"Sacrifice more of my capital? That I won't do. Why don't you see if you can get back with Cheever Harrison and Cheever? I know that Bob—"
"I won't go back to being a salaried man. You can't go back like that when you've been in the other class." He beat a fist into a palm. "Why couldn't Bob Cheever have left me alone? So long as I didn't know anything about Society I never thought about it. Why couldn't your family have let me stay where I was? I should have been head clerk with a good salary by this time, and we would have arranged our expenses accordingly when your mother died. Why can't men give a young fellow a better chance when he goes into business for himself? Every man trying to cut every other man's throat. What chance has a young fellow with a small capital?"
"Do you know that you have blamed everybody but yourself? However … perhaps you are right…. Mr. Kirkpatrick puts it down to the system. I feel more inclined to trace it straight back to old Dame Nature—all the ancestral inheritances down in our sub-cellars. We are as we are made and our characters are certainly our fate. I suppose you will at least resign from the club?"
He set his lips in the hard line that made him look the man of character his ancestor, John Dwight, had been when he legislated in the first Congress. "No, I shall not resign. It would be bad business in two ways: they would know I was hard up, and I should no longer meet in the same way the men who can give me a leg up in business."
"Are you sure those are the only reasons?"
To this he did not deign to reply, and she asked: "Do you mean that you shall go on speculating?"
"I've nothing to speculate with. I mean that the men I cultivate can help me in business."
"They don't seem to have done much in the past. However … At least
I'll send in our resignations to the Golf Club. As we use it so seldom
no one will notice. Now I'm going upstairs to think it all over.
To-morrow I shall do something. I don't know what it will be, yet."
He stood up. "Promise me," he said with firm masculine insistence, "that you will neither go into any sort of money-making scheme or sell this house." His tones had distinctly more life in them and he had recovered his usual bearing of the lordly but gallant male. His eyes were as stern as his lips.
Alexina stared at him for a moment in amazement, then reflected that apparently the stupider a man was the more difficult he was to understand. She nodded amiably.