I
Awake early, Bruce donned a freshly-pressed gray suit and went down to breakfast. His immediate concern was to find employment, for in work, he knew, lay his hope of happiness and peace. He had thrust into his pocket letters from architects who had employed him in various cities commending him as an excellent draughtsman; and he bore a letter certifying to his good character and trustworthiness from the president of the bank in his native town. He was not pressed by immediate need. His travels had been inexpensive; in fact, he had a little more than earned his way; and he had not only the fifty thousand dollars his mother had left invested in securities, but he carried drafts for the accumulated income—something over a thousand dollars—to tide him over any possible difficulties in finding an opening that promised well for the future. He had finished his breakfast, and lingered at the table, deep in thought, when a young man who had just entered the dining-room paused beside him.
“Is it or is it not Bruce Storrs?” he demanded. “I spotted you from the door—didn’t think there could be another such head and shoulders.”
“Bud Henderson!”
Storrs was on his feet, wringing the hand of the young man, who was regarding him with a pleased grin.
“You good old Indian! I was just about to go out and ask the nearest cop where to find you! You’re the only man in town I know!”
“Thanks for the compliment. You might have warned me of your approach. I’ll sit right here and eat while you unfold yourself.”
Henderson was short, lean and dark, with a curiously immobile face. His lips smiled oddly without any accompanying expression of humor in his rather small brown eyes. Without inquiring what had brought Storrs to town, he began talking of their years together at Boston, where they had been fellow students at the Tech. He had a dry, humorous way of saying things, particularly when he talked of himself, which puzzled strangers but delighted his friends. He was treating Storrs quite as though there had been no break in their intercourse.
“Met some of our old Boston pals during the recent unpleasantness and heard of you occasionally on the other side,” he was saying. “Frankly, I’m not keen about war”—he was composedly eating a melon—“war is fatiguing. I hope the great nations will behave for the rest of my life, so I won’t be annoyed by having to go out and settle the row.”
“Here too, Bud; I got enough. I want to have a try at the arts of peace.”
“So say we all. By the way, are you married yet?”
“No.”
“That’s bad. Marriage is an honorable estate; I’m rather keen about it. I took me a wife as soon as I got back from France. Oh, Lord, no! None of the girls we knew around Boston. Couldn’t afford them, and besides it’s a mistake not to marry in your home town, and it’s also easier when you’re a bloomin’ pauper. I married into one of the strongest wholesale grocery houses in all these parts. I’ll drive you by the warehouse, an impressive pile—one of the biggest concerns west of Pittsburgh. Maybelle is the name of the lucky girl, and Maybelle is the only child of the Conrad of Conrad, Buxton and Pettibone. A wonderful girl—one of the really strong, powerful women of this great nation. She’s out of town at present, playing a golf tournament for the huckleberry association championship. That’s why I’m chasing downtown for breakfast—cook’s on a vacation. You’ll meet Maybelle; she’s a person, that girl! Married me out of pity; thinks I’m half-witted, and right, at that!”
“Of course you’d have to marry a girl who’d make allowance for your mental infirmities,” Bruce replied. “Getting on in your profession, I suppose?”
“Hell, no! I chucked that. There are too many really capable electrical experts, and after Maybelle’s father had tried me for six months in the grocery and I failed to show any talent for distributing the well-known Verbena Brand of canned stuff, he set me up in the automobile business. Shameful to relate, I really make money. I handle the Plantagenet—one of the worst cars on the market. You know it was a mistake—my feeling that I was called to be another Edison or Marconi. I was really cut out for the literary life—another sad case of mute, inglorious Milton. I exercise my talents now designing ‘ads’ and come-on letters as a lure to customers for the Plantagenet. Would you ride with kings? The Plantagenet is the car that takes you out and brings you back. That’s my latest slogan; you’ll find it glaring at you all over the landscape.”
“Oh, what a fall, my countryman!”
“Not at all. You know I always had a knack of making phrases. It’s a gift, my boy. I suppose you’re here to figure on a new state-house or perhaps a hospital for lame cats. I know nearly everybody in town, so if I can be of use to you, just warble.”
“My aim isn’t so high,” said Bruce, who remembered Henderson as somewhat eccentric but the kindest of souls. His manner of talking was no indication of his true character. Bruce’s heart warmed to Henderson; already the town seemed less strange, and he at once disclosed his intention of establishing himself in the city, though without in the least surprising the imperturbable Bud.
“Welcome!” he exclaimed with his mouth full of toast. “You shall be our Michelangelo, our Sir Christopher Wren! I see, as in a dream,” he went on as he thrust his fork into a poached egg, “I see our fair city adorned with the noble fruits of the genius of Bruce Storrs, the prince of architects. You will require a fleet of Plantagenets to whirl you from one rising edifice to another. I might make you a special price on six cars—but this must be confidential.”
“I really want to get into a good office, and I’m not expecting to be taken right into the firm,” said Bruce, laughing. “It will take me a year or two to get acquainted, and then I’d like to set up for myself.”
“Certainly a worthy ambition, Bruce. It’s a good thing I’m here on the ground to give you the true dope on the people who count in this teeming village. The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and there’s danger of getting pinched between the old hard-boiled bunch and the birds of gayer plumage who flew in when no one was looking and insist on twittering sweetly on our tallest trees. Let me be your social booster; no one better fitted. I’m the only scion of one of our earliest and noblest families. My grandfather’s bank busted in seventy-three with a loud bang and I had an uncle who was indicted for embezzling public funds. He hid in Patagonia and died there in sinful splendor at a ripe old age. Talk about the aristocracy—I’m it! I derive a certain prestige among what you might call the paralytic group from the fact that my ancestors were mixed up in all the financial calamities that ever befell this town. But it’s the crowd that are the spenders—build the lordly palaces and treat the Eighteenth Amendment with the contempt it so richly deserves—that you want to train with. Your profession is cursed with specialization and I’d warn you against public work. Too much politics there for one of your fastidious nature. Our best man in domestic architecture is Freeman—he’s a Tech man, about seven years ahead of our class. He has a weakness for sun parlors with antique Italian fountains that are made for him special by a pottery right here in town. You’re sure to like Freeman; he’s a whist fiend, but otherwise he’s a decent chap. His wife and Maybelle are chums and we play around together a good deal.”
While listening to Henderson’s rambling talk Bruce had been turning over the pages of a memorandum book. He asked about several architects whose names he had noted. Henderson described them succinctly, praising or deriding them for reasons which struck Bruce as not necessarily final as to their merits.
“I don’t expect to land a job the first day,” said Bruce. “I may have to go through the list before I find what I want.”
“Oh, Freeman will take you on,” replied Henderson easily. “But he never does anything important without consulting his wife—one of his eccentricities. My own system is to go ahead and tell Maybelle afterward, being careful, of course, to conceal my mistakes.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” laughed Bruce. “I wish I could view the world as chipperly as you do.”
“My dear Bruce”—with his forefinger Henderson swept Storrs’s breakfast check to his own side of the table with a single gesture—“never try to view the whole world at one glance; it’s too damned big. All I see at present on this suffering, sinning planet is a Plantagenet runabout with Maybelle and me rolling through fields of asphodel. Everything else is superfluous. My fellow creatures simply don’t exist except as prospects for the Plantagenet.”
“Oh, rot! You’re the most unselfish biped I ever knew!”
“Superficially, yes; but it’s all on the surface. Let’s go out and plant our feet firmly upon the city.”
He led the way to his car and drove to the Plantagenet salesroom and garage. A young woman whom he introduced as Miss Ordway apparently ran the whole establishment. Henderson said that she did. He sat down at his desk and signed, without reading, a pile of letters which she had written the day before, talking to her meantime, not of business, but of a novel he had given her to read. Her attempts to interest him in the fact that one of the salesmen wanted his assistance in rounding up a certain difficult customer were provocative only of scornful comments, but when she handed him a memorandum of an appointment with the prospect at ten o’clock the next morning, he meekly thrust the paper into his pocket and said all right; he’d see what he could do. Miss Ordway was already busy with other matters; she seemed to make due allowance for her employer’s peculiarities.
“This girl’s mighty firm with me,” he said in a tone perfectly audible to Miss Ordway. “A cruel tyrant; but she really does get some work out of me.”
He sat on the edge of his desk as he talked over the extension telephone. Bruce inferred that he was speaking to Mrs. Freeman, and it was evident from his tone that Bud had not exaggerated in speaking of his intimacy with the architect and his wife.
“Maybelle’s pushing the pill somewhere and won’t be back for a week. This being Friday, I’d like to be invited to your shanty for the week-end.... Ah! That’s nice of you. And may I bring a little friend?... Oh, a man, of course! And list, Dale, he’s an architect—a Tech grad and everything pretty, and I want Bill to take him on—see? Nice boy and perishing for a job. You fix it for me—that’s the girl!... Oh! my friend isn’t fussy; we’ll both sleep on the grass.... What? Yes; I’ll bring some poison; my pet bootlegger broke through the entanglements yesterday.”
“All set,” he remarked as he hung up the receiver. “Mighty nice girl, Dale.”
Miss Ordway intercepted him on his way out to ask what she should do about a claim for damages to a car belonging to a man named Smythe, which had been scratched in the garage. The owner threatened to sue, and Miss Ordway expressed the belief that the valued patron was not bluffing.
“We took the stand it wasn’t done in our shop and we can’t weaken,” said Henderson. “Also, we don’t want a row. Were my eyes deceiving me or have I seen Smythe looking longingly at that blue touring car in our front window? Yes? Well, suppose we send Briggs to call on him, carrying the olive branch. Tell him to roll home in the blue car and we’ll take his old junk and seven hundred berries cash on the counter.”
“I think we could get eight hundred on the deal.” Miss Ordway’s tones were crisp and businesslike.
“Sold! I despise Smythe, but it’s worth a thousand to have him riding in a Plantagenet. I’ll look in again at five.”