Books: Mr. Bingle
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George Barr McCutcheon >> Mr. Bingle
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"Well, well, Bingle!" exclaimed the president, somewhat gustily as he
hastened forward. "How are you? That this should happen to you! It is
unbelievable!" He was pumping Mr. Bingle's arm. "I don't see how in
the world we are to get along without you. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself. Why don't you--"
"Wha--what in the name of heaven am I accused of doing?" blurted out
Mr. Bingle abjectly. "This is some awful mistake. I--"
"Accused of doing?" exclaimed Mr. Force, frowning perplexedly.
"What say, Bingle?" inquired the president, who wasn't quite certain
that his hearing was what it used to be. "What say?"
Mr. Sigsbee interposed, staring hard at the little man. "Haven't you
been notified of--Oh, I say, you have at least seen the morning
papers?"
"Have they printed anything about me?" gasped Mr. Bingle, sitting down
very suddenly. "It's a lie, gentlemen--a lie, I tell you! I haven't
done a thing--"
"Do you mean to say--" began Mr. Force, glaring at the shivering
little man.
"I'll bring an action against 'em," shouted Mr. Bingle from the depths
of the huge chair. "I'll sue 'em for all they're worth if they've--"
"Haven't you seen the newspapers?" demanded Mr. Sigsbee, bending over
the occupant of the chair in what that individual mistook for a
menacing attitude.
"I--I didn't have time to look at the paper," mumbled Mr. Bingle. "My
wife was so miserable that--"
"Well, by Jove!" exclaimed Mr. Force, and then, to Bingle's
astonishment, the five other occupants of the room were overtaken by a
simultaneous impulse to shout at the top of their voices, all of them
crowding close about him and barking unintelligible exclamations into
his very teeth, so to speak.
The strangest part of it all was that they were in high good humour
and laughed like maniacs. He hadn't the faintest notion what it was
all about, but he began to laugh shrilly. He couldn't help it. He
certainly didn't feel like laughing. The president was slapping Mr.
Force on the back and shouting things that fell upon deaf ears, for
Mr. Force was shouting manfully on his own account. The cashier
stumbled over a chair in trying to get at Mr. Bingle to grasp his
hand, and the chairman of the board began pounding the helpless
bookkeeper on the shoulder with a hand that had all of the weight and
some of the resilience of a sledge hammer.
It was Mr. Sigsbee who finally settled down to a succinct, intelligent
question, and at once had Mr. Bingle's attention.
"Didn't you receive my letter in the morning post?" he demanded.
Mr. Bingle no doubt intended to repeat the word "letter," being
vaguely impressed by its significance, but what he uttered was a
mystified, syllable-less "le'r?"
"I wrote to say that if it suited your convenience to come to our
offices this afternoon at three, I would see to it that the other
heirs were present, Mr. Bingle."
"My wife's illness--" began Mr. Bingle hazily, and then brought
himself up with a jerk. Heirs? What in the world was the man talking
about? "I--I beg pardon, sir. I didn't quite catch that. What--"
Mr. Sigsbee held up his hand, silencing him. Then he turned to the
other gentlemen and said in a strained, excited voice:
"I suspect, gentlemen, that it would be better if I were to have a few
minutes alone with Mr. Bingle."
"Right!" exclaimed Mr. Force, regarding the bookkeeper with what
seemed to be infinite compassion in his eyes. "Stay right where you
are, Sigsbee. We'll get out," and he literally shoved the others out
of the office, closing the president's door behind him.
"Now, Mr. Bingle," said Sigsbee, drawing a chair up close to the
little man's knee, "I want the truth. Have you no--"
"Before heaven, Mr. Sigsbee, I--I swear I am innocent of--"
"Have you no inkling of what has befallen you?" concluded the other.
"No, sir, I haven't," declared Mr. Bingle with conviction.
"Well, my dear sir," said Sigsbee, laying his hand upon Bingle's knee
and speaking with grave impressiveness, "your late and lamented uncle,
Joseph Hooper, in his will, devises that you are his principal--I
might almost say, his sole heir. He has left practically everything to
you, sir. I--I pray you, be calm. Do not allow this astonishing, this
prodigious--"
"Oh," exclaimed Mr. Bingle, with a huge sigh of relief and a sudden
relaxing of all his taut nerves, "I know all about THAT, Mr. Sigsbee.
Is that all?"
"All?" with a stare of amazement.
"We often joked about it, poor old Uncle Joe and I. He seemed to enjoy
a chuckle once in awhile, in spite of the way the world had used him."
"I now realise that you are quite ignorant about the whole matter, Mr.
Bingle. My letter would have enlightened you, of course, but as you
did not receive it, I fear that--"
"I didn't open my letters this morning. Quite forgot 'em, sir. You
see, Mrs. Bingle came down with a fearful--"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Mr. Sigsbee. "Perhaps it would be well for me
to describe myself a little more clearly to you, Mr. Bingle. I am of
the firm of Bradlee, Sigsbee & Oppenheim, lawyers. We have been acting
for Mr. Hooper for the past six months, or, in other words, since his
return to New York City. Our relations were or a--er--a somewhat
Secret nature, I may say. He made the somewhat Extraordinary demand
upon us, at the time we were Retained, that we should conduct his
affairs with the Utmost secrecy. Especially, ser, were we required to
Keep you in the dark as to the real--"
"Just a moment, sir," interrupted Mr. Bingle, sitting up very
straight, and staring. "May I ask one questions? Are you sure you
haven't got my Uncle Joe confused with another Joseph Hooper? To my
certain knowledge, he had no transactions with lawyers while staying
at my house. You've got the wrong man, sir, I--" "I've got the right
man, Mr. Bingle," said the lawyer, with a smile. "Your uncle was a
strange man. Have you never heard of Joseph H. Grimwell?"
"Certainly. Every one has heard of him."
"Well, your uncle was Joseph H. Grimwell, the millionaire mine-owner
and lumber king. For fifteen years the name of Joseph Grimwell took
the place of--I beg your pardon! I did not mean to put it so abruptly,
sir. Calm yourself! I--"
"All right," said Mr. Bingle, suddenly collapsing into the chair after
struggling to his feet, his eyes bulging. "All right. I'm--I'm calm.
Go on with the story. You can't expect me to believe it, however. How
on earth could poor old Uncle Joe Hooper, who was actually starving
when he came to me last--"
"That is the best part of the story, Mr. Bingle," said Sigsbee,
settling back in his chair and linking his plump hands benevolently
across his expansive and somewhat overhanging waistcoat. "That is the
best part of the story, sir."
CHAPTER V
THE STORY OF JOSEPH
Mr. Bingle went home in a taxi-cab, completely done up.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Back in 1885, Joseph Hooper, disgraced, disowned by his family and as
poor Job's turkey, made a brief but sufficiently explicit will in
which he named his beloved nephew Thomas Singleton Bingle as his sole
heir. He drew it up on the surface of a fresh, unused postal card, and
had it properly witnessed by the bailiff who came to Bingle's
apartment to demand his appearance before a court to show cause why he
should not consider himself in contempt for having disregarded the
order to pay monthly sums in the shape of alimony to his late but
unlamented wife.
In looking about for the second witness, he observed a levying deputy
sheriff in the act of carrying off his last and only possession of
value, to wit: a gold-headed cane that had been left to him by his
father. With a fine sense of irony, he persuaded the aforesaid deputy
sheriff to affix his signature to the will, and then remarked with
deep sarcasm that he had "put his house in order" so far as it was in
his power to do so. Inasmuch as the deputy sheriff was making way with
what looked to be his entire estate, saving the clothes upon his back
and the post-card (which he had taken the precaution to address to his
lawyers, thereby securing its protection by the United States
Government), Mr. Hooper's last will and testament as uttered on the
16th day of October, 1885, was necessarily brief and succinct. It
merely said:
"I hereby revoke any former will I may have made prior to this date,
and now bequeath to my beloved nephew, Thomas Singleton Bingle, my
entire fortune, which at this time appears to be not my face but my
figure. I therefore bequeath to him my physical person, and vest in
him the right to chuck it into the river, or to dispose of it for
medical purposes, as he may see fit, provided however that I shall
first have been declared sufficiently dead by competent judges. I also
bequeath to him any property, great or small, that may be in my
possession at the time of my demise, even though it be no more than
the collar-button with which he so kindly supplied me this morning,
and which I shall always retain as a mark of his devotion, knowing
well what it means for a man to deprive himself of a cherished
belonging."
This was written in a very fine, cramped hand, and there was ample
room at the bottom for his own signature and those of the witnesses,
although it must be said that the elegant symmetry of the document was
destroyed by the bulging scrawl of the bailiff, whose name was Abraham
Kosziemanowski and who had to turn the final two syllables down at a
sharp angle in order to get the whole of his signature on the card.
Bradlee, Sigsbee & Oppenheim, on the receipt of this jocose
instrument, immediately communicated with their once magnificent
client, who laconically instructed them to put it away in a very safe
place as it might come in handy some time. To their own and to his
subsequent surprise, they DID put it away in a safe place, but forgot
all about it until he walked in upon them fifteen years afterwards and
revealed himself as the great and only Joseph H. Grimwell.
Having once disinherited his children, he was then in the mood to
reconsider his act, being alive to the fact that his days were
numbered. But he went about the business with the sagacity of an old
dog who has been kicked hard by some one who was not his master.
Instead of proclaiming himself to be the Midas-like Joseph Grimwell,
he appeared before his son and daughters, as poor old Joseph Hooper,
their long lost father, as poor--nay, even poorer than when he went
away, for he had lost the rugged health that was his only possession
at the beginning of his vicissitudes.
Assuming a condition of abject, though genteel poverty, he went to
each of them in turn. He wanted to give them a chance to reconsider,
as he had done. But they would have none of him! Vastly dismayed by
the failure of his nice little scheme to trick them into filial
responsibility, he was on the point of shouting his denunciations from
the house-tops when he suddenly remembered Tom Bingle: he wondered if
Tom would receive him--an old derelict--with open arms.
He presented himself, with his battered valise, at the door of Thomas
Bingle's apartment--and was given a warm, even hearty reception!
And it was on that day--at that very hour, so to speak--that Thomas
Bingle became a fabulously rich man without the slightest effort or
intention on his part.
Mr. Hooper one day recalled to mind the postal-card will. If his
memory served him right there was something jocose and undignified
about it--something that would not look well in the public prints. He
visited the offices of his lawyers, recovered the amazing instrument,
and forthwith set about to make a new will, bereft of certain grewsome
stipulations but quite as sweeping in purpose as the other had been.
In fact, he left his fortune--as he had done before--to his beloved
nephew, Thomas Singleton Bingle, with three precautionary bequests to
his son and daughters, providing against the contests that were sure
to follow. He bequeathed the sum of one thousand dollars to each of
his children, and he signed his name once more as Joseph H. Hooper--
for the first time in fourteen years.
His wanderings as a tramp--in his own account of himself he used the
word "tramp" with a shocking lack of pride--led him inevitably into
the far Northwest. Men were doing things up there. The country fairly
seethed with the activity of live, virile men who were taking the
first staunch grip upon the tricky wheel of fortune and were turning
it to their own account. Every man was building; no man complained of
conditions, for conditions were so new and so ready to hand that he
who found fault was merely lessening his own chance to secure his
share of the vast resources that spread before him, welcoming the
greedy fingers of him who courted the future and shunned the past. All
men lived in the present out there in the great stretches, and all men
were strong and eager.
Joseph Hooper caught the fever that infected the West. He shook off
the fetters that bound him to a far from enchanted East, and began to
squirm with the first tickling sensations of an ambition that had
never really made itself felt, even in the old days of successful
achievement among men who were content to tread the beaten and
commonplace highway toward riches. The spirit of the West gripped him
in its great, enveloping hands, picked him out of the slough and set
him down again, plump upon his two feet, high and dry, prodding him
violently all the while with a spur that would not permit him to stop
or to take a step backward, with the natural result that he moved
forward--slowly, dazedly at first, and then with a mighty rush.
He had one advantage over most of the men who were being driven
helter-skelter by the grateful lash of the West: he was a trained
money-getter. Back of him were generations of shrewd business men,
while dormant in his own being was the half-stunned thing called
natural ability. The simple shrewdness of Joseph Hooper, combined with
a certain hitherto unconfessed lack of respect for the Golden Rule, to
say nothing of a vain-glorious desire to kick the world that had
kicked him, soon produced opportunities that paved the way for his
rehabilitation.
Without a dollar to his name, with nothing in the shape of resources
save a self-sufficient nerve and an infinite eastern contempt for
these struggling westerners, he began to promote things!
The field was fresh and fertile. Inside of two years he reaped a half-
dozen harvests--and replanted as he went along! First, he promoted a
street railway in a place called Mockawock; then it became necessary
for some one to establish reasons for the existence of such a thing as
a car-line in a town that could be traversed on foot, from one end to
the other, in less than eight minutes; so he began to promote the
organisation of a wagon factory at one extreme and a pickle works at
the other, possessing the far-sightedness to put them so far away from
each other that if one wanted to go to the pickle works from the wagon
factory, or vice versa, he would have to go by trolley unless he
possessed the hardiness of an ox and was not dismayed by the vastness
of the city limits. For like all towns in the great Northwest,
Mockawock had its limits and they were wide enough to make New York or
Chicago appear cramped by comparison. One could walk for hours in a
straight line south from the public square in Mockawock and still not
be "out in the country," figuratively speaking, although he might not
see a house or a human being--unless he turned his head--after the
first ten minutes. He could also walk west or north in the same futile
effort to get out of the "city" into the "country," but he could not
walk east for more than two city blocks. Mockawock happened to be
situated on the shores of Lake Superior and not even the most boastful
citizen would have contended that the city limits reached far in that
direction.
And, having successfully promoted such enterprises in Mockawock as
would tend to convince the citizens that some day the city limits
would have to be extended, he very wisely took the gains acquired in
the sale of options, the disposal of franchises, the surrender of
equities, and all such, and slipped away to the vast forests in the
north, where he bought timber-land by the section.
Another town required stirring up by this time, so he descended upon
it, backed by the reputation gained at Mockawock and, before the
citizens could say Jack Robinson, he had skilfully promoted a number
of enterprises, including a belt railroad, an electric lighting plant,
and a new evening newspaper, all of which fairly set the town by the
ears and made him one of the most important figures in the upper Lake
region.
Once more he slipped off into the forests and took unto himself
additional sections of virgin timber at inconceivably low prices.
Other men made much of the wheat-field and the town-lot, but Joseph
Hooper saw fortune in the forests. Again and again he increased his
timber land holdings. People thought he was buying up town-sites and
smiled smugly among themselves as they discussed the dreadful shock he
was to have when the time came for him to begin clearing away the
timber!
All this time he was known as Joseph H. Grimwell. There was no such
person as Joseph Hooper. That discredited individual had died, so to
speak, by the wayside, a vagabond. New York had lost track of him; his
family believed him to be dead--or in prison! It is barely possible
that he ought to have been incarcerated for some of his skilfully
manipulated enterprises, but that has nothing to do with this
narrative. It is relevant to dwell only upon the contention that
riches come swiftly to him who makes use of both hands without caring
whether the left knows what the right is doing or the other way about.
At any rate, Joseph Grimwell was a better man than Joseph Hooper ever
had been, and he was a wiser man in many respects than Solomon the
historic.
In brief, there came a day when his timber turned to gold. The name of
Grimwell became a household word. It even penetrated to the secret
crannies of Wall Street. Men who did not know oak from soft pine began
to plead with him to be "let in on the ground floor." Gentlemen who
sat in mahogany offices and worshipped at unseen shrines, took notice
of this man of the West who was getting more than his share of the
pillage. Promoters sought him out and haggled with him--haggled with
the prince of promoters! They tried to let him into the secret of
making money!
Fortune may not always favour the brave, but it continues to do a
little something every now and then for the bold. In Joseph Grimwell's
case, it overlooked the fact that he was neither brave nor bold but
rewarded him for being interestingly tricky. Out of sheer respect for
his cleverness in acquiring all of the timber land available, Fortune
set about to outdo him in productiveness. It suddenly remembered that
it had placed three rich copper deposits in separate and distinct
parts of his land and kindly directed him to the spots.
Now, copper can be turned into gold quite as readily as ice, or beef,
or hops, or any of the products of man's experimentation, just as one
can make hay while the sun shines, even though his field of activity
lies at the bottom of an oil-well. Mr. Grimwell made gold out of his
copper, just as he made it out of oak and pine and ash, and when he
came to be three score years and ten he had so many dollars that, like
Old Mother Hubbard, he didn't know what to do with them.
It suddenly dawned upon him that there was no one to whom he could
leave this vast accumulation unless he made peace with his past.
He sold out all of his holdings, reducing everything to coin of the
realm, and once more became a wanderer in search of a place to lay his
head. With fourteen or fifteen millions of dollars in his purse, so to
speak, he slunk into New York, a beggar still and hungrier than he had
ever been in his life.
Then he tried out the plan that failed. His lawyer and his doctor
alone knew that Joseph Grimwell and Joseph Hooper were one and the
same person, and they were pledged to secrecy. One of them drew up his
will and the other made death as easy as possible for him. His nephew,
poor wretch, buried him in a grave alongside a devoted sister, froze
his ears while doing so--and lost his job in the bank besides!
The new will was read in the offices of Bradlee, Sigsbee & Oppenheim
on the day following Mr. Bingle's first ride in a taxi-cab. The heir
was too bewildered to attend the meeting arranged for the same
afternoon, and it had to be postponed. As a matter of fact, he sent
word to the lawyers that his wife was too ill to come down that
afternoon but would doubtless be better on the following day. When
informed that his wife's presence was unnecessary and that his cousins
were even then on their way down town and that there was no way to
head them off, he blandly inquired if it wouldn't be possible to
postpone the whole matter for a week or two, assuring the gentlemen
that he wouldn't, for all the world, disturb Mrs. Bingle, who appeared
to be sleeping comfortably for the first time in twenty-four hours. In
fact, he informed them that he thought it would be a mistake to break
the news to her while her cold was so bad; as for himself, he didn't
mind waiting a week or two--not in the least--if it was all the same
to Mr. Sigsbee.
It was Melissa who broke the news to Mrs. Bingle, and it was at once
apparent that it was not a mistake to do so. The good lady improved so
rapidly that she sent for the expensive Dr. Fiddler, dismissing the
cheap Dr. Smith, and by seven o'clock that evening declared that she
had never felt better in all of her life.
"I suppose you'll fire me now, Mr. Bingle," Melissa had said
dejectedly. "With all that money, you'll be wanting high-priced
servants."
"Quite so," said Mr. Bingle magnificently. "Much higher-priced,
Melissa."
"You'll never find any one that loves you more than I do," began
Melissa, on the verge of tears.
"Allow me," interrupted Mr. Bingle, with a sweep of the hand. "The
highest priced servant in our employ is to be Melissa Taylor, which is
you, my girl. We shall probably keep two or three servants--if we can
find anything for them to do--but none of 'em shall receive as much as
you, Melissa. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."
"I--I wasn't asking for a raise, sir," murmured Melissa, in
considerable distress.
"You get it without asking," said Mr. Bingle. It should be remembered
that he was still very much dazed and bewildered.
"Maybe you'll be having a butler and a regular chef. They come pretty
high, sir," advised Melissa, spilling a little of Mrs. Bingle's tea on
the counterpane. "Oh, excuse me, Mrs. Bingle."
"Never mind, Melissa," said Mr. Bingle. "I guess we can afford to
spill a little tea if we like. I've no doubt that a butler would spill
a great deal. It doesn't matter what we have to pay him--if we have
him--you shall have five dollars a month more than he gets. That's
settled."
The least important person at the "reading of the will" was the little
man who sat hunched up in a chair and gazed about him with perplexed
eyes, occasionally touching his sore ears with tender fingers, and
always regretting the act for the reason that it called the attention
of his cousins to something that appeared to gratify them a great deal
more than the actual business at hand. In fact, he never quite got
over that miserable hour of inspection on their part. He never ceased
to regret the condition of his ears on that stupendous occasion. What
might have been a really impressive hour in his life was spoiled by
the certainty that every one was paying more attention to his
misfortune than to his fortune.
Of course, the conditions of the will were pretty well known to the
three children of Joseph Hooper, hours before they were read to them.
They knew that their detestable father had practically disinherited
them, but they were not prepared for the staggering baseness employed
by the old man in giving his reasons for cutting them off. To their
chagrin, mortification, even shame, they were compelled to listen to
at least a dozen letters that they had written to their father during
the period covered by his supposed degeneracy. The originals of these
letters, stained, dirty, frazzled but incontrovertibly genuine, were
attached to the instrument, and were referred to in certain specific
recommendations incorporated in the body of the will itself.
Old Joseph had preserved the letters of his children. They were
emphatic evidences of their attitude toward him from first to last.
There was no such thing as going behind them. It might be possible to
produce proof that the testator was unsound of mind, but it would
never be possible to wipe out the written declarations of his mentally
perfect son and daughters. In these delectable missives they
completely disowned him as a father; they raked him fore and aft; they
riddled him with a hundred shafts of scorn; they repeatedly said that
they never wanted to see his face again; they put him out of their
lives and urgently requested him to put them out of his; they expected
nothing of him and they certainly did not want him to expect anything
of them; and so on and so forth. And in spite of all these bitter
rebukings, old Joseph had come back to New York ready and willing to
let bygones be bygones if they would only meet him half way.
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