“It’s all attended to, Miss Pembroke,” he said. “I got here at half-past twelve, lunchless. Boat in ten minutes, train out of Jersey City at two o’clock, positively. We can have luncheon on the train.” He seemed a bit embarrassed, as he ought to have been, in truth.
She stood still and looked at him. “On the train?” she murmured.
“Yes, Miss Pembroke. I have an afternoon off. I’m going to Princeton. Oh, by the way, don’t bother about the tickets. I have them. Come along, please, or we’ll miss the boat.”
Of course she protested. She was very much annoyed—or, at least, that is what she meant to be.
He explained, in a burst of confidence meant to cover the unique trepidation he felt, that he was not to assume his duties as secretary to Mr. Krosson until the following Monday. “This is my last free week. Don’t begrudge me an excursion. It’s to take the place of four house parties.”
She held out stubbornly, for appearance’s sake; it was not until they were in the middle of the Hudson that she said it would be very nice, and he could catch the five o’clock train back to New York.
It would be difficult to relate all that they said during the tortuous trip to Princeton. Naturally they discussed his prospects.
“I’m not sure that I know what a secretary has to do,” he confessed. “But,” with a determined gleam in his eyes, “whatever it is, I’m going to do it. I don’t expect Mr. Krosson to give me a year’s vacation on full pay, and I’m not looking for furs in my stocking at this or any other Christmas, but I do mean to live on what I earn. I’m to have twenty-five hundred a year, in the beginning.”
“Goodness, that is a lot of money,” she said. They were at luncheon in the private dining car.
“I’ll retain my membership in two clubs. I’m starting out tomorrow to find a couple of cozy rooms in a genteel apartment hotel.”
“Have you broken the news to your father?”
He laughed. “No. I stopped at his room to see if he had pneumonia. He said he was asleep and couldn’t tell—and for me to go to the devil.”
From the car window they watched the great white sea through which they were gliding. Their hearts were free and their hearts were sparkling. Constantly recurring in their thoughts were the little forgotten things of that memorable voyage across the Atlantic. It was he, however, who presumed to steal surreptitious glances in which wonder was uppermost; she steadfastly declined to be led by her impulses.
“You’ve never heard anything particularly terrible about me, have you?” he demanded, rather anxiously, once in course of a duet of personalities.
“Only that a great many women are in love with you.”
“It’s funny I’ve never heard that,” he said dolefully.
“Men say that you are an exceptionally decent chap and it’s too bad you’ll never amount to anything.”
“Oh, they do, do they?” indignantly.
“I think they’ll be stunned when they hear of your latest move.”
“Well, I’ll show ’em what I’m made of.”
“Splendid! I like to hear you speak in that way.”
“You do?” he asked eagerly. “You do think I’ll make good, don’t you?”
“What station is this?” she asked deliberately.
“Rahway,” he said, leaning close to her in order to see the name on the station.
“I think I’ll have a holiday on Christmas,” he ventured carefully. “That’s next week, you know. May I come down to Princeton for the afternoon and evening?”
“To see me?” She seemed surprised.
“Yes,” he said simply. She had expected some frivolous reply. Her gaze wavered ever so slightly as it met his.
“It will be a very dull way to spend Christmas,” she said.
“Christmas is always a dull day,” he said, so imploringly that she laughed. He came very near to adding, irrelevantly, that she was prettier than ever when she smiled.
“When there are no children about,” he succeeded in saying, as an amend for his slip.
“There are two in our house, besides myself,” she said gayly.
“Splendid!” he cried enthusiastically. “Can’t we have a tree?”
On the platform at Princeton he was introduced to two small and very pretty young ladies, six and eight, and to a resentful gallant aged nine, who seemed to look upon him with disfavor. It afterwards developed that he was the characteristic neighbor boy who loves beyond his years. He adored Miss Pembroke.
“Mr. Van Pycke is coming down for Christmas,” announced Miss Pembroke, in course of time, drawing her little sisters close to her side and smiling upon the dazzled gallant, aged nine.
“Will you play bear for me?” asked the young lady aged six, after a sly look at her nurse.
“The whole menagerie,” said Mr. Van Pycke, most obligingly. Then, having occupied a perilously long time in shaking hands with the girl in the Persian lamb, he rushed off in response to the station master’s satirical warning that last night’s train was just pulling out for New York.
“I know just what’s going to happen to me,” he said to himself, jubilantly, as he waved to her from the window. “I can feel it coming.”
CHAPTER V
HIS FIRST HOLIDAY
Two days passed before Mr. Van Pycke, senior, in diligent and somewhat wrathful quest of his son, came to know that the young man had accepted a position as secretary to Mr. Krosson.
“I can’t believe it,” said Mr. Van Pycke, a sudden pallor almost retrieving the lost complexion at the end of his nose. He then went about the search in earnest, ultimately discovering his son in his room at the club, busily engaged in superintending the packing of cherished Penates.
“Is what I hear true, Bosworth?” demanded the old gentleman, without preliminaries.
“Sit down, dad. Try that trunk. The chairs seem to be occupied by odds and ends.” Bosworth was in his shirt sleeves. His hands were dirty, and there was a long dark streak across his brow. “I’m moving.”
“Moving? What the devil’s the meaning of all this?” sputtered his father, kicking a package of rugs out of the way.
“I can’t afford to live here on twenty-five hundred a year,” said his son, genially. The perspiring porters retired to the hall.
“But you have twelve thou—”
“And I have decided to save that twelve thousand. My salary will have to do for a few years, dad.”
“Your salary? Then it is true?” It was almost a wail.
“It does seem too good to be true, doesn’t it? I am like you, dad. I didn’t believe any one would hire me. But Mr. Krosson seems to think I’ve got it in me to—”
“Bosworth,” interrupted his father, sternly, “I won’t permit you to make an ass of yourself. I forbid you—”
“Hold on, dad,” said Bosworth, rather shortly. “We won’t discuss it unless we can do so agreeably. I’m going into this thing with all my heart, and I mean to stick to it. There’s an end to that. I’m tired of leading an absolutely useless, butterfly life.”
“But, my boy, my boy,” groaned the other, “this step will blast every prospect of a suitable marriage. Demmit all, no one will marry you.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said his son, sticking his hands into his pockets and breathing deeply. “I think, if I’m careful, I can make a very suitable marriage.”
“Rubbish! Who’d marry a secretary?” sniffed Mr. Van Pycke, jabbing a chair-back with his cane.
Bosworth radiated joy. “I would!” he cried so emphatically that Mr. Van Pycke almost rose to his toes.
“That’s not the point, sir,” said he, a little bewildered. “You can’t marry yourself.”
Bosworth laughed softly, but ventured no explanation to the odd remark. If, during the next ten minutes, his father noticed a detached, far-away look in the young man’s eyes, he attributed it to the force of his own arguments. Just as he was beginning to feel that he had succeeded in turning the thoughtful young man fro
m his suicidal course, Bosworth came to himself with a start.
“Beg pardon, dad; my mind must have been wandering. What were you saying?”
“Do—do you mean to tell me you haven’t heard what I’ve been saying to you?” roared the old gentleman, coming to his feet.
“I’m sorry; but, you see, this new undertaking is on my mind all the time. It’s a rather serious step I’m taking and I can’t help giving it a good deal of thought. Mr. Krosson says he’ll raise my salary at the end of—”
But Mr. Van Pycke was standing over him, his face red with anger.
“I brought you up as a gentleman, sir, and this is what comes of it. What would your poor mother say? She, too, expected you to be a gentleman, sir. Your grandfather expected it. All Van Pyckes are gentlemen. You are the first to forget yourself, sir. By Gad, sir, I suppose you’ll marry a shop girl or a stenographer. That’s what you’ll do! After the way in which I’ve brought you up and educated you and all that. And with the Van Pycke name and traditions at your command! It’s so demmed preposterous that I can’t express myself adequately. It’s—”
“It’s no use, dad,” said Bosworth, simply. “I’m lost.”
“You could marry that little Hebbins girl next week if you—”
“I’m going to marry for love, dad,” said his son.
Mr. Van Pycke opened his lips to say something, thought better of it, and stalked majestically out of the room. In the hall he encountered the two porters.
“Is Mr. Bosworth ready for us now, Mr.—” began one of the men, very deferentially, for Mr. Van Pycke was very well known in the club.
“Get out of my way!” roared Mr. Van Pycke.
The next morning, it being a Sunday at that, Bosworth sustained a blow that shook him mightily. In his box he found a curt letter from his father.
“My dear son,” it read, “I neglected to announce my coming marriage to you at our last meeting. I dare say it was because I was so upset. I am to be married to Mrs. Scoville on the third of January. If you can get away from the shop, or the office, or whatever it is, at three o’clock on that day, I will be very much gratified to see you at the ceremony. Your loving father.”
Bosworth clapped his hand to his brow, glaring at the note.
“He’s gone clean daffy!” he groaned. “Scoville? Why, he must know she’s already—Great Scott! He means the old one!—the pelican!—that’s who he means. The good Lord deliver us!”
He was genuinely distressed. The dowager Mrs. Scoville, of all women! For a long time he stood in the window, staring out over the housetops, his heart full of pity for his wayward parent.
“Poor old dad!” he said over and over again. “He’s paying an awful price for the privilege of remaining a gentleman to the end. Hang it all! I would have taken care of him. I’d have given him half of my income—yes, two thirds of it—sooner than see him sell out to that old tigress. I’ll see him at once. I’ll make the proposition to him. He may be able to crawl out of it.”
He soon discovered that an appeal of any sort was out of the question. The Sunday papers announced the approaching marriage of the venerable society leaders. As a man of honor, Van Dieman Van Pycke could not now retreat.
“Poor dad!” said Bosworth a hundred times that day. He could not banish the calamity from his mind. Thoughts of Mary Pembroke crept in frequently to chasten his ill humor, but even a developing interest in that adorable creature failed to overcome the shock he had received.
He ended by writing a long, boyish letter of congratulation and well wishes to his father, closing with the ingenuous hope that he might live long to enjoy the fruits of his folly.
The next day, bright and early, he was at the office of the great Mr. Krosson, a bit nervous, but withal full of the confidence that will not be gainsaid. Every man in the club, on that momentous Sunday, had congratulated him on the step he was taking. Somehow, he was beginning to feel that he was no longer “Buzzy” Van Pycke. He was almost a stranger to himself.
Christmas came on Friday. By that time he was fairly well acquainted with the inner offices of Mr. Krosson. The novelty was wearing off, but his ambition was being constantly whetted by signs of achievement that met him, no matter which way he looked in contemplation of his new environment. To his surprise and gratification—and also to his consternation—society was not ready to drop him. As a matter of fact, he was more sought after than ever. Most of his time as secretary to Mr. Krosson was spent in declining the invitations that poured in upon him from admiring hostesses who, far from disdaining him, frankly intimated that they liked him the better for the step he had taken. Old Mrs. Beeker, society’s leader, halted him in Fifth Avenue the day before Christmas and leaned from her carriage window to tell him that she was proud of him.
“Women despise idlers and dawdlers, my dear boy,” she said. “Make something of yourself. If you should happen to get a wife, beat her occasionally.”
His personal effects had been removed to less conspicuous rooms in Seventy-seventh Street. He was at home there every evening.
“I wonder if this will last,” he said to himself more than once in those first days.
He was off to Princeton on the noon train, more pleasurably excited than he had been in many a day. He had asked Mr. Krosson if his services were necessary at the office on Christmas day.
“If not, I think I will run down to Princeton to spend the holiday with friends.”
“I thought you were going to drop out of society, Bosworth,” said the capitalist, putting his hand on the young man’s shoulder.
Bosworth flushed. “I expect to, Mr. Krosson, but I’m not going into a monastery,” he said.
“I’m glad you were not one of the guests at that ridiculous De Foe-Scoville wedding,” said his old friend and new master. “That was the limit in outrages.”
“It was very daring,” said Bosworth, swallowing hard.
He had seven bundles and a suit case on the seat in front of him when the train pulled out of Jersey City. In his pocket was a great bunch of newspaper clippings, intended for the private eye of the new Mrs. De Foe’s one-time secretary. He wondered how she would take the caustic, sometimes scurrilous things the editors were saying about the now historic wedding. Few if any of them left a shred on which the bride could depend for support if she ever presumed to apply to New York society for reestablishment. He was distressed by the fear that Mary Pembroke would take to heart the bitter things that were being said of her benefactress. He discovered, later on, that Mrs. De Foe had quite fully prepared the girl for the avalanche of criticism. And so it was that Mary was able to smile when he showed her the clippings.
“I’m still her private secretary, Mr. Van Pycke,” she said, “and therefore I cannot discuss her private affairs with any one. As Mr. Krosson’s secretary, you wouldn’t think of discussing his affairs, would you?”
But we are getting ahead of the story, or, more properly speaking, ahead of the train. When he got down at Princeton, with his bundles and his bag, he was surprised and not a little mortified by the half-checked shriek of laughter that greeted him from the shelter of the station building. She had come down to meet him. He had not expected it. But it was most unkind of her to laugh at him. The bundles contained Christmas presents for the children, he had lugged them about at great inconvenience, and—He was thinking these things, but not venturing to express them aloud.
“Forgive me,” she cried, hurrying over to him. “You are so funny with all those packages.”
He promptly set them down, regardless, and shook hands with her. His ears were a bit red. On second thoughts, he didn’t blame her for laughing. He now recalled that other people had smiled as he crowded through the aisle of the car, but he had not noticed it at the time on account of a certain abstractedness that had to do with the future and not the present.
“I didn’t expect you,” he said. “It’s awfully good of you to meet me. Merry Christmas!”
“To you the same,” she c
ried, meeting his gaze with one in which happiness shone brightly. “I had a dark purpose in meeting you here, Mr. Van Pycke. It’s very mysterious.”
“Splendid!” he said. “I’ve always wanted to be a conspirator.”
“Let me take some of the packages—yes, do! I insist! You are ridiculous, carrying all these things. I have a cab around the corner. We’ll—”
“A cab!” he exclaimed, dropping a picture puzzle with considerable effect. “My dear Miss Pembroke, we can’t afford cabs! They’re luxuries.”
“You won’t say so when you see this one,” she said gayly. Together they collected the bundles, large and small, and hurried off to the waiting cab. There was some doubt as to which should go in first, the passengers or the parcels.
“If we get in first, there will be no room for the bundles,” said he. “And if we put them in first, there’ll be no room for us.” The venerable driver scratched his head in perplexity.
“We could make two loads of it, sir,” he said. “I c’n take your wife and half the bundles up first and come back—”
“It isn’t to be thought off,” interrupted Bosworth, quickly. “Don’t you remember me, Tobias?”
“It—it ain’t Mr. Van Pycke? Well, by gracious! It beats the—”
Bosworth checked him in time. To Miss Pembroke he said: “Tobias drove me all the way from the freshman class to the senior.”
“I knew it, Mr. Van Pycke. That’s why I engaged him.”
Tobias was suddenly confused. “Excuse me, I was thinking of another gentleman when I said wife, sir. My mistake, sir. It sha’n’t happen again.”
“Don’t make rash statements like that, Tobias,” said Bosworth, boldly. “You can’t tell what will happen.”
“Put the bundles in, Tobias,” said Miss Pembroke quietly, far from amused. “Mr. Van Pycke must ride on the seat with you. He has done it a great many times, if tradition is to be trusted.”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 214