Cupid's Middleman

by Edward B. Lent

During his leisure, which John MacDonald planned to maintain against all comers, and the on-rush of business, he practiced the art of relaxation; he had formed a habit of returning to the simple from confusing contact with the complex, and he practiced it largely in his home, with his wife and children. Lincoln is the best-known master of this art, necessary to maintain the equilibrium of a busy man, and keep him fresh, sane, sociable and interestingly boyish.

MacDonald had gone into the thick of the world's strife, and through the ordeal had shielded himself from its poisoned arrows of ambition. At a board meeting, it was said of John MacDonald, that when the three minutes of real business were over and his associates then began to discuss matters in the domain of irrelevancies, he resolved into smiles and found somebody to crack a joke with. He figured that about a third of his available time was given to actual work, and the rest to play, because his colleagues had so much ground to cover without reaching anywhere. There were days when he worked a full sixteen hours, but they were few, and he was always alone. On the days he had to associate with talking business men, he made up for these busy days by relaxing at a more rapid pace in a revel of bracing fun. I never knew a man who understood so thoroughly how to live and succeed, because it seemed to me he knew how to discount everything unnecessary, so that he might take the time others gave to straining their nerves to save his.

I suppose the character of Gabrielle Tescheron might have yielded to the unstable influences of her home, where her impulsive and irascible father sought to be an influential factor, were it not for the counteracting effect of the day's associations in that calm realm of business activity, where so much of the brain-work of vast industrial enterprises was conducted as noiselessly as the movements of one of those powerful machines that run in an oil bath. I do not say that she would not have been superior to her home environment without her fortunate associations down-town. I give the business small credit, for our superior jewels are intrinsically precious before the artisan gives the polish by which we more often make our comparisons. But there can be no question that she worked among associations which strengthened and emphasized all her admirable qualities and placed her above the petty things that annoyed her fretful father and seemed like mountains to his magnifying eyes.

These, then, were Hosley's judges.

"Miss Tescheron, I come to right a great wrong, for which I am wholly responsible; will you hear me?" I asked as softly and politely as the meekest penitent ever tutored for the book agent's business.

"I have no desire to hear you," she answered firmly, but with a slight nervousness betraying the deep interest she denied.

"I trust you will be persuaded to at least hear me, and then—"

"But there is nothing you can say, as the subject I know you wish to allude to is closed. Please do not refer to it." It was a woman's "No."

Mr. MacDonald tilted back his chair and eyed me closely, but not discouragingly.

"You are supposed to deal in justice here, are you not, Miss Tescheron?" I continued, not heeding her frigid, uninviting air. I had planned to deal tenderly with her wound, but soon realized that my sympathetic beginning had proved more irritating than bluntness; accordingly I introduced the spice of severity in tone in equivalent degree as an experiment, and as I proceeded I noted the interest of John MacDonald increasingly reflected in the features of his pupil.