REGGIE COMES TO LIFE
The of having of time on one’s hands is that one has to to the of all one’s circle of friends; and Archie, as he over the of the Sausage Chappie, did not neglect the needs of his brother-in-law Bill. A days later, Lucille, returning one to their suite, her husband seated in an chair at the table, an on his face. A large cigar was in the of his mouth. The of one hand rested in the of his waistcoat: with the other hand he on the table.
As she upon him, what be the with him, Lucille was aware of Bill’s presence. He had from the and was walking across the floor. He came to a in of the table.
“Father!” said Bill.
Archie looked up sharply, over his cigar.
“Well, my boy,” he said in a strange, voice. “What is it? Speak up, my boy, speak up! Why the can’t you speak up? This is my day!”
“What on earth are you doing?” asked Lucille.
Archie her away with the large of a man of blood and iron while concentrating.
“Leave us, woman! We would be alone! Retire into the old and for a bit. Read a book. Do acrostics. Charge ahead, laddie.”
“Father!” said Bill, again.
“Yes, my boy, yes? What is it?”
“Father!”
Archie up the red-covered that on the table.
“Half a mo’, old son. Sorry to stop you, but I there was something. I’ve just remembered. Your walk. All wrong!”
“All wrong?”
“All wrong! Where’s the chapter on the Art. of Walking? Here we are. Listen, dear old soul. Drink this in. ‘In walking, one should to that swinging, easy movement from the hips. The correctly-poised to along, as it were.’ Now, old bean, you didn’t a dam’ bit. You just in like a into a railway restaurant for a bowl of when his train in two minutes. Dashed important, this walking business, you know. Get started wrong, and where are you? Try it again.... Much better.” He to Lucille. “Notice him along that time? Absolutely skimmed, what?”
Lucille had taken a seat,-and was waiting for enlightenment.
“Are you and Bill going into vaudeville?” she asked.
Archie, scrutinising-his-brother-in-law closely, had to make.
“‘The man of self-respect and self-confidence,’” he read, “‘stands in an easy, natural, attitude. Heels not too apart, erect, to the with a level gaze’—get your level, old thing!—‘shoulders back, arms naturally at the when not otherwise employed’—that means that, if he to you, it’s all right to guard—‘chest naturally, and abdomen’—this is no place for you, Lucille. Leg it out of earshot—‘ab—what I said before—drawn in and above all not protruded.’ Now, have you got all that? Yes, you look all right. Carry on, laddie, on. Let’s have two-penn’orth of the Dynamic Voice and the Tone of Authority—some of the full, rich, we so much about!”
Bill a upon his brother-in-law and a breath.
“Father!” he said. “Father!”
“You’ll have to up Bill’s a lot,” said Lucille, critically, “or you will bookings.”
“Father!”
“I mean, it’s all right as as it goes, but it’s of monotonous. Besides, one of you ought to be questions and the other answering. Bill ought to be saying, ‘Who was that lady I saw you the with?’ so that you would be able to say, ‘That wasn’t a lady. That was my wife.’ I know! I’ve been to of shows.”
Bill his attitude. He his chest, spread his heels, and to in his abdomen.
“We’d try this another time, when we’re alone,” he said, frigidly. “I can’t do myself justice.”
“Why do you want to do justice?” asked Lucille.
“Right-o!” said Archie, affably, off his like a garment. “Rehearsal postponed. I was just old Bill through it,” he explained, “with a view to him into mid-season for the old pater.”
“Oh!” Lucille’s voice was the voice of one who sees light in darkness. “When Bill walked in like a cat on and there looking stuffed, that was just the Personality That Wins!”
“That was it.”
“Well, you couldn’t me for not it, you?”
Archie her paternally.
“A little less of the stuff,” he said. “Bill will be all right on the night. If you hadn’t come in then and put him off his stroke, he’d have out some stuff, full of authority and and what not. I tell you, light of my soul, old Bill is all right! He’s got the up a tree, he wants to go and it. Speaking as his and trainer, I think he’ll your father his little finger. Absolutely! It wouldn’t me if at the end of five minutes the good old started jumping through and up for of sugar.”
“It would me.”
“Ah, that’s you haven’t old Bill in action. You his act he had to spread himself.”
“It isn’t that at all. The why I think that Bill, his may be, won’t father to let him a girl in the is something that last night.”
“Last night?”
“Well, at three o’clock this morning. It’s on the page of the early of the papers. I one in for you to see, only you were so busy. Look! There it is!”
Archie the paper.
“Oh, Great Scot!”
“What is it?” asked Bill, irritably. “Don’t there! What the is it?”
“Listen to this, old thing!”
REVELRY BY NIGHT.
SPIRITED BATTLE ROYAL AT HOTEL
COSMOPOLIS.
THE HOTEL DETECTIVE HAD A GOOD HEART
BUT PAULINE PACKED THE PUNCH.
The logical for Jack Dempsey’s has been discovered; and, in an age where are men’s jobs all the time, it will not come as a to our readers to learn that she to the that is more than the male. Her name is Miss Pauline Preston, and her is for under oath—under many oaths—by Mr. Timothy O’Neill, to his as Pie-Face, who the job of at the Hotel Cosmopolis.
At three o’clock this morning, Mr. O’Neill was by the night-clerk that the of every room of number 618 had ’phoned the to complain of a disturbance, a noise, a from the room mentioned. Thither, therefore, Mr. O’Neill, his full of cheese-sandwich, (for he had been in an early or a late supper) and his of to duty. He there the Misses Pauline Preston and “Bobbie” St. Clair, of the of the of the Frivolities, a friends of either sex. A time was being had by all, and at the moment of Mr. O’Neill’s entry the entire of the company was with that ballad, “There’s a Place For Me In Heaven, For My Baby-Boy Is There.”
The able and officer at once that there was a place for them in the and the patrol-wagon was there; and, being a man of action as well as words, to up an of guests as a to a personally-conducted onto the cold night. It was at this point that Miss Preston into the limelight. Mr. O’Neill that she him with a brick, an iron casing, and the Singer Building. Be that as it may, her were able to him to retire for reinforcements, which, arriving, the supper-party of age or sex.
At the police-court this Miss Preston that she and her friends were having a home-evening and that Mr. O’Neill was no gentleman. The male guests gave their names as Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd-George, and William J. Bryan. These, however, are to be incorrect. But the is, if you want than sleep, at the Hotel Cosmopolis.
Bill may have as he to this but he was unmoved.
“Well,” he said, “what about it?”
“What about it!” said Lucille.
“What about it!” said Archie. “Why, my dear old friend, it means that all the time we’ve been in making your has been away. Absolutely a loss! We might just as well have read a manual on how to sweaters.”
“I don’t see it,” Bill, stoutly.
Lucille to her husband.
“You mustn’t judge me by him, Archie, darling. This of thing doesn’t in the family.-We are to be on the whole. But Bill was by his nurse when he was a baby, and on his head.”
“I what you’re at,” said the Bill, “is that what has will make father against girls who to be in the chorus?”
“That’s it, old thing, I’m sorry to say. The next person who the word chorus-girl in the old governor’s presence is going to take his life in his hands. I tell you, as one man to another, that I’d much be in France over the top than do it myself.”
“What nonsense! Mabel may be in the chorus, but she isn’t like those girls.”
“Poor old Bill!” said Lucille. “I’m sorry, but it’s no use not facts. You know perfectly well that the of the hotel is the thing father more about than anything else in the world, and that this is going to make him with all the chorus-girls in creation. It’s no good trying to to him that your Mabel is in the but not of the chorus, so to speak.”
“Deuced well put!” said Archie, approvingly. “You’re right. A chorus-girl by the river’s brim, so to speak, a chorus-girl is to him, as it were, and she is nothing more, if you know what I mean.”
“So now,” said Lucille, “having you that the which you with my well-meaning husband is no good at all, I will you of cheer. Your own original plan—of your Mabel a part in a comedy—was always the best one. And you can do it. I wouldn’t have the news so if I hadn’t had some to give you afterwards. I met Reggie Tuyl just now, about as if the of the world were on his shoulders, and he told me that he was up most of the money for a new play that’s going into right away. Reggie’s an old friend of yours. All you have to do is to go to him and ask him to use his to your Mabel a small part. There’s sure to be a or something with only a line or two that won’t matter.”
“A scheme!” said Archie. “Very and fruity!”
The cloud did not from Bill’s brow.
“That’s all very well,” he said. “But you know what a Reggie is. He’s an of chump, but his tongue’s on at the middle and at ends. I don’t want the whole of New York to know about my engagement, and have somebody the news to father, I’m ready.”
“That’s all right,” said Lucille. “Archie can speak to him. There’s no need for him to mention your name at all. He can just say there’s a girl he wants to a part for. You would do it, wouldn’t you, angel-face?”
“Like a bird, queen of my soul.”
“Then that’s splendid. You’d give Archie that photograph of Mabel to give to Reggie, Bill.”
“Photograph?” said Bill. “Which photograph? I have twenty-four!”
Archie Reggie Tuyl in a window of his that looked over Fifth Avenue. Reggie was a man who from of the bank-roll and the other that from that complaint. Gentle and by nature, his had been much by with a world; and the thing that had Archie to him was the that the latter, though hard-up, had any attempt to borrow money from him. Reggie would have with it on demand, but it had him to that Archie to take a in his without having any motives. He was of Archie, and also of Lucille; and their happy marriage was a of to him.
For Reggie was a sentimentalist. He would have liked to live in a world of couples, himself to some and girl. But, as a of cold fact, he was a bachelor, and most of the he were of divorces. In Reggie’s circle, therefore, the home-life of Archie and Lucille like a good in a world. It him. In moments of it his in nature.
Consequently, when Archie, having him and into a chair at his side, produced from his pocket the photograph of an girl and asked him to her a small part in the play which he was financing, he was and disappointed. He was in a more than mood that afternoon, and had, indeed, at the moment of Archie’s arrival, been of soft arms about his and the of little and all that of thing.-He at Archie.
“Archie!” his voice with emotion. “Is it it?, is it it, old man?-Think of the little woman at home!”
Archie was puzzled.
“Eh, old top? Which little woman?”
“Think of her trust in you, her faith—“.
“I don’t you, old bean.”
“What would Lucille say if she about this?”
“Oh, she does. She all about it.”
“Good heavens!” Reggie. He was to the of his being. One of the articles of his was that the of Lucille and Archie was different from those partnerships which were the in his world. He had not been of such a that the of the were and and that there was no light and in life since the morning, eighteen months back, when a had sent him out into Fifth Avenue with only one on.
“It was Lucille’s idea,” Archie. He was about to mention his brother-in-law’s with the matter, but himself in time, Bill’s to having his to Reggie. “It’s like this, old thing, I’ve met this female, but she’s a of Lucille’s”—he his by the that, if she wasn’t now, she would be in a days-“and Lucille wants to do her a of good. She’s been on the stage in England, you know, supporting a old mother and a little and all that and of rot, you understand, and now she’s over to America, and Lucille wants you to and her into your and keep the home and so forth. How do we go?”
Reggie with relief. He just as he had on that other occasion at the moment when a taxi-cab had rolled up and him to his leg from the public gaze.
“Oh, I see!” he said. “Why, delighted, old man, delighted!”
“Any small part would do. Isn’t there a or something in your bob’s-worth of who about saying, ‘Yes, madam,’ and all that of thing? Well, then that’s just the thing. Topping! I I on you, old bird. I’ll Lucille to ship her to your address when she arrives. I she’s to in in the next days. Well, I must be popping. Toodle-oo!”
“Pip-pip!” said Reggie.
It was about a week later that Lucille came into the at the Hotel Cosmopolis that was her home, and Archie on the couch, a pipe after the of the day. It to Archie that his wife was not in her of mind. He her, and, having her of her parasol, without success to it on his chin. Having it up from the and it on the table, he aware that Lucille was looking at him in a of way. Her were clouded.
“Halloa, old thing,” said Archie. “What’s up?”
Lucille wearily.
“Archie, darling, do you know any good swear-words?”
“Well,” said Archie, reflectively, “let me see. I did up a and out in France. All through my career there was something about me—some magnetism, don’t you know, and that of thing—that to make and of that order inventive. I of them, don’t you know. I one brass-hat me for ten minutes, saying something new all the time. And then he to think he had only touched the of the subject. As a of fact, he said out in the most and way that couldn’t do to me. But why?”
“Because I want to my feelings.”
“Anything wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong. I’ve just been having tea with Bill and his Mabel.”
“Oh, ah!” said Archie, interested. “And what’s the verdict?”
“Guilty!” said Lucille. “And the sentence, if I had anything to do with it, would be for life.” She off her irritably. “What men are! Not you, precious! You’re the only man in the world that isn’t, it to me. You did a girl, didn’t you? You didn’t go after with hair, at them with your out of your like a waiting for a bone.”
“Oh, I say! Does old Bill look like that?”
“Worse!”
Archie rose to a point of order.
“But one moment, old lady. You speak of hair. Surely old Bill—in the he used to deliver I didn’t see him and he got me alone—used to to her as brown.”
“It isn’t now. It’s scarlet. Good gracious, I ought to know. I’ve been looking at it all the afternoon. It me. If I’ve got to meet her again, I to go to the oculist’s and a pair of those you wear at Palm Beach.” Lucille for a while over the tragedy. “I don’t want to say anything against her, of course.”
“No, no, of not.”
“But of all the awful, second-rate girls I met, she’s the worst! She has and an Oxford manner. She’s so that it’s to to her. She’s a sly, creepy, slinky, made-up, vampire! She’s common! She’s awful! She’s a cat!”
“You’re right not to say anything against her,” said Archie, approvingly. “It to look,” he on, “as if the good old pater was about for another shock. He has a hard life!”
“If Bill to that girl to father, he’s taking his life in his hands.”
“But surely that was the idea—the scheme—the wheeze, wasn’t it? Or do you think there’s any of his weakening?”
“Weakening! You should have him looking at her! It was like a small boy his nose against the window of a candy-store.”
“Bit thick!”
Lucille the leg of the table.
“And to think,” she said, “that, when I was a little girl, I used to look up to Bill as a of wisdom. I used to his and into his and wonder how anyone be so magnificent.” She gave the table another kick. “If I have looked into the future,” she said, with feeling, “I’d have him in the ankle!”
In the days which followed, Archie himself a little out of touch with Bill and his romance. Lucille to the only when he the up, and it plain that the of her sister-in-law was not one which she discussing. Mr. Brewster, senior, when Archie, by way of preparing his mind for what was about to befall, asked him if he liked red hair, called him a fool, and told him to go away and someone else when they were busy. The only person who have him of the of was Bill himself; and had Archie in the of meeting Bill. The position of to a man in the early of love is no sinecure, and it Archie to think of having to talk to his brother-in-law. He his love-lorn relative, and it was with a one day that, looking over his as he sat in the Cosmopolis grill-room to ordering lunch, he Bill upon him, upon joining his meal.
To his surprise, however, Bill did not upon his monologue. Indeed, he spoke at all. He a chop, and to Archie to avoid his eye. It was not till was over and they were that he himself.
“Archie!” he said.
“Hallo, old thing!” said Archie. “Still there? I you’d died or something. Talk about our old pals, Tongue-tied Thomas and Silent Sammy! You ’em on the same evening.”
“It’s to make me silent.”
“What is?”
Bill had into a of dream. He sat sombrely, to the world. Archie, having waited what to him a length of time for an answer to his question, and touched his brother-in-law’s hand with the end of his cigar. Bill came to himself with a howl.
“What is?” said Archie.
“What is what?” said Bill.
“Now listen, old thing,” Archie. “Life is and time is flying. Suppose we cut out the cross-talk. You there was something on your mind—something the old bean—and I’m waiting to what it is.”
Bill a moment with his coffee-spoon.
“I’m in an hole,” he said at last.
“What’s the trouble?”
“It’s about that girl!”
Archie blinked.
“What!”
“That girl!”
Archie his senses. He had been prepared—indeed, he had himself—to Bill to his in a number of ways. But “that girl” was not one of them.
“Companion of my years,” he said, “let’s this thing straight. When you say ‘that girl,’ do you by any possibility to—?”
“Of I do!”
“But, William, old bird—”
“Oh, I know, I know, I know!” said Bill, irritably. “You’re to me talk like that about her?”
“A trifle, yes. Possibly a trifle. When last from, laddie, you must recollect, you were speaking of the lady as your soul-mate, and at least once—if I rightly—you to her as your little dusky-haired lamb.”
A Bill.
“Don’t!” A his frame. “Don’t me of it!”
“There’s been a of slump, then, in dusky-haired lambs?”
“How,” Bill, savagely, “can a girl be a dusky-haired when her hair’s scarlet?”
“Dashed difficult!” Archie.
“I Lucille told you about that?”
“She did touch on it. Lightly, as it were. With a of touch, so to speak.”
Bill off the last of reserve.
“Archie, I’m in the of a fix. I don’t know why it was, but directly I saw her—things so different over in England—I mean.” He ice-water in gulps. “I it was her with Lucille. Old Lu is such a thoroughbred. Seemed to of her up. Like pearls by the of pearls. And that hair! It of put the on it.” Bill morosely. “It ought to be a for to their hair. Especially red. What the do do that of thing for?”
“Don’t me, old thing. It’s not my fault.”
Bill looked and harassed.
“It makes me such a cad. Here am I, that I would give all I’ve got in the world to out of the thing, and all the time the girl to be of me than ever.”
“How do you know?” Archie his brother-in-law critically. “Perhaps her have too. Very possibly she may not like the colour of your hair. I don’t myself. Now if you were to crimson—”
“Oh, up! Of a man when a girl’s of him.”
“By no means, laddie. When you’re my age—”
“I am your age.”
“So you are! I that. Well, now, the from another angle, let us suppose, old son, that Miss What’s-Her-Name—the party of the second part—”
“Stop it!” said Bill suddenly. “Here comes Reggie!”
“Eh?”
“Here comes Reggie Tuyl. I don’t want him to us talking about the thing.”
Archie looked over his and that it was so. Reggie was his way among the tables.
“Well, he looks pleased with things, anyway,” said Bill, enviously. “Glad somebody’s happy.”
He was right. Reggie Tuyl’s mode of progress through a restaurant was a slouch. Now he was positively along. Furthermore, the on Reggie’s was a sadness. Now he and with animation. He their table, and erect, his up, his level, and his expanded, for all the world as if he had been reading the in The Personality That Wins.
Archie was puzzled. Something had to Reggie. But what? It was to that somebody had left him money, for he had been left all the money there was a of ten years before.
“Hallo, old bean,” he said, as the new-comer, good will and bonhomie, at the table and over it like a noon-day sun. “We’ve finished. But and we’ll watch you eat. Dashed interesting, old Reggie eat. Why go to the Zoo?”
Reggie his head.
“Sorry, old man. Can’t. Just on my way to the Ritz. Stepped in I you might be here. I wanted you to be the to the news.”
“News?”
“I’m the man alive!”
“You look it, you!” Bill, on mood of this was heavily.
“I’m to be married!”
“Congratulations, old egg!” Archie his hand cordially. “Dash it, don’t you know, as an old married man I like to see you settling down.”
“I don’t know how to thank you enough, Archie, old man,” said Reggie, fervently.
“Thank me?”
“It was through you that I met her. Don’t you the girl you sent to me? You wanted me to her a small part—”
He stopped, puzzled. Archie had a that was and gurgle, but it was up in the noise from the other of the table. Bill Brewster was with and eyebrows.
“Are you to Mabel Winchester?”
“Why, by George!” said Reggie. “Do you know her?”
Archie himself.
“Slightly,” he said. “Slightly. Old Bill her slightly, as it were. Not very well, don’t you know, but—how shall I put it?”
“Slightly,” Bill.
“Just the word. Slightly.”
“Splendid!” said Reggie Tuyl. “Why don’t you come along to the Ritz and meet her now?”
Bill stammered. Archie came to the again.
“Bill can’t come now. He’s got a date.”
“A date?” said Bill.
“A date,” said Archie. “An appointment, don’t you know. A—a—in fact, a date.”
“But—er—wish her from me,” said Bill, cordially.
“Thanks very much, old man,” said Reggie.
“And say I’m delighted, will you?”
“Certainly.”
“You won’t the word, will you? Delighted.”
“Delighted.”
“That’s right. Delighted.”
Reggie looked at his watch.
“Halloa! I must rush!”
Bill and Archie him as he out of the restaurant.
“Poor old Reggie!” said Bill, with a compunction.
“Not necessarily,” said Archie. “What I to say is, tastes differ, don’t you know. One man’s is another man’s poison, and versa.”
“There’s something in that.”
“Absolutely! Well,” said Archie, judicially, “this would appear to be, as it were, the maddest, day in all the New Year, yes, no?”
Bill a breath.
“You your it is!” he said. “I’d like to do something to it.”
“The right spirit!” said Archie. “Absolutely the right spirit! Begin by paying for my lunch!”
