Books: Her Weight in Gold
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George Barr McCutcheon >> Her Weight in Gold
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"Men are always in demand," admitted Corky, making a wretched error in
diplomacy. He was thankful to see that it went unnoticed. "That is,
men who are worth while."
The Grand Duchess settled back in her chair, and softly patted her
coiffure, choosing to stroke the curls immediately above her ears.
"Well?" she invited, calmly, deliberately.
"I'd like to marry you," said Corky.
"Do you expect me to say 'yes'?"
"I do."
"Well, I'll let you know in the morning."
"I prefer to have my answer now."
"I've got to think it over."
"Haven't you been thinking it over for some time?" he demanded
impatiently.
"I'll admit that I am in love with you," she said coyly.
He shuffled his feet uneasily. "And you also will admit that I am in
love with you, won't you?"
"Are you?"
"How can you ask?"
"Well, prove it."
"Won't I be proving it beyond all question if I marry you?"
She sighed. "That isn't the way I was wooed years ago."
"You forget that it was long before my time. Custom changes, my dear.
I love you in the present, up-to-date fashion, not as they did in the
unsettled West."
She pondered. "How much of an allowance will you expect?"
"Whatever you choose to settle upon me, I shall be happy to divide
equally with you. That's the only way we can carry on our social
campaign."
"Well, I'll marry you, Corky."
He blinked his eyes two or three times. "When?" he enquired, and
absently looked at his watch.
"Next Saturday," she said.
"Good!" said he.
When he got back to his hotel he found awaiting him there a letter
from his brother Ripley. The news it brought caused him to thank his
lucky stars that his fortune would be safe on Saturday.
Jefferson and Ripley were making their fortunes in a middle-west city,
following the ancient and honourable pursuit of the golf-ball as
instructors in rival country clubs. They seemed to be a bit uncertain
as to what they would follow during the winter, but both of them were
thinking rather seriously of getting married.
The news that caused Gorky's eyes to bulge came in the last casual
paragraph of the letter. "Oh, by the way," wrote Rip, "the governor
has just been married. I suppose you haven't heard of it. He had his
appendix out six weeks ago and married his night nurse as soon as he
was up. Well, so long. I'm giving a lesson at 10:30. Good luck."
CHAPTER III
THE TWINS
The twins went fortune-seeking in a more complaisant way. They were
big and hardy and the world had no real terrors for them. As twins
should go, they fared forth together in quest of the road to wealth.
They had been told that it lay toward the West and that it grew
broader as one drew nearer the land of the setting sun. The West was
the place for young men with ambitions. That expression had been ding-
donged into their ears by college mates from Los Angeles and Seattle
ever since they had learned that these two towns were something more
than mere dots on the map.
They had heard so much of the two cities that they decided to try
Omaha or some other place of that character before definitely putting
their strength against the incomprehensibly sagacious gentlemen who
were responsible for the supremacy of Seattle and Los Angeles over all
other towns on the continent.
As was their wont, they went about the thing casually and without
worry. They could not buckle down to work until after the wedding of a
friend in Chicago, a classmate at college. He had asked them to act as
ushers. The twins were especially well-qualified to serve as ushers.
Since graduating they had performed that service for no fewer than
twenty members of the class and were past-masters at the trade. It was
only fair and right that they should usher for old Charley Whistler,
although the name was not quite as familiar as it ought to have been.
They couldn't quite place him, but so long as he had done them the
honour to ask them to take part in his wedding, they were reasonably
secure in the belief that he was all right. Before leaving New York,
they spent several hundred dollars on a joint wedding present, a habit
acquired when they first came out of college and which clung to them
through many marriages, no doubt because of the popularity of the
phrase: "Know all men by these presents, etc."
They were somewhat surprised on reaching Chicago to learn that Charley
Whistler did not live there at all, but in W----, a thriving city not
far removed from the Illinois metropolis. They could not have been
expected to know that dear old Charley lived in W---- when they didn't
even know there was such a place as W---- to live in. They heard all
about the place from Charley, however. It seemed to be a city of
distilleries. Everybody there was rich because everybody owned a
distillery.
"Come out and visit us," said Charley after he had told them what a
wonderful place it was. "I'm so busy I can't take more than two weeks
for a honeymoon. Any time after the first of June will be convenient,
boys. I'll show you a REAL town."
"There's only one real town," said Jefferson, his mind drifting back
to Manhattan Island.
"Only one," said Ripley.
"Bosh! Say, how many distilleries has New York got? Answer that, will
you?"
"I don't know, but I'll bet ten dollars we could drink up in three
months all the whiskey you can make in W---- in a whole year."
Charley was silenced. He could only remark: "Well, there's more money
in making it than there is in drinking it." The twins assented.
"Anyhow, I wish you fellows could come out and see what we've got
there. I'd like to get some of the Van Winkle millions interested in
our village."
The twins exchanged glances. "The Van Winkle money is pretty well tied
up," said Jeff.
"Well, it won't be forever, will it? I want to get you young fellows
interested. And say, I can introduce you to some of the finest girls
this side of Paradise. The burg is full of 'em. Why, I've heard New
Yorkers say that they'd never seen so many pretty women or better
dressed ones than we've got right there in--"
"I know," interrupted Rip. "That's what you hear in every city in
America, big or little. And it's always the poor, impressionable New
Yorker who says it, the fellow who has to put up with the depressing
homeliness and dowdiness of Fifth Avenue. Give us a rest, Charley."
"Have you got a baseball team there?" demanded Jeff sarcastically.
"Sure! A peach, too. We're leading the league."
"What league?"
"The Peewee Valley League, of course. Two country clubs, too, with
brand new golf courses. Oh, we're getting to the front, let me tell--"
"Why two?"
Charley stared. "Great Scott! Haven't you heard? It's been in all the
papers. The row in the Wayside Country Club? It's only two years old,
but, by George, they've had enough quarrels to last a New York club a
century. There was a split last fall, and a new club was formed--the
Elite Country Club. All the nicest people in town belong to the Elite.
Lot of muckers run the Wayside. If you---"
"Which one has the distilleries?" asked Pip. "Both. The whiskey people
can't very well discriminate, don't you see? Same as the breweries.
It's good business for them to support both clubs. Good Lord, it's six
o'clock. You fellows will have to be at the church at seven sharp, you
know. Better dress pretty soon. So long. See you later."
The long and short of it was that the Van Winkle twins DID go out to
W----. They remained in Chicago for three weeks looking for work at
teas, bridge-parties, theatre-parties and luncheons at all of the
country clubs. They played golf and tennis when not engaged in looking
for work. Their joint four thousand dollars, pooled, had dwindled to
barely half that amount, but they were cheerful. Their only prayer was
that no one else in the class of '08 would decide to get married
before the summer was over.
W---- is a thriving, bustling, aggressive town in the Mississippi
Valley. It is not necessary to describe it in detail. The Van Winkles
were put up at the Commercial Club, the W---- Club and the two country
clubs. Charley Whistler attended to that. He was so proud of his two
distinguished ushers that he sadly neglected his bride in showing them
off to acquaintances during the first week of their stay.
Almost the first thing he did was to introduce them to the Barrows
sisters, treasured by W---- as her "fairest daughters." Every one in
town, including the editors, spoke of them familiarly as "Toots" and
"Beppy" Barrows, applying nicknames that had grown up with them and
had no connection whatever with the names they received when
christened. They were young, rich, lovely and apparently heart-whole.
Charley Whistler, being newly-wedded, wanted every one else in the
world to get married. He was continually saying that there was
"nothing like it," and resented some of the ironic rejoinders of men
who had been married all their lives, to hear them talk about it. So
he made haste to introduce the twins to the beautiful Barrows girls.
With a perfectly beautiful fidelity to the fitness of things, the two
Van Winkles fell prostrate before the charms of the two young ladies,
and spent nearly a month looking for work in their delightful company.
It was not until they realised that their funds were reduced to almost
nothing that they came down to earth with a thud. They had less than
one hundred dollars between them and destitution.
Sitting in the shade of a huge old oak near the first tee on the Elite
Club course, awaiting the appearance of the young women with whom they
were to play a mixed foursome, the twins fell to discussing a subject
they had dreaded to contemplate much less to broach.
"Jeff," said Rip, poking a dandelion with the head of his mashie,
"lend me fifty till next week."
"Fifty what?" enquired Jeff gloomily.
"Cents, of course," said Rip. "But I'll take it in dollars if you
happen to have them."
"We're up against it, old boy," said his brother, lighting a fresh
cigarette. "What's to be done?"
"I suppose we'll have to clear out," sighed Rip. "We can't go on in
this way. They are the finest, best girls I've ever known, and it's a
bloody shame to--to go on."
"Right-o! We've just got to clear out while our credit is good. I hate
to do it, though. I--I don't mind confessing that I'm heels over head
in love with her. It's a damned shame, isn't it?"
"You're no worse off than I am," groaned Rip. "We are a nice pair of
Romeos, aren't we? Good Lord, what will they think of us when they
find us out?"
"Well," mused Jeff, "they're sensible darlings. Maybe they'll
understand."
"Never! These western girls are not brought up to understand such
blighters as we are. We are a species known only to the effete East.
No; they will not understand. God knows I'm willing to work. The
trouble is, I haven't time."
"Well, we'll have to work, steal or starve."
"I can't steal and I won't starve. I'm afraid we'll have to move on
farther west. Cow-punching isn't bad if one--Here they come. Not a
word, old boy. We'll talk it over tonight. It's my notion we'd better
move on tomorrow while we've got the wherewithal. I'm not mean enough
to borrow money from Whistler and I haven't the face to ask Uncle
George to help us out. Darn him, I think he's the one who put it into
father's head to do this--"
"Sh!" hissed the other, coming to his feet as the trim, trig figures
of the Barrows girls drew near.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," said Toots, the elder of the two. "Mrs.
Garvin was telling a story in the locker room." Toots was an exquisite
blonde, tall, slender and lithesome.
"I've been slicing horribly of late, Mr. Van Winkle," said Beppy,
frowning prettily. "Can you straighten me out? What am I doing that's
wrong?" She was dark and brilliant, and quite as tall as her sister.
One would go miles to find two more comely maids than these.
"Standing too far away from the ball," said Jeff, to whom the remark
was addressed.
"I don't see why the club doesn't hire a professional," complained
she. "He could get rich showing the members how to play the sort of
golf they needn't be ashamed of."
"Three fourths of them don't know the difference between a mashie and
a mid-iron," said Toots. "We learned in England, you know."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Rip, apropos of nothing. A great light beamed in
his face.
"By Jove!" repeated Jeff, divining his thought.
Then, just to prove that they understood each other, they drove at
least two hundred and fifty yards off the first tee, straight down the
course. Jeff showed Beppy how to overcome the slice. She got a hundred
and fifty yard ball.
"For heaven's sake!" she exclaimed, surprised by her own prowess. "How
wonderful! And how easy, when you know how."
With singular coincidence of purpose, the two Van Winkles set about to
teach their partners how to play better golf than they had ever played
before. By the time they were playing the long eighth hole, the young
men were so exercised over the discovery of a vocation that they
sliced badly into the rough. Trudging side by side through the tall
grass, looking for balls which the caddies had lost, they addressed
each other in excited undertones.
"Nothing could suit me better," said Jeff.
"It's like finding money. Lessons at three dollars an hour and the
privilege of selling all the golf balls to the players. How's that?
Shall we tackle it?"
Jeff experienced a momentary pang of doubt. "Of course we'd lose our
standing as amateurs. We'd be professionals, you know."
"What's the odds? Even amateurs have to live, old son."
"What will the girls think of us?" dolefully.
"They can't blame us for earning an honest dollar."
"A Van Winkle earning an honest dollar!" scoffed Jeff, with a short
laugh. "It's incredible. No one will believe it."
"Here's what I think," said Rip seriously. "We ought to make a clean
breast of everything those girls. Tell 'em just how we stand. I'll
stake my head they'll stand for it."
"Tell 'em we've been kicked out by the governor?" gasped Jeff.
"Sure. A rich man's sons earning their daily bread by the sweat of
their brow. Horrible ogre of a father, d'ye see? Romance of the
highest order. By ginger, Jeff, I'm strong for it. It's honest work
and I'm not ashamed of it."
The Barrows girls witnessed the strange spectacle of two brothers in
quest of golf-balls shaking hands with each other in the centre of a
wire-grass swamp, and blinked their beautiful eyes in amazement.
At the "nineteenth hole," over tea and highballs, the Van Winkle twins
made humble confession to the high priestesses of W----. They did not
spare themselves. On the contrary, they confessed their utter
worthlessness and paid homage to the father who had sent them out in
the world to retrieve themselves.
"And what do you think of the scheme?" asked Rip at the end of a
lengthy and comprehensive explanation of the project in mind.
"Fine!" cried the two girls in a breath. "Then, the first thing to do
is to convince the club that it needs a professional," said Jeff
eagerly. He was looking into Beppy's big brown eyes.
"But it doesn't need TWO," spoke Toots.
The four faces fell. "I never thought of that," murmured Jeff.
"The Wayside Club has no instructor," cried Rip, grasping at a straw.
"But no one thinks of going to Wayside," protested Toots. "They are
perfectly dreadful."
"Still they could be taught how to play golf," said Rip. "In any
event, beggars can't be choosers. We both want to stay in W----."
"Well, there's only one way out of it," said Beppy quickly. "You,
Ripley, apply to the Wayside for the position. Jefferson has already
spoken for the place here."
"He has not!" exclaimed Toots indignantly.
"He has! I am on the golf committee, so that settles it. I'll call a
meeting of the committee tomorrow--"
"I don't see why Ripley should be sacrificed--"
"Wait, girls," broke in Ripley with a laugh. "It's very flattering to
us, but please don't quarrel on our account. We can settle it nicely
by flipping a coin."
"Heads," said Jefferson without hesitation. He won. "Sorry, old chap."
"We shall have to join Wayside," lamented Toots. "Oh, how I hate it."
"I wouldn't join until you see whether I land the place," advised
Ripley. "I suppose I COULD go to some other city."
Both girls uttered such a harmonious protest against that alternative,
that he said he wouldn't consider leaving his brother for anything in
the world.
"I know the president of Wayside," said Beppy consolingly. "He used to
be in business with father. I'll see him tomorrow and tell him---"
"See him TODAY," advised Toots firmly.
"You are adorable," whispered Rip as he walked beside her toward the
automobile. "I wish I could do something to show how much I appreciate
your--your friendship." Her response was a most enchanting smile.
Under his breath he said: "Gad, I'd like to kiss you!" It is barely
possible that thoughts speak louder than words and that she heard him,
for she said something in reply under her own breath that would have
made it a very simple matter for him to kiss her if he had been
acquainted with the silent tongue.
The Van Winkle twins, in anticipation of success crowning their
efforts to become professional instructors in the two country clubs,
outlined a splendid and cunning campaign for themselves. By inspiring
a fierce rivalry between the would-be golfers of the two clubs, they
could build up a thriving practice in their chosen profession. The
rivalry was already bitter along other lines. If they could get the
men of the clubs into a fighting humour over the golf situation, there
would be no end to the lessons they would demand of their instructors.
By using a little strategy, the twins figured they could keep the
clubs in a state of perpetual tournament. The results would be far-
reaching and gratifying.
Before the end of the week, the redoubtable sons of old Bleecker Van
Winkle, "leaders of cotillions in the Four Hundred and idols of
Newport and Bar Harbor," (according to the local press), were
installed as instructors in the rival clubs. Everybody in town, except
the conspiring Barrows girls, regarded the situation as a huge joke.
The fashionable young "bloods" were merely doing it for the "fun of
the thing." That was the consensus of opinion. The news was
telegraphed to the New York papers and the headlines in Gotham were
worth seeing. The twins winked at each other and--played golf.
Be it said to their credit, they were soon earning twenty-five or
thirty dollars a day--and saving half of it!
So intense was the golf fever in W---- that the middle of July found
the links of both clubs so crowded that it was almost impossible to
play with anything except a putter. Nearly every foursome had a
gallery following it and no one spoke above a whisper after he entered
the club grounds, so eager were the members to respect the proprieties
of golf. Men who had but lately scoffed at the little white ball now
talked of stymies and lies and devits as if they had known them all
their lives. Hooks, tops and slices were on every man's tongue, and
you might have been pardoned for thinking that Bunker Hill was smack
in the centre of W----, and that Col. Bogie had come there to be beaten
to death in preference to being executed in any other city in the
world.
The merry Van Winkles, good fellows and good sports that they were,
thrived with the game, and kept straight down the course of true love
as well.
"Jeffy," said Rip one evening after returning from a rather protracted
call on Toots Barrows, "I have asked her to marry me."
"So have I," said Jeff, who had returned with him from the Barrows
home. "I wonder what the governor will say?"
"I'm not worrying about him. I'm wondering what the girls' mother will
say."
"No one will say we are marrying them for their money, that's
positive. Everybody here thinks we've got millions and millions."
"Oh, by the way, did she accept you!"
"Certainly. Did she accept you?"
"Of course. Another thing, did she say anything to you about hurrying
the thing along a bit, so as to have it over with before her mother
gets wind of it?"
"By George, she did. That's odd, isn't it? She's afraid her mother
will object to her marrying a New Yorker. Got some silly prejudice
against the Four Hundred. I said it couldn't happen any too soon for
me. We had a sort of a notion next week would be about right."
"It suits me," said the other. They shook hands. "I want to say, here
and now, that I love her with all my heart and soul, and I'll never
let her rue the day she married me. I love her, old son."
"Not a blamed bit more than I do," said Jeff fervently. "She's the
best ever!"
The next morning they saw by the newspaper that their father had
married his night nurse in the hospital and was going up into Maine to
recover!
That same day, on the seventh tee of the Elite course, Toots promised
to marry Ripley two weeks from Wednesday. At Wayside Beppy told
Jefferson she would marry him at the same time, but I think it was on
the ninth green.
"Mother will be wild when we cable the news to her," said she.
CHAPTER IV
ALL VAN WINKLES
The fortnight between that fateful day on the links and the Wednesday
aforesaid, was full of surprising complications for the Van Winkle and
Barrows families.
The two girls went into fits of hysteria on receipt of a cablegram
from their mother in Paris announcing her marriage to Mr. Courtney Van
Winkle, of New York. They were still more prostrated on learning from
their wide-eyed sweethearts that not only was Courtney their step-
father but he was on the point of becoming their brother-in-law as
well. A still greater shock came the day of their own double wedding
which took place in the Barrows mansion on Ardmore Avenue in the
presence of a small company of guests. It developed that the Mrs.
Smith who nursed old Mr. Van Winkle and afterwards married him was
their divorced sister, Mary, who had not only grown tired of a husband
but of nursing other women's husbands as well. The situation was
unique.
"Good heavens," said Rip, after the ceremony which linked the entire
Barrows family to the Van Winkles, "what relation are we to each
other?"
"Well," said his wife, "for one thing, you are my uncle by marriage."
"And I am my father's brother-in-law. By the same argument, the
governor becomes his own son's son-in-law. Can you beat it?"
"Your brother becomes your father, and my mother is my sister. Now,
let's see what else--"
"And your sister is now your mother-in-law. By the way, has she any
children?"
"Two little girls," said Toots.
"That makes poor old Corky a grandfather," groaned Rip.
Pretty much the same conversation took place between Jeff and Beppy.
"Corky is my father-brother," said Jeff, summing it all up.
On the high seas, Mr. and Mrs. Courtney Van Winkle threshed out the
amazing situation, and in the mists of the Maine coast, the
flabbergasted father of the three young men who fared forth to make
men of themselves agonised over the result of their efforts.
"When I am quite strong again, my dear," said he to the comely ex-
nurse--who, by the way, had engaged a male attendant to take her place
in looking after the convalescent gentleman, "we must have a family
gathering in New York. What is your mother like?"
"She is like all women who marry at her age," said she without
hesitation--and without rancour. "She's very silly. What sort of a
person is your son?"
"I don't know," said Mr. Van Winkle with conviction.
We will permit three months to slip by. No honeymoon should be shorter
than that. It is meet that we should grant our quiddlers three and
their excellent parent the supreme felicity of enjoying the period
without being spied upon by a mercenary story-teller. But all
interests, as well as all roads, lead to a common centre. The centre
in this case was New York City.
It goes without saying that the Barrows girls, Edith and Gwendolyn,
preferred New York to W---- as a place of residence. They married New
Yorkers and it was only right and proper that they should love New
York. Possessing a full third of the enormous fortune left by their
distilling father, they maintained that they could afford to live in
New York, even though their husbands remained out of employment for
the rest of their natural lives. We already know that Mrs. Corky Van
Winkle longed for a seat among the lofty, and that Mrs. Bleecker Van
Winkle had married at least two gentlemen of Gotham in the struggle to
feel at home there. Therefore, we are permitted to announce that
Jefferson and Ripley Van Winkle resigned their positions as golf-
instructors the instant the wedding bells began to ring, and went upon
the retired list with the record of an honourable, even distinguished
career behind them. They said something about going into "the Street,"
and their amiable and beautiful wives exclaimed that it would be
perfectly lovely of them. But, they added, there was really no excuse
for hurrying.
We come now to the family gathering in the palatial home of Mr.
Courtney Van Winkle, just off Fifth Avenue (on the near east side),
and it is December. Corky's wife bought the place, furnished. He
couldn't stop her. The only flaw in the whole arrangement, according
to the ambitious Grand Duchess, was the deplorable accident that
admitted a trained nurse into the family circle. It would be very hard
to live down. She never could understand why Mr. Van Winkle did it!
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