The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories

by George Barr McCutcheon

  The train was late, and at five o’clock he was desperately combating an impulse to leave it at Strassburg, find lodging in a hotel, and then, refreshed, set out for London to have it out with the malevolent Medcroft. The disembarking of the venerable mourners, however, restored him to a degree of his peace of mind. After all, he reviewed, it would be cowardly and base to desert a trusting wife; he pictured her as asleep and securely confident in his stanchness. No: he would have it out with Medcroft at some later day.

  He was congratulating himself on the acquisition of a bed—although it might possess the odour of a bed of tuberoses—when all of his pleasant calculations were upset by the appearance of a German burgher and his family. It was then that he learned that these people had booked le compartement from Strassburg to Munich.

  Brock resumed his window-seat and despondently awaited the call to breakfast. He fell sound asleep with his monocle in position; nor did it matter to him that his hat dropped through the window and went scuttling off across the green Rhenish fields. When next he looked at his watch, it was eight o’clock. A small boy was standing at the end of the passage, staring wide-eyed at him. Two little girls came piling, half dressed, from a compartment, evidently in response to the youngster’s whispered command to hurry out and see the funny man. Brock scowled darkly, and the trio darted swiftly into the compartment.

  He dragged his stiff legs into the dining-car at Stuttgart and shoved them under a table. The car was quite empty. As he was staring blankly at the menu, the conducteur from his car hurried in with the word that Madame would not breakfast until nine. She was still very sleepy. Would Monsieur Medcroft be good enough to order her coffee and rolls brought to her compartment at that hour? And would he mind seeing that the maid saw to it that Raggles surely had his biscuit and a walk at the next station?

  “Raggles?” queried Brock, passing his hand over his brow. The other shrugged his shoulders and looked askance. “Oh, yes,—I—understand,” murmured the puzzled one, recovering himself. For the next ten minutes he wondered who Raggles could be.

  He had eaten his strawberries and was waiting for the eggs and coffee, resentfully eying the early risers who were now coming in for their coffee and rolls. They had slept—he could tell by the complacent manner in which their hair was combed and by the interest they found in the scenery which he had come, by tedious familiarity, to loathe and scorn.

  The actions of two young women near the door attracted his attention. From their actions he suddenly gathered that they were discussing him,—and in a more or less facetious fashion, at that. They whispered and looked shy and grinned in a most disconcerting manner. He turned red about the ears and began to wonder, fiercely, why his eggs and coffee were so slow in coming. Then, to his consternation, the young women, plainly of the serving-class, bore down upon him with abashed smiles. He noticed for the first time that one of them was carrying a very small child in her arms; as she came alongside, grinning sheepishly, she extended the small one toward the astounded Brock, and said in excellent old English:

  “Good morning, Mr. Medcroft.” Then, with a rare inspiration, “Baby, kiss papa—come, now.”

  She pushed the infant almost into Brock’s face. He did not observe that it was a beautiful child and that it had a look of terror in its eyes; he only knew that he was glaring wildly at the fiendish nurse, the truth slowly beating its way into his be-addled brain. For a full minute he stared as if petrified. Then, administering a sickly grin, he sought to bring his wits up to the requirements of the extraordinary situation. He lifted his hand and mumbled: “Come, Raggles! I haven’t a biscuit, but here, have a roll, do. Give me a—a kiss!” He added the last in most heroic surrender.

  The nurse and the maid stared hard at him; the baby turned in affright to cling closely to the neck of the former.

  “Good Lord, sir,” whispered the nurse, with a nervous glance about her; “this ain’t Raggles, sir. This is a baby.”

  “Do you think I’m blind, madam?” whispered he, savagely. “I can see it’s a baby, but I didn’t know there was to be one. Its father didn’t mention it to me.”

  “It’s a wise father that knows his own child,” said the nurse, with prompt sarcasm.

  “I think they should have prepared me for this,” growled he. “Is it supposed to be mine? Does—does Mrs. Medcroft know about it?”

  “You mean, about the baby, sir? Of course she does. It’s hers. Please don’t look so odd, sir. My word, sir, I didn’t know you didn’t know it, sir. I wasn’t told, was I, O’Brien? There, sir, you see! Mrs. Medcroft said as I was to bring Tootles in to you, sir. She said—”

  “Tootles?” murmured Brock. “Tootles and Raggles. I daresay there’s a distinction without much of a difference. Are you Burton?”

  “Yes, Mr. Medcroft. The nurse. Won’t you take baby for a minute, sir? Just to get acquainted, and for appearance’s sake.” She whispered the well-meant entreaty. Brock, now well into the spirit of the situation, obligingly extended his arms. The baby set up a lusty howl of aversion.

  “For God’s sake, take him back to his mother!” groaned Brock hastily. “He doesn’t like strangers! Take him away!”

  “It isn’t a he, sir,” whispered the maid, as the nurse prepared to beat a hasty retreat with the Medcroft offspring. “It’s a her, sir.”

  Brock’s face was a study in perplexity as they hurried from the car.

  “By George,” he muttered, “what next!”

  That which did come next was even more amazing than the unexpected advent of Tootles. He barely had recovered his equanimity—with his coffee—when a young lady entered the car. That, of itself, was not much to speak of, but what followed was something that not even he could have dreamed of if he had been given the chance. He afterward recalled, in some distress of mind, that his second quick glance at the newcomer developed into little less than a rude stare of admiration. Small wonder, let it be advanced in his defence.

  She was astoundingly fair to look upon—dazzling, it might be said, with some support to the adjective. Moreover, she was looking directly into his eyes from her unstable position near the door; what was more, a shy, even mischievous, smile crept into her face as her glance caught his. Never had he seen a more exquisite face than hers; never had he looked upon a more perfect picture of grace and loveliness and—aye, smartness. She was smiling with unmistakable friendliness and recognition, and yet he could have sworn he had not seen her before in his life. As if he could have forgotten such a face! A sudden sense of enchantment swept over him, indescribable, yet delicious.

  She was coming toward him—still smiling shyly, her lips parted as if she were breathing quickly from fear or another emotion. He set down his coffee-cup without regard to taste or direction, his gaze fixed upon the trim, slender figure in blue. He now saw that her dark eyes were filled with a soft seriousness that belied her brave smile; a delicate pink had come into her clear, high-bred face; the hesitancy of the gentlewoman enveloped her with a mantle that shielded her from any suspicion of boldness. Brock struggled to his feet, amazement written in his face.

  “Good morning, Roxbury,” she said, in the most impersonal of greetings. Her smile deepened as the blankness increased in his face. In the most casual, matter-of-fact manner, she appropriated the chair across the table from his. “Please sit down, Roxy.”

  He sat down abruptly. For a single, tense, abashed moment they looked searchingly into each other’s eyes.

  “Are you Raggles?” he asked politely.

  “You poor man!” she cried, aghast. “Raggles is Edith’s French poodle. Has no one told you of the poodle?” She half whispered this. He began to adore her at that very moment,—a circumstance well worth remembering.

  “No one has told me of you, for that matter,” he apologised, thrilling with a delight such as he had never known before. “Would you mind whispering to me just who you are? Am I supposed to be your father—or what?”

  “It is all so delightfully casual, isn
’t it?” she said. “I daresay they forgot to tell you that you are a man of family. Didn’t they mention me in any way at all?” She pouted very prettily.

  “No, they ignored you and Raggles and Tootles. Are there any more in my family that I haven’t met?”

  “You see, we got to the station quite a bit ahead of Edith. That’s how you happened to miss meeting us. We saw you there, however. I recognised you by your clothes. You seemed very unhappy. Oh, I forgot. You wanted to know who I am. Well, I am your sister-in-law.” She ordered coffee and toast while he sat there figuring it out. When the waiter departed, he leaned forward and said quite frankly,—

  “You’ll pardon me, I’m sure, but I can’t understand how I was so short-sighted as to marry your sister.”

  “Well, you see, you didn’t catch a glimpse of me until after you were married,” she railed. “I was in the Sacred Heart convent, you remember.”

  “Ah, that explains the oversight. I am considered an unusually discriminating person. Let me see: I married a Miss Fowler, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, Roxbury. Four years ago, in London, at St. George’s, in Hanover Square, at four o’clock, on a Saturday. Didn’t they tell you all that?”

  “I don’t think they said anything about it being four o’clock. I’m glad to know the awful details, believe me. Thanks! Do you know I decided you were an American the instant I saw you in the door,” he went on, quite irrelevantly.

  “How clever of you, Roxbury!”

  “Oh, I say, Miss Fowler, I’m not such an ass as I look, really I’m not. I’m trying to look like—”

  “’Sh! If you want me to believe you are not the ass you think you look, be careful what you say. Remember I am not Miss Fowler to you. I am Constance—sometimes Connie. Can you remember that,—Roxbury?”

  He drew a long breath. “Oh, I say, Connie, I’d much rather be plain Brock to you.”

  “Please don’t forget that I am doing this for my sister,—not for myself, by any manner of means,” she said stiffly. He flushed painfully, conscious of the rebuke.

  “Please overlook my faults for the time being,” he said. “I’ll do better. You see, I’ve been rather overcome by the sense of my own importance. I’m not used to being the head of an establishment. It has dazed me. A great many things have happened to me since I left the Gare de l’Est last night.” He was considerate in not referring to his unhappy mode of travelling. “For instance, I’ve completely lost my head.” He might have said hat, but that would have sounded commonplace and earthy.

  “One does, you know, when he loses his identity,” she said sympathetically. “Edith says you are ripping, and all that sort of thing,” she went on hurriedly, in perfect mimicry. “You come very highly recommended as a brother-in-law.”

  “Are you to be with us until the end of the play?”

  “Yes. The Rodneys are my friends, not Edith’s. Katherine Rodney was in the convent with me. We see a great deal of each other. I’m sure you will like her. Everybody falls dreadfully in love with her.”

  “How very amiable of you to permit it,” he protested gallantly. “I’m sure I shall enjoy falling in love. Which reminds me that I’ve never had a sister-in-law. They’re very nice, I’m told. It’s odd that Medcroft didn’t tell me about you. Would you mind advancing a bit of general information about yourself—and, I may say, about my family in general? It may come handy.”

  “I feel as though I had known you for years,” she said, frankly returning his gaze. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. “I’m merely Edith’s sister. We live in Paris,—that is, father and I. I’m three years younger than Edith. Of course, you know how old your wife is, so we won’t dwell upon that. You don’t? Then I’d demand it of her. I haven’t been in Philadelphia since I was seven—and that’s ages ago. I have no mother, and father is off in South America on business. So, you see, little sister has to tag after big sister. Oh!” She interrupted the recital with an abrupt change of manner. “I’m so sorry you’ve finished your coffee. Now you’ll have to go. Roxbury always does.”

  “But I haven’t finished,” he exclaimed eagerly. “I’m going to have three or four more pots. You have no idea how—”

  “It’s all right then,” she said with her rarest and most confident smile. “Well, Edith asked me to come to London for the season. The Rodneys were in Paris at the time, however, and they had asked me to join them for a fortnight in the Tyrol. When I said that I was off for a visit with the—with you, I mean—they insisted that you all should come too. They are connections, in a way, don’t you see. So we accepted. And here we are.”

  “You don’t, by any chance, happen to be engaged to be married, or anything of that sort,” he ventured. “Don’t crush me! It’s only as a safeguard, you know. People may ask questions.”

  “You are not obliged to answer them, Roxbury,” she said. The flush had deepened in her cheek. It convinced him that she was in love—and engaged. He experienced a queer sinking of the heart. “You can say that you don’t know, if anyone should be so rude as to ask.” Suddenly she caught her breath and stared at him in a sort of panic. “Heavens,” she whispered, the toast poised half-way to her lips, “you’re not, by any chance, engaged, are you? Appalling thought!”

  He laughed delightedly. “People won’t ask about me, my dear Constance. I’m already married, you know. But if anyone should ask, you’re not obliged to answer.”

  She looked troubled and uncertain. “You may be really married, after all,” she speculated. “Who knows? Poor old Roxbury wouldn’t have had the tact to inquire.”

  “I am a henpecked bachelor, believe me.”

  For the next quarter of an hour they chatted in the liveliest, most inconsequential fashion, getting on excellent terms with each other and arriving at a fair sense of appreciation of what lay ahead of them in the shape of peril and adventure.

  She was the most delightful person he had ever met, as well as being the most beautiful. There was a sprightly, ever-growing air of self-reliance about her that charmed and reassured him. She possessed the capacity for divining the sane and the ridiculous with splendid discrimination.Moreover, she could jest and be serious with an impartial intelligence that gratified his vanity without in the least inspiring the suspicion that she was merely clever. He became blissfully imbued with the idea that she had surprised herself by the discovery that he was really quite attractive. In fact, he was quite sincerely pleased with himself—for which he may be pardoned if one stops to think how resourceful a woman of tact may be if she is very, very pretty.

  And, by way of further analogy, Brock was a thoroughly likable chap, beside being handsome and a thoroughbred to the core. It’s not betraying a secret to affirm, cold-bloodedly, that Miss Fowler had not allied herself with the enterprise until after she had pinned Roxbury down to facts concerning Brock’s antecedents. She was properly relieved to find that he came of a fine old family and that he had led more than one cotillion in New York.

  He experienced a remarkable change of front in respect to Roxbury Medcroft before the breakfast was over. It may have been due to the spell of her eyes or to the call of her voice, but it remains an unchallenged fact that he no longer thought of Medcroft as a stupid bungler; instead, he had come to regard him as a good and irreproachable Samaritan. All of which goes to prove that a divinity shapes our ends, rough hew them how we may.

  “I’m sure we shall get on famously,” he said, as she signified her desire to return to the compartment. “I’ve always longed for a nice, agreeable sister-in-law.”

  “Her mission in life, up to a certain stage, is to make the man appreciate the fact that he has, after all, been snapped up by a small but deserving family,” she said blithely. “It is also her duty to pour oil on troubled waters and strew flowers along the connubial highway, so long as her kind offices are not resented. By the way, Roxbury, I am now about to preserve you from bitter reproaches. You have forgotten to order coffee and rolls for
your wife.”

  “Great Scott! So I have! It’s nine o’clock.” He ordered the coffee and rolls to be sent in at once. “I hope she hasn’t starved to death.”

  “My dear Roxbury,” she said sternly, “I must take you under my wing. You have much to accomplish in the next twenty-four hours, not the least of your duties being the subjugation of Tootles and Raggles. Tootles is fifteen months old, it may interest you to know. We can’t afford to have Tootles scream with terror every time she sees you, and it would be most unfortunate if Raggles should growl and snap at you as he does at all suspicious strangers. Once in a while he bites too. Do you like babies?”

  “Yes, I—I think I do,” he said doubtingly. “I daresay I could cultivate a taste for ’em. But, I say,” with eager enthusiasm, “I love dogs!”

  “It may be distinctly in your favour that Raggles loathes the real Roxbury. He growls every time that Roxy kisses Edith.”

  “Has he ever bitten Roxy for it?”

  “No,” dubiously, “but Roxy has had to kick him on several occasions.”

  “How very tiresome,—to kick and kiss at the same time.”

  “Raggles is very jealous, you understand.”

  “That’s more than I can say for dear old Roxy. But I’ll try to anticipate Raggles by compelling Edith to keep her distance,” he said, scowling darkly. “Has it not occurred to you that Tootles will be pretty—er—much of a nuisance when it comes to mountain climbing?” He felt his way carefully in saying this.

  “Oh, dear me, Roxbury, would you have left the poor little darling at home—in all that dreadful heat?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t have been blamed for leaving her at home,” he protested. “She didn’t exist until half an hour ago. Heavens! how they do spring up!”