"They're nothing but sharps!" the clerk protested feebly, insistent like a child on his idea that some one had done him a personal injury.
Sommers shrugged his shoulders in despair. "I must be going," he said at last. "I don't suppose you'll take my advice, and perhaps the lake would be the best thing for you. But you'd better try it again—it's just as well that everything has gone this time. There won't be any chance of going back to the game. Tell her, and if she'll take you, marry her at once, and start with the little people. Or stay here and have a few more drinks," he added, as he read the irresolute look upon Webber's face.
The clerk rose wearily and followed the doctor into the street, as if afraid of being alone.
"You needn't be so rough," he muttered. "There are lots of the big fellows who started the same way—in the market, wheat or stocks. And I had a little ambition to be something better than a clerk. I wanted her to have something different. She's as good as those girls Dresser is always talking to her about."
Sommers made no reply to his defence, but walked slowly, accommodating his pace to Webber's weary steps. When they reached Michigan Avenue, he stopped and said,
"I should put the lake off, this time, and make up my mind to be a little fellow."
Webber shook hands listlessly and started toward the railroad station with his drooping, irresolute gait. Sommers watched him until his figure merged with the hurrying crowd. Habit was taking the clerk to the suburban train, and habit would take him to the Keystone and Miss M'Gann instead of to the lake. Habit and Miss M'Gann would probably take him back to his desk. But the disease had gone pretty far, and if he recovered, Sommers judged, he would never regain his elasticity, his hope. He would be haunted by a memory of hot desires, of feeble defeat.
The wavering clerk had succumbed to the mood of the hour. And the mood of the hour in this corner of the universe was hopeful for weak and strong alike. Cheap optimism, Sommers would have called it once, but now it seemed to him the natural temper of the world. With this hope suffused over their lives, men struggled on—for what? No one knew. Not merely for plunder, nor for power, nor for enjoyment. Each one might believe these to be the gifts of the gods, while he kept his eyes solely on himself. But when he turned his gaze outward, he knew that these were not the spur of human energy. In striving restlessly to get plunder and power and joy, men wove the mysterious web of life for ends no human mind could know. Carson built his rickety companies and played his knavish tricks upon the gullible public, of whom Webber was one. Brome Porter rooted here and there in the industrial world, and fattened himself upon all spoils. These had to be; they were the tools of the hour. But indifferent alike to them and to Webber, the affairs of men ebbed and flowed in the resistless tide of fate.
CHAPTER XIII
The dinner at the Hitchcocks' was very simple. Parker had gone out "to enjoy his success in not getting to Cuba," as Colonel Hitchcock expressed it grimly. The old merchant's manner toward the doctor was cordial, but constrained. At times during the dinner Sommers found Colonel Hitchcock's eyes resting upon him, as if he were trying to understand him. Sommers was conscious of the fact that Lindsay had probably done his best to paint his character in an unflattering light; and though he knew that the old colonel's shrewdness and kindliness would not permit him to accept bitter gossip at its face value, yet there must have been enough in his career to lead to speculation. While they were smoking, Colonel Hitchcock remarked: