Booth Tarkington

“ And I'll never have anything but orchids on my table—”
“For my part,” Lady Mount-Rhyswicke interrupted in the loud, tired monotone which seemed to be her only manner of speaking, “I like more light. I like all the light that's goin'.”
“If Lady Mount-Rhyswicke sat at my table,” returned Mellin dashingly, “I should wish all the light in the world to shine upon so happy an event.”
“Hear the man!” she drawled. “He's proposing to me. Thinks I'm a widow.”
There was a chorus of laughter, over which rose the bellow of Mr. Pedlow. ”

“ Most people have had dreams of approaching dangers in the path of which their bodies remained inert; when, in spite of the frantic wish to fly, it was impossible to move, while all the time the horror crept closer and closer. This was Mellin's state as he saw the young man going. It was absolutely necessary to ask Cooley for help, to beg him for a loan. ”

“ She laughed, and looked to the Italian for sympathy in her kindly merriment. He smiled cordially upon her, then lifted his hat and smiled as cordially upon Mellin.
“I am so happy to fin' myself in Rome that I forget”—Madame de Vaurigard went on—“ever'sing! But now I mus' make sure not to lose you. What is your hotel?”
“Oh, the Magnifique,” Mellin answered carelessly. “I suppose everybody that one knows stops there. One does stop there, when one is in Rome, doesn't one?”
“Everybody go' there for tea, and to eat, sometime, but to stay—ah, that is for the American!” she laughed. ”

“ I mean to sit at such a table as this, with such a chef, with such wines—to know one crowded hour like this is to live! Not a thing is missing; all this swagger furniture, the rich atmosphere of smartness about the whole place; best of all, the company. It's a great thing to have the real people around you, the right sort, you know, socially; people you'd ask to your own table at home. ”

“ Mr. Cooley rose from his chair and began to pace up and down the chamber. “I can guess to within a thousand francs of what I've lost! I had to get the hotel to cash a check on New York for me this morning. I've a habit of carrying all my money in bills, and a fool trick, too. Well, I'm cured of it!”
“Oh, if it were only a little money and nothing else that I'd lost! The money means nothing.” Mellin choked.
“I suppose you're pretty well fixed. Well, so am I,” Cooley shook his head, “but money certainly means something to me!” ”

“ I won't let you go till you promise to watch me.”
“I shall adore it, my frien'!”
“Mellin,” called Cooley from the other room. “You comin' or not?”
“Can't you see me?” answered Mellin hilariously, entering with Madame de Vaurigard, who was rosy with laughter. “Peculiar thing to look at a man and not see him.”
Candles were lit in many sconces on the walls, and the card-table had been pushed to the centre of the room, little towers of blue, white and scarlet counters arranged upon it in orderly rows like miniature castles.
“Now, then,” demanded Cooley, “are the ladies goin' to play?” ”

“ She led them through the curtains, not withdrawing her hands until they entered the salon. She might have led them out of her fifth-story window in that fashion, had she chosen.
“My two wicked boys!” she laughed tenderly. This also pleased both of them, though each would have preferred to be her only wicked boy—a preference which, perhaps, had something to do with the later events of the evening.
“Aha! I know you both; before twenty minute' you will be makin' love to Lady Mount-Rhyswicke. ”

“ She'd got a notion you were a millionaire like the little Cooley, but I knew better from your talk. She's clever, but she's French, and she can't get it out of her head that you could be an American and not a millionaire. Of course, they all knew better when you brought out your express checks and talked like somebody in one of the old-time story-books about 'debts of honor.' Even Helene understood then that the express checks were all you had. ”

“ Whereupon the four seated themselves about a tabouret in the corner, and, a waiter immediately bringing them four fresh glasses from the bar, Mellin began to understand what Mr. Pedlow meant by “gittin' ready for dinner.” The burden of the conversation was carried almost entirely by the Honorable Chandler, though Cooley, whose boyish face was deeply flushed, now and then managed to interrupt by talking louder than the fat man. Mr. Sneyd sat silent.
“Good ole Sneyd,” said Pedlow. “He never talks, jest saws wood. Only Britisher I ever liked. Plays cards like a goat.” ”

“ He's game,' she says—'he'll see you all under the table!' That's what the smartest little woman in the world, the Countess de Vaurigard, says about you.”
This did not seem very closely to echo Madame de Vaurigard's habit of phrasing, but Mellin perceived that it might be only the fat man's way of putting things.
“You ain't goin' back on her, are you?” continued Mr. Pedlow. “You ain't goin' to make her out a liar? I tell you, when the Countess de Vaurigard says a man 's game, he is game!” ”

“ A dozen men and women, dressed for dinner, with a gold-fish officer or two among them, swam leisurely through the aquarium on their way to the hotel restaurant. They were the same kind of people who had sat at the little tables for tea—people of the great world, thought Mellin: no vulgar tourists or “trippers” among them ”

“ He must be the real thing. She certainly is! You come along up and see.”
So Mellin followed, to make his bow before a thin, dark, charmingly pretty young woman, who smiled up at him from her deck-chair through an enhancing mystery of veils; and presently he found himself sitting beside her. He could not help trembling slightly at first, but he would have giving a great deal if, by some miraculous vision, Mary Kramer and other friends of his in Cranston could have seen him engaged in what he thought of as “conversational badinage” with the Comtesse de Vaurigard. ”

“ When a Parisienne of her sort is clever at all she's irresistible.”
“I believe you,” Cooley sighed deeply.
“Yesterday evening, Mr. Mellin,” continued the journalist, “when I saw the son of my old friend in company with Welch and Sneyd, of course I tried to warn him. I've often seen them in Paris, though I believe they have no knowledge of me. As I've said, they are notorious, especially Welch, yet they have managed, so far, to avoid any difficulty with the Paris police, and, I'm sorry to say, it might be hard to actually prove anything against them. ”

“ I don't know anything about the Italian who is working with them down here. But a gang of the Welch-Vaurigard-Sneyd type has tentacles all over the Continent; such people are in touch with sharpers everywhere, you see.”
“Yes,” Cooley interpolated, “and with woolly little lambkins, too.”
“Well,” chuckled Cornish, “that's the way they make their living, you know.”
“Go on and tell him the rest of it,” urged Cooley.
“About Lady Mount-Rhyswicke,” said Cornish, “it seems strange enough, but she has a perfect right to her name. ”

“ It may be better if you stay in bed till evening: a train's a mighty mean place for the day after. But I wouldn't hang around here too long. If you want money, all you have to do is to ask the hotel to cash a check on your home bank; they're always glad to do that for Americans.” He turned to the door. “Mr. Cornish, if you're goin' to help me about shipping the car, I'm ready.”
“So am I. Good-by, Mr. Mellin.”
“Good-by,” Mellin said feebly—“and thank you.”
Young Cooley came back to the bedside and shook the other's feverish hand. ”

“ I have been in the newspaper business on this side for fifteen years, and my headquarters are in Paris, where these people are very well known. The man who calls himself 'Chandler Pedlow' was a faro-dealer for Tom Stout in Chicago when Stout's place was broken up, a good many years ago. There was a real Chandler Pedlow in Congress from a California district in the early nineties, but he is dead. This man's name is Ben Welch: he's a professional swindler; and the Englishman, Sneyd, is another; a quiet man, not so well known as Welch, and not nearly so clever, but a good 'feeder' for him. ”

“ An' yet you throw your money away—yes, you throw it to poor Europe as if to a beggar!”
“No, no,” he protested with an indulgent laugh which confessed that the truth was really “Yes, yes.”
“Your smile betray' you!” she cried triumphantly. “More than jus' bein' guilty of that fault, I am goin' to tell you of others. You are not the ole-time—what is it you say?—Ah, yes, the 'goody-goody.' I have heard my great American frien', Honor-able Chanlair Pedlow, call it the Sonday-school. Is it not? Yes, you are not the Sonday-school yo'ng men, you an' your class!” ”

“ The coverlet was still over Mellin's head.
“Asleep?” asked Cooley.
“No.”
The coverlet was removed by a shaking hand.
“Murder!” exclaimed Cooley sympathetically, at sight of the other's face. “A night off certainly does things to you! Better let me get you some—”
“No. I'll be all right—after while.”
“Then I'll go right ahead with our little troubles. I've decided to leave for Paris by the one-thirty and haven't got a whole lot of time. Cornish is here with me in the hall: he's got something to say that's important for you to hear, and I'm goin' to bring him right in.” ”

“ But we'll land you pretty soon, won't we, ole Sneydie?”
“We sh'll have a shawt at him, at least,” said the Englishman.
“Perhaps he won't want us to try,” young Cooley pursued derisively. “Perhaps he thinks I play like a goat, too!”
Mr. Pedlow threw back his head and roared. “Give me somep'n easy! You don't know no more how to play a hand of cards than a giraffe does. I'll throw in all of my Blue Gulch gold-stock—and it's worth eight hundred thousand dollars if it's worth a cent—I'll put it up against that tin automobile of yours, divide chips even and play you freeze-out for it. ”

“ Lady Mount-Rhyswicke followed the others into the salon, but Madame de Vaurigard waited just inside the doorway for Mellin.
“High play!” he cried. “We must play high! I won't play any other way.—I want to play high!” ”

“ Pedlow and young Cooley. It ended by their rising, the latter overturning a chair in his haste.
“I don't know the rudiments, don't I!” cried the boy. “You wait! Ole Sneydie and I'll trim you down! Corni says he'll play, too. Come on, Mellin.”
“I won't go unless Helene goes,” said Mellin. “What are you going to do when you get there?”
“Alas, my frien'!” exclaimed Madame de Vaurigard, rising, “is it not what I tol' you? Always you are never content wizout your play. You come to dinner an' when it is finish' you play, play, play!” ”

“ Emerging, they encountered a tall man who was turning away from the Countess' door, which he had just closed. The landing was not lighted, and for a moment he failed to see the American following Madame de Vaurigard.
“Eow, it's you, is it,” he said informally. “Waitin' a devil of a long time for you. I've gawt a message for you. He's comin'. He writes that Cooley—”
“Attention!” she interrupted under her breath, and, stepping forward quickly, touched the bell. “I have brought a frien' of our dear, droll Cooley with me to tea. Monsieur Mellin, you mus' make acquaintance with Monsieur Sneyd. ”

“ I've knocked about the world a good bit.”
“Helene says you're one of these leisure American billionaires like Mr. Cooley there,” she said in her tired voice.
“Oh, none of us are really quite billionaires.” ”

“ He is a man of distinction; he did sit in your Chamber of Deputies—what you call it?—yes, your Con-gress. He is funny, eccentric—always he roar like a lion—Boum!—but so simple, so good, a man of such fine heart—so lovable!”
“I'll be glad to meet him,” said Mellin coldly.
“An', oh, yes, I almos' forget to tell you,” she went on, “your frien', that dear Cooley, he is on his way from Monte Carlo in his automobile. I have a note from him to-day.”
“Good sort of fellow, little Cooley, in his way,” remarked her companion graciously. “Not especially intellectual or that, you know. ”

“ I mus' keep up with the time. I mus' do somesing to hold my frien's about me. Even the ladies like to play now—that breedge w'ich is so tiresome—they play, play, play! And you—you Americans, you refuse to endure us if we do not let you play. So for my frien's when they come to my house—if they wish it, there is that foolish little table. ”

“ That was when the American was ter-ri-ble! He was the—what is that you call?—oh, yes; he 'make himself,' you say: that is it. My frien', he was abominable! He brag'; he talk' through the nose; yes, and he was niggardly, rich as he was! But you, you yo'ng men of the new generation, you are gentlemen of the idleness; you are aristocrats, with polish an' with culture. ”

“ In truth, some such exit as that was imagined for them by a young man who remained in the aquarium after they had all gone, late one afternoon of last winter. They had been marvelous enough, and to him could have seemed little more so had they made such a departure. ”

“ It was a happy drive for Robert Russ Mellin, though not happier than that of the next day. Three afternoons they spent driving over the Campagna, then back to Madame de Vaurigard's apartment for tea by the firelight, till the enraptured American began to feel that the dream in which he had come to live must of happy necessity last forever.
On the fourth afternoon, as he stepped out of the hotel elevator into the corridor, he encountered Mr. Sneyd. ”