“Right you are. Babbit Bertie, they call me. Now will you marry me?”
“What will we live on?” Ann asked practically.
Bertie almost swooned with delight at this time-honored question. For it meant that The Girl was practically in his arms for keeps.
“A sensible question,” he said approvingly. “But you may cease worrying on that score. My brother, who is a good enough chap in his way, controls the purse strings of the Crimmins estates. The foolish chap cares nothing for money himself, but he has refused to pass along any of the bonny green stuff to me. You see he hasn’t much confidence in me. But when he sees the remarkable transformation I have undergone, he will give me his blessings and large chunks of lettuce with which we can furnish our nest.”
“Where is your brother?”
“Right here at Mosswood. He’s assistant professor of almost forgotten languages, or something like that. Odd, what?”
“Will you see him today?”
“First thing,” Bertie answered cheerfully. “I’ll drop you home and then speed the body over to his rooms to show him what a sterling chap I’ve turned into.”
He waved for a cab.
A half hour later Bertie stepped from the cab, a feeling of virtuous confidence in his heart. He had dropped Ann off a few minutes before and her farewell had been affectionately tender. It was obvious that she was impressed by the New Bertie.
Bertie paid off the driver with his last remaining change and headed up the elm-lined walk that led to the unpretentiously dignified house where his brother lived and labored.
There was a song in his heart and a bounce in his stride as he trotted up the steps and punched the doorbell. His brother’s housekeeper opened the door and after murmuring “speak of the devil” or something equally cheery, admitted him.
She led the way to his brother’s study in a grim silence. She did not approve of Bertie Crimmins interrupting his brother in the middle of his work. She paused before an oak-paneled door.
“Mister Arthur is very busy these days,” she said coldly. “I hope you will not disturb him too much.”
“Oh, I won’t,” Bertie said warmly. “I’ll only be here for the weekend.”
“Only? Couldn’t you manage to stay a full week?”
Sarcasm was lost on Bertie.
“Nice of you,” he said brightly, “but it just can’t be done. Sorry and all that.”
With a warm feeling of being in demand, he opened the oak-paneled door and strode into his brother’s study.
“What ho!” he cried.
His brother, a lean scholarly looking chap, with graying temples and hornrimmed glasses, looked up from his desk where he had been intently examining a faded piece of parchment.
There was a distinct trace of annoyance in his tired blue eyes.
“Must you bellow?” he said impatiently.
“Sorry,” Bertie said. “Didn’t realize the old vocal chords had that much vim and vigor. Must be the old brotherly affection cropping out.”
“Stop babbling,” his brother said. “Come in and close the door. I’m busy here. Be through in a moment. Sit down.”
“Right ho!” Bertie said. “Don’t let me disturb the great brain. Let it ramble on. I’ll sit and watch.”
“In silence,” his brother qualified.
Bertie found a comfortable chair and threw his lean body over it in a position that a professional contortionist might have envied. His brother had turned back to his desk, his head bent close to the ancient parchment. He only changed his position to turn the pages of a huge leather bound book resting on the desk beside him.
Bertie gazed about at the book lined walls and sighed. It didn’t hardly seem decent to give a million dollars to a buzzard who spent his waking hours digging into the remains of obscure authors.
He was disturbed by an exultant exclamation from his brother.
“Got a nibble?” he asked companionably.
His brother’s thin frame was trembling with excitement.
“If,” he muttered tensely, “I can prove a relationship between the recurrence of this symbol and the recurrence of the letter V in the Phoenician alphabet, I may have something.”
“Probably alphabet soup,” Bertie said brightly. “Get it! Letter ‘e’ mixed up with something else and you get alphabet soup. It’s a joke, what?”
His brother turned to him, the scientific zeal in his eyes fading slowly.
“Bertie,” he said slowly, “you are a blithering moron. On top of that—”
“Tut! Tut!” Bertie said hastily. “Mustn’t forget the old brotherly affection.”
“You make it easy to,” his brother said sadly.
“It’s nice of you to say so,” Bertie beamed. “Now I’ve a surprise for you. I’m getting married. Congratulate me.”
“Married?” his brother said sharply.
“Right ho! It’s a blow, but you must be strong. You’re not losing a brother, you know, you’re gaining a sister.”
His brother lighted a pipe carefully and peered over the flame at Bertie as one might at an amiable nitwit.
“What are you going to live on?” he asked.
“Glad you brought that up, old bean,” Bertie said. “We’ll be needing a spot of assistance and I thought that you might bless the union with a hearty hunk of the old necessary.”
“Translated, that means I am to finance your marriage?”
“Crudely put, but accurate,” Bertie admitted.
“I shall do no such thing. In my opinion you are about as competent to handle money as a two-months-old baby. The bulk of the family estate will revert to you when I think you are capable of handling it intelligently. That date, I regret to say, does not seem imminent.”
“You mean,” Bertie said glumly, “that it’s no soap.”
“I mean precisely that.”
“But I’m a new man,” Bertie said frantically. “Old salt of the earth, backbone of the Nation. No more of the cup that cheers, no more of the gay race tracks. All over, all done with.”
His brother looked at him skeptically.
“In the vernacular, I am from the state of Missouri. If you are actually the paragon of masculine virtue that you claim, I might reconsider.”
“A chance is all I ask,” Bertie said dramatically. “Tell me,” he said in a more conventional tone, “does the family estate mount up to a tidy bit?”
“Very tidy,” his brother answered. “Several millions at least.”
Bertie had no conception of amounts over ten, but he knew a million to be a hefty lot of money. He wondered if it would be enough to pay off his debts and set him and Ann up in a cozy fiat?
His brother disrupted his thoughts by rising to his feet and picking up the parchment from the desk with a gesture of disgust.
“Money is the most helpless thing in the world,” he said scathingly. “It is nothing in itself. Men’s cupidity lends it value. The real and lasting things of this world are the things that can be locked away in the vaults of the mind. I would trade all the riches of the world for the translation of this parchment I hold in my hand.”
Bertie looked at the parchment with new respect.
“What is it?” he asked. “A new system on the ponies?”
His brother sighed and placed the parchment carefully in the drawer of the desk. There was a despairing gleam in his eye.
“Make yourself at home,” he said. “I am going out. In the park the birds are chattering and the loons are on the lake, so I will be thinking of you, Bertrand.”
After his brother left, Bertie prowled about the library, glancing vaguely at the grimly titled books on the shelves, and musing darkly on his own troubles.
Things did look pretty blackish, he decided with a sigh. It was apparent that his brother’s opinion concerning him had not undergone any changes for the better in the past months. And if his brother didn’t change his mind, Lohengrin was a long way off.