Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

While all this had been going on in the house of MacFarlane, much more astonishing things had been developing in the house of Breen.

The second Mukton Lode scoop,—the one so deftly handled the night of Arthur Breen's dinner to the directors,—had somehow struck a snag in the scooping with the result that most of the “scoopings” had been spilled over the edge there to be gathered up by the gamins of the Street, instead of being hived in the strong boxes of the scoopers. Some of the habitues in the orchestra chairs in Breen's office had cursed loud and deep when they saw their margins melt away; and one or two of the directors had broken out into open revolt, charging Breen with the fiasco, but most of the others had held their peace. It was better to crawl away into the tall grass there to nurse their wounds than to give the enemy a list of the killed and wounded. Now and then an outsider—one who had watched the battle from afar—saw more of the fight than the contestants themselves. Among these was Garry Minott.

“You heard how Mason, the Chicago man, euchred the Mukton gang, didn't you?” he had shouted to a friend one night at the Magnolia—“Oh, listen! boys. They set up a job on him,—he's a countryman, you know a poor little countryman—from a small village called Chicago—he's got three millions, remember, all in hard cash. Nice, quiet motherly old gentleman is Mr. Mason—butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Went into Mukton with every dollar he had—so kind of Mr. Breen to let him in—yes, put him down for 2,000 shares more. Then Breen & Co. began to hoist her up—five points—ten points—twenty points. At the end of the week they had, without knowing it, bought every share of Mason's stock.” Here Garry roared, as did the others within hearing. “And they've got it yet. Next day the bottom dropped out. Some of them heard Mason laugh all the way to the bank. He's cleaned up half a million and gone back home—'so afraid his mother would spank him for being out late o' nights without his nurse,'” and again Garry's laugh rang out with such force and earnestness that the glasses on Biffy's table chinked in response.

This financial set-back, while it had injured, for the time, Arthur Breen's reputation for being “up and dressed,” had not, to any appreciable extent, curtailed his expenditures or narrowed the area of his social domain. Mrs. Breen's dinners and entertainments had been as frequent and as exclusive, and Miss Corinne had continued to run the gamut of the gayest and best patronized functions without, the Scribe is pained to admit, bringing home with her for good and all both her cotillion favors and the gentleman who had bestowed them. Her little wren-like head had moved from side to side, and she had sung her sweetest and prettiest, but somehow, when the song was over and the crumbs all eaten (and there were often two dinners a week and at least one dance), off went the male birds to other and more captivating roosts.

Mrs. Breen, of course, raved when Corinne at last opened the door of her cage for Garry,—went to bed, in fact, for the day, to accentuate her despair and mark her near approach to death because of it—a piece of inconsistency she could well have spared herself, knowing Corinne as she had, from the day of her birth, and remembering as she must have done, her own escapade with the almost penniless young army officer who afterward became Corinne's father.

Breen did not rave; Breen rather liked it. Garry had no money, it is true, except what he could earn,—neither had Corinne. Garry seemed to do as he darned pleased,—so did Corinne;—Garry had no mother,—neither had Corinne so far as yielding to any authority was concerned. “Yes,—let 'em marry,—good thing—begin at the bottom round and work up—” all of which meant that the honorable banker was delighted over the prospect of considerable more freedom for himself and considerable less expense in the household.

And so the wedding had taken place with all the necessary trimmings: awning over the carpeted sidewalk; four policemen on the curb; detectives in the hall and up the staircase and in the front bedroom where the jewels were exposed (all the directors of the Mukton Lode were represented); crowds lining the sidewalk; mob outside the church door—mob inside the church door and clear up to the altar; flowers, palms, special choir, with little bank-notes to the boys and a big bank-note to the leader; checks for the ranking clergyman and the two assistant clergymen, not forgetting crisp bills for the sexton and the janitor and the policemen and the detectives and everybody else who could hold out a hand and not be locked up in jail for highway robbery. Yes, a most fashionable and a most distinguished and a most exclusive wedding—there was no mistake about that.

No one had ever seen anything like it before; some hoped they never would again, so great was the crush in the drawing-room. And not only in the drawing-room, but over every square inch of the house for that matter, from the front door where Parkins's assistant (an extra man from Delmonico's) shouted out—“Third floor back for the gentlemen and second floor front for the ladies”—to the innermost recesses of the library made over into a banquet hall, where that great functionary himself was pouring champagne into batteries of tumblers as if it were so much water, and distributing cuts of cold salmon and portions of terrapin with the prodigality of a charity committee serving a picnic.

And then the heartaches over the cards that never came; and the presents that were never sent, and the wrath of the relations who got below the ribbon in the church and the airs of the strangers who got above it; and the tears over the costly dresses that did not arrive in time and the chagrin over those they had to wear or stay at home—and the heat and the jam and tear and squeeze—and the aftermath of wet glasses on inlaid tables and fine-spun table-cloths burnt into holes with careless cigarettes; and the little puddles of ice cream on the Turkish rugs and silk divans and the broken glass and smashed china!—No—there never had been such a wedding!

This over, Corinne and Garry had gone to housekeeping in a dear little flat, to which we may be sure Jack was rarely ever invited (he had only received “cards” to the church, an invitation which he had religiously accepted, standing at the door so he could bow to them both as they passed)—the two, I say, had gone to a dear little flat—so dear, in fact, that before the year was out Garry's finances were in such a deplorable condition that the lease could not be renewed, and another and a cheaper nest had to be sought for.