The Tangled Threads Part 33

admiring eyes when their car should sweep up to their door.

At three o'clock Sat.u.r.day afternoon the Wheelers with their two guests started for the lake. It was a beautiful day. The road was good and every one was in excellent spirits--that is, every one but the host.

It had come to him suddenly with overwhelming force that he was responsible not only for the happiness but for the lives of his wife and their friends. What if something should go wrong?

But nothing did go wrong. He stopped twice, it is true, and examined carefully his car; but the only result of his search was a plentiful bedaubing of oil and gasoline on his hands and of roadway dust on his clothing. He was used to this and did not mind it, however--until he went in to dinner at the Lakeside House beside the fresh daintiness of his wife and their friends; then he did mind it.

The ride home was delightful, so the Arnolds said. The Arnolds talked of it, indeed, to each other, until they fell asleep--but even then they did not talk of it quite so long as their host worked cleaning up the car after the trip. Wheeler kept the automobile now in a neighbor's barn and took care of it himself; it was much cheaper than keeping it in Dearborn's garage.

There were several other friends in the A's and B's and two in the C's who were taken out in the Wheeler automobile before Herbert one day groaned:

"Jessica, this alphabet business is killing me. It does seem as if Z never would be reached!"

"Why, Herbert!--and they 're all our friends, and you know how much they think of it."

"I think of it, too, when the dinner checks and the supper checks come in. Jessica, we just simply can't stand it!"

Jessica frowned and sighed.

"I know, dear; but when the _car_ did n't cost anything--"

"Well, lobster salads and chicken patties cost something," mentioned the man grimly.

"I know it; but it seems so--so selfish to go all by ourselves with those empty seats behind us. And there are so many I have promised to take. Herbert, what can we do?"

"I don't know; but I know what we can't do. We can't feed them to the tune of a dollar or two a plate any longer."

There was a long pause; then Jessica clapped her hands.

"Herbert, I have it! We'll have basket picnics. I 'll take a lunch from the house every time. And, after all, that'll be lots nicer; don't you think so?"

"Well, that might do," acquiesced the man slowly. "Anyhow, there would n't be any dinner checks a-coming."

August pa.s.sed and September came. The Wheelers were in "M" now; they had been for days, indeed. Even home-prepared luncheons were beyond the Wheelers' pocketbook now, and no friend had been invited to ride for a week past. The spoiling of two tires and a rather serious accident to the machine had necessitated the Wheelers spending every spare cent for repairs.

In the eyes of most of the town the Wheelers were objects of envy.

_They_ had an automobile. _They_ could ride while others must plod along behind them on foot, blinded by their dust and sickened by their noisome odor of gasoline.

As long as the Wheelers were "decently hospitable" about sharing their car, the townspeople added to their envy an interested tolerance based on a lively speculation as to when one's own turn for a ride would come; but when a whole week went by, and not one of the many anxious would-be guests had been invited, the interest and the tolerance fled, leaving only an angry disdain as destructive to happiness as was the gasoline smell of the car itself.

There were some things, however, that the townspeople did not know.

They did not know that, though the Wheelers had a motor-car, they had almost nothing else; no new clothes, except dust coats and goggles; no new books and magazines, except such as dealt with "the practical upkeep and operation of a car"; no leisure, for the car must be kept repaired and s.h.i.+ning; no fresh vegetables to eat, for the garden had died long ago from want of care, and they could buy only gasoline. But they did have an automobile. This much the town knew; and there came a day when this fact loomed large and ominous on the horizon of the Wheelers' destiny.

On the first day of October the bank in which young Wheeler worked closed its doors. There had been a defalcation. A large sum of money was missing, and the long finger of suspicion pointed to Herbert Wheeler.

Did he not sport an automobile? Was he not living far beyond his means? Had not the Wheelers for weeks past flaunted their ill-gotten wealth in the very eyes of the whole town? To be sure they had. The idea, indeed, of a twelve-hundred-dollar-a-year clerk trying to cut a dash like that! As if every one could not guess just where had gone that missing sum of money.

And so the town talked and wagged its head, and back in the tiny house in the midst of its unkept lawn and garden sat the angry, frightened, and appalled Herbert Wheeler, and Jessica, his wife.

In vain did the Wheelers point out that the automobile was a gift. In vain did they bare to doubting eyes the whole pitiful poverty of their daily life. The town refused to see or to understand; in the town's eyes was the vision of the Wheeler automobile flying through the streets with selfishly empty seats; in the town's nose was the hateful smell of gasoline. Nothing else signified.

To the bank examiners, however, something else did signify. But it took their sworn statement, together with the suicide of Cas.h.i.+er Jewett (the proved defaulter), to convince the town; and even then the town shook its head and said:

"Well, it might have been that automobile, anyhow!"

The Wheelers sold their elephant--their motor-car.

"Yes, I think we 'd better sell it," agreed Jessica tearfully, when her husband made the proposition. "Of course the car did n't cost us anything, but we--"

"Cost us anything!" cut in Herbert Wheeler wrathfully. "Cost us anything! Why, it's done nothing but cost from the day it smashed those two eggs in the kitchen to the day it almost smashed my reputation at the bank. Why, Jessica, it's cost us everything--food, clothing, fun, friends, and almost life itself! I think we 'll sell that automobile."

And they sold it.

A Patron of Art

Mrs. Livingstone adored art--Art with a capital A, not the kind whose sign-manual is a milking-stool or a beribboned picture frame. The family had lived for some time in a shabby-genteel house on Beacon Hill, ever since, indeed, Mrs. Livingstone had insisted on her husband's leaving the town of his birth and moving to Boston--the center of Art (according to Mrs. Livingstone).

Here she attended the Symphony Concerts (on twenty-five cent tickets), and prattled knowingly of Mozart and Beethoven; and here she listened to Patti or Bernhardt from the third balcony of the Boston Theater. If she attended an exhibit of modern paintings she saw no beauty in pictured face or flower, but longed audibly for the masterpieces of Rubens and of t.i.tian; and she ignored the ordinary books and periodicals of the day, even to the newspapers, and adorned her center-table with copies of Shakespeare and of Milton.

To be sure, she occasionally read a novel or a book of poems a trifle less ancient in character, but never unless the world had rung with the author's praises for at least a score of years. The stamp of Time's approval was absolutely necessary to the aspirant after Mrs.

Livingstone's approbation. Indeed, there was only one of the present-day celebrities who interested the good lady at all, but that one attracted with a power that compensated for any lack in the others.

She would have given much--had it been hers to give--to once meet that man.

Of course he was famous--he had been for thirty years. She called him the "Inimitable One," and set him up in her heart and groveled joyfully at his feet. She bought each of his books when published, whether she had shoes to her feet or clothes to her back. He was the Prophet--the High Priest--the embodiment of Art. She occasionally even allowed his books to rest on the table along with Milton and Shakespeare.

Mrs. Livingstone's husband was only an ordinary being who knew nothing whatever of Art; and it was a relief to her--and perhaps to him, poor man--when he departed this life, and left her to an artistic widowhood with anything but an artistic income--if size counts in Art. But one must eat, and one must wear clothes (in chilly, civilized Boston, at least), and Mrs. Livingstone suddenly realized that something must be done toward supplying these necessities of life for herself and her young daughter, Mabel.

It was at about this time that there came a sharp ring at the doorbell, and a stout man with small, but very bright, black eyes asked to see Mrs. Livingstone.

"I have come, my dear madam, on a matter of business," said he suavely; "and though I am a stranger to you, you certainly are not one to me. I said 'business,' madam, yet I and the one for whom I am speaking are so anxious that you should look favorably upon our proposition that I had almost said that I had come to ask a favor."

Mrs. Livingstone relaxed from the forbidding aspect she had a.s.sumed, and looked mildly interested.

"A gentleman wishes to leave his house in your charge, madam. The house is advertised for sale, and from time to time parties may wish to see it. He would like it to be in the care of some one who will understand how to show it to the best advantage, you see."

Mrs. Livingstone's back straightened, and her chin rose perceptibly.

Had she come to this--a common caretaker? And yet--there was Mabel.

Something must certainly be done.

"Who is this man?" she asked aggressively; and then she almost started from her chair as the name fell from the other's lips--it was that borne by the Inimitable One.

"That man!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "That famous creature with the world at his feet!"

The stout gentleman opposite smiled, and his little eyes narrowed to mere slits of light. He had counted on this. His employer was indeed famous--very famous, though perhaps not in the way this good lady supposed. It was not the first time he had traded on this convenient similarity of names.

"I thought, madam, we had made no mistake. I was sure you would deem it a privilege. And as for us, your keen appreciative sense of the fitness of things will--er--will make it a favor to us if you comply with our request," said he, floundering in helpless confusion for a moment.