Jim went out, his head in a pink cloud, his feet treading something lighter than mundane pavement. Why, they had not thought he was in a hole at all! The things Grierson and he had looked on as scarcely creditable makeshifts were approved as sound business, and they had given him money. How easy money was to get! It astonished him. Thirty thousand dollars he had borrowed from the Diversity Bank, with no difficulty; twenty-five thousand more poured into his purse from the City Bank, with compliments attached. His policy had won. He had found some one who appreciated being told the whole uncolored truth. After all, the world had not trampled its ideals into the mire of money-chasing. Even to-day the sound things of life commanded a market value. Business men, in high places of trust, business men of tested capacity, placed the moral before the material risk.
The president of the bank had said, “I would rather lend a known honorable man money on doubtful security than to venture a loan to a dubious man on Government bonds.”
So Jim brought back from the city more than money. He brought back a renewed, an increased faith in the virtue of mankind. It was an asset not to be despised. The mighty hand of business reached out to encourage, to help with concrete aid, the honest man. It withheld its support, even though ample security were offered, from the man whose honor was dubious. Therefore, this modern god of business was a virtuous god. If evil were committed in its name the god itself was not smirched save in the eyes of the ignorant; if false sacrifices were offered to it by charlatans and liars and cheats, by jack priests of commerce, the god was not more dishonored than is the God of Israel by horrors that have been committed in His name.
As Jim rode home on the train his first feeling of elation dwindled. Doubt returned. He weighed the sides of his ledger against each other and determined all was not yet secure. How could it be secure when he had but added to his liability the not inconsiderable sum of twenty-five thousand dollars? Part of his debts he could pay. The balance must wait, for he could not divest himself of ready money, nor would the reserve he could set aside last forever.
The demand-note of thirty thousand dollars reared itself as a threat, assumed the guise of a poised bird of prey biding its moment. No, he was not free from the chains of his difficulties. His competitors—he thought of them as enemies—were as yet strong, untouched, unready for peace. They were capable of striking, would strike if a telling blow could be launched. There was Michael Moran.
The task of defending his own was just begun; the feat of bringing his enemies to overtures of peace was distant from accomplishment; and again there was Michael Moran. It was Jim’s first contact with that black spirit called hatred. He hated Michael Moran because it was inevitable he should do so, because Michael Moran was the exponent of all things at the remotest pole from Jim’s ideals.
With something like consternation he admitted to himself that he hated Michael Moran because the man’s life orbit had touched with pitch the life of a woman who had assumed preponderating importance in Jim’s universe.
As he alighted from the train at Diversity he saw Marie Ducharme as he had first seen her weeks ago. She stood motionless, a statue with lines of loveliness surmounted by a face of hopeless discontent. In her eyes was the look of hunger, like that of the starving woman in the bread-line. She gazed after the departing train as one might gaze after a hope dispelled.
Jim walked toward her. She saw him and nodded coolly.
“School’s out early,” he said.