I had left Sandy MacWhirter crooning over his smouldering wood fire the day Boggs blew in with news of the sale of Mac’s two pictures at the Academy, and his reply to my inquiry regarding his future plans (vaguely connected with a certain girl in a steamer chair), “By the next steamer, my boy,” still rang in my ears, but my surprise was none the less genuine when I looked up from my easel, two months later, at Sonning-on-the-Thames and caught sight of the dear fellow, with Lonnegan by his side, striding down the tow-path in search of me.
“By the Great Horn Spoon!” came the cry. And the next minute his big arms were about my shoulders, his cheery laugh filling the summer air.
Lonnegan’s greeting was equally hearty and spontaneous, but it came with less noise.
“He’s been roaring that way ever since we left London,” said the architect. “Ever since we landed, really,” and he nodded at Mac. “Awfully glad to see you, old man!”
The next moment the three of us were flat on the grass telling our experiences, the silver sheen of the river flashing between the low-branched trees lining the banks.
Lonnegan’s story ran thus:
Mac had disappeared the morning after their arrival; had remained away two weeks, reappearing again with a grin on his face that had frozen stiff and had never relaxed its grip. “You can still see it; turn your head, Mac, and let the gentleman see your smile.” Since that time he had spent his nights writing letters, and his days poring aver the morning’s mail. “Got his pocket full of them now, and is so happy he’s no sort of use to anybody.” Mac now got his innings:
Lonnegan’s airs had been insufferable and his ignorance colossal. What time he could spare from his English tailor—“and you just ought to see his clothes, and especially his checkerboard waistcoats”—had been spent in abusing everything in English art that wasn’t three hundred years old, and going into raptures over Lincoln Cathedral. The more he saw of Lonnegan the more he was convinced that he had missed his calling. He might succeed as a floorwalker in a department store, where his airs and his tailor-made upholstery would impress the hayseeds from the country, but, as for trying to be—The rest was lost in a gurgle of smothered laughter, Lonnegan’s thin, white fingers having by this time closed over the painter’s windpipe.
My turn came now:
I had been at work a month; had my present quarters at the White Hart Inn, within a stone’s throw of where we lay sprawled with our faces to the sun—the loveliest inn, by the way, on the Thames, and that was saying a lot—with hand-polished tables, sleeve and trouser-polished arm-chairs, Chippendale furniture, barmaids, pewter mugs, old and new ale, tough bread, tender mutton, tarts—gooseberry and otherwise; strawberries—two would fill a teacup—and roses! Millions of roses! “Well, you fellows just step up and look at ‘em.”
“And not a place to put your head,” said Mac.
“How do you know?”
“Been there,” replied Lonnegan. “The only decent rooms are reserved for a bloated American millionaire who arrives to-day—everything else chock-a-block except two bunks under the roof, full of spiders.”
Mac drew up one of his fat legs, stretched his arms, pushed his slouch hat from his forehead—he was still on his back drinking in the sunshine—and with a yawn cried:
“They ought to be exterminated.”
“The spiders?” grumbled Lonnegan.
“No, millionaires. They throw their money away like water; they crowd the hotels. Nothing good enough for them. Prices all doubled, everything slimed up by the trail of their dirty dollars. And the saddest thing in it all to me is that you generally find one or two able-bodied American citizens kotowing to them like wooden Chinese mandarins when the great men take the air.”
“Who, for instance?” I asked. No millionaires with any such outfit had thus far come my way.
“Lonnegan, for one,” answered Mac.
The architect raised his head and shot a long, horizontal glance at the prostrate form of the painter.
“Yes, Lonnegan, I am sorry to say,” continued Mac, his eyes fixed on the yellow greens in the swaying tree-tops.
“I was only polite,” protested the architect. “Lambert is a client of mine; building a stable for him. Very level-headed man is Mr. Samuel Lambert; no frills and no swelled head. It was Tommy Wing who was doing the mandarin act 32 the other day at the Carlton—not me. Got dead intimate with him on the voyage over and has stuck to him like a plaster ever since. Calls him ‘Sam’ already—did to me.”
“Behind his back or to his face?” spluttered Mac, tugging at his pipe.
“Give it up,” said Lonnegan, pulling his hat over his face to shield his eyes from the sun.
Mac raised himself to a sitting posture, as if to reply, fumbled in his watch-pocket for a match, instead; shook the ashes from his brier-wood, filled the bowl with some tobacco from his rubber pouch, drew the lucifer across his shoe, waited until the blue smoke mounted skyward and resumed his former position. He was too happy mentally—the girl in the steamer chair was responsible—and too lazy physically to argue with anybody. Lonnegan rolled over on his elbows, and feasted his eyes on the sweep of the sleepy river, dotted with punts and wherries, its background of foliage in silhouette against the morning sky. The Thames was very lovely that June, and the trained eye of the distinguished architect missed none of its beauty and charm. I picked up my brushes and continued work. The spirit of perfect camaraderie makes such silences not only possible but enjoyable. It is the restless chatterer that tires.
Lonnegan’s outbreak had set me to thinking. Lambert I knew only by reputation—-as half the world knew him—a man of the people: lumber boss, mill owner, proprietor of countless acres of virgin forest; many times a millionaire. Then came New York and the ice-cream palace with the rock-candy columns on the Avenue, and “The Samuel Lamberts” in the society journals. This was all the wife’s doings. Poor Maria! She had forgotten the day when she washed his red flannel shirts and hung them on a line stretched from the door of their log cabin to a giant white pine—one of the founders of their fortune. If Tommy Wing called him “Sam” it was because old “Saw Logs,” as he was often called, was lonely, and Tommy amused him.
Tommy Wing—Thomas Bowditch Wing, his card ran—I had known for years. He was basking on the topmost branches now, stretched out in the sunshine of social success, swaying to every movement made by his padrones. He was a little country squirrel when I first came across him, frisking about the root of the tree and glad enough to scamper close to the ground. He had climbed a long way since then. All the blossoms and tender little buds were at the top, and Tommy was fond of buds, especially when they bloomed out into yachts and four-in-hands, country houses, winters in Egypt (Tommy an invited guest), house parties on Long Island or at Tuxedo, or gala nights at the opera with seats in a first tier.
In the ascent he had forgotten his beginnings—not an unnatural thing with Tommies: Son of a wine merchant—a most respectable man, too; then “Importer” (Tommy altered the sign); elected member of an athletic club; always well dressed, always polite;—invited to a member’s house to dine; was unobtrusive and careful not to make a break. Asked again to fill a place at the table at the last moment-accepted gracefully, not offended—never offended at anything. Was willing to see that the young son caught the train, or would meet the daughter at the ferry and escort her safely to school. “So obliging, so trustworthy,” the mother said. Soon got to be “among those present” at the Sherry and Delmonico balls. Then came little squibs in the society columns regarding the movements of Thomas Bowditch Wing, Esquire. He knew the squibber, and often gave her half a column. Was invited to a seat in the coaching parade, saw his photograph the next morning in the papers, he sitting next to the beautiful Miss Carnevelt. He was pretty near to the top now; only a little farther to where the choicest buds were bursting into flower; too far up, though, ever to recognize the little fellows he had left frisking below. There was no time now to escort school-girls or fill unexpectedly empty seats unless they were exclusive ones. His excuse was that he had accepted an invitation to the branch above him. The mother of the school-girl now, strange to say, instead of being miffed, liked him the better, and, for the first time, began to wonder whether she hadn’t made too free with so important a personage. As a silent apology she begged an invitation for a friend to the Bachelor Ball, Tommy being a subscriber and entitled to the distribution of a certain number of tickets. Being single and available, few outings were given without him—not only week-ends (Weak Odds-and-Ends, Mac always called them), but trips to Washington, even to Montreal in the winter. Then came the excursions abroad—Capri, Tangier, Cairo.
It was on one of these jaunts that he met “Saw Logs,” who, after sizing him up for a day, promptly called him “Tommy,” an abbreviation instantly adopted by Maria—so fine, you know, to call a fellow “Tommy” who knew everybody and went everywhere. Sometimes she shrieked his name the length of the deck. On reaching London it was either the Carlton or the Ritz for Lambert. Tommy, however, made a faint demur. “Oh, hang the expense, Tommy, you are my guest for the summer,” broke out Lambert. What a prime minister you would have made, Tommy, in some kitchen cabinet!
There were no blossoms now out of his reach. Our little squirrel had gained the top! To dazzle the wife and daughter with the priceless value of his social position and then compel plain, honest, good-natured Samuel Lambert to pay his bills, and to pay those bills, too, in such a way, “by Heavens, sir, as not to wound a gentleman’s pride”: that, indeed, was an accomplishment. Had any other bushy tail of his acquaintance ever climbed so high or accomplished so much?
A movement on my right cut short my revery.
MacWhirter had lifted his big arms above his head, and was now twisting his broad back as if for a better fulcrum.
“Lonny—” he cried, bringing his body once more to a sitting posture.
“Yes, Mac.”
“In that humiliating and servile interview which you had a short time ago with your other genuflector, the landlord of the White Hart Inn, did you in any way gain the impression that every ounce of grub in his shebang was reserved for the special use of his highness, Count Kerosene, or the Earl of Asphalt, or the Duke of Sausage, or whatever the brute calls himself?—or do you think he can be induced to—”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Think what, you obtuse duffer?”
“That he can be induced.”
“Well, then, grab that easel and let us go to luncheon.”