Part 58 (1/2)

”I don't see why you keep a secretary, Mr. Smart. I don't begin to earn my salt.”

”Salt, Mr. p.o.o.pend.y.k.e,” said I, ”is the cheapest thing I know of. Now if you had said pepper I might pause to reflect. But I am absolutely, inexorably opposed to rating anything on a salt basis. If you--”

”You know what I mean,” he said stiffly. ”I am of no use to you.”

”Ah,” said I triumphantly, ”but you forget! Who is it that draws the salary checks for yourself and Britton, and who keeps the accounts straight? Who, I repeat? Why, you, Mr. p.o.o.pend.y.k.e. You draw the checks.

Isn't that something?”

”If--if I didn't know you so well, I wouldn't hesitate to call you a blooming fool, Mr. Smart,” said he, but he grinned as he said it.

”But he who hesitates is lost,” said I. ”This is your chance, don't let it slip.” He looked at me so steadily for a moment that I was in some fear he would not let it slip.

Before I had been in London a week it became perfectly clear to me that I could not stretch my stay out to anything like a period of two months. Indeed, I began to think about booking my pa.s.sage home inside of two weeks. I was restless, dissatisfied, homesick. On the ninth day I sent p.o.o.pend.y.k.e to the booking office of the steams.h.i.+p company with instructions to secure pa.s.sage for the next sailing of the _Mauretania_, and then lived in a state of positive dread for fear the confounded American tourists might have gobbled up all of the cabins.

They are always going home it seems to me, and they are always trying to get on a single unfortunate s.h.i.+p. In all my experience abroad, I've never known a time when Americans were not tumbling over each other trying to get back to New York in time to catch a certain train for home, wherever that may be. But p.o.o.pend.y.k.e managed it somehow. He must have resorted to bribery.

I awoke one morning to find a long and--I was about to say interesting--letter from the Countess! It was a very commonplace communication I found on the third or fourth reading. The sum and substance of its contents was the information that she was going to Virginia Hot Springs with the family for a month or two and that Lord Amberdale was to join them there.

It appeared that her father, being greatly overworked, was in need of a rest, and as the golf links at Hot Springs are especially designed to make it easy for rich men, his doctor had ordered him to that delightful resort. She hoped the rest would put him on his feet again.

There was a page or so of drivel about Amberdale and what he expected to do at the New York Horse Show, a few lines concerning Rosemary; and a brief, almost curt intimation that a glimpse or two of me would not be altogether displeasing to her if I happened to be coming that way.

It may be regarded as a strange coincidence that I instructed Britton that very evening to see that my golf clubs were cleaned up and put into good shape for a little practice on a course near London, where I had been put up by an English author, and who was forever ding-donging at me to come out and let him ”put it all over me.” I went out and bought a new bra.s.sie to replace the one destroyed by the experimenting Rocksworth youth, and before I got through with it had a new putter, a niblick and a spoon, neither of which I needed for the excellent reason that I already possessed a half dozen of each.

Keyed up to a high pitch of enthusiasm, I played golf for ten days, and found my friend to be a fine sportsman. Like all Englishmen, he took a beating gracefully, but gave me to understand that he had been having a good deal of trouble with rheumatism or neuritis in his right elbow. On the last day we played he succeeded in bringing me in two down and I've never seen neuritis dispersed so quickly as it was in his case. I remember distinctly that he complained bitterly of the pain in his elbow when we started out, and that he was as fit as a fiddle at the eighteenth hole. He even went so far as to implore me to stay over till the next sailing of the Mauretania.

But I took to the high seas. Mr. p.o.o.pend.y.k.e cabled to the Homestead at Hot Springs for suitable accommodations. I cannot remember when I had been so forehanded as all that, and I wonder what my secretary thought of me. My habit is to procrastinate.

I almost forgot to mention a trifling bit of news that came to me the day before sailing. Elsie Hazzard wrote in great perturbation and at almost unfeeling length to tell me that Count Tarnowsy had unearthed the supposedly mythical Rothhoefen treasure chests and was reputed to have found gold and precious jewels worth at least a million dollars.

The acc.u.mulated products of a century's thievery! The h.o.a.rd of all the robber barons! Tarnowsy's!

Strange to say I did not writhe nor snarl with disappointment and rage.

I took the news with a _sang froid_ that almost killed poor p.o.o.pend.y.k.e.

He never quite got over it.

Nor was I especially disturbed or irritated by the telegram of condolence I received on board s.h.i.+p from Tarnowsy himself. He could not resist the temptation to gloat. I shall not repeat the message for the simple reason that I do not wish to dignify it by putting it into permanent form. We were two days out when I succeeded in setting my mind at rest in respect to Aline, Countess Tarnowsy. I had not thought of it before, but I remembered all of a sudden that I held decided scruples against marrying a divorced woman. Of course, that simplified matters. When one has preconceived notions about such matters they afford excellent material to fall back upon, even though he may have disregarded them after a fas.h.i.+on while unselfishly thinking of some one else. As I say, the recollection of this well-defined though somewhat remorseless principle of mine had the effect of putting my mind at rest in regard to the Countess. Feeling as strongly as I did about marriage with divorcees, she became an absolutely undesirable person so far as matrimony was concerned. I experienced a rather doubtful feeling of relief. It was not so hard to say to myself that Lord Amberdale was welcome to her, but it was very, very difficult to refrain from adding the unamiable words: ”d.a.m.n him.”

This rigid, puritanical principle of mine, however, did not declare against the unrighteousness of falling in love with a divorcee.

CHAPTER XX

I CHANGE GARDEN SPOTS

IF I have, by any chance, announced earlier in this narrative that the valley of the Donau is the garden spot of the world, I must now ask you to excuse the ebullience of spirit that prompted the declaration.

The Warm Springs Valley of Virginia is infinitely more attractive to me, and I make haste to rectify any erroneous impression I may have given, while under the spell of something my natural modesty forbids me to describe.

If you happen not to know the Warm Springs Valley, permit me to say that you are missing a great deal. It is a garden spot and--but why discourse upon a subject that is so aptly handled by the gentlemen who supply railway folders with descriptive material and who will tell you in so many words that G.o.d's n.o.blest work was done in the green hills and vales of fair Virginia? Any railway folder will acquaint you with all this and save me a great deal of time and trouble, besides giving you a sensible and adequate idea of how to get there and where to stop when you reach your journey's end, together with the price of Pullman tickets and the nature of the ailments you are supposed to have if you take the waters. It is only necessary for me to say that it is a garden spot and that you don't have to change cars if you take the right train out of New York City, a condition which does not obtain if you happen to approach from the opposite direction.

I arrived there early one bright November morning, three days after landing in New York. You will be rendered unhappy, I fear, by the announcement that I left Mr. p.o.o.pend.y.k.e behind. He preferred to visit an aunt at New Roch.e.l.le and I felt that he deserved a vacation. Britton, of course, accompanied me. He is indispensable, and, so far as I know, hasn't the faintest notion of what a vacation means unless he considers employment with me in some such light. At any rate he has never mentioned a relation in need of a visit from him.