Mr. Bingle Part 23

"Nothing. Go on."

"Some of those kids of yours are not precisely what I would call thoroughbred. See what I mean? No reflection, of course, Bingle. I wouldn't say this if they were your own, understand, but--well, they're not, so that's all there is to it. I shall have to ask you to engage a special companion for Kathleen, and I have arranged with a Madame Dufresne to--"

"See here, Force, I--"

"--to call on you this week. She is an excellent woman, refined and a lady of very good family in France. She is a friend of Rouquin's, in the bank. He knew the family in Paris. I took the liberty of telling him that you wanted to engage a French LADY to act as companion to your eldest child. I trust you will see to it that Kathleen is not allowed to romp about with the rest of those--er--the other children. This Madame Dufresne will--What's that?"

Mr. Bingle had recovered his breath. His voice was high and shrill with indignation.

"You will oblige me, Force, by permitting me to run my household as I see fit. If this Madame What's-her-name comes out here to see me, I shall pack her off to town again so quick her head will swim. We have brought Kathleen up as if she was our own child, sir, and I don't care to have any suggestions from you, sir. What's more, I must say--although it's against the rules of the telephone company--you are a d.a.m.ned fine man to be giving advice to me about the raising of your child. You--"

"s.h.!.+ For heaven's sake, Bingle, don't shout like that! Be careful, man!"

"Well, you leave Kathleen to me, that's all I've got to say. She shall play with the rest of the children as much as she likes, Force. So far as we are concerned, she's no better than the rest of them, understand that, sir. She isn't going to be contaminated a darned bit more than she was before you discovered that she was yours. And, as for that, she isn't yours until I see fit to give her up. Understand that, too. Now, if--wait a minute! I'm still talking. Now, if you think you can give me any pointers on how to bring up children I want to say to you that you are barking up the wrong tree. Don't you dare to send that woman here, and don't you dare to dictate to me how--"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, Bingle," came Mr. Force's agitated voice through the transmitter. "For heaven's sake, don't fly off the handle like this. I--I thought I was acting for the best interests of every one. I was only trying to help you out in--"

"I don't need any help," said Mr. Bingle crisply. "Have you told your wife?"

"Yes, I have," said Force. "That's--that's why we are going abroad for a few months. She--"

"Mrs. Bingle was right, then. She usually is. What is her att.i.tude?"

"Devilish bad, Bingle--devilish, that's all I can say. I can't talk to you over the telephone about it. I'll--I'll write you from Paris.

I'm--I'm working with her, that's all I can do at present. I believe she'll come around all right in the end. I'm sure she will. I'll--I'll let you know."

"Says she won't have the brat in her house, is that it?" said Mr.

Bingle, with a queer rasp in his voice.

"I can't talk to you over the telephone. Didn't you hear me say so a minute ago?"

"You can say yes or no, can't you?"

"She's pretty much upset over the business."

"Speak up! I can't hear you."

"I'll drop you a line in the morning. Now, Bingle, you will take good care of the child, won't you. She--"

"I shall take good care of all of them, Force."

"And now about this Madame Du--"

"She is out of the question, Force. Good night!"

"Just as you say, old man. I sha'n't insist if you are opposed to--"

"Good night!"

"But I will feel a great deal easier in my mind if she isn't allowed to come in contact with the rest--"

Mr. Bingle hung up the receiver.

CHAPTER XI

A TIMELY LESSON IN LOVE

The Forces returned from Europe late in February. They cut their visit short because Mr. Force's jubilant cablegram to Mr. Bingle drew from its recipient a reply so curt and effective that there could be no mistaking his stand in the matter of Kathleen.

Toward the end of the first week in February, Mr. Force cabled: "Everything smoothed out. Rejoice. Wife keen about K. Insists on having her with us over here. Send her over at once with Dufresne. Never was so happy in my life. Force."

The reply was: "Come and get her, but bring your wife with you. Bingle."

"I am not sure that I trust Force," said Mr. Bingle to his wife as they discussed the banker's message. "Like as not he wants to get the child over in Europe and leave her there with strangers until she grows up, or something of the sort. What proof have we that he has told his wife?

How do we know that she is keen about Kathie? She never has been. As a matter of fact, she brags about her hatred for children. Openly says she despises 'em. Prefers her dogs and cats, and all such rubbish as that. No, sir, Mary; I don't pack Kathie off with a strange Frenchwoman, destined for heaven knows what, and that's all there is to it. The thing looks fishy to me. Maybe it's, a plot--a dark, cruel plot to get the child out of the country. If he wants me to believe that Mrs. Force is keen about Kathie, she'll have to say so herself, in so many words, and, blame me, Mary, I don't believe I'll let her say 'em by telegraph either."

"But he is the president of the bank, Thomas," said Mrs. Bingle, as if that were all that was necessary to put him above suspicion.

"I am not dealing with the president of the bank, my dear," said Mr.

Bingle stiffly. "I am dealing with my next door neighbour, and I have a mighty poor opinion of him. The boy is waiting. I'll just write an answer to his cablegram and get it off at once."

The day after they landed in New York, Mr. and Mrs. Force paid a formal visit to the Bingle mansion. They came out from town by motor, arriving at four in the afternoon. Mr. Bingle was expecting them. They had telephoned, saying they could stay but a short time and made it quite clear that it wouldn't be necessary to serve tea. They were staying in town for a few days before going on to Florida.

At five o'clock they motored swiftly away from Seawood. The ordeal was over. Kathleen was to go to Mr. and Mrs. Force. The wife of a "man called Hinman" was to mother the child of Agnes Glenn.

It was to be very simple and easy for the Forces; like their kind, they left the hard part of the bargain to Mr. Bingle. He was to tell Kathleen of the great change that was soon to take place in her life.

He was to tell the happy, loving little girl that she was no longer to call him daddy, that she was to go and live with the man she feared and disliked. That was the part of the bargain left to the one who loved her best of all and who would not have given her an instant's pain for all the world. He was to deliver her, with scant excuse or explanation, into the hands of strangers--cold, unfeeling strangers. It would be the same as saying to the child that he did not care for her any longer, that he did not love her, that he was willing to give her up to Mr.

Force without so much as a pang of regret. For he could NOT tell her the truth. She was never to know about the carbolic acid and the days of starvation. She was only to know that Mr. Force was to be her daddy from this time forward and that Mr. Bingle could never be anything more to her than Uncle Tom.

But after he told her, he cried.... Still, they were not to take her away until the end of the week, and that was five days off.

An unsuspected astuteness in the character of Thomas Singleton Bingle reveals itself in the declaration, now to be made for the first time in this present history of the man: he never allowed his wards to look upon themselves as his own children. They were taught to call him daddy and to look upon him as a subst.i.tute supplied by G.o.d to take the place of a real father, and by the same token Mrs. Bingle became mother to the brood, but they were safe-guarded against the surprise and shock of future revelations--revelations that so frequently spoil the lives of those who have lived in happy ignorance. Mr. Bingle, gentle soul that he was, had the heart to look ahead in this pleasant game of his. He saw the cruelty of a too loving deception. He foresaw the desolating results of a too great faith in chance. So his children were taught to regard him in the light of a protector who was satisfied to have them feel that he was under obligations to them instead of the other way round. It was his joy to be called daddy, and in return for this simple tribute he lavished upon them all the love and tenderness of a true father and a great deal of the consideration that a child deserves, but seldom gets, from its own pre-occupied and self-satisfied parent.

Kathleen knew that she was not the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bingle. She had always known that she was the daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Hinman, both deceased. In the case of Reginald--and, in a way, Harold also--there was some uncertainty. As the former advanced in years and characteristics, it became more and more apparent to Mr. Bingle that his fifth-born was not of Italian descent, despite the fact that the authorities at the Foundlings' Home had him down on the records as the offspring of a Mr. and Mrs. Vanesi, lost in one of the factory fires in the city of Brooklyn. Mr. Bingle was convinced, as time went on, that the tags on certain infants had been accidentally misplaced by careless attendants, and that Reginald's nick-name, bestowed by Frederick and Wilberforce in their frivolous wisdom, was not so far out of the way as it might have seemed if he had not been possessed of his own vague misgivings. They called him Abey. As for Harold, he was unmistakably Irish, although the hospital people declared that he was German to the core when Mr. and Mrs. Bingle went there to pick out a healthy Teuton to add to their collection. They were positive that they wanted a German baby; nothing else would do, they announced clearly and positively to the superintendent in charge of the maternity ward. The superintendent was most gracious about it. She said they could return little Fritz if he didn't come up to the mark in every particular. What more could a German fancier desire than a child whose name alone stood for all that one could possibly seek in Teutonic research? Fritz b.u.mbleburg:--that was the infant's name and his father's name before him. Surely Mr. Bingle wouldn't demand anything more German than that.

Moreover, Fritz's mother was German-American and she had been the wife of Fritz's father for a matter of five years or more. Still, in spite of all this, Fritz (re-christened Harold while he was still too young to raise a voice in protest) was unmistakably Irish, or at least part Irish. It is also worthy of note that Mrs. b.u.mbleburg ran away with an Irish policeman some weeks after the infant Fritz's advent into the world, which would go to show that the mother, at any rate, had Celtic inclinations if nothing more.

Kathleen took it very hard at first. She was inconsolable until the desperate Bingle began to dilate upon the wonders of Florida. Miss Fairweather was called in to corroborate all that they had to say about the gorgeousness of that southern fairyland, and as a group they did very well when one stops to consider that not one of them had ever been south of Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C. The child cheered up a bit. She began to take some interest in the matter of dress. Following that, she revealed considerable enthusiasm over the prospect of going south in a private car with a personal maid of her own, and could have a change of frock twice a day for a week at a stretch, to say nothing of being allowed to eat in the public dining-car if it pleased her to do so. That thing of eating in the dining-car was a master-stroke on the part of Bingle. It was the greatest inducement he could have offered to the child in support of the claim that she ought to be the happiest creature on earth, going away with Mr. and Mrs. Force like this.

Frederick and Wilberforce openly declared--in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Bingle--that you bet they'd go in a minute if they had the chance to see the land where Melissa's pirates and smugglers did most of their plundering--an att.i.tude that created an unhappy half-hour for Melissa later on in the day. Any one else but Melissa would have received her walking-papers.

The frocks, the personal maid, the prospect of the dining-car and the a.s.surance that it wouldn't be necessary to call Mr. Force "daddy" until she became a little more accustomed to seeing him around, brought Kathleen to a proper way of thinking. She became quite eager to go!

"Well," said Mr. Bingle to his wife, after the storm, "I fancy we'd better make an appointment with Rouquin as soon as possible. I am really quite enthusiastic, my dear, over that idea of yours to have a cute little French baby. The sooner we get it the better, I say. It is going to be pretty lonesome for awhile. Somehow I hope we find one that cries a good deal. It would cheer us up considerably, I'm sure, if we had something like that to annoy us, especially at night. We shall probably lie awake anyhow."