The Four Philanthropists/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
BOTTIGER'S PHILANTHROPIC INSPIRATION
I found myself too busy for some time with the task of attending, in the proper, brotherly fashion, to the work of broadening Angel's mind by a careful study of the picture galleries, architecture and theatres of London, to give the time to philanthropy I ought to have done. I questioned heirs but rarely. But in Chelubai and Bottiger philanthropy seemed to have grown a veritable passion, for they were continually sounding before. They made inquiries of them about the people from whom they were due to inherit, about their characters and tastes and the part they were playing in the world, whether it was good or evil. Also they inquired, with I hoped sufficient caution, of the heirs themselves whether they felt inclined to subscribe to the great Cause of Human progress, in the event of a speedy and unexpected inheritance. These inquiries were singularly unfruitful; Chelubai and Bottiger complained that they were everywhere hampered by false sentiment and a distressing timidity. For my part, I was inclined to suspect a lack of tactfulness in the inquiries, since one day Chelubai came to me in a fuming indignation because a middle-aged clerk in the Bank of England had asked him if he took him for a murderer.
I let Chelubai unload his overburdened soul. Then I said: "I'm afraid you must have put it to him very badly, if he could so misunderstand you."
"Perhaps I did. Perhaps I did," said Chelubai. "But that's the worst of enthusiasm—one gets carried away."
"You ought not to. You have had a business training; and if it is not as absolutely useless as I have always suspected, it ought to have taught you restraint."
"I suppose it ought," said Chelubai.
"Of course when one thinks of Humanity, one is apt to get carried away," I said. "But I think when you are sounding an heir you should try to persuade yourself that you are not engaged in a glorious philanthropic enterprise, but merely in a cold business transaction. Then you would keep cool, and not lay yourself open to misconception."
"But one gets enthusiastic in business, too," said Chelubai.
"A morbid enthusiasm—and not to the same extent as in philanthropy," said I.
"That's true. I'll try going more gently, any way," said Chelubai; and he seemed comforted by my suggestion.
The next day he put my point of view to Bottiger, and I think they decided to give gentler enthusiasm a trial. If they did, it proved barren of results.
One evening I was returning their hospitality to Angel and myself during the black fortnight when I had been short of money, by giving them a dinner at the Savoy, and they came to it in very poor tempers. Chelubai was fuming; Bottiger was brick-red with fury. It came out that they had fallen victims to Sir Reginald Blackthwaite; they had in turn been his partner at bridge for two rubbers. Sir Reginald Blackthwaite is the club bore, and probably the worst bridge player in Europe. He is a round, tubby man of forty-five, provided with an inexhaustible fund of tedious anecdote. He insists on thrusting his victims into corners and flooding their dazed brains with his interminable views on the fiscal question. He suffers, too, from that debased form of humor which finds expression in punning, and he greets each of its efforts with a bleating gurgle, which in him does duty for a laugh.
Chelubai and Bottiger burst out upon us together with the recital of the horrible fate which had befallen them. There was nothing Sir Reginald had not done. He had revoked, he had trumped their best cards, he had declared spades when he should have declared no trumps, he had declared no trumps when he should have declared spades.
"He is the limit!" cried Chelubai furiously.
"He wants his neck wringing!" cried Bottiger, with greater fury.
They paused for want of breath, and we expressed our deep sympathy with them. Indeed, I had never seen either of them so moved. The beads of sweat stood on Chelubai's lofty brow; Bottiger's eyes were slightly bloodshot.
Then Bottiger said, "That's an enemy of Humanity, if you like!"
"His removal would be a boon to the human race," said Chelubai, with fervent ardor.
As a bridge player, and one who had suffered from Sir Reginald, I sympathized with them, and I listened with complacency while they debated several painful methods of removing him. It cooled their wrath, and I made haste to change the subject. Bitter as their wrongs had been, I could not let them spoil Angel's evening.
I thought no more of the matter for some days. Then one afternoon Chelubai took Angel to a matinée, and Bottiger and I went to the Warwickshire to play bridge. We were playing together in a rubber, and Noel Blackthwaite, Sir Reginald Blackthwaite's nephew and heir, was my partner. Presently Sir Reginald himself came in and toddled—though but fifty-five he had already reached the toddling age—up to the table. It is a mistake for a man and his heir to belong to the same club, and Noel and Sir Reginald often bickered freely, with a family frankness, which I found engaging but other members annoying. Noel's bitterness against his uncle was the fruit of the dinners with him—he could not shirk them—at which he had to listen, with a show of intelligent interest, to his uncle's views on the fiscal question.
At once Sir Reginald began to criticise Noel's play. His criticisms were delivered with the air of an expert and were utterly absurd. Noel's eyes began to sparkle, and a dusky redness mantled his cheeks and chin. He contradicted his uncle four times flatly. Then Sir Reginald came into the rubber, and he and Noel cut as partners. Sir Reginald's play always afflicts me with a dazed amazement which puts me off my game. He played two hands with a masterly imbecility which gave us a large rubber. His nephew criticised his play in every hand with an infuriated bitterness; he criticised his nephew's play with an expert's haughty superiority. Their faces warmed slowly to an even tint of purple.
At the end of the rubber, Sir Reginald said: "I would sooner play with a congenital idiot," rose and toddled haughtily out of the room.
Noel looked after him, and gasped. Only his youth saved him from an apoplectic seizure. "I—I'm hanged if ever I play with the old idiot again!" he said.
Suddenly I saw Bottiger's honest English face brighten with an almost continental intelligence, and he said to Noel, with a curious eager air, "The old man is breaking up fast."
"Breaking up fast!" cried Noel. "He's as strong as a horse!"
"He's not long for this world; he has changed very much lately," said Bottiger obstinately.
"Rubbish!" cried Noel. "I never saw him look better. He—he's good for—for another twenty years!"
"He won't be alive three months from to-day," said Bottiger, looking more like an aggravating mule than a fine upstanding young Englishman.
The exasperated Noel snorted like a war-horse in his wrath. "Look here!" he cried. "I—I'll bet you five thousand to a tenner that he is!"
"Done!" said Bottiger quietly. "Let's see—to-day's the twenty-fifth, isn't it!" And he entered the bet in his betting book.
"When you two have quite finished, we might play bridge," said the man whom Sir Reginald had cut out of the table.
We began another rubber.
I had not paid any great attention to the bet. Men are always making silly bets, and Bottiger will bet about anything. But I observed that he showed a very fine conceit of himself for the rest of the afternoon. He came back with me to the Temple, where we found Angel and Chelubai awaiting my return.
When we came into the room, his first words were, "I've got another job for the Company."
"Good!" said Chelubai, and Bottiger broke into the triumphant narration of the incident of the bet.
I was taken aback, but at the end of it Chelubai said, with cold ferocity, "I don't think there's a man in England I should have greater pleasure in removing."
"Oh, come," I protested. "You're not going seriously to maintain that that old blatherer Blackthwaite is an enemy of Humanity?"
"Not an enemy of Humanity? You should have seen him trump my nine of spades last Friday," said Chelubai.
"You should have seen the no-trumper he declared on Monday," said Bottiger.
There was a baleful glare in their eyes.
"Has he ever talked to you about the fiscal question?" said Chelubai.
"He has to me," said Bottiger, and he laughed horribly.
"This is a very reprehensible spirit," I said firmly. "You propose to divert an organization formed for the deliverance of Humanity to the destruction of your private enemies."
"Ain't I a part of Humanity? That's what I want to know," said Bottiger.
"Consider the evil passions he arouses, not only in us but in every one at the club, in the card-room and out of it. A man who arouses passions of that kind and injures noble natures is an enemy of Humanity," said Chelubai solemnly.
"And you call yourself a Socialist!" sneered Bottiger.
"The Socialist abhors violence," I said quickly. "I don't consider him sufficiently an enemy of Humanity to make him a fitting job for the Company."
"That's for the majority of the Directors to decide," said Chelubai. "Bottiger and I are in favor of it. What do you say, Miss Brand?"
"I vote with Roger," said Angel quickly.
"Sakes alive!" said Chelubai. "If we haven't forgotten to make provision for a casting vote when the Directors are equally divided on a point!"
They were silent a while, considering the deadlock. I filled a pipe and lighted it.
Then Chelubai said plaintively: "I can't understand your opposition, Roger. You wouldn't let us run our scheme on pure romantic lines. You would have made it practical, as a means of collecting contributions to your hospital. Now here's five thousand good pounds for your hospital, and you kick."
"I don't think Sir Reginald sufficiently an enemy of Humanity to justify our removing him even to get five thousand pounds for the Children's Hospital," I said firmly; and from that standpoint I would not budge.
Chelubai argued with me; Bottiger blustered at me. I remained unshaken.
At last Chelubai said thoughtfully: "If it were ten thousand pounds for your hospital, I reckon you'd climb down and come in with us."
"Well, I admit that that would be a temptation that might break me down. Thank goodness, it isn't ten thousand pounds," I said.
"I see," said Chelubai, still thoughtful; and presently they took their leave coldly.
I was not long learning that we had not done with Sir Reginald Blackthwaite. I found myself up against the American keenness of Chelubai and Bottiger's dogged English tenacity. Indeed, Bottiger's enthusiasm to rid the European section of Humanity of its worst bridge player transformed him. He became a sleuth-hound, dogging the toddle of the unconscious Sir Reginald, in a passionate hope of discovering that he was the prey of some Platonic attachment, which would bring him into a quiet corner to be knocked on the head at midnight
Bottiger insisted on imparting to me the fruits of his research. I learned that Sir Reginald was a man of most regular habits; at noon every day he left his house in Berkeley Square, sauntered down to Piccadilly, along it, up the left-hand side of Regent Street, and down the right-hand side of it. All the way he ogled every pretty woman he met, with unflagging but bootless perseverance. Now and again he would turn and follow one for fifty or a hundred yards, toddling himself along with the air of a dauntless buck of a fortunately bygone age, his face shining with a captivating, infantine smile to which his faultless false teeth lent a brilliant radiance. This walk, with these engaging breaks in it, took him an hour and a half; and at half-past one he was at the entrance to the Café Royal. There he made a lengthy, generous lunch, drinking with it a bottle of champagne, and after it two or three liqueur brandies. At half-past three he lighted his second cigar, paid his bill, came out and went for a drive. He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at the club, and went to bed at half-past ten.
Bottiger plied me with these details of Sir Reginald's wasted life that, by presenting him to me as a worthless member of society, he might weaken my reluctance to removing him. He enlarged with simple eloquence on the horrors of gluttony and the captivating process in a man of Sir Reginald's age. I listened to his diatribes with patient politeness. Presently I found that his temper towards his proposed prey was growing worse, since Sir Reginald's habit of keeping early hours made it very difficult to find a reasonable opportunity for his removal. To Bottiger he assumed the forbidding appearance of a stubborn enemy impregnably entrenched behind the gas lamps of London.
Chelubai's method of overcoming my resolution was different. He nagged and nagged. He nagged at me about my blindness to the claims of Humanity; he nagged at me about my forgetfulness of the sick children, and he nagged at me for "gagging the dictates"—his own phrases—of my better nature. I often pained him by my truculence.
I withstood their efforts, and my resolution would have remained unbroken, for all my sympathy with their just wrongs as bridge players, had not Sir Reginald himself sapped it. By some accident Angel and I chanced to be lunching at the Café Royal.
In the middle of lunch she said: "There's such a funny old gentleman sitting behind you, and he keeps looking at me in the funniest way. I think his eyes are coming out of his head."
I turned, frowning, and looked into the chubby face of Sir Reginald Blackthwaite.
"How are you, Brand? How are you?" he said, with a geniality I found excessive and with a smile beyond words ingratiating.
"How are you?" I said, as civilly as I could, and I turned to my food.
"That's the bone of contention. That's the man who is splitting the Company and undermining the friendship of years—that's Sir Reginald Blackthwaite," I said to Angel, in a low voice.
"Oh, is it?" she said; and she looked at him with greater interest.
I gave him no more thought, but suddenly I perceived a very mischievous expression on Angel's face, and then I distinctly saw her employed in a languishing glance.
"Good heavens!" I said. "Are you making eyes at that old terror?"
"Oh, Roger, you know I wouldn't make eyes at any one! I wouldn't do anything so horrid!" she said plaintively.
"Of course not," I said, in a tone of utter disbelief, for I saw the corners of her mouth quiver with a repressed smile.
"You don't believe me. You're very distrustful," she wailed.
"Not at all. Mine is an ingenuous nature," I said peacefully.
She accepted the admission with suspicious haste, and turned indifferent eyes to Sir Reginald for the rest of lunch.
But the harm was done. I was just about to order coffee, when Sir Reginald asked if he might drink his at our table. It was impossible to refuse, since Angel was but my sister, and he came. He proceeded to placate any resentment I might feel by forcing upon me an excellent cigar and insisting on our having some old Grand Marnier, which he assured us the restaurant was keeping for him alone, since it had but a few bottles left. It was his privilege as one of its oldest habitués. Then he devoted himself to Angel. She was the very creature to be immeasurably attractive to the impressionable age of fifty-five, and I was very soon assured that with him it was a case of love at first sight. He set about the captivating process hammer and tongs. He worked the witty and gallant scheme for all it was worth. He told her long and pointless stories, punctuating them with appreciative chuckles; he made puns to her, and followed each with his gurgling bleat. At the end of half an hour she was casting appealing looks for help to me. She did not get any. She had brought him on herself; and, besides, it amused me to watch his burbling.
At the end of an hour, however, I relented, and snatched her from his grip. As she came out of the restaurant with a dazed air, she said softly: "I—I think I understand why Mr. Kearsage and Sir Ralph are so keen on removing him."
I said nothing.
That night Chelubai said to me with a thoughtful air, "Sir Reginald Blackthwaite seems very much struck by your sister."
"He does," said I.
He remained thoughtful; but I suspected nothing. The next afternoon he brought Sir Reginald round to the Temple to tea and bridge. It was the act of a Machiavel. I saw his purpose at once; he meant Sir Reginald to inspire into us such a loathing that we, too, should grow eager for his removal. Sir Reginald gave him his best help: it was an afternoon, and it was bridge.
That was only the beginning. The next fortnight was a nightmare of Sir Reginald. He came to tea and bridge with a firm regularity no snubs could break. He made us lunch with him, he made us dine with him, he even set about widening Angel's life by imparting to her his views on the fiscal question. He was our Old Man of the Sea; we began to feel that we were justified in taking any measures to be rid of him. He was sweeping me off my moral legs.
At last I weakened. I told Chelubai and Bottiger that if they could find a way of getting another five thousand pounds out of his removal for my Children's Hospital I would withdraw my opposition to the job.
Chelubai found the way. The very next day Sir Reginald was taking a voluble tea with us, and the talk fell on the making of wills. We learned, and goodness knows we had no desire to learn it, that Sir Reginald was in the throes of making his will. He described each throe to us twice, at length. Chelubai at once went into the matter of charitable bequests, and advocated with passionate warmth the claims of my Children's Hospital. His earnestness impressed Sir Reginald deeply; he agreed to leave five thousand pounds to it. It left us nothing to do but to remove him.
Had it not been that I felt that Chelubai had worsted me, I should have gone about the business with enthusiasm, so deep was the impression Sir Reginald had made upon me; as it was I went about it in a grudging spirit. Not even the thought of the £10,000 for the Children's Hospital quite cheered me.
Since his regular habits and his early hours rendered London unfit for his removal, our thoughts turned to the country. His habit of driving every afternoon relieved us of the necessity of luring him into it, and we resolved to avail ourselves of those drives to compass our end. One night he took Angel and me to the theatre. During an interval between the acts, Angel complained with no little bitterness, and perfect truth, of the stuffiness of London, and declared her longing to get oftener into the freshness of the country. I said that she must have a bicycle; but Sir Reginald saw his chance, and broke in: "Why not come for a drive? I should be delighted to drive you out twenty miles or so, have lunch somewhere, and drive you back? It would be as pleasant a way of spending a day as I know. Besides, you'd be doing me a service—you would, really. I need fresh air, and I am so tired of driving out by myself. You'd be surprised how people stick to this stuffy town. I can't get any one to drive with me. I can't really."
Angel and I looked at one another—a queer look, I fancy.
"Yes, I should like it. It would be a relief," said Angel, with an excellent show of eagerness.
Accordingly, we arranged to drive out with him on the following Thursday. When Chelubai and Bottiger heard of the arrangement they agreed with me that we must try and arrange a carriage accident. On the Thursday we drove to Richmond. November is no month for driving in, and we started in a thin yellowish fog, and since we drove through the low, damp country south of London, it stayed with us all the way, only changing here and there to a dirty gray. However, thanks to her genuine passion for the poisonous country air. Angel enjoyed the drive; and since she sat beside him on the box and talked to him, or rather he talked indef atigably to her, Sir Reginald enjoyed it too. I, sitting in the back of the phaeton beside an unusually stolid groom, was alone bored, and I could not comfort myself with the thought that my time was well spent, for carefully as I considered every part of the road, I could find no spot suited to a quiet, uninterrupted carriage accident of which we might take advantage to remove Sir Reginald.
When I told the company that night of this unfortunate disadvantage of the road to Richmond, Bottiger suggested that we should propose drives to the north of London, where the peaceful and deserted lanes of Hertfordshire would afford far greater advantages. He said that the village of Aldley on the Hill was affected somewhat by sightseers, since the view from the top of its church tower embraced a stretch of five counties.
"It sounds promising," I said. "We might throw him over the parapet. And at any rate we should get him away from the groom, who is not at all a fit person to remove, for he's an honest fellow with a wife and nine children dependent upon him."
"I don't see that he's an unfit person to remove at all!" said Chelubai quickly. "He's been guilty of over-populating the world!"
"You're too quick to catch at straws to serve your philanthropic purpose," I said severely, "I don't approve of removing the unobjectionable, and I'm sure that Angel doesn't."
"Certainly not. He looks a very respectable man," said Angel.
"Besides, a double removal at least quadruples the risk," I said. "However, it is plain that we must move slowly. The church tower at Aldley sounds indeed promising, but we must first drive there, and make a preliminary exploration of its conveniences."
"That means that your unfortunate sister will have to endure more of the society of that old terror," said Bottiger. "I tell you, it's very hard on her."
"Oh, I can stand it—if only it's going to be put a stop to, once and for all, very soon," said Angel, with a resigned air.
"We must not grudge the poor old fellow the gladdening of his last days by a few drives with my sister," I said.
"Poor old fellow! Unmitigated old ruffian! He declared diamonds on four to the queen at love—all yesterday!" cried Bottiger.
When Bottiger grows rabid about anything, he is touchy.