Part 8

Mr. Elwell Parker had frequently played the role of confidential investigator for Walter Scott Campbell, and established the following evening at the Kipperly House he began his labors with his usual intelligence, thoroughness and discretion. Within twenty-four hours there was little pertaining to the Wards, the social or business conditions of Kernville that he did not know. Twenty-four hours more sufficed for his complete enlightenment as to the thriving city’s advantages as a manufacturing point, the value and possibilities of its water power, and the financial and moral status of its leading citizens. He thereupon wrote a report, condensed it with faculties that had been trained in the ways of Walter Scott Campbell, and then imparted it by telephone to the magnate.

The famous Campbell chuckle rewarded the secretary several times. The idea that the son of his wife’s quondam schoolmate was shaking the foundations of Kernville to bring the inhabitants to a realization of the high condescension of the Walter Scott Campbells in visiting their city with resulting benefits to the firm of Ward & Ward, tickled Walter Scott enormously.

“Very good, Parker! Come back at your convenience. Subscribe for the local papers in your name. We don’t want to overlook anything!”

VII

The Campbells’ visit was still ten days distant when John, rising in the Sycamore Circuit Court to ask for an injunction against certain persons who were removing gravel from the pits of a company that had lately carried its business to Ward & Ward, was interrupted by the bailiff who handed him a telegram.

“If your honor please----?” said John, bowing deferentially toward the person of the court.

The judge nodded, not a little impressed as the young attorney tore open the envelope and scanned the message, which read:

Have recommended your firm to certain corporations in which I am interested to counsel them in legal and business matters affecting your city. Please feel no compulsion to accept their commissions if not wholly agreeable to you. W. S. CAMPBELL.

John thrust the message carelessly into his trousers’ pocket, straightened his shoulders and proceeded with a terse explanation of the injury inflicted upon his client and the grounds upon which he sought the immediate relief of a restraining order.

The order was granted and in the midst of a parley over the amount of bond to be given by the petitioner the bailiff delivered into John’s hands three more telegrams, one from the Sutphen Loan & Trust Company, another from The Ironsides Steel Casting Company, another from the general manager of the Transcontinental Lines west of Buffalo.

The message of the Sutphen Loan & Trust Company stated that it was sending an engineer to examine the plant of the Sycamore Water Power Company and would appreciate such confidential assistance as Ward & Ward might give him as to the personnel of the corporation. One of the vice-presidents of the steel casting company wished to make an appointment with Ward & Ward at the earliest date possible, letter of explanation to follow; matter strictly confidential. The Transcontinental official would reach Kernville shortly to take up the matter of certain improvements, and wished a conservative estimate of the local needs uninfluenced by the Chamber of Commerce or owners of property that might be needed in extensions. Matter confidential; letter to follow; please wire answer.

Ward, senior, with law books overflowing upon the floor from his desk, heard John’s report of his success in protecting the gravel pits, read the telegrams, and asked hoarsely:

“Are we crazy, John, or has the whole world gone mad?”

“Nothing of the kind! We’ve been discovered; that’s all! Campbell’s a man of discernment, and he’s spotted us as the solidest and most trustworthy citizens and lawyers of the Sycamore valley. Though all these messages are addressed to me, it’s the brains of the firm he’s recommending and that’s you. I’m only the field man and business getter.”

“You certainly get the business, son! Not counting anything we may get out of those people Campbell’s sending us, we’ve got at least twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of business on the books right now!”

“Don’t look so scared, dad! We’re handling it all right. Within a week I’ve turned down four divorce cases and a breach of promise suit with love letters I’d rejoice to read to a farmer jury! Pick and choose; that’s our motto! Where are the papers in Shipton versus Hovey. I’m getting a settlement there that will save Hovey about ten thousand bucks, and I want to tell him about it when I go up to see Alice tonight. I’ll now wire our thanks to Campbell and date up these people he’s sending to see us. Those wise guys that run the Chamber of Commerce are going to be frantic when they find the hope of a bigger Kernville lies right here in our office.”

VIII

“I never expected a simple tea would cause so much trouble!” exclaimed Mrs. Ward at the dinner table five days before the day set for the Campbell visit. “I’ve simply got to send out the cards tomorrow!”

“Let me see that list again,” said John. “It’s first rate as it stands. You’ve put in all our new clients and that’s the main thing. But if Mrs. Shepherd is to pour chocolate, you’ll have to affix Mrs. Hovey to the tea pot to prevent hard feeling. I’ve got everything all set with Townley to make a big spread of Helen’s engagement to Ned and mine to Alice next Sunday.”

“Please don’t be too noisy about it,” pleaded Helen. “Since you began boosting the family I’m ashamed to look at the papers.”

“Circulation of both sheets has gone up, sis. Everybody in the Sycamore valley’s on tip-toe for news of the Wards and Campbells. Tomorrow the _Journal_ will print exclusive information from our office that the mighty Ironsides corporation is to build a plant here. The happy word that the railroad yards are to be doubled and the shops enlarged will come from headquarters, but father will be interviewed to make sure we get the credit.”

“I think I understand everything,” said Helen gazing musingly at the engagement ring of which she had been the happy possessor for just twenty-four hours, “except how Mr. Campbell began sending those important people to you and father. You might almost think it was a joke of some kind.”

“The joke certainly isn’t on us! I’ve decided to turn down the nomination for prosecutor. As things are going I’d be a fool to sacrifice my private practice for a public job. The general counsel of the Transcontinental’s feeling us out as to whether we’ll take the local attorneyship of that rascally corporation. Canby Taylor’s had it for twenty years, and it would be some triumph to add it to our string of scalps.”

The invitation list, rigidly revised and cut to one hundred, was finally acceptable to all the members of the family, and Helen and John had begun to address the envelopes when this task was interrupted by the delivery of a telegram.

“It’s for you, mother,” said Helen, taking the envelope from the capped and aproned housemaid who had been installed in the household against the coming of the Campbells.

Mrs. Ward adjusted her glasses and settled herself to read with the resigned air of one inured to the idea that telegrams are solely a medium for communicating bad news.

“What is it, mother? Somebody dead?” asked John without looking up from the envelope he was addressing to The Hon. and Mrs. Addison Swiggert.

“Worse!” murmured Mrs. Ward, staring vacantly.

“Nothing can be worse!” ejaculated Helen, catching the bit of paper as it fell fluttering to the floor. “The Campbells are not coming!” she gasped.

“Not coming!” faltered Robert Fleming Ward, throwing down a brief he was studying.

“Read it, for heaven’s sake!” commanded John.

Helen, with difficulty bringing her eyes to meet the dark tidings, began to read:

So sorry we are obliged to change our plans and cannot pay you the visit to which we had looked forward with so much pleasure----

“It’s horrible! It’s positively tragic,” sobbed Mrs. Ward, groping for her handkerchief.

“Hurry on, Helen!” ordered John. “There’s a lot more of it.”

Walter feels that he ought to attend a conference of Southern bankers unexpectedly called for February eighteen at Baltimore, and we are obliged to defer the California trip indefinitely. However, we are going down in the yacht and Walter has happily solved the whole problem by insisting that you all come to New York and make the cruise with us.

“Glory! glory hallelujah!” John shouted.

The yacht is big enough to be comfortable for even a poor sailor like me, so we can have a cosy time together. We want your husband, son and daughter to come of course, and you will be our guests throughout the journey. The Manager of the Transcontinental will put his private car at your disposal. Do wire at once that you will come. With much love. RUTH CAMPBELL.

“Can you beat it! _Can_ you beat it!” cried John.

“After all this talk--and the publicity and everything----” his mother began plaintively.

“And all these people who’ve brought us business in the hope of meeting the Campbells and getting favors from him!” his father added hopelessly.

“My dear parents!” cried John pleadingly, flinging up his arm with a dramatic gesture he had found effective in commanding the attention of juries,--“my _dear_ parents, nothing could be more fortunate! If the Campbells had come we’d have been hard put to please all these people who want the joy of shaking big money by the hand. The old boy very shrewdly switched all these business matters to father and me to handle so we’ve already got about everything Kernville needs, and we’ve done it in a way that makes us the best advertised law firm in the state.”

“But the humiliation----” his mother began in a hoarse whisper.

“Humiliation nothing!” John caught her up. “Don’t you realize that an announcement that the Campbells are sending a private car to haul us down to their yacht will make the biggest hit of all! And you’re going, mother--and you, Helen; and father’s got to go, too! You all deserve it, and I’ll stay right here and bask in the warm radiance of your grandeur while the _White Gull_ rides the waves.”

“You think, then, the change won’t ruin _everything_?” his mother asked with a gulp.

“John’s perfectly right!” declared Helen. “The Campbell name has already worked magic in our lives and through us done wonders for Kernville. It will be glorious to sail in a yacht! They didn’t need to ask us, and nothing could be friendlier or more cordial than that telegram.”

“That’s true,” Mr. Ward assented. “But I can’t possibly leave right now. There’s that Lindley coal case coming up for trial next week, and John’s not familiar with it.”

“Yes, my dear father, but when you ask for a postponement on the perfectly legitimate ground that Walter Scott Campbell wants you to go yachting with him, that case will be set forward and you will acquire much merit in the eyes of the court! You’ll need a couple of white flannel suits and some rubber-soled shoes, but you can pick them up in New York. Really this change of plans is the biggest thing of all. Take this pad, mother, and write your acceptance, carefully expressing my deep regret that owing to pressure of professional duties I am unable to leave.”

* * * * *

The announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Walter Scott Campbell had been obliged to postpone their visit to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Fleming Ward until spring, but that Mr. and Mrs. Ward and Miss Helen were to cruise with them in the _White Gull_ did not fail of the impression which John had predicted such a revelation would make upon his fellow citizens. A yacht that would sail the winter seas was a challenge to the imagination of home-keeping folk whose most daring adventure upon the deep was an occasional cruise in an excursion steamer on the Great Lakes.

Kernville was proud of the Wards, and so many citizens of both genders expressed their affection with flowers that the car in which the trio set out for New York looked like a bridal bower.

Ned Shepherd and Alice Hovey were at the station with John to see them off and several hundred other citizens looked on with mingled emotions of admiration and envy. The _Journal’s_ photographer caught an excellent picture of Mrs. Ward and Helen, their arms full of roses, standing on the rear platform as the train pulled out.

* * * * *

“That boy of yours,” remarked Walter Scott Campbell, as he sat with Robert Fleming Ward in the smoking room of the _White Gull_ as the yacht felt her way cautiously up Chesapeake Bay,--“That boy must be a good deal of a lad. Even at long range you can feel his energy and enterprise.”

“He’s a good boy,” Ward agreed diffidently, “and full of ginger. I get out of breath trying to keep up with him.”

Campbell chuckled. “Knows a chance when he sees it.” Another Campbell chuckle. “I like youngsters of that type. He’s profited of course by your own long experience in the law?”

“He’s as good a lawyer as I am now--more resourceful, and a better hand in dealing with people.”

“That boy knows more than the law,” declared Campbell with another chuckle. “He knows human nature!”

As their eyes met Ward’s face broke into a smile as he realized that Campbell understood everything, and was not at all displeased at the outrageous fashion in which John had used his name.

“You know of Gaspard & Collins, in New York?” asked the magnate. “They do a good deal of my legal work. They’re looking for a young man, westerner preferred, to go into the firm, and it just occurs to me that your John would just suit them. I can understand how you would feel about losing him, but it’s a good opportunity to get in touch with important affairs. Talk it over with your wife, and if you think well of the idea you can wire him tomorrow. It’s a fair night; let’s go on deck and watch the lights.”

ARABELLA’S HOUSE PARTY

I

Farrington read the note three times, fished the discarded envelope out of his wastepaper basket, scrutinized it thoroughly, and then addressed himself again to the neat vertical script. What he read was this:

If Mr. Farrington will appear at the Sorona Tea House, on Bayfield Road, near Corydon, at four o’clock today--Tuesday--the matter referred to in his reply to our advertisement may be discussed. We serve only one client at a time and our consultations are all strictly confidential.

The note was unsigned, and the paper, the taste and quality of which were beyond criticism, bore no address. The envelope had not passed through the post office, but had been thrust by a private messenger into the R.F.D. box at Farrington’s gate.

Laurance Farrington had been established in the Berkshires for a year, and his house in the hills back of Corydon, with the Housatonic tumbling through his meadow, had been much described in newspapers and literary journals as the ideal home for a bachelor author. He had remodeled an old farmhouse to conform to his ideas of comfort, and incidentally he maintained a riding horse, a touring car and a runabout; and he had lately set up an Airedale kennel.

He was commonly spoken of as one of the most successful and prosperous of American novelists. He not only satisfied the popular taste but he was on cordial terms with the critics. He was thirty-one, and since the publication of The Fate of Catherine Gaylord, in his twenty-fourth year, he had produced five other novels and a score or more of short stories of originality and power.

An enviable man was Laurance Farrington. When he went back to college for commencement he shared attention with presidents and ex-presidents; and governors of states were not cheered more lustily. He was considered a very eligible young man and he had not lacked opportunities to marry. His friends marveled that, with all his writing of love and marriage, he had never, so far as any one knew, been in love or anywhere near it.

As Farrington read his note in the quiet of his study on this particular morning it was evident that his good fortune had not brought him happiness. For the first time he was finding it difficult to write. He had begun a novel that he believed would prove to be the best thing he had done; but for three months he had been staring at blank paper. The plot he had relied on proved, the moment he began to fit its parts together, to be absurdly weak; and his characters had deteriorated into feeble, spineless creatures over whom he had no control. It was inconceivable that the mechanism of the imagination would suddenly cease to work, or that the gift of expression would pass from him without warning; and yet this had apparently happened.

Reading somewhere that Sir Walter Scott had found horseback riding stimulating to the imagination, he galloped madly every afternoon, only to return tired and idealess; and the invitations of his neighbors to teas and dinners had been curtly refused or ignored. It was then that he saw in a literary journal this advertisement:

PLOTS SUPPLIED. Authors in need of assistance served with discretion. Address X Y Z, care of office, _The Quill_.

To put himself in a class of amateurs requiring help was absurd, but the advertisement piqued his curiosity. Baker, the editor of The Quill, wrote him just then to ask for an article on Tendencies in American Fiction; and in declining this commission Farrington subjoined a facetious inquiry as to the advertisement of X Y Z. In replying, Baker said that copy for the ad had been left at the business office by a stranger. A formal note accompanying it stated that a messenger would call later for answers.

“Of course,” the editor added jocularly, “this is only another scheme for extracting money from fledgling inkslingers--the struggling geniuses of Peoria and Ypsilanti. You’re a lucky dog to be able to sit on Olympus and look down at them.”

Farrington forced his unwilling pen to its task for another week, hoping to compel the stubborn fountains to break loose with their old abundance. His critical faculties were malevolently alert and keen, now that his creative sense languished. He hated what he wrote and cursed himself because he could do no better.

To add to his torture, the advertisement in The Quill recurred to him persistently, until, in sheer frenzy, he framed a note to X Y Z--an adroit feeler, which he hoped would save his face in case the advertisement had not been put forth in good faith.

Plots--he wrote--were the best thing he did; and as X Y Z seemed to be interested in the subject it might be amusing if not indeed profitable for them to meet and confer. This was the cheapest bravado; he had not had a decent idea of any sort for a year!

X Y Z was nothing if not prompt. The reply, naming the Sorona Tea House as a rendezvous, could hardly have reached him sooner; and the fact that it had been dipped into his mail box unofficially greatly stimulated his interest.

The Sorona Tea House stood on a hilltop two miles from Farrington’s home and a mile from Corydon, his post office and center of supplies. It had been designed to lure motorists to the neighborhood in the hope of interesting them in the purchase of property. It was off the main thoroughfares and its prosperity had been meager; in fact, he vaguely remembered that some one had told him the Sorona was closed. But this was not important; if closed it would lend itself all the better to the purposes of the conference.

He lighted his pipe and tramped over his fields with his favorite Airedale until luncheon. It was good to be out-doors; good to be anywhere, in fact, but nailed to a desk. The brisk October air, coupled with the prospect of finding a solution of his problems before the day ended, brought him to a better mood, and he sat down to his luncheon with a good appetite.

When three o’clock arrived he had experienced a sharp reaction. He was sure he was making a mistake; he was tempted to pack a suitcase and go for a weekend with some friends on Long Island who had been teasing him for a visit; but this would not be a decent way to treat X Y Z, who might be making a long journey to reach the tea house.

The question of X Y Z’s sex now became obtrusive. Was the plot specialist man or woman? The handwriting in the note seemed feminine and yet it might have been penned by a secretary. The use of _our_ and _we_ rather pointed to more than one person. Very likely this person who offered plots in so businesslike a fashion was a spectacled professor who had gone through all existing fiction, analyzing devices and making new combinations, and would prove an intolerable bore--a crank probably; possibly an old maid who had spent her life reading novels and was amusing herself in her old age by furnishing novelists with ideas. He smoked and pondered. He was persuaded that he had made an ass of himself in answering the advertisement and the sooner he was through with the business the better.

He allowed himself an hour to walk to the Sorona, and set off rapidly. He followed the road to the hilltop and found the tea house undeniably there.

The place certainly had a forsaken look. The veranda was littered with leaves, the doors and windows were closed, and no one was in sight. Depression settled on him as he noted the chairs and tables piled high in readiness for storing for the winter. He passed round to the western side of the house, and his heart gave a thump as he beheld a table drawn close to the veranda rail and set with a braver showing of napery, crystal and silver than he recalled from his few visits to the house in midsummer. A spirit lamp was just bringing the kettle to the boiling point: it puffed steam furiously. There were plates of sandwiches and cakes, cream and sugar, and cups--two cups!

“Good afternoon, Mr. Farrington! If you’re quite ready let’s sit down.”

He started, turned round and snatched off his hat.

A girl had appeared out of nowhere. She greeted him with a quick nod, as though she had known him always--as though theirs was the most usual and conventional of meetings. Then she walked to the table and surveyed it musingly.

“Oh, don’t trouble,” she said as he sprang forward to draw out her chair. “Let us be quite informal; and, besides, this is a business conference.”

Nineteen, he guessed--twenty, perhaps; not a day more. She wore, well back from her face, with its brim turned up boyishly, an unadorned black velvet hat. Her hair was brown, and wisps of it had tumbled down about her ears; and her eyes--they, too, were brown--a golden brown which he had bestowed on his favorite heroine. They were meditative eyes--just such eyes as he might have expected to find in a girl who set up as a plot specialist. There was a dimple in her right cheek. When he had dimpled a girl in a story he bestowed dimples in pairs. Now he saw the superiority of the single dimple, which keeps the interested student’s heart dancing as he waits for its appearance. Altogether she was a wholesome and satisfying young person, who sent scampering all his preconceived ideas of X Y Z.

“I’m so glad you were prompt! I always hate waiting for people,” she said.

“I should always have hated myself if I had been late,” he replied.

“A neat and courteous retort! You see the tea house is closed. That’s why I chose it. Rather more fun anyhow, bringing your own things.”

They were very nice things. He wondered how she had got them there.

“I hope,” he remarked leadingly, “you didn’t have to bring them far!”

She laughed merrily at his confusion as he realized that this was equivalent to asking her where she lived.

“Let’s assume that the fairies set the table. Do you take yours strong?”