CHAPTER XXVII
MR. BALCOMB’S EASY CONSCIENCE
Ezra Dameron had never been happier than during this summer. His life had run for years an eventless course; his interests had been small and he had been content to have them so. But since the gambler’s passion had fixed its gyves upon him he had become a changed being. He walked with a quicker step; his drooping shoulders grew erect; he was a new man, living in a new paradise that folly was constructing for him. He enjoyed the farm greatly, rising betimes to direct the work of his laborers. He permitted Zelda to drive him in her runabout to the interurban station—a concession in itself significant of a greater deference to the comfort and ease of living.
Jack Balcomb’s flat scheme had hung fire during the spring, with only half the stock of the Patoka Land and Improvement Company sold; but Balcomb had taken it up again, determined to carry it through. Dameron always insisted, when Balcomb approached him, that he did not care to sell the tract on the creek which the promoter coveted; but he never rebuffed Balcomb entirely. It had occurred to Dameron that Balcomb might be of use to him. The young man was, moreover, a new species, who talked of large affairs in an intimate way that fell in well with Dameron’s new ideas of business, and he accepted Balcomb at as high a valuation as he ever placed upon any one.
Balcomb was quick to act on the hint given unexpectedly by Dameron at the farm. He called at once at the dingy office in the Dameron Block. It was a hot midsummer morning and Balcomb was a pleasing object as he appeared at the door of Ezra Dameron’s private office. Balcomb had lately fallen under the spell of a New York tailor who solicited business among Mariona young men, and his figure lent itself well to metropolitan treatment. The blue silk socks that filled the margin between his half-shoes and gray trousers expressed a fastidious taste, and his negligée shirt matched them exactly. Having discarded a waistcoat for greater comfort in the hot weather, he wore his watch in the outer pocket of his coat, with a bit of chain and the key of the Phi Beta Kappa Society showing.
“Good morning, Mr. Dameron. Your office is positively cool. You ought to advertise it—the coolest place in the city. That’s what I’d do if I had it. I have a south exposure, cheerful in winter, but ghastly in summer. These inside rooms are the only thing, after all; and they’re cheaper. We youngsters can still sit with profit at the feet of our elders.”
He eyed a decrepit chair by Dameron’s desk, sat down in it with misgivings, and fanned himself with his straw hat, whose blue ribbon, it may be said, was of exactly the same tint as his shirt and socks.
“You are very prompt, Mr. Balcomb. I trust my chance word of the other night hasn’t put you to inconvenience.”
“Don’t worry about me! I flatter myself that I know when to go and when to come, and a word from a man of your standing is enough for a novice like me. There’s a disposition all along the line to crowd out old men, but I tell you, Mr. Dameron, we’ve got a lot to learn from the senior class. I flatter myself that I have among my friends some of the grandest old men in the state, and I’m proud of it.”
“A worthy sentiment,—a very worthy sentiment, Mr. Balcomb.”
“I consider, Mr. Dameron, that anything I may be able to do for you is to my credit. It looks well to the public for a young tyro in business to win the confidence of one of the conservatives. Doctor Bridges, over at Tippecanoe—you know the doctor?—”