The Golden Rule Dollivers (collection)/The Dollivers Dine Out
VI
THE DOLLIVERS DINE OUT
ONE of the duties frequently devolving upon Dolliver was the entertainment of important out-of-town customers of the firm employing him, and for a week he and Marjorie had been assiduously devoting themselves to a rich and ponderous ironmonger named Titus, who was thriftily employing a part of his wedding journey in the conduct of certain business negotiations in New York, and permitting the manufacturers whose wares he ordered to bear a large part of the expense of the metropolitan honeymoon upon which his middle-aged bride had set her heart.
When, therefore, after a series of motor trips and shopping expeditions, luncheons, dinners, and visits to the theater, in which the Dollivers had faithfully played their part as hosts, Mrs. Titus developed one day a neuralgic headache, and telephoned at the last moment that she could not go out with them that afternoon Page ejaculated, "Thank the Lord!" and notified the head of the firm that a box in the grand-stand at the aviation-field was at his disposal.
"Use it yourself, Dolliver," was the reply. "Take your wife and some friends and have a good time. You've earned it."
The Dollivers welcomed the opportunity thus offered, for an unusually spectacular aviation meet was in progress, and immediately began discussing which of their more congenial friends they should invite to join them for the afternoon and a little dinner at Rousseau's, a quaint and delightful inn on Long Island, of which they had heard much and where they had long intended to dine. It proved to be too late to get any one to go with them, however, as every one to whom they telephoned either had gone out or had other engagements, and in the end they set forth without guests.
"Oh, I'm a selfish sinner, but I'm almost glad nobody could come with us," confessed Marjorie, as they crossed Queensborough Bridge and left the city behind. "Think of the blessedness of a whole long afternoon out of doors and a delicious, cozy dinner at Rousseau's, all by our lones! It's almost worth the price, isn't it?"
"Poor child, you're tired out," commiserated Page. "This Titus episode has been hard on you."
"Oh no, it hasn't—not really," she instantly defended. "I've realized that it was very important to you that they should be well amused, so it has interested me to help a little."
"You helped a lot," interpolated her husband, whereat she smiled at him brightly, continuing:
"But though I dare say Mr. Titus is a good business man—"
"He isn't," again interrupted Page. "He's a hold-over. He hates his competitors with a positively medieval fervor, and would rather lose a hundred dollars himself than see one of them make fifty. He's probably heard of the twentieth century, but he thinks it's only an idle rumor, with which he has nothing to do."
"Well, anyway, conversationally he's not of my species," she resumed. "Talking to those two for any length of time is like trying to drive a hippopotamus and a—a salt-mackerel, tandem. He's huge and soggy and wallowy, and when he moves at all he wants the whole road; and she just soaks and soaks, and never stirs a fin. And you're afraid all the time that he'll forget and step on her and make her flatter than she is now. Oh, Page dear, it's good to get off alone with you and talk nonsense!" She tucked a hand into his coat pocket, where he captured it.
"I heard you talking to her last night about the Home League," he suggested.
"Page, is there anything on earth I haven't talked to that woman about?" she demanded. "While you men have been talking shop I've tried her on every subject I ever heard of, hoping to find something she'd pick up and carry on herself a little way. I discoursed alluringly upon needlework, housekeeping, cooking, servants, children, dogs, cats, parrots, poultry, and foreign missions, and when these failed I baited my hooks with travel, history, literature, music, and art. Then I raked from my buried past all I could remember about botany, astronomy, chemistry, and birdlore; and when I had exhausted myself in that direction I launched out on the ologies—geology, genealogy, archaeology, astrology—and I don't know a thing in the world about any of them! I tried feminism, suffrage, civics, eugenics, and industrial education; and when there was nothing else left I told her the story of my life, winding up with my latest enthusiasm, the Home League.
"What did she say to that?" he asked, chuckling.
"What did she say?" echoed Marjorie. "What did she ever say to anything?"
"'How vurry ihtrusting! Henry, isn't that intrusting?'" he dryly quoted, and then they both laughed.
"Oh, well, I dare say she's not so bad, if only one could discover her human side," Marjorie conceded. "She must have one, you know. Everybody has. But somehow I couldn't find it."
Maybe she has"—Dolliver's tone was dubious—but it must be mighty well secreted when you couldn't uncover it, Marjoricums. I did hope, when I heard you enlarging so animatedly upon the achievements and intentions of the League, that she was really getting interested in something at last, and that she'd give you a decent subscription. They could easily afford to build you a cottage."
"But I didn't tell her for that reason. Page, and of course I didn't ask her for a subscription. How could I?"
"You couldn't," he returned, "but she might have offered it. I should have said it was the least she could do, after all you've done for her."
"But I didn't do it for her, goosie. I did it for you. And you got your big order, didn't you? Then it's all right, don't you see?"
They arrived at the aviation-field rather early, parked their car, and were strolling toward the hangars when they caught sight of Dick Holden, whom they had not seen for several weeks.
"How are the Golden Rule Dollivers?" he hailed, as he approached them, "Had any more hair-breadth escapes?"
"There have been episodes," Page dryly admitted, and then they told him about "dear Cousin Clara," and about their relief expedition in the thunder-storm.
"By heck, you certainly do get it going and coming!" he chuckled. "I suppose you know it's making you famous, though? Frank Cole thinks that kidnapping episode was the funniest thing that ever happened, and he's telling the story on all occasions."
"It is funny—now," Marjorie conceded, with a little grimace.
"But what I want to know is this," said Holden: is this kind of thing a sort of philanthropic jag with you people, the allurements of which you can't resist? Or are you going to reform after these last jolts?"
"Not a bit of it! We're just as keen for it as ever," Page assured him. "Besides, the tide seems to have turned now, and to be coming our way. The last affair came out all right, in spite of the grandmother, and we went to the wedding."
"Well, you're certainly good sports!" commented the other man. "You play the game to the finish."
They laughingly acknowledged this tribute, and asked him to join them, but he explained that he was with a party of men whom he could not desert, promising, however, to come in to see them later. The Dollivers walked about for a while among the hangars, looking at the various machines and watching the experimental flights before finally seeking their box. As they entered the grand-stand Marjorie's attention was attracted by a couple standing near the entrance, who seemed to be watching them, but who averted their glances when they saw she had observed them.
It was perhaps an hour later, when their first wonder at the spectacle of the soaring birdmen had worn away a little, that Marjorie leaned back in her chair with a comfortable little sigh and glanced along the line of boxes.
"Do you suppose it's spoiling us, all this sort of thing?" she asked, thoughtfully.
"What sort of thing?"
"All this." She waved an inclusive hand. "Boxes and expensive restaurants and an atmosphere of luxury—all the things we can't afford and have been playing with at the company's expense for the past week."
"H'mph! I rather think we've worked our passage."
"Yes, we've earned it in a way, I suppose. But we've also cultivated an appetite for it, and—and I like it," she confessed.
"Would you like it if you knew it was costing every penny we could scrape together?" he asked, smiling at her.
"N-no, perhaps not. But it must be pleasant to be rich. I like the sample." At that moment her glance fell upon an approaching couple, and she added: "Here comes a pretty woman. Page. I noticed her at the door as we came in."
"So did I," he replied. "She is rather attractive, though a little—well, not quite fine enough, is she?"
"Hardly, for a fastidious taste. But she's very good-looking, just the same, and she knows how to wear her clothes. The man does, too. Neither of them is just our sort, I imagine, but I like them because they look as if they enjoyed life. Such a contrast to those poor Tituses!"
The couple under discussion entered the vacant box adjoining the DoIHvers', and exchanged pleasant, half-smiling glances with their neighbors before sitting down. In the box on the other side of the new-comers, with a party of grown people, was a little girl about four years old, whose quaint speeches had been amusing everybody in the vicinity for some time, and presently, as a Bleriot rose in the air like a huge insect, she shrilled, excitedly:
"Look! Look! Oh, my soul and body!"
"Where is your soul, Jane?" asked a smiling woman of her party; and the clear, confident little voice replied:
"My sole is on the bottom of my foot, and my body is on me."
Involuntarily, Marjorie glanced at the couple in the next box, who looked toward her at the same instant, and they all laughed together.
"No philosophic doubt about that," observed the man. Turning to the child, he pointed to the soaring machine and asked, "What is that, girlie?"
"Why, doesn't oo know?" she instantly responded. "Zat's Coopid. He has fezzers on his back, 'n' he can fly like anysing."
At this the laughter was general, and in the midst of it the man addressed himself, with twinkling eyes, to Dolliver.
"If there's anything you'd like to know about cosmic force or ultimate destiny, let me refer you to the young lady on my left," he said. "I'll warrant her ability to inform you."
"I fancy she'll teach several men something about 'Coopid 'and his 'fezzers' before she's done, at any rate," Page returned.
"You're right, she will!" laughed the other.
"Unless, by the time she grows up, Cupid's 'fezzers' have all been plucked by the scientists, and he's been given a microscope in place of his quiver," suggested the woman with him.
"Do you think we need worry about Cupid just yet?" asked Marjorie, smiling at the child.
"That's right, too," agreed the man, "Cupid can't be wholly plucked while there are girls like that growing up."
"Again how different from the Tituses!" whispered Marjorie.
From this the four drifted into conversation, first about the various aeroplanes and their operators, then about automobiles, and then about sports and amusements generally. Their neighbor mentioned his residence near Great Neck and said something about his interest in dogs. Later he spoke casually, in connection with fishing, of a camp in the Adirondacks. But it was not until the talk swung around to yachting that the Dollivers began to suspect the identity of these chance acquaintances. Page made some allusion to the sale, several months before, of a large steam-yacht to a Cræsus from the West, and the other man replied:
"Yes, he tried to buy The Nixie, but I didn't care to sell her."
He spoke carelessly, watching a swooping biplane the while, and the Dollivers exchanged startled glances, for The Nixie belonged to Horace Manning, a young millionaire whose country-place near Great Neck was one of die most beautiful on Long Island, and whose model farm and kennels in Westchester County were celebrated. Then he added, as if by an afterthought:
"By the way, I'm sorry I haven't a card"—he felt in two or three pockets while he spoke—"I seem to have mislaid my card-case—but my name is Manning."
"Mine is Dolliver—Page Dolliver."
"Page Dolliver?" repeated Manning, questioningly. "Why, you must be—is it possible that you're the chap they call 'Golden Rule Dolliver'?"
"I am," confessed Page, laughing. "But what do you know about it?"
"I know Frank Cole very well, and the other day he told me about that kidnapping episode, and about your extraordinary custom of sharing your car with strangers along the road. He promised to bring us together very soon, but I've beaten him to it, by Jove! I'm exceedingly glad to meet you, Mr. Dolliver." By this time he was enthusiastically shaking hands with Page, and Mrs. Manning was scarcely less demonstrative.
"This is perfectly delightful!" she exclaimed, addressing Marjorie. "I knew from the instant when I first saw you, down at the door as you came in, that we should enjoy knowing you—my husband and I spoke of it then—and we were so pleased when we discovered you next us here! But if we had the slightest idea that you were the Golden Rule Dollivers we should have introduced ourselves on the spot! Instead of which we wasted nearly an hour on some stupid people we happened to meet, when we might have been here talking to you. We were so entertained by Mr. Cole's account of his introduction to you. Do tell us all about this delightful idea of yours. Who gave you that fascinating name—'the Golden Rule Dollivers'? We want to hear the whole story from the beginning."
So, after a little urging, Page and Marjorie related some of their adventures, and their auditors were amused and indignant by turns, and sympathetic all the time.
"Well, certainly you don't weary of well-doing," laughed Mrs. Manning. "You obey all the Scriptural injunctions, don't you?—Do as you'd be done by, bread on the waters, turn the other cheek, and all the rest."
"Oh, don't give us more credit than we deserve," said Dolliver, flushing a little, as he always did at any suggestion of this nature. "You see, it's an interesting sort of pastime, and we enjoy it. I'm afraid the spirit in which we play this game is more adventurous than philanthropic."
"Precisely," said the lady, mischievously. "That's capital! You even carry it to the point of not admitting to your left hand what your right hand doth! You're quite living up to your reputation, Mr. Dolliver, and that's such a difficult thing to do!" Then, as he flushed redder than before and was obviously somewhat embarrassed, she added, in rather a wistful tone: "How delightful it must be to be able to make up pretty games for yourselves and play them together! That's the worst of a position like ours—it makes one so conspicuous. We never can run off and do delicious, unconventional, irresponsible things like that, because some one is sure to recognize us, and the next morning the whole thing is in the papers, with large headlines and faked pictures."
Marjorie laughed outright. "How human that is!" she exclaimed. "We all 'pine for what is not,' don't we? Just as you came in I was saying that it must be very pleasant to have plenty of money and to be able to do all the things one would like to do."
"But we have to do so many stupid things that we don't like to do, for no better reason than that everybody does them and they're expected of us," said Mrs. Manning. "And one gets tired just buying things. Of course, I have a good time. I enjoy life hugely, but sometimes I feel that I enjoy it in a very foolish, useless sort of way; and I suspect that you get a lot more out of it than I do, Mrs. Dolliver."
Page, glad to have her attention diverted from the analysis of his motives, turned to her husband with some comment on the machine then in the air, and the women drifted into a discussion of their various interests and occupations, during which Mrs. Manning proved to be so sympathetic and persuasive a listener that Marjorie had soon told her all about the Home League.
"I think thats the most splendidly practical thing I ever heard of!" enthusiastically cried Mrs. Manning, when she had finished. "Of course, one hears of scores of worthy charities nowadays—we subscribe to any number of them—but somehow I have a feeling that most of them benefit the benefactors more than they do the beneficiaries. But anything that provides a real home—not an asylum, but a home—for poor, wretched little kiddies is of real practical benefit, and I want to be in it! I suppose you could find more children if you had places to put them, couldn't you?"
"There are always more than we have room to house or money to care for," said Marjorie, with glowing eyes. "We're in sore need of another cottage now, and we're to hold a special meeting Monday to discuss ways and means of getting it."
"How much does a cottage cost?"
"We can get it built for thirty-five hundred or four thousand dollars," said Marjorie, a little breathlessly. "Of course, the furnishing and equipment are extra."
"You ought not to have any trouble getting that." Mrs. Manning seemed surprised that the required sum was so small. "They'd let me give it to them, wouldn't they?"
"Oh—would you?" There was a little catch in Marjorie's throat.
"I'd love to. That would be buying something really worth while. Oh, there's Grace Denslow over there! Do you know her? Mrs. Perry Denslow?" Mrs. Manning nodded and waved her hand slightly to some one at a distance. "That's she, standing in the third box. Now, she'd like a thing like this. Grace is frivolous, like most of us, but she's a good sort, and I'm sure she'd help if I asked her. So would Tessie Keeler, and Mrs. Teddy Brayton, and Marion Vandorp." She mentioned, with growing enthusiasm, the names of several women prominent in New York society. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm going up to Lenox day after to-morrow for two or three weeks, but if you can come out to luncheon to-morrow I'll get as many of these women together as I can. It's short notice, but I'll make them break some of their silly engagements. Then you tell them about the scheme, I'll offer to build a cottage, and we'll see if we can't get them to chip in enough to furnish it and pay the housemother for a while. What do you say? Can you come?"
"I will come!" cried Marjorie. "Do you think I wouldn't break engagements for that, too? Page dear, what do you think has happened?"
Dolliver was suitably impressed when he heard the news, and Manning, after the situation was explained to him, heartily approved his wifes action, and intimated that if by any chance her plan failed and her friends proved indifferent, he would provide the funds necessary to furnish and equip the proposed cottage.
"Hello, Manning! Spellbinding, as usual?" some one behind them exclaimed; and they turned to find Holden standing back of Dolliver's box, amusedly watching them. "No, thanks, Mrs. Dolliver, I can't stop. The fellows I'm with are going back to town, and I've got to go with them. I hope we'll get there with whole bones! Tom Jerrold's driving, and Phaethon was a model of caution in comparison." He shook hands with the Dollivers, nodded to Manning, and rejoined his friends, with whom, a few minutes later, they saw him swinging across the field.
It was perhaps a quarter of an hour after this that Manning looked at his watch, uttered an exclamation, and said to his wife:
"By Jove, we've no time to lose, my dear! We're likely to be late, as it is. I'll go ahead and order the car, and—perhaps Mn Dolliver will bring you down?"
"Gladly," said Page. "We'll all go down, for it's high time we were starting home also."
Manning hurried away, and as the rest followed more slowly his wife explained that they were to dine in town that night, and had first to go to a hotel to dress, whither servants had preceded them with their luggage. When they reached the spot where Manning had promised to meet them he was not in sight, and they were beginning to wonder whether they had mistaken the rendezvous when they saw him coming toward them, frowning anxiously.
"'Here's a state of things!'" he quoted, as he approached, laughing, but with the pucker still between his brows. "That idiot, Tom Jerrold, managed somehow to back his car into ours as he took it out, and put it entirely out of commission for the present."
"Put whose car out of commission? His?" asked Page.
"No! I wish he had! Careless daredevil! He got off with a little scratched paint and a bent mud-guard, Taylor says, but it will take two hours to put ours into condition to run at all." He turned to his wife, adding: "Taylor telephoned home for the other car, but they say your mother has it out, and nobody knows when she'll return. Meanwhile, we have a dinner engagement in town, and we've just missed a train. Mr. Dolliver, I hate to impose upon you, but would it—"
"I was about to say," interrupted Page, "that I'm sorry you've had an accident, but it will at least give us the pleasure of taking you in to town."
"I'm afraid it may put you to some inconvenience. Are you sure you were going in to town?" hesitated the other man.
"THEY HAD PLANNED A COZY LITTLE DINNER AT ROUSSEAU'S, AND NOW WE'RE SPOILING IT!"
"No, they were not!" cried his wife. "They had planned a cozy little tête-à-tête dinner at Rousseau's. Mrs. Dolliver told me so, and now we're spoiling it! Can't we get a car somewhere?"
"That's of no consequence at all," Marjorie made haste to say. "We can dine at Rousseau's any night, and of course we're going to take you to town. You mustn't fail to keep a formal dinner engagement just because we had expected to go to a little country inn. Fortunately, we have no guests and are free to change our plans. Hurry and get the car. Page. How lucky that we were here!"
"You're pulling us out of a very awkward situation, Mrs. Dolliver, and you shall have that dinner at Rousseau's yet—with us, if you will," Manning thanked her. "We little thought, when we were discussing your hospitalities this afternoon, that we should throw ourselves upon your generosity within two hours!"
So the Dollivers took the Mannings in to town and deposited them at the door of their very expensive hotel, with ample time before their dinner-hour.
"I'm going West to-morrow, to be away for a week or two," said Manning, as he shook hands with Page at parting, "and my wife's going up to the Berkshires. But we shall look you up as soon as we get back—and don't forget that you're to dine with us at Rousseau's," he added, turning to Marjorie, "as well as on many other occasions, I hope. We don't want to lose touch with you."
"Meanwhile, you'll come out to Great Neck to-morrow," said Mrs. Manning. "I'll expect you at one, and I'll get as many of those women as I can to meet you, so we can get the thing started, anyway, even if we have to leave the final arrangements until I return."
"Oh, Page!" sighed Marjorie, as they drove away. "Isn't that the most heavenly luck! Think of just stumbling into the Horace Mannings and having a cottage, all furnished and free of debt, thrust into one's hands, so to speak! Won't the girls be delighted? I'll have to break a luncheon engagement with Mrs. Derby to-morrow, but she won't care, because she's chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and she'll be perfectly jubilant when I tell her about Mrs. Manning's cottage. Isn't it wonderful?"
"It will be—if you get it," said Dolliver.
There was a moment of silence, and then Marjorie asked, in a curious, thoughtful tone:
"Why do you say that?"
"I don't know. For no particular reason, only—it seemed too easy, somehow. It didn't seem quite real."
"That's funny," she said, slowly. "Because every now and then I felt that way, too. I wonder why? For it is real, you know. It must be!"
"Yes, I suppose so—unless they forget it overnight."
"Page! What a dreadful thing to say—or to think 1 Surely you don't mean that! You don't think they're that sort!"
"No, I don't quite mean any of these things I'm saying, I suppose, but, after all, they might be that sort, you know," he reasoned. "He's a little too fluent to be wholly convincing, though I dare say it's just his manner; and she—well, she's a trifle ebullient—effervescent—isn't she? And that sort of thing—that facility of emotion and expression—sometimes works both ways, you know. You never can tell. They might forget as easily as they were interested."
"Y-yes. But we said when we first saw them, you remember, that they weren't quite—not quite our sort. Of course, one realizes that all the time. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they are insincere and—and horrid, or that they're not perfectly nice people, does it? You know. Page, I sometimes wonder whether all these things that have happened to us, all these misunderstandings and disappointments when we've tried to be nice to people, haven't made us a little—just a little—suspicious and pessimistic, and afraid to trust people?" At this Page laughed whole-heartedly.
"Well, not so you'd notice it!" he said. "We're just as childlike and trusting as we were when we began this game, and I for one am glad of it. I hope we'll stay so! Who cares if somebody does misconstrue our amiable motives now and then? We enjoy cherishing them, just the same. And in the main people are decent and honest and kindly, by Jupiter!"
"And this afternoon proved it," supplemented Marjorie. "I didn't ask her for anything, you know—in fact, I quite forgot for the moment how rich she was, and just talked about the League for sheer love of it; and then, entirely of her own accord, she offered to build the cottage."
"Rather a contrast to Mrs. Titus's attitude, wasn't it?"
"That's the reason!" triumphantly announced Marjorie. "I've got it now! That's what's been the matter with us all the afternoon. Page! We've associated with hippopotami and salt-mackerel until warm, sentimental, enthusiastic humans don't seem real to us, and we suspect their motives just as people are always suspecting ours. After all, why shouldn't the Mannings act on impulse just as sincerely as we do?"
"No reason at all why they shouldn't, love, and let's hope they do. But I have what is vulgarly called a hunch that Mrs. Manning will recall her luncheon invitation either by mail or telephone in the morning."
"Well, she won't. You'll see, you cynic!" retorted Marjorie.
Late the next forenoon Dolliver was called to the telephone, and his wife's voice said:
"Here I go! off for Great Neck, with all my hopes intact!"
"No word from the lady?"
"None."
"Good-by, then, and good luck!"
"Good luck!" she called back, happily. "Perhaps I'll return with the cottage in my pocket!"
There was no suggestion of triumphal rejoicing in her manner, however, when she whirled into Dolliver's office a few hours later, though her movements were quick, her eyes brilliant, and bright spots of color stained her cheeks.
"Well, how about it?" asked her husband, observing at first only that she was looking unusually attractive. Then, quickly, he added: "What's the matter, dear? What's happened?"
"I don't know—exactly," she replied, in a stifled tone. "Page, I want to see you—alone, please. I want to tell you—alone."
He led her into the vacant office, closed the door, gently pushed her into a chair, and asked:
"Now what is it, dearest?"
"Page, I went out to that woman's house—to the Manning place—"
"Yes."
"I got a cab at Great Neck and drove out."
"Yes."
"And when I got there I gave my card to the butler, and he said Mrs. Manning was engaged and could see no one."
"What?"
"I knew that must be a mistake, so I told him I had an appointment with her—that she expected me—and he went away. Presently he came back, saying that Mrs. Manning thought there must be some misunderstanding, as she didn't know my name. Then I knew there was something wrong, but I intended to find out what it was, so I told him I had come from New York by appointment to see Mrs. Manning on business, but that if she was occupied with something else I would detain her only a moment. He went away again, and when he came back he said she'd see me if I would wait a little while. After a long time a woman came in—a tall, crisp, cool woman, who looked at me as if I had things to sell, and said, in a polite, business-like tone: 'Good morning. You're Mrs. Dolliver?' 'Yes,' I said. Then she waited for me to go on, and I said, 'I asked to see Mrs. Manning personally.' 'I am Mrs. Manning.' 'Oh, I want to see Mrs. Horace Manning.' 'I am Mrs. Horace Manning.' And, Page, I had never seen the woman before! I asked if there was another Mrs. Manning in Great Neck, and she said not to her knowledge. Then I began to blush and stammer, and tried to explain, and she got cooler and more remote every minute. I told her we had a box yesterday at the aviation-field, next a man who said he was Mr. Horace Manning and lived at Great Neck, and that his wife had become interested in a charity with which I was connected, and had asked me to take luncheon with her to-day at Great Neck, to meet some of her friends and tell them about it. She said that was very extraordinary, as her husband was in Canada and could not possibly have been at the aviation-field, and that certainly she had not been there."
"Do you mean that she doubted your word?"
"N-no, she didn't say so. She was perfectly courteous. She just said it was very extraordinary, as if it didn't concern her at all, and waited for me to go on. Well, of course I could only say that I was very sorry indeed to have disturbed her, but that I had no way of knowing that the lady I met yesterday was not Mrs. Horace Manning when she said she was, and prepare to take my leave. Then she did thaw a little—I think she thought at first that the whole thing was a ruse to secure an interview with her for some reason or other—and she asked a lot of questions about the other Mannings, and seemed very much puzzled, but I think she was chiefly trying to discover whether I was suffering from a mild hallucination or was just a plain liar." Dolliver, who had been sitting near her, here sprang to his feet with an ejaculation and began to pace the floor. "Well, it did look queer, you know, my appearing at her house at one o'clock and insisting that I had been invited there to luncheon. She finally asked with a sharp, expectant sort of expression in her eyes, what the charity was in which I had tried to interest the other Mrs. Manning; but I didn't intend to be mistaken for a lying beggar at any rate, and I said I had made no attempt to interest the lady, who had voluntarily offered to help an organization of which I had chanced to speak. Then I'm sure she thought I was a little wrong in my head, and she was very gentle and nice, and said she was sorry I was disappointed, and didn't I think I'd better go directly home now, without making any further effort to find the other Mrs. Manning, and I said I certainly did. She wanted to give me some luncheon, too, but of course I couldn't accept that. I had sent away my cab, so I had to walk to the station, and it's three miles or more, and—oh. Page, I'm so tired! What do you suppose it all means?"
"Means? Why, it means that we've been done again!" hotly exclaimed Dolliver. "Whoever those people were, they were not the Mannings—"
"But they were. Page! At least, he was. Don't you remember that Mr. Holden said, 'Hello, Manning!' when he came up?"
"By George, so he did! He must know him!" Dolliver reached for the telephone receiver on the desk near him and asked to be connected with Holden's office.
"And there isn't going to be any cottage, after all!" mourned Marjorie. "Mrs. Derby and the girls will be so disappointed! And my explanation is going to sound so lame and foolish! But it must have been Mr. Manning, Page. He knew Mr. Holden—and he spoke of Mr. Cole. But who was the woman?"
"Give it up!" briefly replied her husband, and waited. Holden's office answered that Holden had gone out, but was expected to return at any moment.
"Ask him to call up Mr. Dolliver at once when he comes in," said Page. "Or, better, if he has time, ask him to step over here a moment. Say that Mrs. Dolliver would like to see him." Then he called up Franklin Cole. "Hello, Cole! This is Dolliver. How well do you know Horace Manning?"
"Horace Manning? Don't know him at all," was the reply.
"You don't know him at all!"
"No. Why?"
"We sat next a man out at the aviation-field yesterday who said he was Horace Manning, that he knew you very well, and that you had told him all about the kidnapping affair. He called me 'Golden Rule Dolliver,' and hailed me as a friend and a brother on your account."
"How much did he touch you for?" asked Cole, laughing.
"Not a thing. Yes, by Jove, he did! We brought him and his wife back to town."
"I'll bet you did!" said Cole. "But it wasn't Manning."
"That's the queer part of it. It was Manning. Holden came along while we sat there and called him by name."
"The deuce he did! And he said he knew me?"
"Said he knew you well."
"Well, all I can say is that he must have dreamed it. As far as I know, I never saw Manning in my Hfe. What does Holden say about it?"
"I don't know. He isn't in his office now, and I've just learned that there's a screw loose somewhere."
"Well, I don't understand his use of my name. What's the rest of the story?"
"I don't know yet, but there are more things about it than your part of it that I don't understand."
A few minutes later Holden came in, and Dolliver asked:
"Who were the people in the box adjoining ours yesterday?"
"The Mannings."
"It was Manning, then!"
"I thought you knew them."
"No; he introduced himself to me out there, but he had no card, and—well, one or two things have occurred since to make that seem rather significant. You're sure it was Manning?"
"Sure? Of course Tm sure! I've known Charlie Manning all my life. Went to school with him."
"Charlie Manning! Oh—I see!"
"See what?" puzzled Holden, and then he began to laugh. "Good Lord, Dolliver, you didn't think he was Horace Manning, did you?"
"I had some reason to think so," was the reply. Page was thinking rapidly.
"Why, he said he was Horace Manning!" cried Marjorie.
"N-no, come to think of It, I don't remember that he did, dear," slowly said her husband. "He said his name was Manning, and left us to infer the rest from his casual allusions to his place in Great Neck and his kennels in Westchester, and his camp in the Adirondacks—or perhaps your Manning owns all these things, too?"
"Owns nothing!" growled Holden. "He never owned any more earth than it takes to make a clay pipe, and he generally stole that!"
Who is he, anyway?" inquired Dolliver.
Charlie Manning," said Holden, "is the son of a minister in my home town. Versatile, clever, fluent of speech, as you probably discovered—"
"We did," said Dolliver, dryly.
He has an inborn repugnance to real work, but his imagination is prolific, and he has a facility in lying that I have never seen equaled. He'd rather put over a good story than make a hundred dollars, and he actually makes 'em so plausible that he almost believes 'em himself!"
"What does he do for a living?"
"He's done a little of everything requiring talk! He has sold books and real estate and wildcat stocks. At one time he was connected with an advertising agency, and now he's picking up a more or less precarious subsistence by soliciting life insurance. He married a sharp little Irish school-teacher, whom I've never met—you may have noticed yesterday that our relations are not exactly cordial—who is reported to be as clever and as unscrupulous as he is, and I suppose they may be said, in the truest sense, to live by their wits. When going's hard they camp around in second-class boarding-houses, and when they manage somehow to rake in a winning they pose as plutocrats and spend it all in high living—witness their having a box at that show yesterday! Charlie must have had as much as fifty dollars all at once."
"Then it wasn't his car you damaged yesterday?" Marjorie inquired.
"What's that?"
"Did your friend Jerrold back his car into another one yesterday and put it out of business?" asked Page.
"No! We had no mishap at all. What's the story?"
They told it to him from the beginning. When they came to the incident of the damaged car he exclaimed:
"Hold on! I've got it! That's like his infernal cheek! I've got the whole thing, by jiminy! and the drinks are on me! Were the Mannings in that box from the time the show opened?"
"No; they came in very late. Said they'd been with some friends, didn't they?"
Marjorie nodded.
"That's it! After I met you the first time, down in the field, one of the fellows I was with asked who you were, and, as they all know Cole, I told that kidnapping story. I remember now that Manning had joined the group for a moment, and of course heard the yarn. Probably the box next you was vacant, and when there was little chance left of selling it, it was easy enough for the Mannings to bribe an usher to let them use it, incidentally open conversation with you, spring the story, and—as I said, the drinks—and the dinner—are on me! Mrs. Dolliver, may I telephone Mrs. Holden that you are dining with us to-night at Rousseau's?"