Her voice broke. She was sobbing helplessly. The memory of it was too raw and vivid.
Mr Warden stood motionless. Many emotions raced through his mind, but chief among them the thought that this revelation had come at a very fortunate time. An exceedingly lucky escape, he felt. He was aware, also, of a certain measure of indignation against this deceitful young man who had fraudulently imitated a gold-mine with what might have been disastrous results.
The door opened and Jeanne, the maid-of-all-work, announced Mr Vince.
He entered the room briskly.
'Good evening!' he said. 'I have brought you some more chocolates, Miss Warden, and some fruit. Great Scott! What's the matter?'
He stopped, but only for an instant. The next he had darted across the room, and, before the horrified eyes of Mr Warden, was holding Ruth in his arms. She clung to him.
Bill, the fox-terrier, over whom Mr Vince had happened to stumble, was the first to speak. Almost simultaneously Mr Warden joined in, and there was a striking similarity between the two voices, for Mr Warden, searching for words, emitted as a preliminary to them a sort of passionate yelp.
Mr Vince removed the hand that was patting Ruth's shoulder and waved it reassuringly at him.
'It's all right,' he said.
'All right! All _right_!'
'Affinities,' explained Mr Vince over his shoulder. 'Two hearts that beat as one. We're going to be married. What's the matter, dear? Don't you worry; you're all right.'
'I refuse!' shouted Mr Warden. 'I absolutely refuse.'
Mr Vince lowered Ruth gently into a chair and, holding her hand, inspected the fermenting old gentleman gravely.
'You refuse?' he said. 'Why, I thought you liked me.'
Mr Warden's frenzy had cooled. It had been something foreign to his nature. He regretted it. These things had to be managed with restraint.
'My personal likes and dislikes,' he said, 'have nothing to do with the matter, Mr Vince. They are beside the point. I have my daughter to consider. I cannot allow her to marry a man without a penny.'
'Quite right,' said Mr Vince, approvingly. 'Don't have anything to do with the fellow. If he tries to butt in, send for the police.'
Mr Warden hesitated. He had always been a little ashamed of Ruth's occupation. But necessity compelled.
'Mr Vince, my daughter is employed at the _mont-de-piete,_ and was a witness to all that took place this afternoon.'
Mr Vince was genuinely agitated. He looked at Ruth, his face full of concern.
'You don't mean to say you have been slaving away in that stuffy--Great Scott! I'll have you out of that quick. You mustn't go there again.'
He stooped and kissed her.
'Perhaps you had better let me explain,' he said. 'Explanations, I always think, are the zero on the roulette-board of life. They're always somewhere about, waiting to pop up. Have you ever heard of Vince's Stores, Mr Warden? Perhaps they are since your time. Well, my father is the proprietor. One of our specialities is children's toys, but we haven't picked a real winner for years, and my father when I last saw him seemed so distressed about it that I said I'd see if I couldn't whack out an idea for something. Something on the lines of the Billiken, only better, was what he felt he needed. I'm not used to brain work, and after a spell of it I felt I wanted a rest. I came here to recuperate, and the very first morning I got an inspiration. You may have noticed that the manager of the _mont-de-piete_ here isn't strong on conventional good looks. I saw him at the casino, and the thing flashed on me. He thinks his name's Gandinot, but it isn't. It's Uncle Zip, the Hump-Curer, the Man who Makes You Smile.'
He pressed Ruth's hand affectionately.
'I lost track of him, and it was only the day before yesterday that I discovered who he was and where he was to be found. Well, you can't go up to a man and ask him to pose as a model for Uncle Zip, the Hump-Curer. The only way to get sittings was to approach him in the way of business. So I collected what property I had and waded in. That's the whole story. Do I pass?'
Mr Warden's frosty demeanour had gradually thawed during this recital, and now the sun of his smile shone out warmly. He gripped Mr Vince's hand with every evidence of esteem, and after that he did what was certainly the best thing, by passing gently from the room. On his face, as he went, was a look such as Moses might have worn on the summit of Pisgah.
It was some twenty minutes later that Ruth made a remark.
'I want you to promise me something,' she said. 'Promise that you won't go on with that Uncle Zip drawing. I know it means ever so much money, but it might hurt poor M. Gandinot's feelings, and he has been very kind to me.'
'That settles it,' said Mr Vince. 'It's hard on the children of Great Britain, but say no more. No Uncle Zip for them.'
Ruth looked at him, almost with awe.
'You really won't go on with it? In spite of all the money you would make? Are you always going to do just what I ask you, no matter what it costs you?'
He nodded sadly.
'You have sketched out in a few words the whole policy of my married life. I feel an awful fraud. And I had encouraged you to look forward to years of incessant quarrelling. Do you think you can manage without it? I'm afraid it's going to be shockingly dull for you,' said Mr Vince, regretfully.
ARCHIBALD'S BENEFIT
Archibald Mealing was one of those golfers in whom desire outruns performance. Nobody could have been more willing than Archibald. He tried, and tried hard. Every morning before he took his bath he would stand in front of his mirror and practise swings. Every night before he went to bed he would read the golden words of some master on the subject of putting, driving, or approaching. Yet on the links most of his time was spent in retrieving lost balls or replacing America. Whether it was that Archibald pressed too much or pressed too little, whether it was that his club deviated from the dotted line which joined the two points A and B in the illustrated plate of the man making the brassy shot in the _Hints on Golf_ book, or whether it was that he was pursued by some malignant fate, I do not know. Archibald rather favoured the last theory.
The important point is that, in his thirty-first year, after six seasons of untiring effort, Archibald went in for a championship, and won it.
Archibald, mark you, whose golf was a kind of blend of hockey, Swedish drill, and buck-and-wing dancing.
I know the ordeal I must face when I make such a statement. I see clearly before me the solid phalanx of men from Missouri, some urging me to tell it to the King of Denmark, others insisting that I produce my Eskimos. Nevertheless, I do not shrink. I state once more that in his thirty-first year Archibald Mealing went in for a golf championship, and won it.
* * * * *
Archibald belonged to a select little golf club, the members of which lived and worked in New York, but played in Jersey. Men of substance, financially as well as physically, they had combined their superfluous cash and with it purchased a strip of land close to the sea. This land had been drained--to the huge discomfort of a colony of mosquitoes which had come to look on the place as their private property--and converted into links, which had become a sort of refuge for incompetent golfers. The members of the Cape Pleasant Club were easygoing refugees from other and more exacting clubs, men who pottered rather than raced round the links; men, in short, who had grown tired of having to stop their game and stand aside in order to allow perspiring experts to whiz past them. The Cape Pleasant golfers did not make themselves slaves to the game. Their language, when they foozled, was gently regretful rather than sulphurous. The moment in the day's play which they enjoyed most was when they were saying: 'Well, here's luck!' in the club-house.
It will, therefore, be readily understood that Archibald's inability to do a hole in single figures did not handicap him at Cape Pleasant as it might have done at St. Andrews. His kindly clubmates took him to their bosoms to a man, and looked on him as a brother. Archibald's was one of those admirable natures which prompt their possessor frequently to remark: 'These are on me!' and his fellow golfers were not slow to appreciate the fact. They all loved Archibald.
Archibald was on the floor of his bedroom one afternoon, picking up the fragments of his mirror--a friend had advised him to practise the Walter J. Travis lofting shot--when the telephone bell rang. He took up the receiver, and was hailed by the comfortable voice of McCay, the club secretary.
'Is that Mealing?' asked McCay. 'Say, Archie, I'm putting your name down for our championship competition. That's right, isn't it?'
'Sure,' said Archibald. 'When does it start?'
'Next Saturday.'
'That's me.'
'Good for you. Oh, Archie.'
'Hello?'
'A man I met today told me you were engaged. Is that a fact?'
'Sure,' murmured Archibald, blushfully.
The wire hummed with McCay's congratulations.
'Thanks,' said Archibald. 'Thanks, old man. What? Oh, yes. Milsom's her name. By the way, her family have taken a cottage at Cape Pleasant for the summer. Some distance from the links. Yes, very convenient, isn't it? Good-bye.'