“Mr. Bushmill,” he said with an effort, “I’ve got to speak to you alone—at once. It’s very important. I—”
Hallie jumped to her feet.
“I’ll wait with mother,” she said with a curious glance. “Hurry—both of you.”
As she left the bar, Bushmill turned to Corcoran anxiously.
“What is it?” he demanded. “What do you want to say?”
“I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to faint,” said Corcoran.
And with remarkable promptitude he did.
II
In spite of the immediate liking that Bushmill had taken to young Corcoran, a certain corroboratory investigation was, of course, necessary. The Paris branch of the New York bank that had handled the last of the half million told him what he needed to know. Corcoran was not given to drink, heavy gambling or vice; he simply spent money—that was all. Various people, including certain officers of the bank who had known his family, had tried to argue with him at one time or another, but he was apparently an incurable spendthrift. A childhood and youth in Europe with a wildly indulgent mother had somehow robbed him of all sense of value or proportion.
Satisfied, Bushmill asked no more—no one knew what had become of the money and, even if they had, a certain delicacy would have prevented him from inquiring more deeply into Corcoran’s short past. But he did take occasion to utter a few parting admonitions before the expedition boarded the train.
“I’m letting you hold the purse strings because I think you’ve learned your lesson,” he said; “but remember that this time the money isn’t your own. All that belongs to you is the seventy-five dollars a week that I pay you in salary. Every other expenditure is to be entered in that little book and shown to me.”
“I understand.”
“The first thing is to watch what you spend, and prove to me that you’ve got the common sense to profit by your mistake. The second and most important thing is that my wife and daughter are to have a good time.”
With the first of his salary Corcoran supplied himself with histories and guidebooks of Holland and Belgium, and on the night before their departure, as well as on the night of their arrival in Brussels, he sat up late absorbing a mass of information that he had never in his travels with his mother been aware of before. They had not gone in for sight-seeing. His mother had considered it something which only school-teachers and vulgar tourists did, but Mr. Bushmill had impressed upon him that Hallie was to have all the advantages of travel; he must make it interesting for her by keeping ahead of her every day.
In Brussels they were to remain five days. The first morning Corcoran took three seats in a touring bus, and they inspected the guild halls and the palaces and the monuments and the parks, while he corrected the guide’s historical slips in stage whispers and congratulated himself on doing so well.
But during the afternoon it drizzled as they drove through the streets and he grew tired of his own voice, of Hallie’s conventional “Oh, isn’t that interesting,” echoed by her mother, and he wondered if five days wasn’t too long to stay here after all. Still, he had impressed them, without doubt; he had made a good start as the serious and well-informed young man. Moreover, he had done well with the money. Resisting his first impulse to take a private limousine for the day, which would certainly have cost twelve dollars, he had only three bus tickets at one dollar each to enter in the little book. Before he began his nightly reading he put it down for Mr. Bushmill to see. But first of all he took a steaming hot bath—he had never ridden in a rubber-neck wagon with ordinary sight-seers before and he found the idea rather painful.
The next day the tour continued, but so did the drizzling rain, and that evening, to his dismay, Mrs. Bushmill came down with a cold. It was nothing serious, but it entailed two doctor’s visits at American prices, together with the cost of the dozen remedies which European physicians order under any circumstances, and it was a discouraging note which he made in the back of his little book that night:
One ruined hat—she claimed it was an old hat, but it didn’t look old to me
$10.00
3 bus tickets for Monday
3.00
3 bus tickets for Tuesday
2.00
Tips to incompetent guide
1.50
2 doctor’s visits
8.00
Medicines
2.25
Total for two days’ sight-seeing
$26.75
And, to balance that, Corcoran thought of the entry he might have made had he followed his first instinct:
One comfortable limousine for two days, including tip to chauffeur
$26.00
Next morning Mrs. Bushmill remained in bed while he and Hallie took the excursion train to Waterloo. He had diligently mastered the strategy of the battle, and as he began his explanation of Napoleon’s maneuvers, prefacing it with a short account of the political situation, he was rather disappointed at Hallie’s indifference. Luncheon increased his uneasiness. He wished he had brought along the cold lobster luncheon, put up by the hotel, that he had extravagantly considered. The food at the local restaurant was execrable and Hallie stared desolately at the hard potatoes and vintage steak, and then out the window at the melancholy rain. Corcoran wasn’t hungry, either, but he forced himself to eat with an affectation of relish. Two more days in Brussels! And then Antwerp! And Rotterdam! And The Hague! Twenty-five more days of history to get up in the still hours of the night, and all for an unresponsive young person who did not seem to appreciate the advantages of travel.
They were coming out of the restaurant, and Hallie’s voice, with a new note in it, broke in on his meditations.
“Get a taxi; I want to go home.”
He turned to her in consternation.
“What? You want to go back without seeing the famous indoor panorama, with paintings of all the actions and the life-size figures of the casualties in the foreground?”
“There’s a taxi,” she interrupted. “Quick!”
“A taxi!” he groaned, running after it through the mud. “And these taxis are robbers—we might have had a limousine out and back for the same price.”
In silence they returned to the hotel. As Hallie entered the elevator she looked at him with suddenly determined eyes.
“Please wear your dinner coat tonight. I want to go out somewhere and dance—and please send flowers.”
Corcoran wondered if this form of diversion had been included in Mr. Bushmill’s intentions—especially since he had gathered that Hallie was practically engaged to the Mr. Nosby who was to meet them in Amsterdam.
Distraught with doubt, he went to a florist and priced orchids. But a corsage of three would come to twenty-four dollars, and this was not an item he cared to enter in the little book. Regretfully, he compromised on sweet peas and was relieved to find her wearing them when she stepped out of the elevator at seven, in a pink-petaled dress.
Corcoran was astounded and not a little disturbed by her loveliness—he had never seen her in full evening dress before. Her perfect features were dancing up and down in delighted anticipation, and he felt that Mr. Bushmill might have afforded the orchids after all.
“Thanks for the pretty flowers,” she cried eagerly. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a nice orchestra here in the hotel.”
Her face fell a little.
“Well, we can start here—”
They went down to the almost-deserted grill, where a few scattered groups of diners swooned in midsummer languor, and only a half dozen Americans arose with the music and stalked defiantly around the floor. Hallie and Corcoran danced. She was surprised to find how well he danced, as all tall, slender men should, with such a delicacy of suggestion that she felt as though she were being turned here and there as a bright bouquet or a piece of precious cloth before five hundred eyes.
But when they had finished dancing she realized that there were only a score of eyes; after dinner even these began to melt apathetically away.
“We’d better be moving on to some gayer place,” she suggested.
He frowned.
“Isn’t this gay enough?” he asked anxiously. “I rather like the happy mean.”
“That sounds good. Let’s go there!”
“It isn’t a cafe—it’s a principle I’m trying to learn. I don’t know whether your father would want—”
She flushed angrily.
“Can’t you be a little human?” she demanded. “I thought when father said you were bom in the Ritz you’d know something about having a good time.”
He had no answer ready. After all, why should a girl of her conspicuous loveliness be condemned to desolate hotel dances and public-bus excursions in the rain?
“Is this your idea of a riot?” she continued. “Do you ever think about anything except history and monuments? Don’t you know anything about having fun?”
“Once I knew quite a lot.”
“What?”
“In fact—once I used to be rather an expert at spending money.”
“Spending money!” she broke out. “For these?”
She unpinned the corsage from her waist and flung it on the table. “Pay the check, please. I’m going upstairs to bed.”
“All right,” said Corcoran suddenly, “I’ve decided to give you a good time.”
“How?” she demanded with frozen scorn. “Take me to the movies?”
“Miss Bushmill,” said Corcoran grimly, “I’ve had good times beyond the wildest flights of your very provincial, Middle-Western imagination. I’ve entertained from New York to Constantinople—given affairs that have made Indian rajahs weep with envy.
“I’ve had prima donnas break ten-thousand-dollar engagements to come to my smallest dinners. When you were still playing “who’s got the button” back in Ohio I entertained on a cruising trip that was so much fun that
