THE END
HER FRUITS
BY
MARY ELEANOR ROBERTS
These are her fruits, kindness and gentleness,
And gratefully we take them at her hands;
Patience she has, and pity for distress,
And love that understands.
Ah, ask not how such rich reward was won,
How sharp the harrow in the former years,
Or mellowed in what agony of sun,
Or watered with what tears.
THE KEY TO THE DOOR
BY FIELDING BALL
ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER JACK DUNCAN
"There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see.
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was—and then no more of Thee and Me."
The postmaster was lounging in an open window, cleaning his fingernails with his pocket-knife, as Allison went into the post-office. He rose with some show of animation at sight of the tall, boyish figure in the doorway.
"I got a hired girl for you all right, Mr. Allison," he said, advancing to meet him. "Used to work down to Webb City, in a restaurant, but got tired of it—hours too hard. She's a good cook, and she knows how to get things on the table so they look real nice—I knew that would mean considerable to you folks."
He went on to dwell at length upon the girl's good points, becoming more nervously demonstrative in his praise as he found that Allison's face reflected none of his enthusiasm, but remained unexpectedly impassive and non-committal.
Allison interrupted at the first opportunity.
"You have been very kind, Mr. Barbour," he said, with impersonal civility. "Would you be so good as to get me my mail?"
He took the letters which the man handed him and walked out without giving him another glance.
Just outside of the door he met Jim Brown, man-of-all-work at the station. Allison himself was station agent. Allison looked at Jim as he passed with such a cold, unswerving gaze that in spite of himself the other dropped his eyes. Jim had been present at the interview between Billings and Allison that morning; Allison knew that he was coming now to tell the postmaster about it. The young man set his lips hard at the thought of some of the things he had done during the last two weeks, when he had been full of glad confidence in himself and in this invention of his—this brake which Billings had told him an hour ago was not worth the stuff of which it was made. The recountal of his performance would doubtless afford much entertainment to the pair in the post-office. Just yesterday he had asked the postmaster to find for him, if possible, a capable maid-servant, and had said, without thinking anything in particular about it, that he would pay a satisfactory girl five dollars a week. Five dollars a week—it had not seemed much to him; he had been amused by Barbour's evident astonishment. To-day he saw more reason in it.... Then there was that perfume for Gertrude—he should have to countermand his order for that. He had no choice in the matter, he told himself, with bitter resentment that a paltry nine dollars should mean so much to him. In spite of the fact that he had come to this decision before he reached the drug store, he did not go in, but walked past with his head in the air, looking neither to right nor to left. He felt as though every one must already know of the morning's experience; and he was fearful of meeting eyes alight with cynical understanding.
The postmaster and Jim watched the young man from the post-office door as he made his way up the one hilly street of the little town. The soldierly precision of his carriage and gait, together with a certain air of distinction about his clothes, made him seem singularly out of keeping with all about him—the narrow, stony road, the straggling white houses on each side of it, the unkempt yards, the neglected trees, the dilapidated sidewalks half hidden by an amazing growth of dog-fennel.
"You'd know somep'n had gone wrong by the way he had his head reared back, wouldn't you?" Jim asked with a smile on his dark face.
He had just finished telling Barbour of what had happened that morning. Several days before,
Allison had got word from the railroad company that some time this week they would send a man to tell him what offer they were prepared to make for the brake on which he had been working for so many weeks, and had finally finished; and this morning Billings had put in his appearance. The brake was practically good for nothing, he assured Allison—certainly not worth a cent to the company; and he told him the reasons why this was so.
He went on to say, however, that he felt sorry for Allison,—sorry for that nice little wife of his,—Jim smiled grimly as he repeated the condescending phrase,—that he knew they were having a mighty hard time of it. Sixty dollars a month was not enough for a single man to live on decently, much less a married one; and the way in which Allison had been brought up made it harder. He didn't mean to criticize Allison's father—he didn't believe in criticizing the dead—but he certainly should not bring up his son in such a way that he couldn't make a living for himself if necessary. You never could tell what was going to happen in this world; Allison wasn't the first gay young fellow who had grown up not expecting ever to have to do a day's work, and then all of a sudden had found himself glad to get almost any sort of a job. Well, as he said, he was sorry for Allison, and ready to help him out a little. He meant to see to it that Allison got something out of this brake of his—a couple of hundred dollars, perhaps; of course, two hundred dollars wasn't a great deal; it wouldn't mean much to him—Billings—but it would probably mean considerable to Allison.
"What did Mr. Allison say?" the postmaster asked.
"Never changed face. Set there starin' at Billings with those darned cool eyes o' his that look's if they'd never blink 'f a cannon went off under his very nose—waited till Billings got good and done, 'n' then said with that high 'n' mighty air of his, f'r all the world's if he was speakin' to some poor, half-witted Swede: 'Two hundred dollars doesn't mean as much to me as you think, Mr. Billings.' Then he stopped a minute, 'n' went on in a little diff'rent tone, 'You needn't concern yourself any further about me and my troubles'—'n' that had very much the sound of 'I'll make kindling-wood of you if you do!' Then he looks at his watch. 'I've given you all the time I can spare,' says he; and with that he swings around 'n' begins looking over some papers on his desk. Billings reddened up a little—coughed 'n' wriggled around in his chair, 'n' tried to get up courage to say somethin' more—but he simply didn't darst. He went off finally lookin' sort o' cheap. Mist' Allison never give him another glance, no more'n 's if he was that dog o' yours."
The postmaster was silent for a minute or two. Then he turned to Jim. "I'm not particularly sorry to see Billings get left," he said. "Still, it might be just as well for Mr. Allison if he'd have kept on the right side of Billings from the start. There's no use talking, he's got an awfully uppish way with him, that boy."
Jim nodded an emphatic assent. Along with other smaller grievances there still rankled in his mind the memory of how, when Allison had first come as station agent to the little town, a year ago now, he had one day asked Jim if he did not suppose that the nice-looking girl who had passed their house with Jim the Sunday before could be induced to come and work for them. Allison had asked the question in all innocence, not dreaming that this unshaven young man in blue seersucker shirt and greasy trousers considered himself in every way Allison's equal, and was as much affronted by this suggestion as Allison would have been by one of the same sort. Jim could not forgive him for it—any admiration he felt for Allison was invariably tempered by resentful remembrance.
"It's about time he woke up to the fact that he doesn't have a father worth two millions behind him these days," Barbour went on. "Extravagant! Lord, he never stops to ask what a thing costs before getting it, as long as he has money in his pockets. Went into the book-store the other afternoon to get some magazines—carried off about everything Henry had in the place. Three dollars and fifteen cents his bill was. Never thinks, when he's buying anything in the way of shirts or ties, of getting less than half a dozen at a time—s'pose he hasn't found out you can buy them any other way. And his laundry bills—guess he about runs the laundry. And just yesterday he was telling me in the most off-hand way that he would pay five dollars a week to a hired girl. Five dollars a week! I could hardly believe my ears. But I guess he's gone back on that." The postmaster smiled sourly.
The young man of whom they were talking was almost at the top of the hill by this time. So far he had met few people; and those whom he had met had not forced any formal recognition from him. But as he passed Mrs. Jennings, she called out a greeting that could not be ignored. Gertrude had stopped once to talk to her and to admire her collection of shells; and since then every noon and night he found her waiting here by her gate to speak to him; and she invariably asked the same question about his wife, always in the same tone, always with the same inflection. The meeting with
her had become one of the frightfully unvarying things of his day. As he walked on now, he saw stretching before him an interminable vista of days, weeks, years—one deadly sameness of hard work, long hours, scanty pay, poor living, growing debts—and inextricably mixed up with it all, this dreary, gaunt black figure, waiting always for him at the top of the hill.... He had not realized what it meant to him, the success of his invention—how much he was depending on it. He felt now as he might if, moving blindly through a dark passage, hoping any minute to see a glimmer of light ahead, an outlet into the open air, he had run full into a locked door—a door to which he had no key.
The thought of going home to his wife brought no comfort with it. They had long ago ceased to be honest with each other, Gertrude and he; their attempts to make the best of a sorry situation had in the end become a barrier which held them apart. Gertrude would not admit that she was ever tired, or lonesome, or discouraged; would find no fault with their poor little house, their scanty means, her unaccustomed duties. She never spoke of the past any more, nor of the future, lest in that there might be an implied criticism of the present; she was resolutely, unvaryingly, aggressively contented. But this contentment was too constant, too uniform, like false color on a woman's cheek. He sometimes wished she would throw pretense to the winds—would put her head on his shoulder, and sob and cry, and confess that she wished she were dead—or that she would upbraid him, reproach him, call him some of the hard names he called himself. But she was insistently cheerful; and there was nothing for him to do, in the face of this, but play an awkward second to her, ignore his aching back, his sore hands, his throbbing head, and keep a resolute silence as to all that happened to vex and humiliate and perplex and hurt him. It was not always easy; to-day he was conscious that he was walking more and more slowly as he drew near the house.
How poor and forlorn it looked in this glare of light! During these last weeks his thoughts had turned often to that stately house where he had lived for nineteen years—its green, close-clipped lawn glistening under a perpetual play of water, its great beds of white and green and cardinal foliage plants, its shut-in porches, its awnings, its flowering shrubs, its vines, its heavy iron fence. He looked with bitter attentiveness at the dingy frame cottage he was approaching, noticing each homely detail—the dish-towels spread on the bushes in the back yard, the mop hanging by the door, the kerosene can under the step, the lean hen scuttling away under the currant bushes, the vegetable garden lying parched and dry along the fence. There was a small artificial mound of stones at one side of the house, with a somewhat scanty growth of portulaca springing from its top. The last occupant of the house was responsible for that adornment. Allison wondered how they had happened to leave it there so long. That mound of stones—all his hopes might have been buried under it and he could not have hated it more. It stood, somehow, for all that chafed and irritated him here—the moral, mental, and physical stuntedness of the people—their petty ambitions, petty jealousies, petty quarrels, petty virtues.
Allison was seized with a sudden vague fear as he saw on the kitchen window-sill, just where he had left it at seven this morning, the package which Gertrude had promised to take to Mr. Fulton as soon as she had finished the breakfast dishes. He noticed almost at the same instant that the kitchen door was open; countless flies were sailing in and out; and there on the cellar door, in the blazing sunlight, was the morning's milk, thick and sour by this time. He quickened his steps—made his way hurriedly through the kitchen and dining-room, noticing, as he went, various signs of disorder. The kitchen fire was out—the floor unswept; the coffee he had knocked over when he had built the fire this morning lay where it had fallen: the room was full of its pungent odor. On the dining-room table were the remnants of breakfast, the oatmeal dry and stiff, the butter melted down to a thin oil. In the front room he found Gertrude, bending a flushed face over something she was writing. She gave a start of fright as he came in—then got very red.
"I sat down to write a little of that play I was telling you about last night"—she was picking up her papers with frantic haste as she spoke—"and I had no idea it was getting so late." She cast an appalled glance around the room, and hurried out to begin clearing off the table, making a great clatter with the dishes in her excitement and haste.
"THIS DREARY, GAUNT BLACK FIGURE, WAITING ALWAYS FOR HIM AT THE TOP OF THE HILL"
Allison stood for a minute looking after her wearily. Her manner hurt him. More than once, in days gone by, he had told her fondly that when she married him she should do nothing but what she liked to do—if she chose, she might work on her little dialogues and fairy stories from morning till night. The air of frightened apology which she wore—this servile haste—pained and irritated him. He threw himself into a chair and began mechanically to look over the mail which the postmaster had handed him. A week ago he had written to an Eastern firm asking for a catalogue of the
refrigerators they made. Here it was—bulky, imposing, abounding in alluring pictures of tile-lined refrigerators filled with game, fish, fruit, wine. He found he could buy their smallest and most inexpensive refrigerator, "built especially to supply a demand for low-priced goods,"—so the advertisement ran—for forty-five dollars. He dropped the book, and turned to his other letter. It was from a great retail dry-goods house, and was in answer to a request he had made for samples of dotted swiss—he had thought he would like to get Gertrude a dress such as she had worn when he first knew her. The samples were sent, and along with them a letter expressing pleasure at being able to serve him, and a desire further to accommodate him whenever possible; its extreme deference and respect was like a calculated sarcasm. He pushed it away from him and leaned back in his chair, looking about the room with a curious stare, as a convict, who has just heard that his sentence is for life, might gaze at the walls of his cell. It was a low-ceiled room, with an uneven floor, cheap woodwork, painted in an unsuccessful imitation of natural wood, and walls hung with faded paper of an indeterminate pattern and even more indeterminate color. To-day it was in greater confusion than usual, with white dust thick on table and chair, a window-shade askew, the music-rack disarranged, and a plate of grape-skins which Allison had left last night on the piano still standing there. But it was not the disorder which irritated Allison most, nor the signs of poverty, but the fact that the poverty was so genteel, so self-respecting, so determined to make the best of things and present a brave front to the world. The kerosene lamp had a shade of red, crinkled tissue-paper—the cheap net curtains were arranged with the utmost elaboration—a rug was artfully laid down in such a way as almost to cover the square of zinc on which the stove stood in the winter time, and all of Gertrude's photographs were placed with a view to concealing various defects and deficiencies. His loathing for all this was intensified by a memory of vast rooms stretching out one after the other, hushed and cool, with gracious shadows lending their mystery and romance to everything. With sudden restlessness he rose, and walked over to the window; but the smell of dust and dry, dead vegetation smothered him. Gertrude had raked the long, sparse brown grass all in one direction; it had a grotesque look of having been combed.
He seized his hat, and went to get Mr. Fulton's package from the window-sill. He had barely turned toward the gate, however, when his wife hurried out, remonstrating, apologizing, with an urgent hand on his arm. "It is important that Mr. Fulton should get these papers to-day," he said stiffly. It did not really matter whether Mr. Fulton got the roll of agricultural papers to-day, to-morrow, or next week; but Allison felt the necessity for doing something, it did not much matter what, to crush down his growing despair; and this was the only thing which suggested itself. Gertrude was persistent, however, in her entreaties that he come back; it was frightfully hot, and he already looked tired; she would take the papers to Mr. Fulton right after luncheon. He yielded at last, from sheer languidness, and came silently into the house. Gertrude's moist face, her loud, anxious voice, her warm, clinging hand, were exceedingly disagreeable to him—so much so that finally the desire to escape them became more importunate than any other.
He was again standing by the window, gazing out, when his wife came into the dining-room to set the table. He did not turn—gave no sign of seeing her.
"What are you thinking about, Philip?" she asked presently, with an effort to make her question sound casual.
"I am not thinking—at least I am trying not to," Allison answered, in a somewhat strained, unnatural voice. Why would she not leave him alone? Could she not see that he did not wish to talk?
"What was the last thing that you were thinking about before you stopped?" Gertrude spoke with painstaking gaiety.
Would she always keep up this dissimulation? Allison asked himself. For his part, he was done with it!
"I was thinking that this place was fit for a dog-kennel—and for nothing else!" he said. All the bitterness that was eating out his heart was in the low words.
"It does look pretty bad to-day," Gertrude acquiesced, after an appreciable interval of time.
"To-day!" Allison gave a hard, contemptuous little laugh. "As though it ever looked any other way!"
Gertrude did not reply.... When Allison noticed her silence, and turned to look at her, he saw that there was a peculiar light in her eyes, a red flush over all her face; after a moment's dazed wonder, he realized that she had misunderstood him—had misunderstood him utterly. His thoughts had been on the sagging floors, the cheap furniture, the marred wall-paper, the miserable ugliness and poverty of the house, and everything in it; but she had seen in his remark only scorn for her housekeeping, irritation at the room's untidiness. She
was very angry. As Allison realized this, a sudden fierce satisfaction possessed him. Now at last she would speak out, without pretence, without reserve! He should hear the truth at last.
"HE HEARD HER MOVING ABOUT, GETTING HIS LUNCHEON"
But the wrathful look died out of her eyes. She began arranging the knives and forks, looking suddenly old, and steady, and sober.
"I'm not much of a housekeeper," she said, quietly.
"No, you're not." Allison made his tone as ugly as possible—and waited. Surely she would turn upon him now, overwhelm him with bitter words!
She made no answer of any kind, however, but turned and hurried into the kitchen, striking her arm clumsily against one side of the door as she passed through, as though she had not seen very well. He heard her moving rapidly about, getting his luncheon. She brought it in with her head in the air and her lips compressed. The coffee was muddy, the steak burned, the creamed potatoes scorched—she had been having bad luck. Allison ate every scrap of what she brought him. He did not dare look at her—did not dare ask her to forgive him. What right had he to do that? He lingered on the steps some time before starting for the station, fussing with his cuff, pulling his hat into shape, breaking off from the tree at the corner of the house the branch Gertrude had complained was in her way. His wife usually followed him to the door to tell him good-by; but to-day she was sweeping the dining-room vigorously, singing the while a very gay and cheerful tune. It was one to which they had often danced together in the old days; at the same moment at which he realized it, the song stopped, as though Gertrude had been silenced by the same memory that had come to him. He whistled tentatively; but she did not answer, though she was near enough to hear, as he knew from the sound of her broom.
Allison went about his work that afternoon with a droop to his head, and a dullness about his dark eyes, which Jim noticed with vague discomfort, and which made him wish heartily that he had not confided to the postmaster the story of Billings and the brake. He had quarreled with Gertrude—everything else seemed insignificant to Allison beside that. He had quarreled with Gertrude—Gertrude, who had been so brave, so uncomplaining, so patient, so forbearing—had gone away from her with the shadow of a misunderstanding between them. He kept repeating to himself everything he had said and everything she had said, recalling every tone and gesture. He wondered how he could have felt such a shrinking dislike as she stood with her hand—her poor little scarred hand!—on his arm, begging him to come back, to let her take the papers to Mr. Fulton. How sweet she had been—how sweet! And he!
He started for home a little earlier than usual—Jim urged him to go, with a certain rough friendliness, saying that he could look out for things at the station. On his way home Allison went to the post-office, hoping to get a letter for Gertrude from her mother or sister, and he told the postmaster very humbly and simply why he had not felt like talking this noon, and of the fact that he could not really afford to pay five dollars a week for a maid. It was very strange, but after he had begun, it was not at all hard to go on. He wondered vaguely how he could have thought the postmaster a meddlesome, malicious, vulgar young man; he seemed very sensible and friendly and respectful to-night.
Mrs. Jennings stood at the top of the hill, gaunt and black as usual; somehow Allison did not feel the usual resentment. He stopped to speak to her with unwonted warmth; and when, encouraged by his manner, she began to talk about Gertrude, and what a pretty girl, and what a smart girl, and what a sweet girl she was, he felt a sudden kindness for the old lady, and accepted almost demonstratively the bunch of magenta and orange vinnias she gave him to take to his wife.
As Allison went into the house, he noticed signs of a vigorous cleaning. The back steps had been scrubbed—were still wet; the kitchen floor was as white as the rough, dark boards could be made; the dining-room table was set with their finest table-cloth and prettiest dishes, and was gay with yellow flowers; fresh white curtains, breathing out sweetness, hung at the windows. A note was pinned to the corner of the table.
"If you should get home before I do," it ran, "this is to tell you that I have gone to Mr. Fulton's with those papers I promised to take right after luncheon—I forgot all about them till just now. I'll be back in three-quarters of an hour sure; it's half-past five now. Supper's all ready now but making the coffee. Be sure and wait."
He smoothed the hurried scrawl out tenderly, feeling as if something hard and cold in his left side had melted with a sudden gush of warmth. Back in three-quarters of an hour! He laughed aloud at the sanguineness of it. Why, it took him forty minutes to go to Mr. Fulton's and back! And the idea of telling him to be sure and wait! The little goose! Did she think he would take himself off in a temper at not finding her, as he had once months ago? He went out
to the kitchen to put his flowers in water, and to finish slicing an egg over the top of the bowl of salad there—Gertrude had evidently just begun to do it when the package outside the window caught her eye. He put on some water for the coffee, and brought in an armful of wood; then he strolled to the gate to wait for his wife. The neighbor's two-year-old baby came staggering down the walk in front of the house. Allison caught up the child in his arms, and lifted it to the top of the gate-post, beside him. This was the little girl for whom Gertrude had been making a dress the other day; she had looked very shocked—Gertrude—when he had asked her if she proposed to make clothes for all the dirty little brats in the neighborhood, and had told him with some dignity that Dolly was a very pretty baby, and was kept as clean as could be expected. Dolly was a pretty baby. He tightened the arm that was about her a little, and began to talk clumsy baby-talk to her; her mother looked on with a pleased smile from her front door. The sun was setting, and a strange bright peace was on everything.
Suddenly Allison's eyes were caught by an unaccustomed sight—a crowd of people, men, women, and children, advancing down the road, slowly, steadily, and silently—very silently. He surveyed them curiously, ignorantly. Suddenly a man spoke to the one next him—Allison saw the dip of his head—and almost at the same instant a child—a twelve-year-old girl—put up her hands to shade her eyes, staring intently at Allison, and then with a loud shriek ran wildly, blindly, in the other direction. And then Allison knew that this silent company meant disaster to him.
They dragged him away before he caught more than a glimpse of what they had in their midst—the limp, white-faced thing in the silly pink dress he had liked. She had started home by the short way, they told him—the short way over the old bridge—the bridge that every one knew was not safe. And how it happened no one could say—perhaps she had stumbled and caught hold of the rotten railing, and it had given under her hand; at any rate they had found her in the dry river-bottom, thirty feet below. He looked at them very calmly as they finished. "She is dead," he said quietly, "there is no need to tell me that." And then, suddenly, without a cry or any warning, he toppled over against the man nearest him.
But she was not dead. He came out of his delirium and fever three weeks later to find her limping around the room, looking a little pale and tired, but very pretty in some sort of ruffled white dress, with her hair done up in the puffs and rolls he had always liked. People had been very good, she told him when he was strong enough to listen and understand. The doctor had said that he could eat eggs before he could eat anything else—so everybody had been sending fresh eggs. Mary said she was going to buy an incubator and start to raising chickens—they couldn't eat half the eggs that were sent in, even if they ate nothing but custard. Mary was the pretty girl that they had seen walking with Mr. Brown one Sunday, and had thought would be a nice person to have around. She was going to stay with them all winter; Gertrude was going to teach her German and music, and she was going to teach Gertrude how to cook. She was doing all the work just now, she and the neighbors. Mrs. Ferry came in every morning to scrub the kitchen and black the stove. They said Gertrude must keep her hands nice—Philip had seemed more worried about her hands than about anything else, all the time he was sick. Did he see how soft and white they were? She had been washing them in buttermilk—the doctor's wife had suggested that—and putting some sort of cream on them that Mr. Gilson, the young man who clerked in the drug store, had sent up by Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown had been so kind—it had been he who had sat up with Philip when his fever was at its worst—he had chopped all the ice that they had used from first to last. He was out in the back yard now, fixing—but there, that was to be a surprise.
Allison lay very still, smoothing his wife's hand, and looking out through the open door at the dry grass of the yard, browner, dustier than ever, and at the portulaca waving on top of the pyramid of stones. He could hear Jim's whistle as he moved about the yard; some one at the back door was talking to Mary in a hushed, eager undertone; over on her porch Dolly was singing happily, sinking her voice to a mere murmur now and then at a low remonstrance from within the house. It all made a sort of accompaniment to Gertrude's happy talk.
Suddenly she stopped, and leaned her cheek against his, with a little sigh. "Isn't it a nice world, dear?" she whispered.
He turned so that he could look into her eyes, and said, with a little tremble in his voice:
"It's a beautiful world!"
"HE CAME TOWARD HER WITH THE PITCHER"
THE WAYFARERS
BY
MARY STEWART CUTTING
AUTHOR OF "LITTLE STORIES OF COURTSHIP," "LITTLE STORIES OF MARRIED LIFE," ETC.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS
XIX
"Slipped through your fingers like that! Like a—" Leverich's words were not fit for print. He had been away for a couple of days, and now sat tilted back in his office chair, a heavy, leather-covered thing not meant for tilting, his face puffed with anger, his mouth snarling—a wild beast balked of his prey. His eyes, ferociously insolent, dwelt on Justin, who, fine and keen and smiling a little, sat opposite him. Brute anger never had any effect on Justin but to give him a contemptuous, chill self-possession.
"You're sure the agreement's made?"
"Cater's been sending new consignments as fast as they could go for the past three days; he's loaded up with machines."
Leverich swore again. "Confounded fools, not to have made terms with Hardanger first! If we'd only known! If there was only some way to put a spoke in the wheel, even yet!"
"Oh, I've got the spoke, easily enough," said Justin indifferently. "The only trouble is, I can't use it."
"Got a spoke! Why in heaven didn't you say that before?" Leverich came down on the front legs of his chair with a force that sent it rolling ahead on its casters. "What are you sitting here for? What do you mean by telling me that you can't use it?"
"Just what I say. But it's not worth talking about."
"See here, Alexander, could you get our machine in now instead of his?"
"I suppose I might."
"And you're not going to do it?"
"I can't, I tell you, Leverich. The information came to me in such a way that I can't touch it."
"'The information—' It's something damaging to do with the machine?"
Justin drummed with his fingers on the desk without answering.
"You have proof?"
"What's the sense of talking, Leverich? Proof or no, I tell you, I can't use it. This isn't any funny business; you can see that. Don't you suppose, if I could use it, that I would? But there are some things a man can't do. At any rate, I can't. And that settles it."
Heaven knows he had gone over the matter insistently enough in the last few days, since the combination had been unwillingly given into his hands, but always with the foregone conclusion. The devil, as a rule, doesn't actively try to tempt us to evil: he simply confuses us, so that we are kept from using our reason. But this time he had no field for action. To use secret information against Cater, that could never have been had but for Cater's kindness to him in helping him to those bars in time of need, was first, last, and every time impossible to Justin Alexander. It was vain for argument to suggest that this very deed of kindness had worked his disaster—the fact remained the same. He might do other things; he might do worse things: this thing he could not do—not though the refusal worked his own ruin, not though Cater's ruin with Hardanger was insured anyway, but too late for the typometer to profit by it. Even if the typometer could by some means keep afloat until that day arrived, it would take a couple of years for such a timing-machine to regain its prestige in a foreign country.
Justin had no excess of sentiment; no quixotic impulse urged him to go and tell Cater what he had learned. It was Cater's business to look after his end of the game. If the price of material or labor was too cheap, he must know that there was something wrong with it. The stream of Justin's mind ran clear in spite of that feeling of sharp practice toward himself—nay, because of it; it was impossible to use the
weapon that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a situation, not for bluster and rage, but to be competently grappled with.
"How about your obligations? Do you call this fair dealing to us, Alexander? There's Lewiston's note; once this deal was settled, we would have paid that, as you know. But it's out of the question as things stand. We'll have to get our money out the best way we can. If this is your sense of honor—to sacrifice your friends! See here, Alexander, let's talk this out. When it comes to talking of ruin, no man can afford to stand on terms. We didn't put you into the typometer business on any kindergarten principles—it isn't to form your character. What we did, we did for profit; and if the profit isn't there, we get out. We've no objection to doing a kindness for any one, if we can do it and make a profit; but it stands to reason that we're not in the business for philanthropy any more than for kindergartening. We liked you, and we were willing to give you a place in the game if you could run it to suit us. But we don't consider any scheme that doesn't make money. What doesn't make money has to go. Profit, profit, profit—that's what every sane man puts first, and there's no justice in losing a chance to make it. What you lose, another man takes. If you make another man's wife and children better off, you stint your own. You've got to consider a question on all sides. No woman respects a man who can't make money; it's his everlasting business to make money, and she knows it. Your wife won't think much of your fine scruples if she's to go without for 'em. And, by the Lord, she's right! When you go into business, you've got to make up your mind to one of two things: you've either got to step hard on the necks of those below you, or you've got to lie down and let them wipe their feet on you."
"'I DON'T GIVE QUARTER, AND I DON'T EXPECT ANY. IF I'M SQUEEZED, I PAY'"
Leverich had stopped at intervals for comment from Justin. Since none was offered, he went on, with the large and easy manner of one who feels the justice of his convictions: "No man ever accused me of being close. I'm free-handed, if I say it that shouldn't. I like to give, and I do give. If there's money wanted for charity, the committees know very well where to come. And my wife likes to give,
too; her name's on the books of twenty charitable organizations. But we give out of money I've made by not being free-handed—by getting every last cent that belonged to me. You see, I don't leave my wife out of my calculations—any man's a fool that does. She's got the right to have as good as I can give her. I wouldn't talk like this to most men, Alexander, but between you and me it's different. It pays to keep your wife in a good humor, when you've got to go home after a hard day's work; you take a dissatisfied woman, and she'll make your home a hell. I know men—Great Scott! I don't know how they live!" He paused again. Justin did not answer. He sat with his head on his hand, looking, not at Leverich, but to one side of him.
"EVEN REDGE ... HAD BEEN ALLOWED TO HOLD HIM"
"When I say I've made the money," continued Leverich, "I mean that I actually have made most of it—made it out of nothing! like the first chapter of Genesis. If a man has money to start with, he can add to it as easily as you can roll up a snowball. It's no credit to him. But I've had only my brains. I've seen money where other men couldn't, and nothing has stood in my way of getting to it. That's the whole secret of success. And my attitude's fair—you couldn't find a fairer. When one of your clerks falls sick, you pay him his full salary for three or four months till he's around again. I know! Well, I don't do any such stunts. When I was a clerk myself, I was on the sick-list once for three months, and nobody paid me. After the first month I was bounced, and I didn't expect anything else. I didn't expect any philanthropical business, and I don't give it. That's fair, isn't it? I don't give quarter, and I don't expect any. If I'm squeezed, I pay. I don't stand still in the middle of a deal and snivel about what I can do and what I can't do. I don't snivel about what you call moral obligations. I only recognize money obligations. Why, see here, Alexander," he broke off, "if you use the influence you spoke of, you don't have to tell me what it is—you don't have to tell anybody but Hardanger. Cater himself needn't know that you had anything to do with it."
"But I'd know," said Justin quietly.
Leverich lost his easy manner; his jaw protruded.
"Very well, then; it comes down to this: If you fail us now, out of any of your fool scruples toward that poor devil across the street,—who's bound to get the blood sucked out of him anyway,—you ruin your own prospects, and
you try and cheat us out of the money we put up on you. By ——, if you see any honor in that, I don't."
"Mr. Leverich," said Justin, raising his head simply, with a steely gleam in his eyes that matched the other's, "when I try to cheat you or Lewiston or any man out of what has been put up on me, I'll give you leave to say what you please. At present I'll say good morning."
"AFTER THIS HE ONLY APPEARED IN THE VILLAGE STREET GUARDED ON EITHER SIDE BY A FEMALE SNOW"
Leverich shrugged his shoulders and turned his back as he bent over his desk. Justin picked up his hat and went out, brushing, as he did so, against a dark, pleasant-faced man who had been sitting in the next room. Something in his face instantly conveyed to Justin the knowledge that the conversation he had just been engaged in had grown louder than the partition warranted. The next instant he recognized the man as a Mr. Warren, of Rondell & Co. Both men turned to look back at each other, and both bowed. The action had a certain definiteness in it, unwarranted by the slightness
of the meeting. The next moment Justin was in the street.
"TO PUT HER YOUNG ARMS AROUND LOIS AND HOLD HER CLOSE WITH ACHING PITY"
The active clash of steel always roused the blood in him; he felt actively stronger for combat. He was competently apportioning toward Lewiston's note the different sums coming in this month. There were large bills to be paid to the typometer's credit by several firms, one of them Coneways'. Coneways represented the largest counted-in asset for the entire year—it was the backbone of the establishment. If it went to Lewiston, what would be left for the business? That could come next. Lewiston was first. Leverich and Martin would exact every penny of their principal after these intervening six months of the year were over. Well, let them! Lewiston's note was what he had to think of now.
All business undertakings, no matter how wild, how precarious, to the sense of the beholder, are started with confidence in their ultimate success; it is the one trite, universal reason for starting—that faith is the capital that all possess in common. Some of these doubtful ventures, while never really succeeding, do not really fail at once. They are always hard up, but they keep on, though gradually sinking lower all the time. Others seem to exist by the continuance of that first faith alone—a sheer optimism that keeps the courage alive and keen enough to seize hold of the slightest driftwood of opportunity, binding this flotsam into a raft that takes them triumphantly out on the high tide. For all the long drag, the anxiety, the physical strain, the harassment, failure in itself seemed as inherently impossible to Justin as that he should be stricken blind or lose the use of his limbs. He must think harder to find a way of accomplishment; that was all.
His step had its own peculiar ring in it as he left Leverich's, but it lost somewhat of its alertness as he turned down the street that led to the factory, unaltered, since his first coming to it, save for the transformation of the neglected house he had noticed then, with its gruesome interior, which had been turned into a freshly painted shop long ago. The effect of association is inexorable. There was not a corner, not a building, along that too familiar way, that was not hung with some thought of care. There were moments of such strong repulsion that he felt as if he couldn't turn down that street again—moments lately when to enter the factory with its red-brick-arched yawning mouth of a doorway occasioned a physical nausea—a foolish, womanish state which irritated him.
The mail brought him the usual miscellaneous assortment of orders and bills, and letters on minor points, and questions as to the typometer. The mail was rather apt to be encouraging in its suggestions of a large trade. Two letters this morning were full of enthusiastic encomium on the use of the machine. In spite
of an enormous and long-outstanding bill for office stationery, insistently clamorous for payment—one of those bills looked upon as trifles until they suddenly become staggering—there was, after the mail, a general feeling of wielding the destiny of a large part of the world, where the typometer was a power.
"'YOU'RE VERY GOOD TO BE SO SORRY FOR ME,' SHE WHISPERED"
A little woman whose husband, now dead, had been in his employ came in to get help in collecting his insurance; she was timid before Justin, deeply grateful for his kind and effective assistance. Two men came in, at different times, for advice and introductions to important people. A friend brought in a possible customer from the Sandwich Islands. There was all that aura of prosperity that has nothing to do with the payment of one's bills.
Justin took both the friend and the customer out to lunch, his agreeable sense of hospitality only dimmed by the disagreeable fact of its taking every cent of the five dollars he had expected to last for the week. He was "strapped." The luncheon took longer, also, than he had counted on its doing. The morning, begun well, seemed to lead up only to sordid and anxious details—a sense of non-accomplishment, induced also by small requisitions from different people, requiring cash from a cash-drawer that was usually empty.
It was a welcome relief to figure, with Harker's assistance, on the large sums coming in at the end of the month from Coneways. There were a hundred ways for them to go, but they were to go to Lewiston. Perhaps, after all, as Harker astutely suggested, Lewiston would be satisfied with a partial payment and extend the rest of the note. While they were still consulting, word was brought in that Mr. Lewiston was there.
Mr. Lewiston was a young man, small-featured, black-haired, smooth-shaven, and with an air of nattiness and fashion, set at odds at present by a very pale and anxious face and eager, dilated black eyes. He cut short Justin's greeting with the words:
"I've just come over to speak about that note, Alexander."
"Well, I was just wanting to speak to you about it myself," said Justin easily. "Have a cigar?"
"Thank you," said Lewiston mechanically, and as mechanically holding out his hand for the cigar, evidently forgetting it the next moment. "The fact is, I don't want to seem importunate, but if you could pay off that note fifteen days before date,—a week from to-day, that is,—we'd discount it to satisfy you, if you can collect now. I didn't want to bother you
about it, and I tried outside first, but nobody will take up the paper just now, except at a ruinous rate. If you could make it convenient, Alexander." Young Lewiston sat with his small, eager face bent forward over his knees, his lips twitching slightly. "You know, that money wasn't loaned on strictly business principles, Alexander, but for friendship; I got father to consent to it. And if you could let us have it now, it would save us a world of trouble. It's really not much—only ten thousand."
Justin shook his head, his keen blue eyes fixed on the other. "I can't let you have it, Lewiston; I wish I could! But I'm waiting payments myself. Can't you pull out without it?"
Lewiston drew in his breath. "Oh, yes, of course we'll have to; but it means— Well, I know you would if you could, Alexander; I told father so—father in a way holds me responsible. He was in London when I renewed the note the last time. There isn't anything to interfere with the payment when it's due?"
"On my honor, no," said Justin. "You shall have it then without fail."
"For if that should slip up—" continued young Lewiston, wrapped in somber contemplation of his own affairs alone; he threw his arms outward with a gesture suddenly tragic in its intensity, paused an instant, then wrung Justin's hand silently and departed.
"Are you busy, Alexander? They said I could come in."
"Why, Girard!"
Justin wheeled a chair around with an instantly brightened face. "Sit down. I'm mighty glad to see you." He looked smilingly at his visitor, whose presence, long-limbed, straight, clean, and clear-eyed, always elicited a peculiar admiration from other men. "I heard that you had a room at the Snows' now, while Billy is away, but I haven't laid eyes on you for a month."
"I've been coming in on a later train every morning and going out again on a very much later one at night. I'm back in town on the paper for a while."
"Why don't you settle down to something worth while?" asked Justin, with the reserved disapproval of the business man for any mode of life but his own.
"MRS. SNOW WAS FUMBLING WITH A PAPER"
"Settle down to this kind of thing?" said
Girard thoughtfully. "Well, I did think of it last year, when I undertook those commissions for you. But what's the use—yet awhile, at any rate? You see, I can always make enough money for what I want and to spare, and there's nobody else to care. I like my liberty! The love of trade doesn't take hold of me, somehow—and you have to have such a tremendous amount of capital to keep your place. By the way, have you sold the island yet?" The island was a small one up near Nova Scotia, taken once for a debt.
"Not yet."
Girard gave him a quick glance. "How are things going with you?"
"Fine," said Justin in a conventionally prosperous tone, with a sudden sight of a bottomless pit yawning below him. "I've a few things on my mind lately—but they're all right now. By the way, how do you like it at the Snows'?"
"Oh, all right." Girard's gray eyes smiled in an irrepressible smile. "I score high at present. They all approve of me, and I am told that I am the only man who has never run into the Boston fern or got tangled in the Wandering Jew. Miss Bertha and I have long talks together—she's great. As for Mrs. Snow—she heard Sutton speak of her the other night to Ada as 'the old lady,' I assure you that since—" He shook his head, and both men laughed.
"Come to see us. Miss Linden is back with us again," said Justin hospitably.
"Thank you," said Girard, an indefinable stiffening change instantly coming over him. "By the way, I mustn't forget what I came for, before I hurry off."
He took some bills out of his long, flat leather wallet as he rose. "Do you remember lending that sixty dollars to my friend Keston last year? He turned up yesterday, and asked me to see that you got this."
"I'd forgotten all about it," averred Justin. He had not realized until he took the bills that he had been keeping up all day by main strength, with that caved-in sensation of there being nothing back of it—nothing back of it. There are times when the touch of money is as the elixir of life. Justin, holding on by the skin of his teeth for ten thousand dollars, and needing imperatively at least as much more, felt that with this paltry sixty dollars it was suddenly possible to draw a free breath, felt a sheer lightness of spirit that showed how terrible was the persistent weight under which he was living. The very feeling of those separate bills in his pocket made him calmly sanguine.
He got ready to go home a little earlier than usual, saying lightly to Harker, who had come in for his signature to some papers:
"Those payments will begin to straggle in next week. Coneways' isn't due until the 31st—the very last minute! But he's always prompt, thank Heaven—what are you doing?"
"Knocking on wood," said Harker, with a grim smile.
"Oh, knock on wood all you want to," returned Justin.
He even thought of Lois on his way, and stopped to buy her some flowers. It was the first time he had thought of her unconsciously for a week. While he was waiting for a car to pass before he crossed the street, his eye caught the headline on a paper a newsboy was holding out to him: