The Red Book Magazine/Volume 38/Number 6/Nuttina

by Meredith Nicholson

 

In a quiet corner of the Country Club porch he had told her that he loved her. This, of course, was poor tactics

.

 

Nuttina

 

By Meredith Nicholson

 

Illustrated by H. Weston Taylor

 

GEORGE BUCKINGHAM DEAL was his name; but Fred Tomlin, who had a way of inventing nicknames, dubbed him Nuttina. Deal was, Tomlin declared, a nut, obviously and irretrievably a nut, but so mild, so shy and self-effacing, that it was necessary to invent a feminine form of the noun to express him. If he had chosen any place but the University Club as his habitat, George Buckingham Deal might have lived to a green old age within the city limits and nothing would ever have happened to him. But this extremely conservative organization, housed in an old residence that was built back in the '70's and still retains the crystal chandeliers and the walnut paneling of that period, guards its membership as well as its walnut paneling of that period with the most scrupulous jealousy. As Dudley Barnes remarked bitterly when his best friend was blackballed, none of the members would ever get in if once they were out.

Deal had been a nonresident member, and under the rules was entitled to be transferred to the resident list upon written application to the directors. Tomlin said this was a silly rule, as no one ever knew anything about nonresident members and it was never contemplated by the constitution and bylaws that they would change their classification by the simple process of moving to town. Deal was a graduate of Sycamore College, which, though obscure, was duly empowered by the laws of the State to confer degrees, and being thus an alumnus of a reputable institution, there was no possibility of getting rid of him as long as he didn't smash the furniture or fail to pay his bills.

Nuttina proceeded to live in the club; he not only ate and slept there, but it was almost impossible to enter the club at any hour without finding him. His air was apologetic; he always manifested embarrassment when he encountered a fellow-member. The desire of his heart seemed to be to attract as little attention as possible. He never ventured to sit at the round table by the bay window in the dining-room where other young gentlemen who lodged in the house foregathered. Nuttina ate alone, usually fortifying himself with an English review. His choice of reading matter was in itself an offense that strengthened Tomlin's hostility, as everyone knew that the high-brow literature on the library table was there merely to create an atmosphere, not for perusal. And besides, it was a breach of House Rule XXXII to carry a magazine from the reading-room, even for the absurd purpose of reading it.

Tomlin, who was vice-president of his father's brass foundry and a thoroughgoing business man, caused inquiry to be made through the usual channels as to Nuttina's financial and moral status. The reports were not what Tomlin hoped they would be. George Buckingham Deal, twenty-five years of age, an orphan with one surviving sister, was reputed to be seized and possessed of property netting him an annual income of something like nine thousand dollars. He was interested in art and music, and after leaving college had specialized with private instructors in those branches in Chicago, refusing to assume the management of the creameries his father had planted firmly along the muddy courses of the Sycamore, Wabash and other historic streams.

“I thought maybe he'd been run out of his home town,” said Tomlin when he confided to Barnes the burden of these reports. “There's something queer about him, anyhow. He spends an hour every morning at the Art Institute, and he's a fiend for concerts. The poor imbecile even goes to those Beethoven Club matinées where the rest of the audience is a solid delegation of girls with horn spectacles and old ladies with ear-trumpets.”

“Those facts are certainly incriminating,” Barnes assented; “but you're taking the whole business too seriously. I'm rather for the boy, all things considered. I despise his style of cranial decoration—his hair, I mean; but he dresses faultlessly—those quiet neutral shades that are affected by men of breeding, and he's the only man in the house who puts on a dinner coat with religious regularity. In fact, he's the most correct male in the whole bloomin' commonwealth He's certainly not making a nuisance of himself. The only member who ever speaks to him is old man Burrows who hitches on to him every evening for an hour; and you know Burrows—his only conversational small change is Japanese finance, or maybe it's burial rites of the ancient Egyptians—something gay and cheering.”

Dudley Barnes, a bachelor of thirty-five and the club cynic, was a successful lawyer. Tomlin frequently confided in him, and though he didn't always accept Barnes' reasoning on weighty matters, the attorney's judicial attitude toward all problems great and small never failed to interest him

“I thought at first,” said Tomlin meditatively, “that Nuttina's game might be to work his way in here and sell some bum stock to members, but I've had to give that up. The bird never speaks to anybody!”

“It's creditable to his upbringing that he waits to be spoken to; but on the other hand it's wholly contemptible for the rest of us to treat him as we wouldn't dare treat the municipal servants who remove the garbage from the sacred urns at the alley gate. This is a club, not a refrigerating plant. It just occurs to me——”

“Well, come out with it!” said Tomlin impatiently when Barnes hesitated and peered into the bowl of his pipe with exaggerated deliberation.

“I was just thinking,” replied Barnes serenely, “that being a very decent chap, we should not only give him the glad welcoming hand, but open things up for him socially. The hospitable homes of our city are only superficially snobbish, and an income of nine thousand bucks would prove an open sesame for this eligible young bachelor. If we threw him into the social maelstrom, he wouldn't so persistently blister the eye here in the club-house.”

“You've lost your mind!” gasped Tomlin. “I suppose you'd have me take him up to the Raymonds and ask Peggy to be good to him.”

“Frankly, that's exactly what's in my mind. You've been playing suitor to Peggy for something like two years, and if I read the signs aright, you're not getting anywhere. You need vigorous competition to evoke your best talents as a wooer. I thought of entering the lists myself for that very purpose, but Peggy isn't quite my ideal, and I'm too old for her. I suppose some widow just emerging from the wistful lilac shades will be my fate.”

“Peggy might fall in love with him!” said Tomlin, frowning in his uncertainty as to whether Barnes was chaffing him or not.

It became necessary for Peggy to blindfold Nuttina and then he must needs hold her hand. All this caused Tomlin most poignant anguish.

“If she does, I'll promise to show my hand and save the situation if it becomes serious. You can't tell what his line of social attack will be. The night-hovering owl of our native forests has nothing on Nuttina for solemnity. On the face of it he'd hardly prove a merrymaker, and yet you never can tell. There's always a big bunch at the Raymonds—that's one of your difficulties; Peggy likes having a crowd around, and you never see her alone. If our pale anemic friend casts as much gloom in the domestic parlor as he does in this club, he'd be serving you a good turn. He'd gas the enemy so you could dash right on to victory.”

“That might work,” Tomlin agreed reluctantly. “But there's no accounting for girls; you can't tell but Peggy might fall for him. She's rather musical, you know. Look here, Dud, you're not kidding me?”

“Heaven forbid! I merely wish to be of assistance to you. If Nuttina is the joy-killer you think he is, he'd soon drive away Caldwell, Jessup, Tetlow and those other wearisome youths who haunt the Raymonds, and you ought to be clever enough to get rid of young Mr. Deal after he has served as a writ of eviction.”

“We might try it,” said Tomlin, “but if the scheme fails, I'm going to be bitter about it. Peggy's the only girl who's ever appealed to me; you know that.”

“Perfectly. And the family are strong for you. You stand high with old Raymond, and Peggy's the apple, not to say the peach of his eye. You needn't be afraid he'll let her marry the lad from the upper waters of the Sycamore even if she wanted to. He's strong for the old-family stuff, and a newcomer blowing in from the out townships hasn't a chance.”

WHILE Tomlin and Barnes were discussing him, Nuttina was writing in the library. The green lamp-shade added to his pallor as his pen moved swiftly across the sheets of club stationery. His sister, married and domiciled in California, was the objective of his confidences.

“Dear ole Marian:

“Well, I broke old home ties and landed here at the capital of our native State as previously threatened. I've been living at the U. C. for a couple of weeks, but I can't say that the emotional strain is killing me. You hear a lot about club-life in the large cities, but this house is a tomb compared with the Elks Club in Kernville.

“Nobody speaks to me but the waiters, and they act as though I might have smallpox or be otherwise a menace to public health. There's one old guy who comes in to read the Congressional Record occasionally that I sort o' chum with. He's as deaf as a boiled ham and I've listened patiently to his discourse, thinking maybe he'd ask me to his house for a taste of home cooking, but I find he's a widower who camps in one room somewhere and feeds in the cafeterias.

“I'm playing the proud and indifferent rôle, knowing that in time these toploftical city hicks are bound to feed from my hand. You'd be tickled to see how gentle and demure I am, remembering that I was quite the merrymaker in social gatherings in our home town. It tickles me to see how much I worry the regulars around this old shack. They're hoping I'll get fresh and try to butt in, but I'm playing up my hauteur for all I'm worth.

“I spend an hour practicing every morning at a school of music where I pay two dollars for the unrestrained use of a piano by an alley window overlooking a fragrant garage. Every other afternoon I sketch at the art-school. Not decided yet whether to become a Beethoven or a Velasquez.

“I must now stroll casually through the clubrooms in the hope of annoying my beloved fellow-members

“Your loving brother
“George.”

NEXT evening Barnes strolled into the library, where Nuttina was affecting deep interest in a periodical devoted to the higher altitudes of literature.

“The lighting in here is bad—execrable! muttered the lawyer, as though talking to himself. “Oh, pardon me. It's Mr. Deal, isn't it? Barnes is my name.”

Nuttina rose and accepted Barnes' hand, wondering whether the lawyer, whom he knew by sight, might not be about to reprove him for some infraction of a club rule. But Barnes went on in an absent-minded fashion he employed to throw witnesses off their guard:

“This club's a queer institution! One may speak of it as an institution, quite as though it were penal or reformatory in its character, though that is far from the truth. The first year I was a member I felt like carrying a gun. I did, really—all the boys pretended they didn't know I was here. Every new member is subjected to this treatment; it's a form of hazing. Those fellows at the round table bore me excessively. Why shouldn't we dine together this evening?”

“Thank you, Mr. Barnes; I shall be very glad,” replied Nuttina courteously. Barnes had rather expected him to blush or shuffle his feet, but Nuttina took the invitation quite as a matter of course.

“Ah, there's that tottering ruin Tomlin!” exclaimed Barnes on their way to the dining-room. “We'll ask him to join us.”

And Tomlin, who had been lounging about the hall awaiting the result of Barnes' negotiations, shook hands with Nuttina and said he'd been meaning to introduce himself, and other things equally untrue.

Nuttina talked little but listened responsively. Barnes' manner of speech sometimes puzzled strangers, but a brightening of Nuttina's big blue eyes betrayed his appreciation and enjoyment of the lawyer's gentle ironies. Occasionally the new member smiled, a sad, wistful, furtive smile.

“You made no mistake in throwing in your lot with us here,” Barnes was saying. “I can see that you're a quiet man, and God knows this is a peaceful hole. The bunch who play sniff in the cellar grow boisterous occasionally, but that's only when one of our brothers has sneaked a flagon of rum into our sacred precincts.”

“Yes,” observed Nuttina, “I've noticed that some of the members grow quite merry at times.”

“Don't be deceived by their gayety! Normally the sniff-hounds are a melancholy lot. The game bores me excessively.'

“I was thinking,” remarked Tomlin, catching a meaningful gleam in Barnes' eye, “that you might like to step out a little bit, socially speaking. Barnes, you know the Raymonds? Friendly people—and Peggy's one of the nicest girls in town.”

“She's all of that,” Barnes agreed soberly. “I'm sure Mr. Deal would like Peggy; she's a real person—lively, clever and all that sort of thing.”

“I'd be glad to meet Miss Raymond,” said Deal composedly.

“Peggy's just a little too popular,” Barnes remarked. “She plays to a full house—always a lot of fellows around. And they're young men who don't bring out the best in her. The talk up there is of the most trifling sort—not to put too fine a point on it, piffle, the sheerest rot! It grieves me that Peggy's so tolerant of imbecility.”

“You must remember that I'm up there a good deal!” interrupted Tomlin with a rueful grin

NUTTINA seemed colorless, and the thought of adding him to the Raymond circle didn't please Tomlin, now that Barnes had beguiled him into committing himself. But Dudley Barnes was a difficult person to frustrate, once he had determined upon a course of action, and his suggestion that the low-spoken and well-mannered Nuttina might prove so great a bore that he would drive away the other young gentlemen who haunted the Raymond house had seemed plausible when Barnes first broached it; but as he faced George Buckingham Deal across the table, Tomlin wasn't so sure of it. Barnes was talking, as only Barnes could talk, and Nuttina was warming under the lawyer's blandishments. Barnes knew people in Kernville whom Nuttina knew—the circuit judge, a banker and a lawyer or two.

Nuttina broke a lump of sugar and dropped half of it into his coffee-cup. A slight pressure of Barnes' foot on Tomlin's toe reminded him that it was time to proceed farther with the conspiracy. Tomlin looked at his watch.

“We were speaking of the Raymonds,” he forced himself to say; “it just occurs to me that we might go up there this evening—the three of us. I'll go through the formality of telephoning Peggy to ask if we may bring Mr. Deal.”

“I have no engagement this evening; that would suit me first rate,” replied Nuttina slowly, as though it were rather the usual thing for his evenings to be filled.

“Well, I'm free too,” said Barnes. “I haven't seen Peggy since the last Woodstock party, where with evident reluctance she vouchsafed me a dance. But Tomlin, you scoundrel, you broke in! Actually, he did, Deal, as though I were the scum, the very scum of the earth.”

“Peggy seemed relieved when I did!” Tomlin retorted.

“Tomlin's the best fellow in the world,” said Barnes when Fred had gone to the telephone. “Always doing nice things for people. You're bound to like him when you get acquainted. A little difficult, but sweet and sound at the core.”

Tomlin returned with the intelligence that Peggy would be at home and delighted to meet Mr. Deal. She also sent a characteristic message to Barnes, that he might come, but he would have to very very, very nice, as he had neglected her most shamefully.

THEY were soon speeding in Tomlin's car to the new quarter of town beyond the Creek, where the Raymonds had lately established themselves. The moment they entered the house, they were aware from the lively buzz that Peggy was holding court as usual

“Perfectly delighted to meet you, Mr. Deal!” she cried, darting into the hall to meet them. “How are you tonight, Fred? So you've found the way at last, Mr. Barnes! Oh, I heard what you said about me at the Woodstock party! It is very cruel, but I suppose I'll have to forgive you.”

It was clear that he was already forgiven. They followed her into the long drawing-room where six young gentlemen presented a stubborn circle of resistance. Barnes and Tomlin merely nodded to them collectively, Tomlin disdainfully, Barnes calculatingly, wondering just how much fun he might be able to extract from them. It was absurd, really, that a girl as fine as Peggy Raymond should waste her time on such uninspiring material.

The gaze of the regulars fastened upon Deal's small, neat figure and impassive countenance with immediate animosity. He was an unknown quantity, instantly appraised as undesirable and to be got rid of with all expedition. Tomlin they knew, and they rejoiced in the knowledge that their presence maddened him. Barnes they looked upon as a patriarch who occasionally wandered from his true sphere and got in their way. Each one separately wished he had had the forethought to take Peggy to a show and thus made it impossible for the unwelcome trio to gain audience.

James B. Raymond, Peggy's father, having learned from the maid who opened the door that Barnes was in the house, came in from the living-room to greet the lawyer. Raymond was good-naturedly tolerant of Peggy's kindergarten, as he called it. He scrutinized Deal carefully, asked to have his name repeated to be sure he got it right, and bestowed a familiar “Hello, Fred!” upon Tomlin. He would have liked to seize upon Barnes and carry him back to his den to talk about a case that was troubling him—Barnes was the attorney for the Raymond Engine Company—but he thought better of it and retired after discharging a volley of mild satire at the company.

The six earlier arrivals waited for the newcomers to show their hand. Deal had taken the least desirable chair in the room— that is to say, the one farthest from Peggy; and they heartily approved of this choice. Barnes, by right of seniority, assumed the rôle of interlocutor. He knew them all and correctly appraised their potential value socially and commercially. He had the reputation of being amusing, and they laughed with nervous haste as he leveled his shafts at one and another.

To Tomlin's eyes Peggy had never appeared lovelier or more unattainable. Once in a quiet corner of the Country Club porch he had told her he loved her and demanded that she settle the matter then and there. But this, of course, was very poor tactics, as he realized when she told him very sweetly that she was awfully fond of him, but that marriage was something she wasn't ready for yet. Every time she laughed tonight, he hated the person or persons who, wholly oblivious to his sufferings, moved her to merriment.

HE had lapsed into utter gloom when Barnes, who was enjoying himself, addressed Nuttina with seeming inadvertence, as though just remembering that he was in the room. Barnes had been asserting that the social life of the capital city was dull, and that save for a splurge around the holidays, due largely to the demand of the youngsters home from school for entertainment, and the dreary iteration of dances at the Country Club during the summer, nothing ever really happened A dinner now and then, yes; but you always met the same people and knew in advance everything they had to offer.

“If you're so bored, Mr. Barnes, we might roll back the rugs and dance!” suggested Peggy.

Barnes lifted an arresting hand.

“Nine men to fight for a chance to dance with you! At times. my dear Peggy, your imagination fails to meet a situation. We might play drop-the-handkerchief or charades.” This was received with a chorus of dissent.

“There you are! We're all too self-conscious these days for the good old pleasures I recall from my vanishing past. We might read aloud one of Emerson's essays or—ah! Mr. Deal, I yield you the floor. If you have anything to suggest to put joy into life, we're here to harken!”

By imperceptible degrees Nuttina had drawn himself to the edge of his chair expectantly.

“I might,” he said in his mild tone, “do a few tricks with cards!”

“There we have it! Splendid!” Barnes sprang to his feet with every manifestation of relief.

“That will be lovely!” Peggy exclaimed, clapping her hands rapturously. “I'll find a pack for you, Mr. Deal.”

Nuttina rose and begged her not to go to the trouble.

“I'm sure Dr. Tetlow wont mind if I use his pack,” he remarked, turning to Bob Tetlow, a former football hero now engaged in the practice of medicine. The big athlete grinned sheepishly as Nuttina approached him. The rest, except Barnes, exchanged covert glances, telegraphing around the circle that here was a hick whose social capital was parlor tricks and that he must be obliterated, so that the place that knew him should know him no more.

“Ah, Dr. Tetlow, you shouldn't carry cards about in this fashion!” said Nuttina indignantly. “The ace of clubs in your sleeve! And what's this we have in your watch-pocket—the queen of diamonds! Very careless of you, I must say! It's not often I find anyone using the back of his neck as a hiding-place—but here we have them—a pretty collection indeed!”

“How perfectly delicious! I always wanted to see just how that's done!”

And Peggy, enraptured by Nuttina's prowess, received his assurance that she could do it herself; nothing was simpler. Having infuriated Tetlow almost to the unendurable point by demanding what had become of his watch and then drawing it from a Sèvres urn, Nuttina proceeded to perform other tricks, with Peggy, an enthusiastic ally, assisting him. It could not be denied that he did the tricks deftly. His diffidence passed, though he never wholly lost his gravity. Barnes, avoiding Tomlin's eyes, applauded the prestidigitator vociferously. There seemed to be nothing that Nuttina couldn't do with cards, from sailing them one by one across the long room so that they made a neat pile, to picking any card asked for from the pack which Peggy manipulated under his instructions.

Billy Caldwell, thinking he might stop a performance which threatened to continue forever, seated himself at the piano and began to play, laboriously picking out tunes with one finger to express his sense of utter desolation. Peggy, who by this time had elicited from Nuttina the information that he had at times experimented a little with mind-reading, paused to urge Billy to play “Whose Eyes are Dearest?” which she thought the best of all the new songs. Caldwell hadn't heard of it, but offered as a substitute a frightful one-finger rendition of “Tell Me Good-by Again, Love,” which caused the rest of the six to giggle and indulge in significant gestures in the general direction of Nuttina.

The parlor entertainer displayed his mind-reading powers by finding a pencil which Peggy hid behind a clock on the library mantel. To accomplish this it became necessary for Peggy to blindfold Nuttina and then he must needs hold her hand during the search. All this caused Tomlin the most poignant anguish. He didn't know whether, if he were armed, he would kill Nuttina first or give precedence to the idiot Barnes.

HAVING demonstrated his gift for finding concealed articles, Nuttina turned and blinked solemnly at the company.

Peggy now took note of the fact that Caldwell was still pecking at the piano, and that the sounds he was evoking from the instrument were not agreeable. The old guard were supporting Caldwell, encouraging him to further efforts, not that they enjoyed the hideous sounds, but because they found in them an expression of their fury at Mr. Deal's undoubted success with Peggy.

“For heaven's sake, Billy,” Peggy exclaimed, approaching the piano, “if we must have music, let's find somebody who can play!”

“The point is well taken,” Barnes flung in instantly. “Now that Mr. Deal has proved himself so versatile, perhaps—”

“It would certainly be a great relief if Mr. Deal should include music among his accomplishments.” And Peggy smiled sweetly upon Nuttina.

“I'm afraid,” he remarked softly, “that I'm appropriating too much time.” He smiled wanly as though, mistrustful of his powers, he shrank from inflicting himself upon them further.

“We're all so anxious to hear you!” And Peggy added: “Please, Mr. Deal!”

Nuttina advanced upon the piano slowly, with every manifestation of timidity, as though it were an unfamiliar and dangerous contrivance.

“Really, I'm no Paderewski, you understand—” he murmured.

He eyed the keys for a moment while a grim silence fell upon the room. Without the slightest change of countenance he began playing Rubenstein's “Melody in F.” Barnes observed that he was playing it with intelligence and feeling. Waiting for the last chords to die away, the gentleman from Kernville became a man of action. He drew back his coat sleeves and stepped on the loud pedal. With the greatest dexterity and with growing animation he played the “Melody in F” with variations—amazingly intricate variations that preserved Rubenstein only to mock and jeer at him. And having concluded this impiety, Nuttina jazzed the “Melody in F,” jazzed it with a jazziness that caused the vibrations of the quivering piano to rattle the pictures on the wall.

Mr. Raymond, disturbed in his perusal of a new novel, appeared to learn the cause of the unwonted racket; and Mrs. Raymond, who had been ill, left her bed to steal down the stairs in her dressing-gown and peer into the drawing-room. As a mere exhibition of physical endurance his performance would have won the plaudits of an audience not so sullenly hostile. When he rose, Peggy burst into exclamations of extravagant praise.

“That was perfectly mar-velous! Why, Mr. Deal, I didn't know anyone not a professional could play like that!—It's a shame we didn't have a larger audience!”

SOME one groaned. Barnes believed it was Tomlin, though among the original six, credit for this manifestation of impotent rage was given to Carl Jessup. Peggy heard the groan, and it may have caused her to take a rose from her corsage and pin it on Nuttina's coat with an air of bestowing a decoration for valor on the battlefield. Jessup, who had sent the roses, noted the transfer with a twinge of acutest jealousy.

“My dear boy! My dear boy!” This from Barnes, who wrung Nuttina's hand and told him that never, never had he heard a pianist who so wholly satisfied him. Mr. Raymond, who had listened as one petrified to the recital, added his own words of appreciation, eying the performer as though he were some newly discovered animal that had for the first time been brought into captivity.

“You certainly know how to line 'em out! Staying in town long?”

“I'm living here now, sir. I just lately moved down from Kernville,” Nuttina answered.

“Mr. Deal is a member of the University Club,” Barnes explained, delighting in publishing this information before the other members of that exclusive organization, who resented with all the strength of their earnest souls the fact that George Buckingham Deal did, indeed, belong to their club.

“Peggy, you must play for Mr. Deal!” said Mr. Raymond. “I've spent a lot of money on your music, and I'd like to hear what an expert says of your work.”

Peggy said she couldn't think of it after the glorious playing they had just listened to, but Nuttina' urged her,

While she played a Chopin nocturne stumblingly, Nuttina stood some distance away with a rapt look on his face, lifting his head occasionally under some compulsion of the melody.

“Oh, that was horrid!” cried Peggy when she had gotten through it, and they all burst into applause—all but Nuttina.

“Your feeling for music is exquisite,” he said in the low, tense tone of one who had been deeply moved in the innermost recesses of his being.

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Deal!” murmured Peggy. “Of course I never really have taken my music seriously.”

“Can't you two play a duet?” asked Barnes with sudden evil inspiration.

The effect of this was to precipitate a panic. The gentlemen of the old guard rose as one man. Peggy hardly noticed that they were going, and left it to her father to make sure they found their hats. It was remembered against her that Peggy always saw her visitors to the door in the jolliest informal fashion.

Tomlin watched their departure enviously, and then followed Mr. Raymond to the library that he might avoid further strain upon his nerves.

BARNES held his ground, insisting upon the duet and advising as to the selection of a composition for the purpose. The piece chosen for four hands was one which Peggy had played with another girl at a school recital. She hadn't looked at it since, she protested, but Nuttina said that it would come back to her once she got started, that being his own experience with old music. They got through it after many halts, each pause being an occasion for merriment. The clearing of the room had exercised a salutary effect upon Nuttina's spirits. His restraint passed; and anyone would have thought that he and Peggy had been friends from their dancing-school days.

Tomlin, having solaced himself with a cigarette, reappeared to find Barnes participating in a lively discussion of old ballads.

“Nothing is so adorable!” cried Peggy ecstatically. “And you do sing, Mr. Deal?”

Nuttina admitted that he had given some attention to voice, but more that he might appreciate good singing when he heard it. Peggy had “taken voice,” though only for a few months, as her teacher was very cross with her for not practicing. However, out of these confessions it seemed possible that they might try a few old songs some evening.

Tomlin, seeing all the evenings to the brink of eternity devoted to ballads, went to the hall and put on his overcoat, returning with the mild suggestion that possibly they had kept the household awake long enough.

AS they left, Tomlin received from Peggy almost the first word she had spoken to him all evening, and it was not of a nature to comfort him greatly.

“Fred, it was dear of you to bring Mr. Deal to call! And I give you all the credit for bringing Mr. Barnes too—that dear old fraud!”

“I had to kidnap them both to get them here! That's the truth of it!” Barnes declared.

“Oh, Mr. Deal, you did say Thursday evening, didn't you?” Peggy asked, fixing her eyes intently upon Nuttina, who had gotten himself into his smart polo-coat. “I was just thinking that—maybe—it's possible—well, my engagement for to-morrow was for bridge at the Gladdings, and just possibly I might get out of it, as I was only to fill in and they can easily ask some one else. If you're not busy and would call me up about dinner time—”

“Certainly, Miss Raymond. You may be sure that if you are free I'll come running!”

“It seems a pity if Mr. Deal and I are going to go over those old songs, we shouldn't do it while we're both so enthusiastic,” she said, turning to Barnes. “And Fred, after we've practiced a little, we'll want you to come and hear them too!”

“I shall merely exist until you summon me,” said Tomlin spitefully; but Peggy only laughed and told him he was getting to be a worse grouch all the time, and that he never did take any interest in anything but his business. Which was hardly just, considering the deep and jealous interest he took in Peggy.

When they reached the Club, Nuttina thanked them, though not effusively, for a pleasant evening and betook himself to his room.

The moment he was out of sight, Tomlin attacked Barnes bitterly for what he declared to be a blunder the magnitude of which no terms at his command could describe.

“That's just what I was afraid of! All these hicks are full of small-town parlor-trick stuff, and certainly he has the whole line. And Peggy just ate it up! That fool hasn't anything else to do, and he'll be at the house right after breakfast every morning. You've gummed the whole business, and instead of helping me, you'll be responsible if she marries him.”

“Gently, my boy—gently!” replied Barnes with a paternal air he affected with his juniors. “It's my idea to let Nuttina run his course. The moment Peggy gets tired of him, you'll be standing in the wings ready to spring right into the breach and be the man of the hour. Peggy's interest in music is only superficial, and a big dose of it will cure her.”

“Why,” Tomlin blurted, having paid no attention whatever to what Barnes had been saying, “even Peggy's father seemed taken with that little fool! And when he finds out he has money—”

“The thought of a mercenary motive entering into the sketch is extremely displeasing to me!” declared Barnes. “Raymond is a valued client of mine, and I know his mental processes exceedingly well. I shall manage everything. The course of true love never did run smooth, but in this case we'll let the wheels bump over the ties for a time, knowing that in the end they will hit the rails again.”

IN the fortnight following, Nuttina was much less constantly in the Club than formerly. His demeanor was unchanged; and though the men he had met at the Raymonds now spoke to him perforce, he made no attempt to presume upon their acquaintance. He continued to eat his meals alone except when now and then Barnes joined him. Tomlin sulked in the presence of the lawyer, who chose to pay no heed to his friend's discomfiture. Tomlin knew, just as Barnes knew, that Nuttina left the Club regularly every evening at exactly twenty minutes of eight, which gave him just time enough to motor to the Raymonds and land on the doorstep at eight o'clock.

The roadster Nuttina had purchased on the day after his presentation to Peggy was one of the snappiest parked in front of the Club. Tidings reached Tomlin through various sources that not only was the despised Deal in nightly attendance upon Peggy, frequently appeared with her at parties to which she caused him to be invited, but that she was seen with him in the roadster, whizzing along the highways on the outskirts of town. Many people were inquiring as to Nuttina's identity; and when he appeared at the theater with Peggy and her father and mother and a maiden aunt who was visiting them, and sat with them in a box, everyone who knew the Raymonds began to say that it looked as though Peggy's latest might be her last.

Tomlin, who viewed the box-party with several other Club members, felt himself sinking. He had never thought of asking Peggy's parents to the theater or to any other place of public entertainment. Afterward he was obliged to watch the party partaking of a supper in the Club dining-room, and this so upset him that he went upstairs to rout Barnes out of bed that he might abuse him.

“MY dear inconsolable one,” said Barnes, lounging into Tomlin's room a week later, “I have news!”

“They're engaged, I suppose,” snarled Tomlin. “I must say he made quick work of it.”

“Not that,” replied Barnes, dropping into a chair and placing his feet on Tomlin's bed. “My news is that Papa Raymond is disturbed about this Nuttina business. You know he's been very friendly to you; he wants Peggy to marry you; that's been in his mind all along. He realizes that a girl with Peggy's temperamental nature must marry her opposite—a steady-going, strong, sensible chap like you. Now Nuttina has intimated to him in the frankest way that he wishes to be considered a suitor for Peggy's hand.”

“Well, hurry along with it!”

“Raymond likes the boy well enough; there is something likable about the youngster—you'd admit it if you weren't seeing everything through green spectacles. Raymond asked my counsel as to some means of getting rid of him. Nothing unkind, you know, but some scheme for easing him down and out without too great a jar. And I've made the suggestion that he tell Nuttina that he ought to have some regular occupation—that old and irrefutable philosophy that every young man should work whether he needs to or not. So I've suggested to Raymond that he take Nuttina into his machine-shop. Perhaps wearing overalls in a big noisy place like Raymond's engine-factory will take the jazz out of him. He'll at least have something to do besides chasing over the hills and far away with Peggy, and he'll be too tired at night to pound the Raymond piano.”

A grin slowly crept over Tomlin's face as hope kindled in his soul.

“If that doesn't work, what are you going to do?” he demanded.

“We'll take that up when we come to it,” Barnes answered. “But understand, I'm anxious to serve all concerned, and I confess that I don't share your animosity toward the boy. Considering the amount of temperament he carries, he's a mighty nice little chap. I advise you to get in your work now before the rest of the old crew find out what's in the air.”

THE foreman of Shop Number Two of the Raymond Boiler & Engine Company good-naturedly took George Buckingham Deal into his ward and keep, and turned him over to an old employee who operated a planer, with an injunction to give the boy a good try-out.

Nuttina addressed himself to his new task with his accustomed gravity. He looked much younger than his age in his new overalls and jumper, and his small, delicate figure touched the chivalry of his fellow-workmen. He had a lunch put up for him at the Club and ate it on a bench with several of the men who had showed their friendliness toward him.

He did what he was told and put on no airs. If his frail hands suffered by contact with the sharp edges of steel, he made no complaint. Some of his questions, born of a complete ignorance of machinery, created merriment; but on the whole he was voted a nice kid, queer but likable, and a good little sport. He tactfully tried to accommodate his manner of speech to the familiar talk of his associates, and toward the end of the week he began introducing them to a new and astonishing field of thought.

“The sounds in this shebang are wonderful,” he announced as he perched on a workbench at lunch time. “When the whole shop's going, you only get the lower octaves—a sort of boom like a whole orchestra of kettledrums. Then you can pick out the rattle and quiver of the planers, and the scream of the radial is like high C badly played on a fiddle. And there's a machine back yonder that cuts in now and then on an open G string. There's enough range of tone in the shop to play a symphony if you could only control the noise.”

He bit into a sandwich and filled his neighbor's tin cup with coffee from his thermos bottle. That the shop-sounds were anything more than frightful discords or that they might possess a significance for a musical ear, had never occurred to them. In a few days he had ingeniously fashioned out of steel and wood a xylophone on which he played for the delight of the whole shop.

Having mastered the trick of running the planer, Nuttina had more time for studying the notes and chords evoked by the various machines. He would pause and listen to a new note struck somewhere and try to mark its source.

“This shop's got a regular normal tone,” he gravely informed his noon-hour audience. “If anything gets out of kelter, you can tell it in a minute.”

“Right you are, son!” said the foreman approvingly. “I don't know the tunes the way you do, but if anything slips, you bet I notice it.”

A few days later the foreman was in the yard when Nuttina, busily engaged in operating his planer, stepped aside and listened intently. A discordant sound sent him running toward the fan-engine of the ventilating system, and he yelled, looking about for the foreman:

“She's off the key! She's lost the pitch; something's wrong with the fan-engine!”

The foreman, just entering the door, lifted his head, listened for an instant and then jumped for the throttle valve and shut off the engine.

“Good work, son! The engine was running away. You gotta good ear, all right!”

“The normal tone of the fan and engine is a heavy bass, like drums a long way up the road,” Nuttina gravely explained; “and I thought it was queer the way the drums kept coming nearer at quicker time.”

BARNES dragged the reluctant and grumbling Tomlin to the Raymonds one night, merely, he said, for purposes of observation.

“We must keep in touch with the situation,” said the lawyer. “I beg of you, don't show irritation if you find our talented young friend dominating the house.”

Nuttina was not only there ahead of them, but seated at the piano, Mr. Raymond beside him and Peggy hovering near.

“Just sit down,” said Raymond, “and excuse us for a moment; Mr. Deal is explaining something that interests me very much.”

It did not interest Tomlin at all, but Barnes gave Nuttina's elucidation his complete attention.

“Those castings we're getting from the foundry right now are harder than they were when I went to work,” Nuttina was saying. “The tone at first when we ran them through the drill was pretty close to fa—do, re, me, fa—do you catch the idea, Mr. Raymond? But lately the tone's gone into a higher register—like that!” Nuttina hummed as he struck the keys. “Those castings are harder than they ought to be. It takes longer to trim them up. From what the boys at the shop say, it's up to the foundry to make the castings softer—leave them in the sand longer. And if you'll notice the boring-mill, there's a growl—it's something like this—” He hummed again as he found chords that elicited something akin to the sound he described. “Now, the note oughtn't to change the way it does, and it wouldn't if the core of the cylinder-casting were true. You ought to put in a kick to the foundry about that. You're wasting time, because the workmen have to run the boring-mill slower to keep from breaking the cutting tool. When the core is true, the borer hits a uniform note—there! But when it's crooked, it varies, ranging above and below the normal tone—like this—”

“There's something in that,” remarked Mr. Raymond. “Our efficiency man ought to have noticed those things.”

“YOU see, Papa, it takes a musician to discover little things like that,” cried Peggy with undisguised admiration for the young hero.

“Well, I guess music helps a little in everything,” said Nuttina.

“It's quite remarkable,” said Mr. Raymond, turning to Barnes. “I've been in a machine-shop all my life, and I never thought anything about the noises except that they're disagreeable. We can make a real economy in production by following these suggestions.”

“I've told you all the time, Papa, that George was a genius!” said Peggy, bestowing a fond look upon Nuttina.

The remark and the look brought Tomlin to the verge of collapse. As it became apparent that they were not essential to the intelligent discussion of the merit of Johannes Brahms, which Peggy now opened for the evident purpose of giving Nuttina a chance to expound that composer, Barnes removed the despairing Tomlin from the house.

“It's all over,” Tomlin groaned as Barnes lifted him into his machine.

“Not yet, my dear Fred! The boy's got about all there is out of the melodious whir and clang of the machinery. We must find a way of shifting his line of interest, and at the first chance you must throw forward your strongest battalions.”

“But can't you see Raymond's crazy about that idiot? To think a practical man like Raymond would fall for a lot of drool about the tunes in his own machine-shop!”

“It's true that the points he suggested seemed to impress Raymond, but that doesn't mean that he wants to marry his only child to a young man who, if he was taken into the family, would play the Raymond plant as though it were a pipe-organ! I'm going to arrange with Mrs. Abby Thornton to ask you on a house-party she's pulling off at her country-place next week. What you want to do at the Thornton farm is to renew Peggy's interest in Nature, the dear mother of us all. Keep her on horse-back, call her attention to the sweet chirrupings of the gladsome choristers of woodland and vale, and she will forget the boy wonder of Kernville and his piano-thumping. Peggy's already accepted her invitation—but she doesn't know yet that you're on the list.”

“You're sure Peggy hasn't got an invitation for that half-wit?”

“Confident of it! How lovely the stars are tonight! What a solace they are to the troubled spirit of man!”

“JUST hoping you'd turn up!” exclaimed Barnes, intercepting Nuttina the evening of the day Peggy and Tomlin left town for Sunset Lodge, the Thornton's country-place. “I need you like thunder!”

“You know you can call on me for anything, Mr. Barnes,” the young man replied amiably. “I'm feeling just a little bit lonely!”

“I understand perfectly! The intrepid Peggy has fled to the country, and we do miss her when she's away. Tomlin's a lucky dog; he's at the house-party too—doesn't belong to the proletariat like you and me.”

“Oh, I didn't know Mr. Tomlin had gone!” Nuttina's face registered anxious alarm. With a gesture that dismissed Tomlin, Barnes became confidential.

“You're the only man I know who can help me out of this predicament. You have the discernment, the nice understanding my plight requires.”

“Thank you,” murmured Nuttina, his curiosity piqued.

“I want you to dine with me here tonight, to meet my sister, Mrs. Dinsmore, and her daughter, who've just got home today after a winter in New York. Their house isn't quite in order, but they'll be settled soon. My sister is a jolly soul—not a crab like me. You're bound to like her.”

Nuttina was sure he would like Barnes' sister. His spirits, which had touched zero when Peggy told him that she was leaving town unexpectedly, rose under the impulsion of the lawyer's friendliness.

“My niece, Constance, knows hardly anyone here, as she's been away in school or traveling with my sister. Conny has an artistic bug—I swear I don't know where she got it, as her father, who died several years ago, was a wholesale druggist, and shrank from art in all its forms, and my sister is a sportswoman—wonderful golfer and all that. It bores her greatly that Conny insists on dabbling with art—the child really thinks she can paint, and in New York she's been mingling with those absurd Greenwich Village people and is full of Bohemian ideas. Her mother is anxious to bring her back to normal, and so it occurs to me, George,”—Barnes had not previously called him by his first name, and Deal's heart warmed under the familiarity,—“it occurs to me that you may be of help to us. Of course, Conny isn't really interested in painting—it's all imaginary. You know how young girls get a whim of that sort. We must get her into healthy ways of thinking. I can see that you understand and sympathize with the situation.”

Nuttina murmured inarticulately, overcome that Barnes should be asking his assistance in so delicate a matter.

“Conny's not what I'd call a pretty girl, but she's clever and amusing. To show my hand fully, there's a young chap in New York, a poet or something, that Conny's pretty keen about. Her mother is quite distressed; that's really why she's come home. We must find ways of interesting Conny here,” Barnes ended, musingly.

“Anything I can do!” exclaimed Nuttina, near to bursting with pride that he was chosen of all the young men in town to assist in amusing Miss Dinsmore.

Barnes had lied outrageously when he said that his niece was deficient in comeliness. It would have been a crime for any girl to be prettier. She was small—a trifle shorter even than Deal—dark-eyed, with a roguish smile that one waited for and was grateful for when it came. She wore her hair bobbed, and the bobbing, perceptible under a smart red hat, added considerable to her general piquancy. She was eighteen and possessed all the freshness, grace, spontaneity and general charm that belong to that beatific age. Meeting her in the ladies' reception-room, George Buckingham Deal experienced the most agreeable sensations. After shaking hands with Mrs. Dinsmore, he bowed low before taking the necessary five steps that brought him within reach of the hand that Miss Dinsmore extended.

“Uncle Dudley is terribly enthusiastic about you! He said I must meet you first of all!”

Nuttina thought he had never before heard so beautiful a voice. Her drawl was delicious. He walked beside her into the dining-room, treading air. At the small round table Barnes and Mrs. Dinsmore had much to say to each other of business matters and the settling in the long unoccupied Dinsmore house, which made it necessary for Nuttina and Conny to amuse each other, and this they did without the slightest difficulty.

“You play prodigiously, Uncle Dudley says.” He wondered whether she chose long words merely for the joy of drawling them. “I adore music, though I don't play a note. I'm simply crazy about painting, though I suppose I haven't the slightest talent.”

“That,” said Nuttina gallantly, “remains to be seen! I draw a little—it's just something to fuss at. I was taking lessons at the art-school, but I had to quit when I went into the machine-shop.”

Already the machine-shop and Peggy seemed to belong to a remote past. Conny laughed delightedly at the thought of his being in a machine-shop; she had never heard of anything so perfectly absurd. For the first time he saw that it was indeed ridiculous that he was spending his days in a machine-shop to convince Peggy Raymond's father that he was an industrious and serious-minded man.

“If it wont bore you,” said Conny, “I'd like to show you some of my sketches. You can at least tell me how bad they are!”

He protested that they couldn't possibly be bad, it being in his mind that no one so obviously created for adoration could fail to draw and paint with a masterly hand.

Mrs. Dinsmore was complaining of the difficulty of getting help to settle the house, and Nuttina at once volunteered his services.

“I can easily drop my work at the shop,” he said; and Barnes supported this with the careless suggestion that probably he had got all out of the shop there was in it.

They motored out to the house, where Nuttina, duly importuned, made the piano ring while Barnes and his sister roamed about discussing some contemplated alterations. Conny produced an armful of sketches and water-colors which Nuttina viewed critically from, many angles, praising her technique in sophisticated terms. He would hardly call her an amateur, he said.

BEFORE Barnes was ready to leave, Nuttina had pledged Mrs. Dinsmore and Conny to breakfast with him the next morning at a hotel, placed his car at their disposal, promised to help them unpack and wash windows if necessary, and made tentative arrangements to show Conny over the city, pilot her through the Art Institute and take her to sketch at some wonderful places he had discovered on the river.

“It's a relief to find that there's some one here who can sympathize with Conny's ambitions, and it's nice of you to offer to help me with my problems,” said Mrs. Dinsmore, who had heard from Barnes the most favorable reports of George Buckingham Deal.

“I don't believe I'll be as lonely as I expected,” said Conny. “I didn't suppose anyone out here knew all about the new movement in art as Mr. Deal does. He's a perfect revelation!”

The revelation of George Buckingham Deal's versatility as a handy man about the house endeared him to Mrs. Dinsmore vastly. He waged battle royal in her behalf with carpenters, painters, paperhangers and plumbers, cut the grass and even assisted Conny in preparing luncheon to obviate the necessity of going downtown for meals.

“He's a dear boy!” Mrs. Dinsmore exclaimed to her brother. “He and Conny are just like children together. She's not even reading the letters that come twice a day from her Greenwich Village poet!”

“Things are going splendidly,” said Barnes. “We're witnessing the most beautiful love-story ever enacted. And they've been acquainted only four days!”

“But Dudley, you wouldn't want the matter to become serious?” asked Mrs, Dinsmore. “They're so young!”

“It would be a perfect arrangement,” declared Barnes. “They're tuned to about the same key and are gentle little lambkins that could play very prettily in the same pasture for life.”

TOMLIN walked into Barnes' office as the lawyer was opening his mail.

“Back, are you? Doesn't seem possible you've been gone a week. You look as fit as a fiddle!”

“It's all right, old man! I've won out, and the engagement will be announced in a few weeks. Meanwhile—mum's the word!”

“Congratulate you with all my heart!” Barnes rose to shake hands. “As I told you all the time, all you needed was a chance to impress Peggy with your merits. She forgot the boy marvel very quickly, I dare say?”

“Well, Peggy was awfully sweet about all that,” said Tomlin earnestly. “She's the dearest girl alive, and the boy did interest her a little.”

“That's fine, Fred.”

“Peggy and I are going to be nice to him. You'll have to admit that Peggy did do a lot for him; and it's just a little strange that he doesn't seem to appreciate her kindness. He didn't answer her note. It isn't possible the boy's ill—worried himself sick over Peggy's absence, I mean?”

“Well, hardly! He's very much alive and terribly busy. You know how enthusiastic he is about any new hobby—”

“Oh, the machine-shop; we must get him out of the shop—of course that's no use any more. I rather think I'll give a little dinner for him at the Country Club, put him in the way of meeting a bunch of our nicest young people.”

“Well, love has a humanizing effect, they say, and you certainly treated that boy as though he were the devil. I should think you would want to ease your conscience. Only there's one difficulty in the way of that—you've got to catch him first!”

“Good Lord, he hasn't skipped!” blurted Tomlin.

“Well, no! But he's dated up to kingdom come with a new girl—complete infatuation on both sides. A young niece of mine that I put in his way.”

“Humph! Musical, I suppose?”

“No—paints. The psychology of the whole matter is very simple. He hit it off musically with Peggy; so I switched him off to pen-and-ink and water-colors with a new girl as his inspiration. He's a quick little worker—abandoned Raymond's shop the day after he met Conny. I hope you realize that I've been diligent in your behalf?”

“Rather! What are you going to charge for your services?”

“Not a cent, for I'll admit now that I came near gumming the whole business. I advise you to lose no time in placing the conventional ring on the proper finger of Peggy's left hand. When you're dealing with temperaments, you can't take a chance!”