Books: Her Weight in Gold
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George Barr McCutcheon >> Her Weight in Gold
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"It's good luck to fall upstairs!"
The fires of life had been rekindled, and when such a thing happens to
a person of Martha's horse-power, the effect is astonishing. At four o
'clock she began dressing for the coming suitor. When he arrived at
seven, she was still trying to decide whether her hair looked better
by itself or with augmentations.
Below, in the huge library, Eddie Ten Eyck sat disconsolate, nervously
contemplating the immediate future. He was all alone. Not even a
servant was to be seen or heard. It was as still as the Christmas Eve
whose jingle we love so well.
Never in all his aimless existence had he felt so small, so
unimportant, so put-upon as at this moment. His gaze, sweeping the
ceiling of the library, tried to penetrate to the sacred precincts
above. Even the riches and the stateliness of the Gamble mansion
failed to reimburse his fancy for the losses it was sustaining with
each succeeding minute of suspense. Dimly he recalled that General
Gamble had spent nearly half a million dollars in the construction of
this imposing edifice. The library was worth more than one hundred
thousand dollars; the stables were stocked with innumerable
thoroughbreds; the landed estate was measured by sections instead of
acres; the stocks and bonds were--But even as he considered the
question of assets, there surged up before him an overwhelming
liability that brought the General's books to balance.
By this time, Eddie had become so proficient in the art of rapid
calculation that he could estimate within a few ounces just what a
person would have to weigh in order to be worth as much as the
library, the mansion, or the bonds. The great Gainsborough that hung
in the west end of the room corresponded in value (if reports were
true concerning the price Gamble had asked for it) to a woman weighing
a shade over two hundred and three pounds troy.
He lifted a handsome bronze figure from the library table and
murmured: "It's worth a ten-pound baby, twenty-two hundred dollars and
a fraction."
The General came in, followed closely by the butler, who bore a tray
holding at least ten cocktails. After the greetings, Eddie glanced
uneasily at the cocktails.
"Is--is it to be as big a dinner as all this?" he asked ruefully.
"Oh, no. Just family, my boy; we four. The women don't drink, Eddie,
so help yourself."
Eddie gratefully swallowed three in rapid succession.
"I see you mean to make it absolutely necessary for me to take the
gold cure," he said with a forlorn smile.
Martha put in an appearance at seven-thirty, having kept dinner
waiting for half an hour, much to the amazement of those who had lived
with her long enough to know her promptness in appearing for meals.
Mr. Ten Eyck, who was a rather good-looking chap and fastidious to a
degree, did not possess the strength to keep his heart anywhere near
the customary level. It went hurtling to his very boots. He shook
hands with the blushing young woman and then involuntarily shrank
toward the cocktails, disregarding the certainty that he would find
them lukewarm and tasteless.
She was gotten up for the occasion. But, as it was not her costume
that he was to embrace in matrimony, we will omit a description of the
creation she wore. It was pink, of course, and cut rather low in order
to protect her face from the impudent gaze of man.
Her face? Picture the face of the usual heroine in fiction and then
contrive to think of the most perfect antithesis, and you have Martha
in your mind's eye much more clearly than through any description I
could hope to present.
She was squat. Her somewhat brawny shoulders sloped downward and
forward--and perhaps a little sidewise, I am not sure about that. Her
hair was straw-coloured and stringy in spite of the labour she had
expended on it with curling-iron and brush. As to her face, the more
noticeable features were a very broad, flat nose; a comparatively
chinless under jaw, on which grew an accidental wisp of hair or two; a
narrow and permanently decorated upper lip. When she smiled--well, the
effect was discouraging, to say the least. Her eyes were pale and
prominent. In spite of all this, practice in rouging might have helped
her a little, but she had had no practice. Young men never came to the
house, and it was not worth while to keep up appearances for the old
ones who were content to dodder at the end of the way. You would say
at a glance that she was a very strong and enduring person, somewhat
along the lines of a suffragette ward politician.
The dinner was a genial one, after all. The General was at his best,
and the wine was perfect. In lucid moments, Eddie found himself
reflecting: "If I can drink enough of this I'll have delirium tremens
and then I won't have to believe all that I see."
Martha had always called him Eddie. In fact, every one called him
Eddie. He was that sort of a chap. To-night, he observed, with a hazy
interest, she addressed him as Mr. Ten Eyck, and rather frequently, at
that. It was: "Do you really think so, Mr. Ten Eyck?" or "How very
amusing, Mr. Ten Eyck," or "Good gracious, Mr. Ten Eyck," until poor
Eddie, unused to this distinction, reached a point where he muttered
something in way of protest that caused the General to cough violently
in order to give his guest a chance to recover himself before it was
too late.
After dinner the General and Mrs. Gamble retired somewhat
precipitously, leaving the young people alone.
Eddie heaved a tremendous sigh of decision and bravely crossed the
room. Martha was seated upon the davenport, nervously toying with her
fan. He saw with misgiving that she evidently expected something was
going to happen. Her eyes were downcast.
He stood silent and somewhat awed before her for many minutes, taking
the final puffs at an abbreviated cigarette. Then he abruptly sat down
at the opposite end of the couch. As he did so, she thought she heard
him mutter something about "one hundred and seventy, at the lowest."
"So many people have given up playing golf, Mr. Ten Eyck," she said.
"I am surprised that you keep it up."
"Golf?" he murmured blankly.
"Weren't you speaking of your score for the eighteen holes?"
He gazed at her helplessly for a moment, then set his jaw.
"Say, Martha," he began, in a high and unnatural treble, "I am a man
of few words. Will you marry me? Oh! Ouch! What the dickens are you
doing? O--oh! Don't jump at me like that!"
The details are painful and it isn't necessary to go into them.
Suffice it to say, she told him that he had always been her ideal and
that she had worshipped him from childhood's earliest days. He, on the
other hand, confessed, with more truth than she could have guessed,
that he had but recently come to a realisation of her true worth, and
what she really meant to him.
She set the wedding day for November the eleventh,--just seven weeks
off.
Before leaving,--she kept him until nearly twelve,--he playfully came
up behind her as she stood near the table, and, placing his hands
under her elbows, said:
"Hold 'em stiff now."
Then, to her amazement, he tried to lift her from the floor. He
couldn't budge her.
"It's all right," he exclaimed exultantly and refused to explain.
That night in his dreams an elephant came along and stood for a while
on his chest, but he was used to it by that time, and didn't mind.
The next morning, General Gamble reported by telephone that Martha
weighed one hundred and sixty-eight pounds and nine ounces. A minute
later, Eddie was at his desk calculating.
On the twenty-third of September she weighed two thousand and twenty-
five ounces troy. At nineteen dollars and twenty cents an ounce she
was then worth $38,880. With any sort of luck, he figured, she might
be expected to pick up a few pounds as the result of her new-found
happiness and peace of mind. Her worries were practically over.
Contented people always put on flesh. If everything went well, she
ought to represent at least $40,000 on her wedding day. Perhaps more.
He haunted the Country Club by day and the town clubs by night, always
preoccupied and figuring, much to the astonishment of his friends and
cronies. He scribbled inexplicable figures on the backs of golf cards,
bar checks, and menus.
By the end of the first week he had made definite promises to all of
his creditors. He guaranteed that every one should be paid before the
middle of November. Moreover, he set aside in his calculations the sum
of $7,000 for the purchase of a new house. Early in the second week he
had virtually expended $15,000 of what he expected to receive, and was
giving thanks for increased opportunities.
He called at the Gamble house regularly, even faithfully. True, he
urged Martha to play on the piano nearly all of the time, but to all
intents and purposes it was a courtship.
When the engagement was announced, the town--in utter ignorance of the
conspiracy--went into convulsions. The half-dozen old maids in upper
circles who had long since given up hope began to prink and perk
themselves into an amazing state of rejuvenation,--revival, you might
say. They tortured themselves with the hope that never dies. They even
lent money to impecunious gentlemen who couldn't believe their senses
and went about pinching themselves.
Eddie Ten Eyck's credit was so good that he succeeded in borrowing
nearly five thousand dollars from erstwhile adamantine sceptics.
One day the General met him in the street. The old soldier wore a
troubled look. "She's sick," he said without preamble. "Got pains all
over her and chills, too."
"Is it serious?" demanded Eddie.
"I don't know. Neither does the doctor. He's waiting for developments.
Took a culture to-day. She's in bed, however."
"SHE MUST NOT DIE," said Eddie, a desperate gleam in his eye. "I--
can't afford to have anything like that happen now. Can't she be
vaccinated?"
At the end of the second day thereafter it was known all over town
that Martha Gamble was ill with typhoid fever. She was running a
temperature of 104 degrees and two doctors had come up from New York
to consult with the Essex physician, bringing with them a couple of
trained nurses. They said her heart was good.
After the consultation, the General and Eddie sat alone in the
library, woebegone and disconsolate.
"They think they can pull her through," said the former vaguely.
"Curse 'em," grated Eddie; "they've GOT to do it. If there is the
least prospect of her dying, General, I must insist that the wedding
day be moved forward. I'll--I'll marry her to-day. By Jove, it might
go a long way toward reducing her temperature."
"Impossible! We shall stick to the original agreement." "Confound you,
I believe you are hoping she'll die before the eleventh of November.
It would be just like you, General Gamble."
"I'm not hoping for anything of the sort, sir," thundered the other.
"But, if it SHOULD happen--" He did not finish the sentence, but there
was a green light in his eyes.
Eddie was silent for many minutes.
"And if she SHOULD die, where do I come in, or get off, or whatever is
the proper thing to say in the circumstances? It wouldn't be fair to
me, General Gamble. You know it wouldn't. It would be a damned
outrage. Here am I, a devoted lover, eager to make her happy--to MAKE
HER LAST MOMENTS happy ones, mind you, and you sit there and deny her
the consolation of--"
"All's fair in love, my boy," said the General blandly.
"Rats!"
"Martha wasn't strong enough to stand the excitement. It was like a
sudden and frightful change in the weather. Her constitution couldn't
fight it off." "Constitution? Good Lord!"
"We ought to make allowances, my boy."
"I am in no position to make allowances. Are these doctors any good?"
"The best in New York City."
"And the nurses? Everything depends on good nursing."
"They are real Canadians."
"General, up to the time I was eleven years old I said my prayers
every night. I'm going to begin again to-night," said Eddie solemnly,
as he passed his hand across his brow.
The days went by with monotonous similarity. Bright or dark, wet or
dry, they looked the same to Eddie Ten Eyck. At first he had been
permitted to visit her once or twice a day, staying for a few minutes
on each occasion. After a while the visits were stopped by the
doctor's order. But still he haunted the Gamble mansion. He waylaid
the doctor; he bribed or coerced the nurses; he watched the sick-room
door with the eye of a hungry dog; he partook inordinately of the
General's liquors. Martha was delirious, that much he was able to
gather by persistent inquiry. She seemed obsessed with the idea that
she and Eddie were to keep house in Heaven, with two cherubs and a
hypodermic syringe.
Mrs. Gamble was deeply touched and not a little surprised by the
devotion of her daughter's fiance. She turned to him in these hours of
despair and gave to him a large share of her pity and consolation. She
asked him to pray for Martha. He said he had been praying for some one
else nearly all his life, but henceforth would put in a word for
Martha.
The wedding day was near at hand when an unexpected and alarming
complication set in. The doctors were hurriedly gathered in
consultation. There was a crisis. One of the nurses confided to Mr.
Ten Eyck that there was no hope, but the other declared that if the
patient survived the eighth of November she would "be out of the
woods." The eighth was three days off. Those three days were spent by
Eddie in a state of fearful suspense. He implored Providence and Fate
to stand by him until after the eleventh. He went so far as to add a
couple of days to include the thirteenth, not being superstitious. The
night of the eighth was a memorable one. No one in the Gamble house
went to bed. The ninth came and then the doctors appeared with glad
tidings. The crisis was past and there was every chance in the world
for the patient to recover, unless of course, some unforeseen
complication intervened.
Eddie staggered out to the stables and performed a dance of joy.
"What's her temperature?" he demanded of one of the grooms, absently
repeating a question he had asked five thousand times during the past
few weeks. "I beg your pardon, Smith." Then he hurried back to the
house. Meeting one of the doctors he gripped him by the arm.
"Is she sure to live, doc--doctor?"
"Forever," said the doctor, meaning to comfort him.
"No!" gasped Eddie.
"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Ten Eyck. She is quite rational now and
--pardon me if I repeat a sick-room secret--she declares that there
shall be no postponement of the wedding. She is superstitious about
postponements."
Eddie hesitated. "Ahem! Is--is she emaciated?"
"No more than might be expected."
"I--I hope she hasn't wasted very much."
"Skin and bones," said the doctor with the most professional
bluntness.
Eddie mopped his brow. "You--you don't mean it! See here, doctor, you
ought to advise very strongly against the--er--marriage at this time.
Tell her it would kill her. The shock, I mean. I am willing to wait--
GOD KNOWS, I am only too willing to wait--until she is strong and well
and herself once more. Tell her--"
"Perhaps you would better talk it over with her father, Mr. Ten Eyck.
I am not--"
"Her father--" began Eddie, but caught himself up.
"I would not answer for her safety if a postponement were even
suggested. Her heart is set on it, my dear fellow. She will be strong
enough to go through with it."
"But I want to be married in church."
"I daresay you will agree with me when I say that your feelings are
not to be considered in a crisis of this kind," said the doctor
coldly, and moved away.
At noon on the eleventh Martha awoke from a sound and restful sleep.
Sweet lassitude enveloped her, but her mind went groping for something
that had been troubling her in a vague sort of way for the last forty-
eight hours.
"Is it the eleventh?" she whispered, stretching out her hand to the
watchful nurse.
"Yes, my dear. Now try to go to sleep again--"
"Where is Mr. Ten Eyck?"
"Sh!"
"What time is it!"
"Now don't worry about the time--"
"Is it night or day?"
"It is noon."
"I am to be married at eight o'clock this evening, Miss Feeney."
"Yes, yes, I know," soothingly.
"You might send word to Mr. Ten Eyck that I shall be ready. He may
forget the ring unless you tell him that--there--is--to be--no post--"
She went to sleep in the middle of postponement.
While the nurses were preparing her for the ceremony, General Gamble
sent word into the sick-room that the doctor desired her correct
weight--for scientific purposes.
The patient, too weak to help herself, was lifted upon the scales,
where she remained long enough for it to be seen that she weighed
seventy-three pounds and eight ounces. She was then hustled into bed,
but seemed to be in even better spirits than before, confiding to the
nurses that she knew Mr. Ten Eyck was partial to slender women, and
that if she had anything to do with it she'd never weigh more than one
hundred and ten again, "as long as she lived."
"One hundred and ten is a lovely weight, don't you think, Miss
Feeney!" she asked.
Miss Feeney was feeling her pulse. The other nurse was trying to stick
a mouth thermometer between the patient's lips.
"It is a much lovelier weight than seventy-three," said Miss Feeney
gently.
The General, in the privacy of his bed-chamber, reduced the pounds to
ounces and found that Martha, in her present state, represented eight
hundred and eighty-four ounces. He could not suppress a chuckle, even
though he felt very mean about it. She was worth $16,972 in gold. Her
illness had cost him approximately $2,000 in doctors' fees, et cetera,
but it had cost Eddie Ten Eyck $21,911 in pure gold, with twenty cents
over in silver.
It is said that the bridegroom almost collapsed when he looked for the
first time upon his emaciated investment. It was worse than he had
expected. She was literally "skin and bones."
Mechanically, semi-paralysed, he made the responses to the almost
staccato words of the clergyman. The ceremony was hurried through at a
lively rate, but to Eddie it seemed to take hours. Her fingers felt
like a closed fan in his own pulseless hand. He replied "I do" and "I
will" without really being aware of the fact, and all the time he was
gazing blankly at her, trying to remember where he had seen her
before.
Away back in the dim, forgotten ages there was a robust, squat,
valuable figure; but--this! His brain reeled. He was being married to
an utter stranger. His loss was incalculable.
We will speed over the ensuing months. It goes without saying that
Martha became well and strong and abominably vigorous in the matter of
appetite. Her days of convalescence--But why go into them? They are
interesting only to the person who is emerging from a period of
suffering and fasting. Why dwell upon the reflections of Eddie Ten
Eyck as he saw an erstwhile stranger transformed into an old
acquaintance before his very eyes? Why go into the painful details
attending the stealthy payment of nearly $17,000 by the party of the
first part to the party of the second part, and why tell of the uses
to which the latter was compelled to put this meagre fortune almost
immediately after acquiring it? No one cares to be harassed by these
miserable, mawkish details.
One really needs to know but one thing: the bridegroom soon stood
shorn of all his ill-gotten gains, unless we except the wife of whom
no form of adversity could rob him.
A month after the wedding, Eddie was eagerly awaiting the fourth
quarterly instalment of his allowance. He was out of debt, it is true,
but he never had been poorer in all his life. The thing that appalled
him most was the fact that he had unlimited credit and did not possess
the courage to take advantage of it. He could have borrowed right and
left; he could have run up stupendous accounts; he could have lived
like a lord. But Martha, before she was really able to sit up in bed,
began to talk about something in a cottage,--something that made him
turn pale with desperation,--and bread and cheese and kisses, entirely
with an eye to thrift and what Eddie considered a nose for squalor. He
couldn't imagine anything more squalid than a subsistence on the three
commodities mentioned. In fact, he preferred starvation.
Martha harped for hours at a stretch on how economically she could
conduct their small establishment, once they got into the house he had
bound himself to buy in his days of affluence. She seemed to take it
for granted that she would be obliged to skimp and pinch in order to
get along on what Eddie would be able to earn.
"Our meat and grocery bills will be almost nothing, Eddie dear," she
said one day, with an enthusiasm that discouraged him. "You see, I
mean to keep my figure, now that I've got it. I sha'n't eat a thing
for days at a time. "We'll have no meat, nor potatoes, nor sugar--"
"Just bread and cheese," said he wanly.
"And something else," she added coquettishly.
"Kisses are fattening," he said.
"Goodness! Who ever told you that?" she cried in dismay.
"A well-known specialist," he said, his mind adrift.
"Well, there is one thing sure, Eddie," she declared firmly; "we will
not go into debt for anything. We positively must keep out of debt. I
won't have you worrying about money matters."
"I'm not likely to," said he with conviction.
He then began to watch for signs of decrepitude in the General.
As soon as Martha was strong enough to travel, her step-father
suggested that they go South for the winter instead of opening the
little house down the street. He went so far as to offer to pay the
expenses of the trip as a sort of belated wedding gift.
Eddie objected. He said that his real estate business was in such a
state that he couldn't afford to leave it for a day.
"I didn't know you HAD a business," exclaimed the General.
"I am making arrangements to take up a Government claim in Alaska,"
said his son-in-law grimly.
"Great Scott!"
"I'm going to some place where I can DIG for gold."
"Are you in earnest?"
"Bitterly."
"And--and would you subject Martha to the rigours of an Alaskan winter
in--"
"Inasmuch as we shall have to subsist on snowballs until you pass in
your cheques, General, I think we'd better go where they are fresh and
plentiful."
Fortunately for the bride and groom, everybody that was anybody in
Essex gave them a wedding present. Not a few, in a fever of
exultation, gave beyond their means, and a great many of them with
unintentional irony gave pickle dishes. By the time they were ready to
go into their new home, it was cosily, even handsomely furnished. The
General, contrite of heart, spent money lavishly in trying to make the
home so attractive for Eddie that he wouldn't be likely to desert it
for something worse.
The groom's sense of humour was only temporarily dulled. He noted
signs of its awakening when he assisted in the unpacking of four
cheval mirrors, gifts to the bride from persons who may or may not
have been in collusion but who certainly wanted Martha to see herself
as others saw her, and, as it turned out, from all sides.
The glow of health--an almost superhuman health--increased in the
countenance of Mrs. Edward Ten Eyck. Her hair was a bit slow in
restoring itself, and a shade or two darker, but on the other hand,
despite all she could do to prevent it, she resumed her natural
proportions with a rapidity that was sickening.
It was not long before her figure was unquestionably her own.
Eddie tried to conceal his dismay. He even tried to drown it. Their
first quarrel grew out of her objection to the presence of
intoxicating liquors in the house.
"I don't approve of whiskey," she said flatly.
"But you had it at your house."
"You forget that he was only my stepfather."
"He isn't in the past tense yet," said he bitterly.
"I've always maintained that whiskey should be used for medicinal
purposes only."
"Then please don't worry about it," said he curtly. "I've ordered a
barrel of it."
"For--for medicinal purposes?" "Strictly."
She studied his face with uneasy alarm in her eyes.
"You--don't feel as though you were going to be ill, do you, dear?"
He moved to the opposite side of the table, involuntarily lifting his
left elbow as if to shield himself. She stopped half-way. Then he
laughed awkwardly and turned the subject.
One day he reached the startling conclusion, that she was getting
heavier than she had ever been before. It required days of
contemplation, scrutiny, and development of purpose before he could
ask her to step onto the scales at the meat market.
A cold perspiration started on his forehead as he moved the balance
along the bar and found it would be necessary to use the two-hundred
pound weight instead of the one-hundred, the fifty, and divers small
ones that had been sufficient in days of yore.
She weighed two hundred and three pounds.
At nine o 'clock that night some one took him home from the Essex
Club, and Martha was in hysterics until the doctor, summoned with
haste and vehemence, assured her that her husband was not dead.
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