“That’s all right,” said Lucille. “Archie can speak to him. There’s no need for him to mention your name at all. He can just say there’s a girl he wants to get a part for. You would do it, wouldn’t you, angel-face?”
“Like a bird, queen of my soul.”
“Then that’s splendid. You’d better give Archie that photograph of Mabel to give to Reggie, Bill.”
“Photograph?” said Bill. “Which photograph? I have twenty-four!”
Archie found Reggie van Tuyl brooding in a window of his club that looked over Fifth Avenue. Reggie was a rather melancholy young man who suffered from elephantiasis of the bank-roll and the other evils that arise from that complaint. Gentle and sentimental by nature, his sensibilities had been much wounded by contact with a sordid world; and the thing that had first endeared Archie to him was the fact that the latter, though chronically hard-up, had never made any attempt to borrow money from him. Reggie would have parted with it on demand, but it had delighted him to find that Archie seemed to take a pleasure in his society without having any ulterior motives. He was fond of Archie, and also of Lucille; and their happy marriage was a constant source of gratification to him.
For Reggie was a sentimentalist. He would have liked to live in a world of ideally united couples, himself ideally united to some charming and affectionate girl. But, as a matter of cold fact, he was a bachelor, and most of the couples he knew were veterans of several divorces. In Reggie’s circle, therefore, the home-life of Archie and Lucille shone like a good deed in a naughty world. It inspired him. In moments of depression it restored his waning faith in human nature.
Consequently, when Archie, having greeted him and slipped into a chair at his side, suddenly produced from his inside pocket the photograph of an extremely pretty girl and asked him to get her a small part in the play which he was financing, he was shocked and disappointed. He was in a more than usually sentimental mood that afternoon, and had, indeed, at the moment of Archie’s arrival, been dreaming wistfully of soft arms clasped snugly about his collar and the patter of little feet and all that sort of thing.-He gazed reproachfully at Archie.
“Archie!” his voice quivered with emotion. “is it worth it?, is it worth it, old man?-Think of the poor little woman at home!”
Archie was puzzled.
“Eh, old top? Which poor little woman?”
“Think of her trust in you, her faith–“.
“I don’t absolutely get you, old bean.”
“What would Lucille say if she knew about this?”
“Oh, she does. She knows all about it.”
“Good heavens!” cried Reggie.-He was shocked to the core of his being.-One of the articles of his faith was, that the union of Lucille and Archie was different from those loose partnerships which were the custom in his world.-He had not been conscious of such a poignant feeling that the foundations of the universe were cracked and tottering and that there was no light and sweetness in life since the morning, eighteen months back, when a negligent valet had sent him out into Fifth Avenue with only one spat on.
“It was Lucille’s idea,” explained Archie. He was about to mention his brother-in-law’s connection with the matter, but checked himself in time, remembering Bill’s specific objection to having his secret revealed to Reggie. “It’s like this, old thing, I’ve never met this female, but she’s a pal of Lucille’s”-he comforted his conscience by the reflection that, if she wasn’t now, she would be in a few days- “and Lucille wants to do her a bit of good. She’s been on the stage in England, you know, supporting a jolly old widowed mother and educating a little brother and all that kind and species of rot, you understand, and now she’s coming over to America, and Lucille wants you to rally round and shove her into your show and generally keep the home fires burning and so forth. How do we go?”
Reggie beamed with relief. He felt just as he had felt on that other occasion at the moment when a taxi-cab had rolled up and enabled him to hide his spatless leg from the public gaze.