A Gentleman of Leisure

To
Douglas Fairbanks,
who
many years ago
played
“Jimmy”
in the dramatized version
of this novel

I

Jimmy Makes a Bet

The main smoking room of the Strollers’ Club had been filling for the last half-hour, and was now nearly full. In many ways the Strollers’, though not the most magnificent, is the pleasantest club in New York. Its ideals are those of the Savage Club—comfort without pomp—and it is given over after eleven o’clock at night mainly to the Stage. Everybody is young, clean-shaven, and full of conversation—and the conversation strikes a purely professional note.

Everybody in the room on this July night had come from the theatre. Most of those present had been acting, but a certain number had been to the opening performance of the latest better-than-“Raffles” play. There had been something of a boom that season in dramas whose heroes appealed to the public more pleasantly across the footlights than they might have done in real life. In the play which had opened tonight Arthur Mifflin, an exemplary young man off the stage, had been warmly applauded for a series of actions which, performed anywhere except in the theatre, would certainly have debarred him from remaining a member of the Strollers’ or any other club. In faultless evening dress, with a debonair smile on his face, he had broken open a safe, stolen bonds and jewellery to a large amount, and escaped without a blush of shame via the window. He had foiled a detective through four acts and held up a band of pursuers with a revolver. A large audience had intimated complete approval throughout.

“It’s a hit all right,” said somebody through the smoke.

“These imitation ‘Raffles’ plays always are,” grumbled Willett, who played bluff fathers in musical comedy. “A few years ago they would have been scared to death of putting on a show with a criminal hero. Now, it seems to me, the public doesn’t want anything else. Not that they know what they do want,” he concluded mournfully.

The Belle of Boulogne, in which Willett sustained the role of Cyrus K. Higgs, a Chicago millionaire, was slowly fading away on a diet of free passes, and this possibly prejudiced him.

Raikes, the character-actor, changed the subject. If Willett once got started on the wrongs of the ill-fated Belle, general conversation would become impossible. Willett, denouncing the stupidity of the public, was purely a monologue artiste.

“I saw Jimmy Pitt at the show,” said Raikes. Everybody displayed interest.

“Jimmy Pitt? When did he come back? I thought he was in England?”

“He came on the Mauretania, I suppose. She docked this morning.”

“Jimmy Pitt?” said Sutton, of the Majestic Theatre. “How long has he been away? Last I saw of him was at the opening of The Outsider, at the Astor. That’s a couple of months ago.”

“He’s been travelling in Europe, I believe,” said Raikes. “Lucky beggar to be able to. I wish I could.”

Sutton knocked the ash off his cigar.

“I envy Jimmy,” he said. “I don’t know anyone I’d rather be. He’s got much more money than any man, except a professional plute, has any right to. He’s as strong as an ox. I shouldn’t say he’d ever had anything worse than measles in his life. He’s got no relations. And he isn’t married.”

Sutton, who had been married three times, spoke with some feeling.

“He’s a good chap, Jimmy,” said Raikes. “Which considering he’s an Englishman—”

“Thanks,” said Mifflin.

“How’s that? Oh, beg pardon, Arthur; I keep forgetting that you’re one, too.”

“I’ll tattoo a Union Jack on my forehead tomorrow.”

“It’ll improve you,” said Raikes. “But about Jimmy. He’s a good chap, which—considering he’s an Englishman—is only what you might have expected. Is that better, Arthur?”

“Much,” said Mifflin. “Yes, Jimmy is a good chap—one of the best. I’ve known him for years. I was at school and Cambridge with him. He was about the most popular man at both. I should say he had put more deadbeats on their legs again than half the men in New York put together.”

“Well,” growled Willett, whom the misfortunes of The Belle had soured, “what’s there in that? It’s mighty easy to do the philanthropist act when you’re next door to a millionaire.”

“Yes,” said Mifflin warmly; “but it’s not so easy when you’re getting thirty dollars a week on a newspaper. When Jimmy was a reporter on the News there used to be a whole crowd of fellows just living on him. Not borrowing an occasional dollar, mind you, but living on him—sleeping on his sofa and staying to breakfast. It made me mad. I used to ask him why he stood it. He said there was nowhere else for them to go, and he thought he could see them through all right. Which he did, though I don’t see how he managed it on thirty dollars a week.”

“If a man’s fool enough to be an easy mark—” began Willett.

“Oh, stop it,” said Raikes. “We don’t want anybody knocking Jimmy here.”

“All the same,” said Sutton, “it seems to me that it was darned lucky that he came into that money. You can’t keep open house forever on thirty a week. By the way, Arthur, how was that? I heard it was his uncle.”

“It wasn’t his uncle,” said Mifflin. “It was by way of being a romance of sorts, I believe. Fellow who had been in love with Jimmy’s mother years ago. Went to Australia, made a fortune, and left it to Mrs. Pitt or her children. She had been dead some time when that happened. Jimmy, of course, hadn’t a notion of what was coming to him, when suddenly he got a solicitor’s letter, asking him to call. He rolled round, and found that there was about five hundred thousand dollars waiting for him to spend it.”

Jimmy Pitt had now definitely ousted Love, the Cracksman, as a topic of conversation. Everybody present knew him. Most of them had known him in his newspaper days; and though every man there would have perished rather than admit it, they were grateful to Jimmy for being exactly the same to them now that he could sign a cheque for half a million as he had been on the old thirty-a-week basis. Inherited wealth, of course, does not make a young man nobler or more admirable; but the young man does not always know this.

“Jimmy’s had a queer life,” said Mifflin. “He’s been pretty nearly everything in his time. Did you know he was on the stage before he took up newspaper work? Only in touring companies, I believe. He got tired of it, and dropped it. That’s always been his trouble. He wouldn’t settle down to anything. He studied Law at the ’Varsity, but he never kept it up. After he left the stage he moved all over the States without a cent, picking up any odd job he could get. He was a waiter once for a couple of days, but they sacked him for breaking plates. Then he got a job in a jeweller’s shop. I believe he’s a bit of an expert on jewels. And another time he made a hundred dollars by staying three rounds against Kid Brady, when the Kid was touring the country after he got the championship away from Jimmy Garwin. The Kid was offering a hundred to anyone who could last three rounds with him. Jimmy did it on his head. He was the best amateur of his weight I ever saw. The Kid wanted him to take up scrapping seriously. But Jimmy wouldn’t have stuck to anything long enough in those days. He’s one of the gipsies of the world. He was never really happy unless he was on the move, and he doesn’t seem to have altered since he came into his money.”

“Well, he can afford to keep on the move now,” said Raikes. “I wish I—”

“Did you ever hear about Jimmy and—” Mifflin was beginning, when the Odyssey of Jimmy Pitt was interrupted by the opening of the door and the entrance of Ulysses in person.