V
Tom Merriwether went to the box-office at the Metropolitan and said, pleasantly, as men do when they ask for what they know will be given to them:
“I want the seat just back of G 77—orchestra—for to-night. I suppose it will be H 77.”
The clerk, who knew the heir of the Merriwether millions, said, “I'll see whether we have it, Mr. Merriwether.” He saw. Then he said, with sincere regret: “I'm very sorry. It's gone.”
“I must have it,” said Tom, determinedly.
“I don't quite see how I can help you, Mr. Merri-wether. I can give you another just as—”
“I don't want any other seat. Who bought it?”
“I don't know. It may be a subscription seat, sold months ago.”
“It's the double seven on the seventh row that I am concerned about. I want the seat just back of it.”
“I'll call up the ticket agencies. There's a bare chance they may have it.” After a few minutes he said, “I'm very sorry, Mr. Merriwether, but I can't get it. They haven't it.”
“I'm willing to pay any price for H 77. I'll give you a hundred dollars if you—”
“Mr. Merriwether, I couldn't do it if you offered me a thousand! If I could do it at all I'd be only too glad to do it for you—for nothing,” the clerk said, and blushed.
Everybody liked Tom.
The sincerity in the clerk's voice impressed young Mr. Merriwether, who thanked him warmly and withdrew. The baffled feeling that he took away with him from the ticket-window grew in intensity until he was ready to fight.
It was a natural-enough impulse that led him back to 777 Fifth Avenue; but he was not quite sure whether he was angry at the man for telling him to do what was obviously impossible or at himself for determining to find her!
He rang the bell of the house of mystery. The footman that answered was one of the intelligent four; but his face was impassive, as though he had never before seen Tom.
“Your master?” asked Tom, abruptly.
“Your card, please,” said the footman, impassively.
Tom gave it to him. The man disappeared, presently to return.
“This way, sir.” And at the door in the rear he paused and announced, “Mr. Merriwether!”
The master of the house was in his usual place. He bowed his head gravely and waited.
“I couldn't get the seat,” said Tom, with a frown.
“It is written, 'Vain are man's efforts!'”
“That's all very well, my friend. But the next time—”
“Fate deals with time—not with next time! There is no certainty of any time but one. If you can do nothing I can do nothing. I still say, The seat back of G 77 to-night.”
Tom Merriwether looked searchingly into the calm eyes before him. The baffled feeling returned; also, a great curiosity. What would the end be? At length he said, “Good day, sir.” He half hoped the man would volunteer some helpful remark.
“Good day, sir,” said the man, with cold politeness.
Tom went back to the Opera House and asked for somebody in authority to whom he might talk. They ushered him into Mr. Kirsch's presence. Mr. Kirsch, amiable by birth, temperament, and training, listened to him with much gravity; also, with a concern he tried to conceal, for it was too sad—a bright, clean-living, intensely likable chap like Tom, only heir to the Merriwether millions!
Fearing a scene, he told Tom that he would speak to the ticket-takers in the lobby to be on the lookout for ticket H 77. Then he conferred with the emissary McWayne had sent, who thereupon was able to send in a most alarming report.
The private secretary softened it as much as he could, and even dared to suggest to the chief that it might be a bet; but the little czar of the Pacific & Southwestern, who had never flinched under any strain or stress, grew visibly older as he heard that his son was offering thousands for an opera-seat—for the seat back of the double seven, seventh row. It could mean but one thing!
Tom was so fortunate as to be standing beside the ticket-collector at the middle door of the main entrance when the owner of H 77 appeared. He was a fat man with a pink and shiny face, a close-cropped mustache, and huge pearl studs. The fat man was fortunately alone.
“Sir,” said Tom, “I should like to speak a moment with you.”
The man looked apprehensive. Then he said, “What is it about?”
“For very strong personal reasons I should like to exchange tickets with you. I can give you G 126—every bit as good—on the other side of the aisle.”
“Why should I change?” queried the shiny-faced man, suspiciously.
“To oblige a very nice young lady and myself. Of course, if you prefer to be paid—”
“I don't need money.”
“Well, I'll pay you a hundred dollars for your ticket,” said Tom, coldly.
The man shook his head from force of habit, in order that Tom might see he was offering too little. Then he said, recklessly:
“It's yours, my friend. I have a pet charity. I'll give your money to it. Where's the hundred?”
Tom took out a small roll of yellow bills, pulled off one, and handed it to the man with the pet charity, who took it, looked at it, nodded, put it in his pocket, gave the coupon to Tom, and then held out his right hand.
“Where is the ticket for G 120 that you'll give me in place of mine?”
Tom gave it to him and walked into the house, not knowing that McWayne's emissary had listened and reported. He sat in H 77 and tried to laugh at his own absurd behavior; but somewhere within him—away in, very deep—something was thrillingly alert, tantalizingly expectant.
The seat before him was empty. It remained empty during the first act. It angered Tom that the climax should be so long in coming. The three seats in front of him remained vacant until just before the curtain went up on the last act. Somebody came in just as the lights were lowered and occupied seat G 77.
Tom sat up and braced himself. He leaned over, vaguely desiring to be near her. Unconscious that he was under a strain he, nevertheless, drew a deep breath.
Instantly there came to him the odor of sweet peas, and with it thoughts of summer, of a beautiful girl, of a soul-mate, of a wife. Love filled his being. He wished to love and be loved. He wished to be somebody's husband, so that he might begin to live the life he was to live until the day of his death!
He leaned back in his chair and again inhaled the fragrance of sweet peas—the odor that must mean kisses in the open; the inarticulate love-making of breezes and blossoms; the multitudinous whispers of midsummer nights heard by love-hungry ears. And then the music! There came the breaking of a heart about to cease beating and the sobbing crash of the brasses in the finale. It was almost more than Tom could bear.
Then the curtain fell and light flooded the house. People streamed out. Tom twisted and turned to see the face of the lady who made him think of the sweet peas, which made him think of love and marriage and children—but she was wrapped to the cheeks in a fur-edged opera-cloak and her head was covered with a black-lace wrap. He could not see her face; and after rivulets of people reached the main stream in the middle aisle he found himself hopelessly separated from her. He tried to jostle his way through. McWayne, his father's private secretary, suddenly happened to be there.
“Hello, Tom!” he said. “What's your rush?”
Tom saw that it was useless to pursue the phantom of sweet peas and dreams of love unless he vaulted over the stalls. McWayne's presence made him realize how his friends would be shocked by such actions.
“No hurry at all,” said Tom, who, after all, was a Merriwether. “Just wanted to smoke and to see whether I knew that girl.”
“I'll bet she's a pippin!” said McWayne, with a friendly smile. It irritated Tom.
“I don't know any of your friends,” said Tom, coldly; “lady friends and pippins, fellows like you call them, I believe.”
That was what convinced McWayne that the worst was to be feared about poor Tom, who was so considerate and amiable when normal. Poor Tom! McWayne telephoned to the waiting E. H. Merriwether, whose only reply was to ask the private secretary to arrange to have Dr. Frauenthal, the great specialist, at breakfast in the Merriwether house the next morning, without fail.
It was a common occurrence for Dr. Frauenthal to meet—under false pretenses, as it were—persons whose sanity was suspected by fond relatives who dared not openly acknowledge their suspicions. He was a man whose eyes had been compared to psychic corkscrews, with which he brought the patient's secret thoughts to the light of day. Some one said of him that, by inducing a feeling of guilt and detection among the predatory rich, he was able to exact colossal fees from them. He was the man who had made Ordway Blake give up making six millions a year in Wall Street by quitting the game. Mr. Blake was still alive.
Frauenthal was introduced to Tom as a gentleman whose advice “E. H.” desired. The men conversed on various topics apparently haphazard; but in reality Tom, without knowing it, was answering test questions. The answers could not conclusively prove insanity, but they would certainly show whether a more thorough examination was necessary.
Mr. Merriwether and Frauenthal left the house together. They entered the waiting brougham. The great little railroad magnate gave the address of the doctor's office to the footman, then turned to Frauenthal and said, calmly:
“Well, what do you think of him?”
His voice was steady and cold; his face imperturbable; his eyes were fixed with intelligent scrutiny on the specialist's, but his fingers tightly clutched a rolled morning newspaper.
Frauenthal turned his clinical stare on E. H. Merriwether, as though the financier were really the patient. He swept the little man's face—the eyes, the mouth, and the poise—and then let his eyes linger on the clenched fingers about the newspaper.
The iron-nerved, glacial-blooded, flint-hearted Merriwether could not control himself after forty-five seconds of this. He flung the newspaper on the floor violently.
“Go ahead!” he said, harshly.
The doctor did not smile outwardly; but you felt that within himself he had found an answer to one of his own unspoken questions about the father of the suspect.
“There are, Mr. E. H. Merriwether,” he began, in the measured tones and overcareful enunciation of a lecturer at a clinic, “various forms of—let us say—madness; and your son Tom, a fine young man of twenty-eight, is quite unmistakably suffering from—”
He paused to give the fine young man's emotionless father an opportunity to show human feelings. Frauenthal was always interested in the struggle between the emotional and the physical in his millionaire patients.
“Go on!” said E. H. Merriwether, so very coldly as to irritate.
His eyes never left the alienist's own secret-draggers; but he was drumming on his thigh with the tips of his uncontrollable fingers. Ordinarily his desk would have screened from sight this betrayal of human feeling.
“Your son, sir, is suffering, beyond any question, from the oldest madness of all—love!”
“What?”
“Your son Tom is in love. That is what ails him.”
“Are you serious?” Mr. Merriwether was frowning fiercely now.
“You'll think so,” retorted Frauenthal, coldly, “when you get my bill.”
“My boy Tom in love?” repeated the czar, blankly. “Yes.”
“With whom?”
“I don't know. I'm a neurologist—not a soothsayer.”
“Well, suppose he is in love—what of it?”
“Nothing—to me.”
“Then what is serious about it?”
“I can't tell you, for its seriousness to you depends on your point of view toward society at large. There are, of course, the obvious disquieting circumstances.”
“For instance?”
“He is a fine chap—healthy, bright, honest. What is the reason he has said nothing to you? Is he ashamed or afraid? If he is ashamed it is very serious to both of you. If he is afraid—well, then the seriousness depends on how intelligent a father you have been to him.”
“Don't talk like a damned fool! I've been a good father to him; of course—”
“Wait! Wait! First tell me why you do what you ask me not to do?” In the specialist's eyes was a sort of professional curiosity.
“What do you mean?” said E. H. Merriwether, impatiently. It exasperated him to be puzzled.
“Why do you talk like a damned fool?” said Frauenthal.
Nobody ever talked that way to Mr. E. H. Merriwether, overlord of the greatest railroad empire in history. He flushed and was about to retort angrily, but controlled himself in time. The brougham had reached Frauenthal's office. Mr. Merriwether spoke too calmly—you could feel the tense restraint:
“Dr. Frauenthal, I've heard a great deal of your wonderful ability.”
He paused. It came hard to him to be ingratiating. This difficulty is the revenge which nature takes on people who acquire the habit of 'paying money for everything in this world. Such men cannot talk except with a check-book, and the check-book loses the power of speech before happiness—and before death.
“What very difficult thing is it you wish me to do for you?” asked Frauenthal, coldly.
“You are sure Tom is not—” He hesitated.
“Crazy?” prompted the specialist.
“Yes.”
“Yes; I'm sure he is not. Therefore he is saner than you who are a money-maker.”
Mr. Merriwether let this remark pass. He was anxious to save Tom. This man was uncannily sharp. He said, “And can't you do something, so that Tom will not—”
“I am not God!” interrupted Frauenthal.
“Then, what can I do? What do you suggest might be done?”
“As a neurologist?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing.”
“Then, as a man of the world—as one who knows human nature? You see, this—this—er—sort of thing is not in my line. What shall I do?” It was a terrible thing for the great Merriwether to confess inefficiency in anything.
“Pray!”
The little magnate flushed. “Dr. Frauenthal,” he began, with chilling dignity, “I asked—”
“And I answered. Have your millions deafened you? Pray! Pray to whatever other god you may have that the lady prove to be neither a prima donna nor a novelist. A temperamental daughter-in-law is really worse than you deserve, for all the money they say you have made. There are check-book gods and stock-ticker gods; and there is also God. I'd pray to Him if I were you. Good day, sir!”
The footman had opened the door, and the great specialist, without another look at the railroad man, got out and walked into his house.
“Where to, sir?” asked the footman.
Mr. Merriwether, however, was vexed to think that in relieving his anxiety over Tom's sanity Frauenthal had replaced it with a dread question—Why had not Tom told his father about her? The boy must be either crazy or in love. If he was not crazy, who in blazes was she? What was she? Why was she? All this angered him. He muttered aloud: “Hell!”
“Yes, sir—very good, sir,” said the footman, from force of habit. Then he trembled; but his master had not heard him.' The footman breathed deeply and said, tremulously, “B-beg p-pardon, sir?”
“Nearest Subway station!” said E. H. Merriwether. .
He was in a hurry to reach his office, not because he had important business to transact there, but because somehow he always thought best in his own chair before his own desk in his own office. There he was an autocrat, and there he could think autocratically and issue commands that were obeyed. He had much thinking to do—Tom was concerned, his son Tom; and Tom's future. And it was now clear that T. T. Merriwether's future was also the future of E. H. Merriwether!
Why had this thing come on him? Talk about your thunderbolts out of a clear sky—this love-affair was a million times worse! It was mysterious—and it is well known in Wall Street that a mystery is worse than nitroglycerine—infinitely more dangerous.
What was this love-affair? How far had it gone? Just where was the dynamite stored? Who was she? Why did not Tom say something? Why could not Tom have fallen in love safely? Why could he not have married a good girl who would help him and help E. H. Merriwether help both by minding her own business—to wit, a few little male Merriwethers?
It was time Tom became his father's successor-to-be. E. H. Merriwether had loved to do his own work his own way all his life. It was his pleasure. But the work suddenly took on an aspect of far greater importance than the worker. The work was the work of the Merriwethers—not of one Merriwether; not even of the great E. H., but of all the Merriwethers, living and to be.
Tom must be trained not only to be the son of a Merriwether, but to be himself a Merriwether. And therefore E. H. must cease to be a railroad expert toward Tom; he must become Tom's father, the trainer of a successor—flesh and blood the same; the fortune the same.
And, as a sense of impending loss always heightens values, E. H. Merriwether suddenly realized how important to him and to his happiness Tom was. He loved Tom, who was not only his only son, but the only Merriwether. That told everything: He loved Tom.