The Spenders: A Tale of the Third Generation. Harry Leon Wilson
was awful tormented; talked two or three times about the people in the humbler walks of life bein' strangely something or other. You ain't such a humble walker now, are you, son? But say, that yellow-haired woman, she ain't a bit diffident, is she? She's a very hearty lady, I must say!"
"But did you see Miss Milbrey?"
"Oh, that's her name is it, the one that her mother was so worried about and you? Yes, I saw her. Peart and cunnin', but a heap too wise fur you, son; take my steer on that. Say, she'd have your pelt nailed to the barn while you was wonderin' which way you'd jump."
"Oh, I know I'm only a tender, teething infant," the young man answered, with masterly satire. "Well, now, as long's you got that bank roll you jest look out fur cupboard love—the kind the old cat has when she comes rubbin' up against your leg and purrin' like you was the whole thing."
The young man smiled, as they went up, with youth's godlike faith in its own sufficiency, albeit he smarted from the slights put upon him.
At the surface a pleasant shock was in store for him. There stood the formidable Mrs. Milbrey beaming upon him. Behind her was Mr. Milbrey, the pleasing model of all a city's refinements, awaiting the boon of a hand-clasp. Behind these were the uncomfortable little man, the chatty blonde, and the two solemn young men who had lately exhibited more manner than manners. Percival felt they were all regarding him now with affectionate concern. They pressed forward effusively.
"So good of you, Mr. Bines, to take an interest in us—my daughter has been so anxious to see one of these fascinating mines." "Awfully obliged, Mr. Bines." "Charmed, old man; deuced pally of you to stay by us down in that hole, you know." "So clever of you to know where to find the gold—"
He lost track of the speakers. Their speeches became one concerted effusion of affability that was music to his ears.
Miss Milbrey was apart from the group. Having doffed the waterproofs, she was now pluming herself with those fussy-looking but mysteriously potent little pats which restore the attire and mind of women to their normal perfection and serenity. Upon her face was still the amused look Percival had noted below.
"And, Mr. Bines, do come in with that quaint old grandfather of yours and lunch with us," urged Mrs. Milbrey, who had, as it were, spiked her lorgnon. "Here's Mr. Shepler to second the invitation—and then we shall chat about this very interesting West."
Miss Milbrey nodded encouragement, seeming to chuckle inwardly.
In the spacious dining compartment of the Shepler car the party was presently at lunch.
"You seem so little like a Western man," Mrs. Milbrey confided graciously to Percival on her right.
"We cal'late he'll fetch out all straight, though, in a year or so," put in Uncle Peter, from over his chop, with guileless intent to defend his grandson from what he believed to be an attack. "Of course a young man's bound to get some foolishness into him in an Eastern college like this boy went to."
Percival had flushed at the compliment to himself; also at the old man's failure to identify it as such.
Mr. Milbrey caressed his glass of claret with ardent eyes and took the situation in hand with the easy confidence of a master.
"The West," said he, affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not suspect their—er—humble origin."
"Meaning their Western origin?" inquired Shepler, blandly, with secret intent to brew strife.
"Well—er—to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble—of course—perhaps I should have said—"
"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey," interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"—he lowered his voice to the pitch of impressiveness—"has over eighty pairs of trousers and complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston."
"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his lines under the surface.
"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men, "he must still talk like a banjo."
"And gargle all his 'r's,'" added the other, very earnestly. "They never get over that, you know."
"Instead of losin' 'em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it 'Ne' Yawk,' and prob'ly he don't like it in Boston because they always call 'em 'rawroystahs.'"
"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It is hard for the West and the East to forgive each other's dialects. The inflated 'r' and the smothered 'r' never quite harmonise."
"Western money talks good straight New York talk," ventured Miss Milbrey, with the air of one who had observed in her time.
Shepler grinned, and the parents of the young woman resisted with indifferent success their twin impulses to frown.
"But the service is so wretched in the West," suggested Oldaker, the carefully dressed little man with the tired, troubled eyes, whom the world had been deprived of. "I fancy, now, there's not a good waiter this side of New York."
"An American," said Percival, "never can make a good waiter or a good valet. It takes a Latin, or, still better, a Briton, to feel the servility required for good service of that sort. An American, now, always fails at it because he knows he is as good as you are, and he knows that you know it, and you know that he knows you know it, and there you are, two mirrors of American equality face to face and reflecting each other endlessly, and neither is comfortable. The American is as uncomfortable at having certain services performed for him by another American as the other is in performing them. Give him a Frenchman or an Italian or a fellow born within the sound of Bow Bells to clean his boots and lay out his things and serve his dinner and he's all right enough."
"Hear, hear!" cried Uncle Peter.
"Fancy, now," said Mrs. Drelmer, "a creature in a waiter's jacket having emotions of that sort!"
"Our excellent country," said Mr. Milbrey, "is perhaps not yet what it will be; there is undeniably a most distressing rawness where we might expect finish. Now in Chicago," he continued in a tone suitably hushed for the relation of occult phenomena, "we dined with a person who served champagne with the oysters, soup, fish, and entrée, and for the remainder of the dinner—you may credit me or not—he proffered a claret of 1875—. I need hardly remind you, the most delicate vintage of the latter half of the century—and it was served frappé." There was genuine emotion in the speaker's voice.
"And papa nearly swooned when our host put cracked ice and two lumps of sugar into his own glass—"
"Avice, dear!" remonstrated the father in a tone implying that some things positively must not be mentioned at table.
"Well, you shouldn't expect too much of those self-made men in Chicago," said Shepler.
"If they'd only make themselves as well as they make their sausages and things," sighed Mr. Milbrey.
"And the self-made man will talk shop," suggested Oldaker. "He thinks you're dying to hear how he made the first thousand of himself."
"Still, those Chicago chaps learn quickly enough when they settle in New York," ventured one of the young men.
"I knew a Chicago chap who lived East two years and went back not a half bad sort," said the other. "God help him now, though; his father made him go back to work in a butcher shop or something of the sort."
"Best thing I ever heard about Chicago," said Uncle Peter,