Four days out from New York, then three days, then two days, and then Brewster began to feel the beginning of the final whirlwind in profligacy clouding him oppressively, ominously, unkindly. Down in his stateroom he drew new estimates, new calculations, and tried to balance the old ones so that they appeared in the light most favorable to his designs. Going over the statistics carefully, he estimated that the cruise, including the repairs and return of the yacht to New York, would cost him $210,000 in round figures. One hundred and thirty-three days marked the length of the voyage when reckoned by time and, as near as he could get at it, the expense had averaged $1,580 a day. According to the contract, he was to pay for the yacht, exclusive of the cuisine and personal service. And he had found it simple enough to spend the remaining $1,080. There were days, of course, when fully $5,000 disappeared, and there were others on which he spent much less than $1,000, but the average was secure. Taking everything into consideration, Brewster found that his fortune had dwindled to a few paltry thousands in addition to the proceeds which would come to him from the sale of his furniture. On the whole he was satisfied.
The landing in New York and the separation which followed were not entirely merry. Every discomfort was forgotten and the travelers only knew that the most wonderful cruise since that of the ark had come to an end. There was not one who would not have been glad to begin it again the next day.
Immediately after the landing Brewster and Gardner were busy with the details of settlement. After clearing up all of the obligations arising from the cruise, they felt the appropriateness of a season of reflection. It was a difficult moment—a moment when undelivered reproofs were in the air. But Gardner seemed much the more melancholy of the two.
Piles of newspapers lay scattered about the floor of the room in which they sat. Every one of them contained sensational stories of the prodigal’s trip, with pictures, incidents and predictions. Monty was pained, humiliated and resentful, but he was honest enough to admit the justification of much that was said of him. He read bits of it here and there and then threw the papers aside hopelessly. In a few weeks they would tell another story, and quite as emphatically.
“The worst of it, Monty, is that you are the next thing to being a poor man,” groaned Gardner. “I’ve done my best to economize for you here at home, as you’ll see by these figures, but nothing could possibly balance the extravagances of this voyage. They are simply appalling.”
With the condemnation of his friends ringing in his troubled brain, with the sneers of acquaintances to distress his pride, with the jibes of the comic papers to torture him remorselessly, Brewster was fast becoming the most miserable man in New York. Friends of former days gave him the cut direct, clubmen ignored him or scorned him openly, women chilled him with the iciness of unspoken reproof, and all the world was hung with shadows. The doggedness of despair kept him up, but the strain that pulled down on him was so relentless that the struggle was losing its equality. He had not expected such a homecoming.
Compared with his former self, Monty was now almost a physical wreck, haggard, thin and defiant, a shadow of the once debonair young New Yorker, an object of pity and scorn. Ashamed and despairing, he had almost lacked the courage to face Mrs. Gray. The consolation he once gained through her he now denied himself and his suffering, peculiar as it was, was very real. In absolute recklessness he gave dinner after dinner, party after party, all on a most lavish scale, many of his guests laughing at him openly while they enjoyed his hospitality. The real friends remonstrated, pleaded, did everything within their power to check his awful rush to poverty, but without success; he was not to be stopped.
At last the furniture began to go, then the plate, then all the priceless bric-a-brac. Piece by piece it disappeared until the apartments were empty and he had squandered almost all of the $40,350 arising from the sales. The servants were paid off, the apartments relinquished, and he was beginning to know what it meant to be “on his uppers.” At the banks he ascertained that the interest on his moneys amounted to $19,140.86. A week before the 23rd of September, the whole million was gone, including the amounts won in Lumber and Fuel and other luckless enterprises. He still had about $17,000 of his interest money in the banks, but he had a billion pangs in his heart—the interest on his improvidence.
He found some delight in the discovery that the servants had robbed him of not less than $3,500 worth of his belongings, including the Christmas presents that he in honor could not have sold. His only encouragement came from Grant & Ripley, the lawyers. They inspired confidence in his lagging brain by urging him on to the end, promising brightness thereafter. Swearengen Jones was as mute as the mountains in which he lived. There was no word from him, there was no assurance that he would approve of what had been done to obliterate Edwin Peter Brewster’s legacy.
Dan DeMille and his wife implored Monty to come with them to the mountains before his substance was gone completely. The former offered him money, employment, rest and security if he would abandon the course he was pursuing. Up in Fortieth Street Peggy Gray was grieving her heart out and he knew it. Two or three of those whom he had considered friends refused to recognize him in the street in this last trying week, and it did not even interest him to learn that Miss Barbara Drew was to become a
