Her Weight in Gold and others Part 25

"RIGHT?" shrieked Courtney.

"Yes, right. We ARE loafers. We waste time over trifles. He wants to be proud of us if such a thing is possible. I don't blame him. If I ever have a son I'll know how to bring him up."

"This is no time to be sentimental, Jeff," said Courtney, with deep irony in his voice. "We are confronted by a catastrophe. Unlike most catastrophes, it awaits our pleasure. We are expected to walk up and shake hands with it and say, 'I'm glad to meet you, old chap,' or something of the sort."

"It IS a pretty howdy-do, I'll admit," said Rip thoughtfully. "Still, I agree with Jeff. The governor's right."

"You always agree with each other," said Courtney, pacing the floor in his despair.

"Don't pull your hair like that, Corky," cautioned Jeff, with a good-humoured grin. "You've got to be very saving from now on."

"A miserable pittance, a bagatelle," groaned Courtney.

"It IS getting thin," commented Rip.

"Eh? I'm not talking about hair, d.a.m.n it!"

"Be a man, Corky," cried Jeff cheerfully.

"I asked you not to call me 'Corky,' didn't I?" He glared at his big brother. "How can you stand there grinning like an imbecile with all this hanging over you?"

Jefferson's smile expanded. "If dad can make men of all three of his sons, he won't have to die to go to heaven. He'll BE there."

"And you fellows could have married those awful Sickler girls without half trying last winter," groaned Courtney. "A million apiece in their own right! My Lord, if you could only have looked ahead!"

"We did!" cried the twins in unison.

A cunning gleam leaped into Courtney's watery eyes. He drew a long breath.

"I wonder--" he began, and then stopped.

"No," said Jeff, divining his thoughts. "You proposed to both of 'em, Corky. It's no use. You are NOT the Van Winkle twins."

After a time, they fell into a discussion of plans and possibilities.

Their father had not left a loophole through which they could fire at random. His sentence was clean-cut. They could not fall back upon him for support, help or advice. It was all very clearly set forth. They were to find their own road and travel it to the bitter end.

"I'm willing to work," said Jeff. "The trouble with me is I don't know what to tackle first."

"That's my fix," said his twin.

"Well, I know the first thing I'm going to do," said Courtney, springing to his feet. And he did it an hour later. He succeeded in borrowing ten thousand dollars from a millionaire who had come to New York from Cleveland to live and die a Gothamite. With sublime disregard for the thing called conscience, Courtney included this new debt in the list to be prepared for his father, and permitted the old gentleman to settle without so much as a qualm of self-reproach. He considered it high finance, I believe. His brothers lived up to his estimate of their astuteness by never even thinking of a ruse so clever. Corky congratulated himself on getting a long start over them. Moreover, he had something else in mind. It will be disclosed later on.

A week later Mr. Van Winkle said good-bye to his sons, and they set out upon their travels somewhat after the fashion laid down by those amiable gentlemen who conceived fables and fairy tales and called them the Arabian Nights. You may recall the Three Sons of the Merchant, and the Three Princes, and the Three Woodmen, not to speak of innumerable trios who served Messrs. Grimm and Andersen with such literary fidelity.

The Van Winkle brothers started out rather late in life to make men of themselves. Inasmuch as they elected to start in separate and distinct grooves and as their courses were not what you might call parallel, we are likely to gain time and satisfaction by taking them up one at a time. We must not lose sight of the fact that they set out to acquire three separate and distinct fortunes.

Courtney set sail almost immediately for a land where "Corky" was an unheard-of appellation--or epithet as he was wont to regard it--and where fortunes hung on bushes, if one may be allowed to use the colloquialism. He went to France. It may seem ridiculous to seek fortunes in France, but he was not looking for French fortunes. He was much too clever a chap for that. He was after American money, and he knew of no place where it was easier to get it than in France. By France, he meant Paris. If one is really smart, one can find a great many American dollars in Paris. For that matter, if one is a good bridge player and has the proper letters--not of credit but of introduction--he can make a splendid living in any land where civilisation has gained a substantial foothold. Nothing is so amiable as civilisation. It actually yearns for trouble, and it will have it at any cost. It is never so happy as when it is being skilfully abused. As a society parasite, Corky had learned that it is easier to fool a man who has brains than it is to fool one who hasn't any at all. He had come in contact with both varieties, and he knew. And as for women, one can always fool them by looking pensive. They cannot bear it.

Possessed of a natural wit, a stunted conscience and an indefatigable ego, he had no fear that his twelve thousand, slightly reduced by this time, would see him well along on his journey toward affluence.

Corky was well known in Paris. He had spent many a day and many a dollar there. At this season of the year, the capital was filled with New York, Philadelphia and Boston people whom he knew and with whom he might have fraternised if he had felt inclined. But he aimed higher. He hitched his wagon to the setting sun and was swept into the society of Middle and Far Western tourists; people with money they did not know how to spend; people who needed expert advice; people who hankered for places at Newport but had to be satisfied with Sugar Hills. His New York acquaintances knew him too well, but no better than he knew them.

They had no money to waste on education. They needed all they could sc.r.a.pe together to keep the wolf out of Wall Street. He had no use in this direful emergency for frugal society leaders; he was after the prodigal climber.

Before he had been in Paris a week he was accepting invitations to dine with solid gentlemen from Des Moines and Minneapolis and having himself looked up to with unquestioned ardour by the wives thereof. Was he not the gay Mr. Van Winkle, of New York? Was he not the plus-ultra representative of the most exclusive society in the United States? Was he not hand in glove with fabled ladies whose names were household words wherever the English language is broken? Yes! He was THE Van Winkle! The son of A Van Winkle! And what a WONDERFUL game of bridge he played! It was a pleasure to lose money to him.

He soon found, however, to his discomfiture, that the daughters of these excellent westerners were engaged to be married to young gentlemen who were at work like himself in getting a fortune, but along different lines. So far as he could find out, they were so busy making headway in the commercial world that they wouldn't be able to afford a trip to Europe until they were somewhere in the neighbourhood of fifty-five or sixty. Their sweethearts were taking it while they could.

If Courtney had been as good-looking as either of his brothers--or as both of them, for that matter, because there wasn't much choice between them--he might have played havoc with the chances of more than one man at home, but he was no Adonis. To be perfectly candid, he was what a brawny Westerner would call a "shrimp." There is no call to describe him more minutely than that.

Most of his new friends wanted to have supper at Maxim's or to go to the Bal Tabarin. They wouldn't believe him when he insisted that these places were not what they used to be, and that Montmartre was now the fashionable roistering ground. So he took them to Maxim's and was glad of it afterwards. There wasn't a New Yorker in sight.

One night, after a rather productive game in the apartments of a family from Cedar Rapids, he proposed a supper at Maxim's. His host not only fell in with the proposition, but insisted on giving the supper himself. Corky was very polite. He took into consideration the fact that Mr. Riggles was a much older man than himself, and allowed him to have his own way.

It was at Maxim's that he first saw the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. She wasn't really a lady of t.i.tle, but she looked the part so completely that he spoke of her as the "Grand d.u.c.h.ess" the instant his shifty gaze fell upon her. That is to say, she was painted, bewrinkled, bewigged, begowned, bejewelled and--(I was about to say be-dabbed)--for all the world like a real d.u.c.h.ess, and she smoked a long cigarette in a still longer holder, and blew smoke through her nostrils with great APLOMB and but very few coughs.

His companions bowed to her. She waved her hand in amiable response.

"Who is she?" demanded Corky of his hostess. He almost whispered it.

"Oh, she's a silly old thing from Wisconsin. Did you ever see such a get-up?"

"It's marvellous. I thought she was a grand d.u.c.h.ess."

"That's what SHE thinks, if airs count for anything. I think she's a freak."

"I suppose she was good-looking in her day," remarked his hostess's husband, appraising the grande dame with calculating eyes.

"Do you think they're real?" asked Corky, and his hostess said she thought they were. He did not give a name to them, but they were so overpoweringly prominent that she knew what he meant. It was almost impossible to see anything but pearls when one looked in the direction of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. Corky couldn't help thinking how dangerous it was for the lady to wear such a fortune at Maxim's.

He listened with keen ears to the story of the "silly old thing from Wisconsin." She was a widow of sixty-five and she had been traversing Europe from end to end for several years in quest of a coronet. Many millions in gold had she, but even the most impecunious of n.o.blemen had given them a wide berth,--reluctantly, perhaps. Reversing the order of things, she was not seeing Europe; she was letting Europe see her.

No one in Maxim's so gay and kittenish and coy as she! She was the essence of youth. Her hair was as yellow as gold and so thick and undulating that one could not help wondering how far down her back it would drop if released. Her lips were red with the rich, warm blood of youth and her cheeks bore the bloom of the peach. The Grand d.u.c.h.ess was a creation. To make sure that every one knew she was present, she chattered in a high, shrill voice in Malapropian French, and giggled at everything.

"She is amazing," said Corky for the third time during supper. "And no one will marry her?"

"Not recently," said his host. "What do you mean?"

"I mean no one has married her in the last forty years. There WAS one, of course, but he died a few years back. That's why she wears a pearl mourning wreath around her neck, and a cloth-of-gold gown. He was in trade, as the English would say."

"She IS amazing," said Corky for the fourth time. "By Jove, do you know I'd like to meet her."

"Nothing so easy," said the other. "Come along now. I'll present you.

She'll be tickled to death to meet a real Van Winkle."

Five minutes later Corky was drinking his own health in the presence of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess from Wisconsin.

"I have heard so much of you, Mr. Van Winkle," she said. "Is it true that you are a descendant of that aristocratic old Rip?"