coming from
me."

Nick Baumgarten was the first to resume wholly normal condition
of mind.

"Well, I guess after you've told us about her there'll be no
kick coming from any of us. Of course there's something about you
that royal families cry for, and they won't be happy till they get.
All of us boys knows that. But what we want to find out is how you
worked it so that they saw the kind of pearl-studded hairpin you
were."

"Worked it!" Selden answered. "I didn't work it. I've got a
good bit of nerve, but I never should have had enough to invent what
happened--just happened. I broke my leg falling off my bike, and
fell right into a whole bunch of them --earls and countesses and
viscounts and Vanderpoels. And it was Miss Vanderpoel who saw me
first lying on the ground. And I was in Stornham Court where Lady
Anstruthers lives --and she used to be Miss Rosalie Vanderpoel."

"Boys," said Bert Johnson, with friendly disgust, "he's been up
to his neck in 'em."

"Cheer up. The worst is yet to come," chaffed Tom Wetherbee.

Never had such a dinner taken place at the corner table, or, in
fact, at any other table at Shandy's. Sam brought beefsteaks, which
were princely, mushrooms, and hashed brown potatoes in portions whose
generosity reached the heart. Sam was on good terms with Shandy's
carver, and had worked upon his nobler feelings. Steins of lager
beer were ventured upon. There was hearty satisfying of fine
hungers. Two of the party had eaten nothing but one "Quick Lunch"
throughout the day, one of them because he was short of time, the
other for economy's sake, because he was short of money. The meal
was a splendid thing. The telling of the story could not be wholly
checked by the eating of food. It advanced between mouthfuls,
questions being asked and details given in answers. Shandy's became
more crowded, as the hour advanced. People all over the room cast
interested looks at the party at the corner table, enjoying itself so
hugely. Groups sitting at the tables nearest to it found themselves
excited by the things they heard.

"That young fellow in the new suit has just come back from
Europe," said a man to his wife and daughter. "He seems to have had
a good time."

"Papa," the daughter leaned forward, and spoke in a low voice,
"I heard him say `Lord Mount Dunstan said Lady Anstruthers and Miss
Vanderpoel were at the garden party.' Who do you suppose he is? "

"Well, he's a nice young fellow, and he has English clothes on,
but he doesn't look like one of the Four Hundred. Will you have pie
or vanilla ice cream, Bessy?"

Bessy--who chose vanilla ice cream--lost all knowledge of its
flavour in her absorption in the conversation at the next table,
which she could not have avoided hearing, even if she had wished.

"She bent over the bed and laughed--just like any other nice
girl--and she said, `You are at Stornham Court, which belongs to Sir
Nigel Anstruthers. Lady Anstruthers is my sister. I am Miss
Vanderpoel.' And, boys, she used to come and talk to me every
day."

"George," said Nick Baumgarten, "you take about seventy- five
bottles of Warner's Safe Cure, and rub yourself all over with St.
Jacob's Oil. Luck like that ain't healthy!"

  .  .  .  .  .

Mr. Vanderpoel, sitting in his
study, wore the interestedly grave look of a man thinking of
absorbing things. He had just given orders that a young man who
would call in the course of the evening should be brought to him at
once, and he was incidentally considering this young man, as he
reflected upon matters recalled to his mind by his impending arrival.
They were matters he had thought of with gradually increasing
seriousness for some months, and they had, at first, been the result
of the letters from Stornham, which each "steamer day" brought. They
had been of immense interest to him-- these letters. He would have
found them absorbing as a study, even if he had not deeply loved
Betty. He read in them things she did not state in words, and they
set him thinking.

He was not suspected by men like himself of concealing an
imagination beneath the trained steadiness of his exterior, but he
possessed more than the world knew, and it singularly combined itself
with powers of logical deduction.

If he had been with his daughter, he would have seen, day by
day, where her thoughts were leading her, and in what direction she
was developing, but, at a distance of three thousand miles, he found
himself asking questions, and endeavouring to reach conclusions. His
affection for Betty was the central emotion of his existence. He had
never told himself that he had outgrown the kind and pretty creature
he had married in his early youth, and certainly his tender care for
her and pleasure in her simple goodness had never wavered, but Betty
had given him a companionship which had counted greatly in the sum of
his happiness. Because imagination was not suspected in him, no one
knew what she stood for in his life. He had no son; he stood at the
head of a great house, so to speak--the American parallel of what a
great house is in non-republican countries. The power of it counted
for great things, not in America alone, but throughout the world. As
international intimacies increased, the influence of such houses
might end in aiding in the making of history. Enormous constantly
increasing wealth and huge financial schemes could not confine their
influence, but must reach far. The man whose hand held the lever
controlling them was doing well when he thought of them gravely.
Such a man had to do with more than his own mere life and living.
This man had confronted many problems as the years had passed. He
had seen men like himself die, leaving behind them the force they had
controlled, and he had seen this force-- controlled no longer--let
loose upon the world, sometimes a power of evil, sometimes scattering
itself aimlessly into nothingness and folly, which wrought harm. He
was not an ambitious man, but--perhaps because he was not only a man
of thought, but a Vanderpoel of the blood of the first Reuben--these
were things he did not contemplate without restlessness. When Rosy
had gone away and seemed lost to them, he had been glad when he had
seen Betty growing, day by day, into a strong thing. Feminine though
she was, she sometimes suggested to him the son who might have been
his, but was not. As the closeness of their companionship increased
with her years, his admiration for her grew with his love. Power
left in her hands must work for the advancement of things, and would
not be idly disseminated--if no antagonistic influence wrought
against her. He had found himself reflecting that, after all was
said, the marriage of such a girl had a sort of parallel in that of
some young royal creature, whose union might make or mar things,
which must be considered. The man who must inevitably strongly
colour her whole being, and vitally mark her life, would, in a sense,
lay his hand upon the lever also. If he brought sorrow and disorder
with him, the lever would not move steadily. Fortunes such as his
grow rapidly, and he was a richer man by millions than he had been
when Rosalie had married Nigel Anstruthers. The memory of that
marriage had been a painful thing to him, even before he had known
the whole truth of its results. The man had been a common adventurer
and scoundrel, despite the facts of good birth and the air of decent
breeding. If a man who was as much a scoundrel, but cleverer--it
would be necessary that he should be much cleverer--made the best of
himself to Betty----! It was folly to think one could guess what a
woman--or a man, either, for that matter--would love. He knew Betty,
but no man knows the thing which comes, as it were, in the dark and
claims its own--whether for good or evil. He had lived long enough
to see beautiful, strong- spirited creatures do strange things,
follow strange gods, swept away into seas of pain by strange
waves.

"Even Betty," he had said to himself, now and then. "Even my
Betty. Good God--who knows! "

Because of this, he had read each letter with keen eyes. They
were long letters, full of detail and colour, because she knew he
enjoyed them. She had a delightful touch. He sometimes felt as if
they walked the English lanes together. His intimacy with her
neighbours, and her neighbourhood, was one of his relaxations. He
found himself thinking of old Doby and Mrs. Welden, as a sort of
soporific measure, when he lay awake at night. She had sent
photographs of Stornham, of Dunholm Castle, and of Dole, and had even
found an old engraving of Lady Alanby in her youth. Her evident
liking for the Dunholms had pleased him. They were people whose
dignity and admirableness were part of general knowledge. Lord
Westholt was plainly a young man of many attractions. If the two
were drawn to each other--and what more natural--all would be well.
He wondered if it would be Westholt. But his love quickened a
sagacity which needed no stimulus. He said to himself in time that,
though she liked and admired Westholt, she went no farther. That
others paid court to her he could guess without being told. He had
seen the effect she had produced when she had been at home, and also
an unexpected letter to his wife from Milly Bowen had revealed many
things. Milly, having noted Mrs. Vanderpoel's eager anxiety to hear
direct news of Lady Anstruthers, was not the person to let fall from
her hand a useful thread of connection. She had written quite at
length, managing adroitly to convey all that she had seen, and all
that she had heard. She had been making a visit within driving
distance of Stornham, and had had the pleasure of meeting both Lady
Anstruthers and Miss Vanderpoel at various parties. She was so sure
that Mrs. Vanderpoel would like to hear how well Lady Anstruthers was
looking, that she ventured to write. Betty's effect upon the county
was made quite clear, as also was the interested expectation of her
appearance in town next season. Mr. Vanderpoel, perhaps, gathered
more from the letter than his wife did. In her mind, relieved
happiness and consternation were mingled.

"Do you think, Reuben, that Betty will marry that Lord
Westholt?" she rather faltered. "He seems very nice, but I would
rather she married an American. I should feel as if I had no girls
at all, if they both lived in England."

"Lady Bowen gives him a good character," her husband said,
smiling. "But if anything untoward happens, Annie, you shall have a
house of your own half way between Dunholm Castle and Stornham
Court."

When he had begun to decide that Lord Westholt did not seem to
be the man Fate was veering towards, he not unnaturally cast a mental
eye over such other persons as the letters mentioned. At exactly
what period his thought first dwelt a shade anxiously on Mount
Dunstan he could not have told, but he at length became conscious
that it so dwelt. He had begun by feeling an interest in his story,
and had asked questions about him, because a situation such as his
suggested query to a man of affairs. Thus, it had been natural that
the letters should speak of him. What she had written had recalled
to him certain rumours of the disgraceful old scandal. Yes, they had
been a bad lot. He arranged to put a casual- sounding question or so
to certain persons who knew English society well. What he gathered
was not encouraging. The present Lord Mount Dunstan was considered
rather a surly brute, and lived a mysterious sort of life which might
cover many things. It was bad blood, and people were naturally shy
of it. Of course, the man was a pauper, and his place a barrack
falling to ruin. There had been something rather shady in his going
to America or Australia a few years ago.

Good looking? Well, so few people had seen him. The lady, who
was speaking, had heard that he was one of those big, rather lumpy
men, and had an ill-tempered expression. She always gave a wide
berth to a man who looked nasty-tempered. One or two other persons
who had spoken of him had conveyed to Mr. Vanderpoel about the same
amount of vaguely unpromising information. The episode of G. Selden
had been interesting enough, with its suggestions of picturesque
contrasts and combinations. Betty's touch had made the junior
salesman attracting. It was a good type this, of a young fellow who,
battling with the discouragements of a hard life, still did not lose
his amazing good cheer and patience, and found healthy sleep and
honest waking, even in the hall bedroom. He had consented to Betty's
request that he would see him, partly because he was inclined to like
what he had heard, and partly for a reason which Betty did not
suspect. By extraordinary chance G. Selden had seen Mount Dunstan
and his surroundings at close range. Mr. Vanderpoel had liked what
he had gathered of Mount Dunstan's attitude towards a personality so
singularly exotic to himself. Crude, uneducated, and slangy, the
junior salesman was not in any degree a fool. To an American father
with a daughter like Betty, the summing- up of a normal,
nice-natured, common young denizen of the United States, fresh from
contact with the effete, might be subtly instructive, and well worth
hearing, if it was unconsciously expressed. Mr. Vanderpoel thought
he knew how, after he had overcome his visitor's first
awkwardness--if he chanced to be self-conscious--he could lead him to
talk. What he hoped to do was to make him forget himself and begin
to talk to him as he had talked to Betty, to ingenuously reveal
impressions and points of view. Young men of his clean, rudimentary
type were very definite about the things they liked and disliked, and
could be trusted to reveal admiration, or lack of it, without
absolute intention or actual statement. Being elemental and
undismayed, they saw things cleared of the mists of social prejudice
and modification. Yes, he felt he should be glad to hear of Lord
Mount Dunstan and the Mount Dunstan estate from G. Selden in a happy
moment of unawareness.

Why was it that it happened to be Mount Dunstan he was desirous
to hear of? Well, the absolute reason for that he could not have
explained, either. He had asked himself questions on the subject
more than once. There was no well- founded reason, perhaps. If
Betty's letters had spoken of Mount Dunstan and his home, they had
also described Lord Westholt and Dunholm Castle. Of these two men
she had certainly spoken more fully than of others. Of Mount Dunstan
she had had more to relate through the incident of G. Selden. He
smiled as he realised the importance of the figure of G. Selden. It
was Selden and his broken leg the two men had ridden over from Mount
Dunstan to visit. But for Selden, Betty might not have met Mount
Dunstan again. He was reason enough for all she had said. And
yet----! Perhaps, between Betty and himself there existed the thing
which impresses and communicates without words. Perhaps, because
their affection was unusual, they realised each other's emotions.
The half-defined anxiety he felt now was not a new thing, but he
confessed to himself that it had been spurred a little by the letter
the last steamer had brought him. It was not Lord Westholt, it
definitely appeared. He had asked her to be his wife, and she had
declined his proposal.

"I could not have liked a man any more without being in love
with him," she wrote. "I like him more than I can say --so much,
indeed, that I feel a little depressed by my certainty that I do not
love him."

If she had loved him, the whole matter would have been
simplified. If the other man had drawn her, the thing would not be
simple. Her father foresaw all the complications--and he did not
want complications for Betty. Yet emotions were perverse and
irresistible things, and the stronger the creature swayed by them,
the more enormous their power. But, as he sat in his easy chair and
thought over it all, the one feeling predominant in his mind was that
nothing mattered but Betty--nothing really mattered but Betty.

In the meantime G. Selden was walking up Fifth Avenue, at once
touched and exhilarated by the stir about him and his sense of
home-coming. It was pretty good to be in little old New York again.
The hurried pace of the life about him stimulated his young blood.
There were no street cars in Fifth Avenue, but there were carriages,
waggons, carts, motors, all pantingly hurried, and fretting and
struggling when the crowded state of the thoroughfare held them back.
The beautifully dressed women in the carriages wore no light air of
being at leisure. It was evident that they were going to keep
engagements, to do things, to achieve objects.

"Something doing. Something doing," was his cheerful
self-congratulatory thought. He had spent his life in the midst of
it, he liked it, and it welcomed him back.

The appointment he was on his way to keep thrilled him into an
uplifted mood. Once or twice a half-nervous chuckle broke from him
as he tried to realise that he had been given the chance which a year
ago had seemed so impossible that its mere incredibleness had made it
a natural subject for jokes. He was going to call on Reuben S.
Vanderpoel, and he was going because Reuben S. had made an
appointment with him.

He wore his London suit of clothes and he felt that he looked
pretty decent. He could only do his best in the matter of bearing.
He always thought that, so long as a fellow didn't get "chesty" and
kept his head from swelling, he was all right. Of course he had
never been in one of these swell Fifth Avenue houses, and he felt a
bit nervous--but Miss Vanderpoel would have told her father what sort
of fellow he was, and her father was likely to be something like
herself. The house, which had been built since Lady Anstruthers'
marriage, was well "up-town," and was big and imposing. When a
manservant opened the front door, the square hall looked very
splendid to Selden. It was full of light, and of rich furniture,
which was like the stuff he had seen in one or two special shop
windows in Fifth Avenue--places where they sold magnificent gilded or
carven coffers and vases, pieces of tapestry and marvellous
embroideries, antiquities from foreign palaces. Though it was quite
different, it was as swell in its way as the house at Mount Dunstan,
and there were gleams of pictures on the walls that looked fine, and
no mistake.

He was expected. The man led him across the hall to Mr.
Vanderpoel's room. After he had announced his name he closed the
door quietly and went away. Mr. Vanderpoel rose from an armchair to
come forward to meet his visitor. He was tall and straight--Betty
had inherited her slender height from him. His well-balanced face
suggested the relationship between them. He had a steady mouth, and
eyes which looked as if they saw much and far.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Selden," he said, shaking hands with
him. "You have seen my daughters, and can tell me how they are.
Miss Vanderpoel has written to me of you several times."

He asked him to sit down, and as he took his chair Selden felt
that he had been right in telling himself that Reuben S. Vanderpoel
would be somehow like his girl. She was a girl, and he was an
elderly man of business, but they were like each other. There was
the same kind of straight way of doing things, and the same
straight-seeing look in both of them.

It was queer how natural things seemed, when they really
happened to a fellow. Here he was sitting in a big leather chair and
opposite to him in its fellow sat Reuben S. Vanderpoel, looking at
him with friendly eyes. And it seemed all right, too--not as if he
had managed to "butt in," and would find himself politely fired out
directly. He might have been one of the Four Hundred making a call.
Reuben S. knew how to make a man feel easy, and no mistake. This G.
Selden observed at once, though he had, in fact, no knowledge of the
practical tact which dealt with him. He found himself answering
questions about Lady Anstruthers and her sister, which led to the
opening up of other subjects. He did not realise that he began to
express ingenuous opinions and describe things. His listener's
interest led him on, a question here, a rather pleased laugh there,
were encouraging. He had enjoyed himself so much during his stay in
England, and had felt his experiences so greatly to be rejoiced over,
that they were easy to talk of at any time--in fact, it was even a
trifle difficult not to talk of them--but, stimulated by the look
which rested on him, by the deft word and ready smile, words flowed
readily and without the restraint of self-consciousness.

"When you think that all of it sort of began with a robin, it's
queer enough," he said. "But for that robin I shouldn't be here,
sir," with a boyish laugh. "And he was an English robin--a little
fellow not half the size of the kind that hops about Central
Park."

"Let me hear about that," said Mr. Vanderpoel.

It was a good story, and he told it well, though in his own
junior salesman phrasing. He began with his bicycle ride into the
green country, his spin over the fine roads, his rest under the hedge
during the shower, and then the song of the robin perched among the
fresh wet leafage, his feathers puffed out, his red young
satin-glossed breast pulsating and swelling. His words were
colloquial enough, but they called up the picture.

"Everything sort of glittering with the sunshine on the wet
drops, and things smelling good, like they do after rain-- leaves,
and grass, and good earth. I tell you it made a fellow feel as if
the whole world was his brother. And when Mr. Rob. lit on that twig
and swelled his red breast as if he knew the whole thing was his, and
began to let them notes out, calling for his lady friend to come and
go halves with him, I just had to laugh and speak to him, and that
was when Lord Mount Dunstan heard me and jumped over the hedge. He'd
been listening, too."

The expression Reuben S. Vanderpoel wore made it an agreeable
thing to talk--to go on. He evidently cared to hear. So Selden did
his best, and enjoyed himself in doing it. His style made for
realism and brought things clearly before one. The big-built man in
the rough and shabby shooting clothes, his way when he dropped into
the grass to sit beside the stranger and talk, certain meanings in
his words which conveyed to Vanderpoel what had not been conveyed to
G. Selden. Yes, the man carried a heaviness about with him and hated
the burden. Selden quite unconsciously brought him out strongly.

"I don't know whether I'm the kind of fellow who is always
making breaks," he said, with his boy's laugh again, "but if I am, I
never made a worse one than when I asked him straight if he was out
of a job, and on the tramp. It showed what a nice fellow he was that
he didn't get hot about it. Some fellows would. He only
laughed--sort of short-- and said his job had been more than he could
handle, and he was afraid he was down and out."

Mr. Vanderpoel was conscious that so far he was somewhat
attracted by this central figure. G. Selden was also proving
satisfactory in the matter of revealing his excellently simple views
of persons and things.

"The only time he got mad was when I wouldn't believe him when
he told me who he was. I was a bit hot in the collar myself. I'd
felt sorry for him, because I thought he was a chap like myself, and
he was up against it. I know what that is, and I'd wanted to jolly
him along a bit. When he said his name was Mount Dunstan, and the
place belonged to him, I guessed he thought he was making a joke. So
I got on my wheel and started off, and then he got mad for keeps. He
said he wasn't such a damned fool as he looked, and what he'd said
was true, and I could go and be hanged."

Reuben S. Vanderpoel laughed. He liked that. It sounded like
decent British hot temper, which he had often found accompanied
honest British decencies.

He liked other things, as the story proceeded. The picture of
the huge house with the shut windows, made him slightly restless.
The concealed imagination, combined with the financier's resentment
of dormant interests, disturbed him. That which had attracted Selden
in the Reverend Lewis Penzance strongly attracted himself. Also, a
man was a good deal to be judged by his friends. The man who lived
alone in the midst of stately desolateness and held as his chief
intimate a high-bred and gentle-minded scholar of ripe years, gave,
in doing this, certain evidence which did not tell against him. The
whole situation meant something a splendid, vivid-minded young
creature might be moved by--might be allured by, even despite
herself.

There was something fantastic in the odd linking of
incidents--Selden's chance view of Betty as she rode by, his next
day's sudden resolve to turn back and go to Stornham, his accident,
all that followed seemed, if one were fanciful --part of a scheme
prearranged

"When I came to myself," G. Selden said, "I felt like that
fellow in the Shakespeare play that they dress up and put to bed in
the palace when he's drunk. I thought I'd gone off my head. And
then Miss Vanderpoel came." He paused a moment and looked down on
the carpet, thinking. "Gee whiz! It was queer," he said.

Betty Vanderpoel's father could almost hear her voice as the
rest was told. He knew how her laugh had sounded, and what her
presence must have been to the young fellow. His delightful, human,
always satisfying Betty!

Through this odd trick of fortune, Mount Dunstan had begun to
see her. Since, through the unfair endowment of Nature--that it was
not wholly fair he had often told himself-- she was all the things
that desire could yearn for, there were many chances that when a man
saw her he must long to see her again, and there were the same
chances that such an one as Mount Dunstan might long also, and, if
Fate was against him, long with a bitter strength. Selden was not
aware that he had spoken more fully of Mount Dunstan and his place
than of other things. That this had been the case, had been because
Mr. Vanderpoel had intended it should be so. He had subtly drawn out
and encouraged a detailed account of the time spent at Mount Dunstan
vicarage. It was easily encouraged. Selden's affectionate
admiration for the vicar led him on to enthusiasm. The quiet house
and garden, the old books, the afternoon tea under the copper beech,
and the long talks of old things, which had been so new to the young
New Yorker, had plainly made a mark upon his life, not likely to be
erased even by the rush of after years.

"The way he knew history was what got me," he said. "And the
way you got interested in it, when he talked. It wasn't just
history, like you learn at school, and forget, and never see the use
of, anyhow. It was things about men, just like yourself--hustling
for a living in their way, just as we're hustling in Broadway. Most
of it was fighting, and there are mounds scattered about that are the
remains of their forts and camps. Roman camps, some of them. He
took me to see them. He had a little old pony chaise we trundled
about in, and he'd draw up and we'd sit and talk. `There were men
here on this very spot,' he'd say, `looking out for attack, eating,
drinking, cooking their food, polishing their weapons, laughing, and
shouting--men--Selden, fifty-five years before Christ was born--and
sometimes the New Testament times seem to us so far away that they
are half a dream.' That was the kind of thing he'd say, and I'd
sometimes feel as if I heard the Romans shouting. The country about
there was full of queer places, and both he and Lord Dunstan knew
more about them than I know about Twenty-third Street."

"You saw Lord Mount Dunstan often?" Mr. Vanderpoel suggested.

"Every day, sir. And the more I saw him, the more I got to like
him. He's all right. But it's hard luck to be fixed as he
is--that's stone-cold truth. What's a man to do? The money he ought
to have to keep up his place was spent before he was born. His
father and his eldest brother were a bum lot, and his grandfather and
great-grandfather were fools. He can't sell the place, and he
wouldn't if he could. Mr. Penzance was so fond of him that sometimes
he'd say things. But," hastily, "perhaps I'm talking too much."

"You happen to be talking about questions I have been greatly
interested in. I have thought a good deal at times of the position
of the holders of large estates they cannot afford to keep up. This
special instance is a case in point."

G. Selden felt himself in luck again. Reuben S., quite
evidently, found his subject worthy of undivided attention. Selden
had not heartily liked Lord Mount Dunstan, and lived in the
atmosphere surrounding him, looking about him with sharp young New
York eyes, without learning a good deal.

He had seen the practical hardship of the situation, and laid it
bare.

"What Mr. Penzance says is that he's like the men that built
things in the beginning--fought for them--fought Romans and Saxons
and Normans--perhaps the whole lot at different times. I used to
like to get Mr. Penzance to tell stories about the Mount Dunstans.
They were splendid. It must be pretty fine to look back about a
thousand years and know your folks have been something. All the same
its pretty fierce to have to stand alone at the end of it, not able
to help yourself, because some of your relations were crazy fools. I
don't wonder he feels mad."

"Does he?" Mr. Vanderpoel inquired.

"He's straight," said G. Selden sympathetically. "He's all
right. But only money can help him, and he's got none, so he has to
stand and stare at things falling to pieces. And--well, I tell you,
Mr. Vanderpoel, he loves that place--he's crazy about it. And he's
proud--I don't mean he's got the swell- head, because he hasn't--but
he's just proud. Now, for instance, he hasn't any use for men like
himself that marry just for money. He's seen a lot of it, and it's
made him sick. He's not that kind."

He had been asked and had answered a good many questions before
he went away, but each had dropped into the talk so incidentally that
he had not recognised them as queries. He did not know that Lord
Mount Dunstan stood out a clearly defined figure in Mr. Vanderpoel's
mind, a figure to be reflected upon, and one not without its
attraction.

"Miss Vanderpoel tells me," Mr. Vanderpoel said, when the
interview was drawing to a close, "that you are an agent for the
Delkoff typewriter."

G. Selden flushed slightly.

"Yes, sir," he answered, "but I didn't----"

"I hear that three machines are in use on the Stornham estate,
and that they have proved satisfactory."

"It's a good machine," said G. Selden, his flush a little
deeper.

Mr. Vanderpoel smiled.

"You are a business-like young man," he said, "and I have no
doubt you have a catalogue in your pocket."

G. Selden was a business-like young man. He gave Mr. Vanderpoel
one serious look, and the catalogue was drawn forth.

"It wouldn't be business, sir, for me to be caught out without
it," he said. "I shouldn't leave it behind if I went to a funeral.
A man's got to run no risks."

"I should like to look at it."

The thing had happened. It was not a dream. Reuben S.
Vanderpoel, clothed and in his right mind, had, without pressure
being exerted upon him, expressed his desire to look at the
catalogue--to examine it--to have it explained to him at length.

He listened attentively, while G. Selden did his best. He asked
a question now and then, or made a comment. His manner was that of a
thoroughly composed man of business, but he was remembering what
Betty had told him of the "ten per," and a number of other things.
He saw the flush come and go under the still boyish skin, he observed
that G. Selden's hand was not wholly steady, though he was making an
effort not to seem excited. But he was excited. This actually
meant--this thing so unimportant to multi-millionaires --that he was
having his "chance," and his young fortunes were, perhaps, in the
balance.

"Yes," said Reuben S., when he had finished, "it seems a good,
up-to-date machine."

"It's the best on the market," said G. Selden, "out and out, the
best."

"I understand you are only junior salesman?"

"Yes, sir. Ten per and five dollars on every machine I sell.
If I had a territory, I should get ten."

"Then," reflectively, "the first thing is to get a
territory."

"Perhaps I shall get one in time, if I keep at it," said Selden
courageously.

"It is a good machine. I like it," said Mr. Vanderpoel. "I can
see a good many places where it could be used. Perhaps, if you make
it known at your office that when you are given a good territory, I
shall give preference to the Delkoff over other typewriting machines,
it might--eh?"

A light broke out upon G. Selden's countenance--a light radiant
and magnificent. He caught his breath. A desire to shout--to
yell--to whoop, as when in the society of "the boys," was barely
conquered in time.

"Mr. Vanderpoel," he said, standing up, "I--Mr.
Vanderpoel--sir--I feel as if I was having a pipe dream. I'm not, am
I?"

"No," answered Mr. Vanderpoel, "you are not. I like you, Mr.
Selden. My daughter liked you. I do not mean to lose sight of you.
We will begin, however, with the territory, and the Delkoff. I don't
think there will be any difficulty about it."

  .  .  .  .  .

Ten minutes later G. Selden was
walking down Fifth Avenue, wondering if there was any chance of his
being arrested by a policeman upon the charge that he was reeling,
instead of walking steadily. He hoped he should get back to the hall
bedroom safely. Nick Baumgarten and Jem Bolter both "roomed" in the
house with him. He could tell them both. It was Jem who had made up
the yarn about one of them saving Reuben S. Vanderpoel's life. There
had been no life-saving, but the thing had come true.

"But, if it hadn't been for Lord Mount Dunstan," he said,
thinking it over excitedly, "I should never have seen Miss
Vanderpoel, and, if it hadn't been for Miss Vanderpoel, I should
never have got next to Reuben S. in my life. Both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean got busy to do a good turn to Little Willie. Hully
gee!"

In his study Mr. Vanderpoel was rereading Betty's letters. He
felt that he had gained a certain knowledge of Lord Mount Dunstan.