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Page 51
All that day--in fact from the moment of his creation--Van Sweller had
conducted himself fairly well in my eyes. Of course I had had to make
many concessions; but in return he had been no less considerate. Once or
twice we had had sharp, brief contentions over certain points of
behavior; but, prevailingly, give and take had been our rule.
His morning toilet provoked our first tilt. Van Sweller went about it
confidently.
"The usual thing, I suppose, old chap," he said, with a smile and a
yawn. "I ring for a b. and s., and then I have my tub. I splash a good
deal in the water, of course. You are aware that there are two ways in
which I can receive Tommy Carmichael when he looks in to have a chat
about polo. I can talk to him through the bathroom door, or I can be
picking at a grilled bone which my man has brought in. Which would you
prefer?"
I smiled with diabolic satisfaction at his coming discomfiture.
"Neither," I said. "You will make your appearance on the scene when a
gentleman should--after you are fully dressed, which indubitably private
function shall take place behind closed doors. And I will feel indebted
to you if, after you do appear, your deportment and manners are such
that it will not be necessary to inform the public, in order to appease
its apprehension, that you have taken a bath."
Van Sweller slightly elevated his brows. "Oh, very well," he said, a
trifle piqued. "I rather imagine it concerns you more than it does me.
Cut the 'tub' by all means, if you think best. But it has been the usual
thing, you know."
This was my victory; but after Van Sweller emerged from his apartments
in the "Beaujolie" I was vanquished in a dozen small but well-contested
skirmishes. I allowed him a cigar; but routed him on the question of
naming its brand. But he worsted me when I objected to giving him a
"coat unmistakably English in its cut." I allowed him to "stroll down
Broadway," and even permitted "passers by" (God knows there's nowhere to
pass but by) to "turn their heads and gaze with evident admiration at
his erect figure." I demeaned myself, and, as a barber, gave him a
"smooth, dark face with its keen, frank eye, and firm jaw."
Later on he looked in at the club and saw Freddy Vavasour, polo team
captain, dawdling over grilled bone No. 1.
"Dear old boy," began Van Sweller; but in an instant I had seized him by
the collar and dragged him aside with the scantiest courtesy.
"For heaven's sake talk like a man," I said, sternly. "Do you think it
is manly to use those mushy and inane forms of address? That man is
neither dear nor old nor a boy."
To my surprise Van Sweller turned upon me a look of frank pleasure.
"I am glad to hear you say that," he said, heartily. "I used those words
because I have been forced to say them so often. They really are
contemptible. Thanks for correcting me, dear old boy."
Still I must admit that Van Sweller's conduct in the park that morning
was almost without flaw. The courage, the dash, the modesty, the skill,
and fidelity that he displayed atoned for everything.
This is the way the story runs. Van Sweller has been a gentleman member
of the "Rugged Riders," the company that made a war with a foreign
country famous. Among his comrades was Lawrence O'Roon, a man whom Van
Sweller liked. A strange thing--and a hazardous one in fiction--was that
Van Sweller and O'Roon resembled each other mightily in face, form, and
general appearance. After the war Van Sweller pulled wires, and O'Roon
was made a mounted policeman.
Now, one night in New York there are commemorations and libations by old
comrades, and in the morning, Mounted Policeman O'Roon, unused to potent
liquids--another premise hazardous in fiction--finds the earth bucking
and bounding like a bronco, with no stirrup into which he may insert
foot and save his honor and his badge.
Noblesse oblige? Surely. So out along the driveways and bridle paths
trots Hudson Van Sweller in the uniform of his incapacitated comrade, as
like unto him as one French pea is unto a petit pois.
It is, of course, jolly larks for Van Sweller, who has wealth and social
position enough for him to masquerade safely even as a police
commissioner doing his duty, if he wished to do so. But society, not
given to scanning the countenances of mounted policemen, sees nothing
unusual in the officer on the beat.
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