VIII
“I never expected a simple tea would cause so much trouble!” exclaimed Mrs. Ward at the dinner table five days before the day set for the Campbell visit. “I’ve simply got to send out the cards tomorrow!”
“Let me see that list again,” said John. “It’s first rate as it stands. You’ve put in all our new clients and that’s the main thing. But if Mrs. Shepherd is to pour chocolate, you’ll have to affix Mrs. Hovey to the tea pot to prevent hard feeling. I’ve got everything all set with Townley to make a big spread of Helen’s engagement to Ned and mine to Alice next Sunday.”
“Please don’t be too noisy about it,” pleaded Helen. “Since you began boosting the family I’m ashamed to look at the papers.”
“Circulation of both sheets has gone up, sis. Everybody in the Sycamore valley’s on tip-toe for news of the Wards and Campbells. Tomorrow the Journal will print exclusive information from our office that the mighty Ironsides corporation is to build a plant here. The happy word that the railroad yards are to be doubled and the shops enlarged will come from headquarters, but father will be interviewed to make sure we get the credit.”
“I think I understand everything,” said Helen gazing musingly at the engagement ring of which she had been the happy possessor for just twenty-four hours, “except how Mr. Campbell began sending those important people to you and father. You might almost think it was a joke of some kind.”
“The joke certainly isn’t on us! I’ve decided to turn down the nomination for prosecutor. As things are going I’d be a fool to sacrifice my private practice for a public job. The general counsel of the Transcontinental’s feeling us out as to whether we’ll take the local attorneyship of that rascally corporation. Canby Taylor’s had it for twenty years, and it would be some triumph to add it to our string of scalps.”
The invitation list, rigidly revised and cut to one hundred, was finally acceptable to all the members of the family, and Helen and John had begun to address the envelopes when this task was interrupted by the delivery of a telegram.
“It’s for you, mother,” said Helen, taking the envelope from the capped and aproned housemaid who had been installed in the household against the coming of the Campbells.
Mrs. Ward adjusted her glasses and settled herself to read with the resigned air of one inured to the idea that telegrams are solely a medium for communicating bad news.
“What is it, mother? Somebody dead?” asked John without looking up from the envelope he was addressing to The Hon. and Mrs. Addison Swiggert.
“Worse!” murmured Mrs. Ward, staring vacantly.
“Nothing can be worse!” ejaculated Helen, catching the bit of paper as it fell fluttering to the floor. “The Campbells are not coming!” she gasped.
“Not coming!” faltered Robert Fleming Ward, throwing down a brief he was studying.
“Read it, for heaven’s sake!” commanded John.
Helen, with difficulty bringing her eyes to meet the dark tidings, began to read:
So sorry we are obliged to change our plans and cannot pay you the visit to which we had looked forward with so much pleasure——
“It’s horrible! It’s positively tragic,” sobbed Mrs. Ward, groping for her handkerchief.
“Hurry on, Helen!” ordered John. “There’s a lot more of it.”
Walter feels that he ought to attend a conference of Southern bankers unexpectedly called for February eighteen at Baltimore, and we are obliged to defer the California trip indefinitely. However, we are going down in the yacht and Walter has happily solved the whole problem by insisting that you all come to New York and make the cruise with us.
“Glory! glory hallelujah!” John shouted.
The yacht is big enough to be comfortable for even a poor sailor like me, so we can have a cosy time together. We want your husband, son and daughter to come of course, and you will be our guests throughout the journey. The Manager of the Transcontinental will put his private car at your disposal. Do wire at once that you will come. With much love.
Ruth Campbell.
“Can you beat it! Can you beat it!” cried John.
“After all this talk—and the publicity and everything——” his mother began plaintively.
“And all these people who’ve brought us business in the hope of meeting the Campbells and getting favors from him!” his father added hopelessly.
“My dear parents!” cried John pleadingly, flinging up his arm with a dramatic gesture he had found effective in commanding the attention of juries,—“my dear parents, nothing could be more fortunate! If the Campbells had come we’d have been hard put to please all these people who want the joy of shaking big money by the hand. The old boy very shrewdly switched all these business matters to father and me to handle so we’ve already got about everything Kernville needs, and we’ve done it in a way that makes us the best advertised law firm in the state.”
“But the humiliation——” his mother began in a hoarse whisper.
“Humiliation nothing!” John caught her up. “Don’t you realize that an announcement that the Campbells are sending a private car to haul us down to their yacht will make the biggest hit of all! And you’re going, mother—and you, Helen; and father’s got to go, too! You all deserve it, and I’ll stay right here and bask in the warm radiance of your grandeur while the White Gull rides the waves.”
“You think, then, the change won’t ruin everything?” his mother asked with a gulp.
“John’s perfectly right!” declared Helen. “The Campbell name has already worked magic in our lives and through us done wonders for Kernville. It will be glorious to sail in a yacht! They didn’t need to ask us, and nothing could be friendlier or more cordial than that telegram.”
“That’s true,” Mr. Ward assented. “But I can’t possibly leave right now. There’s that Lindley coal case coming up for trial next week, and John’s not familiar with it.”
“Yes, my dear father, but when you ask for a postponement on the perfectly legitimate ground that Walter Scott Campbell wants you to go yachting with him, that case will be set forward and you will acquire much merit in the eyes of the court! You’ll need a couple of white flannel suits and some rubber-soled shoes, but you can pick them up in New York. Really this change of plans is the biggest thing of all. Take this pad, mother, and write your acceptance, carefully expressing my deep regret that owing to pressure of professional duties I am unable to leave.”
The announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Walter Scott Campbell had been obliged to postpone their visit to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Fleming Ward until spring, but that Mr. and Mrs. Ward and Miss Helen were to cruise with them in the White Gull did not fail of the impression which John had predicted such a revelation would make upon his fellow citizens. A yacht that would sail the winter seas was a challenge to the imagination of home-keeping folk whose most daring adventure upon the deep was an occasional cruise in an excursion steamer on the Great Lakes.
Kernville was proud of the Wards, and so many citizens of both genders expressed their affection with flowers that the car in which the trio set out for New York looked like a bridal bower.
Ned Shepherd and Alice Hovey were at the station with John to see them off and several hundred other citizens looked on with mingled emotions of admiration and envy. The Journal’s photographer caught an excellent picture of Mrs. Ward and Helen, their arms full of roses, standing on the rear platform as the train pulled out.
“That boy of yours,” remarked Walter Scott Campbell, as he sat with Robert Fleming Ward in the smoking room of the White Gull as the yacht felt her way cautiously up Chesapeake Bay,—“That boy must be a good deal of a lad. Even at long range you can feel his energy and enterprise.”
“He’s a good boy,” Ward agreed diffidently, “and full of ginger. I get out of breath trying to keep up with him.”
Campbell chuckled. “Knows a chance when he sees it.” Another Campbell chuckle. “I like youngsters of that type. He’s profited of course by your own long experience in the law?”
“He’s as good a lawyer as I am now—more resourceful, and a better hand in dealing with people.”
“That boy knows more than the law,” declared Campbell with another chuckle. “He knows human nature!”
As their eyes met Ward’s face broke into a smile as he realized that Campbell understood everything, and was not at all displeased at the outrageous fashion in which John had used his name.
“You know of Gaspard & Collins, in New York?” asked the magnate. “They do a good deal of my legal work. They’re looking for a young man, westerner preferred, to go into the firm, and it just occurs to me that your John would just suit them. I can understand how you would feel about losing him, but it’s a good opportunity to get in touch with important affairs. Talk it over with your wife, and if you think well of the idea you can wire him tomorrow. It’s a fair night; let’s go on deck and watch the lights.”