John the coachman could not do it, as the road to the hotel was infested with “duppies” after dark. The probability of meeting a “rolling calf” with a human head and green eyes, or the duppy of some regrettable ancestor, robbed even a tip of its splendour.
The carrying of the suit-case was a physical impossibility to one of the suffragette’s lack of muscle. But to her impossibility was only an additional “Anti” to fight, a rather worthier enemy than the rest. She believed in the power of the thought over the deed, that was her religion, and one is tempted to wonder whether any more complex belief is needed. Has it ever been proved that the human will, if reverently approached, is not omnipotent?
At any rate the suit-case, borne by a thing that looked like the suffragette, but was in reality a super-suffragette created for the occasion, travelled to the hotel, unmolested by duppies, but followed by a literary lady poisoned by injured pride.
At the hotel were many Americans who said, “I guess” and “Bully” and “I should worry,” and all the things that make a second-rate copy collector swell with copy and feel exquisitely cosmopolitan. This collector’s diary began to overflow to three or four foolscap sheets a day, closely covered with dialogues on trivial subjects by very ordinary American husbands and fathers; all Americanisms underlined and spattered with liberal exclamation marks.
At the end of the second week of the lady novelist’s stay at the hotel arrived a millionaire, who immediately became the gem of the collection. He was exactly modelled on the stock millionaire to be met with in the pages of the comic papers. He was lean, self-made, and marvellously dressed; he wore eyeglasses and a little stitched-linen hat tilted over them. Also the beard of a goat. At the very outset he expressed himself, “Vurry happy to meet you, madam, always happy to meet any of our neighbours from across the duck-pond.” It was almost too good to be true. The novelist followed him about, so to speak, with fountain pen poised.
His conversation was almost entirely financial. Neither the lady novelist nor I understand such matters well enough to write them down, but only I am wise enough not to try.
“Do you mind if I say you are a treasure?” asked the lady novelist, after listening for an hour to a dissertation on Wall Street.
“Not at all, ma’am,” replied the millionaire politely, and drew breath to continue his discourse. But he rewarded her by descending to the level of her intelligence.
“Say, talking of money, I guess there’ve been more fine opportunities lorst in Union Town this last fortnight, than ever I missed since I commenced collecting the dollars. Would you believe me—there’s a fellow, by name Dallas Tring, who’s inherited the only flour dee-pot in Union Town. Uncle’s orfice crumpled in on Uncle during the quake, and left Tring his fill of dollars right there for the picking up, so to speak. Union Town wants flour at this crisis, and if it was mine I’d say that Union Town, or the British Government, had darn well got to pay for it. We don’t calc’late in hearts, this side of heaven, but in hard dollars. Philanthropy’s a fool-game.”
“You are simply priceless,” said the lady novelist. “Please go on.”