“Some good Christian souls.”
“Contents don’t tally—mine are some very un-Christian thoughts.” He abandoned the sandwich and cheese, and settled himself to the more serious business of balancing his remarks. “Billy and I work for the same engineering firm; he walked out for lunch Tuesday and no one has seen him since—unless it’s Marjorie Schuyler. Couldn’t get anything out of the old man when I first went to see him, and now he’s too ill to see any one. Marjorie said she really didn’t know where he was, and quit town the next day. Now maybe they don’t either of them know what’s happened any more than I do; but I think it’s infernally queer for a man to disappear and say nothing to his father, the girl he’s engaged to, or his best friend. Don’t you?”
Patsy’s past training stood stanchly by her. She played the part of the politely interested listener—nothing more—and merely nodded her head.
“You see,” the man went on, “Billy has a confoundedly queer sense of honor; he can stretch it at times to cover nearly everybody’s calamities and the fool shortcomings of all his acquaintances. Why, it wasn’t a month ago a crowd of us from the works were lunching together, and the talk came around to speculating. Billy’s hard against it on principle, but he happened to say that if he was going in for it at all he’d take cotton. What was in Billy’s mind was not the money in it, but the chance to give the South a boost. Well, one of the fellows took it as a straight tip to get rich from the old man’s son and put in all he had saved up to be married on; lost it and squealed. And Billy—the big chump—claimed he was responsible for it—that, being the son of his father, he ought to know enough to hold his tongue on some subjects. He made it good to the fellow. I happen to know, for it took every cent of his own money and his next month’s salary into the bargain—and that he borrowed from me.”
“Wouldn’t his father have helped him out?”
Gregory Jessup gave a bitter little laugh. “You don’t know the old man or you wouldn’t ask. He is just about as soft-hearted and human as a Labrador winter. I’ve known Billy since we were both little shavers—and, talk about the curse of poverty! It’s a saintly benediction compared to a fortune like that and life with the man who made it.”
“And—himself, Billy—what does he think of money?”
“I’ll tell you what he said once. He had dropped in late after a big dinner where he had been introduced to some one as the fellow who was going to inherit sixty millions some day. Phew! but he was sore! He walked miles—in ten-foot laps—about my den, while he cursed his father’s money from Baffin Bay to Cape Horn. ‘I tell you, Greg,’ he finished up with, ‘I want enough to keep the cramps out of life, that’s all; enough to help the next fellow who’s down on his luck; enough to give the woman I marry a home and not a residence to live in, and to provide the father of my kiddies with enough leisure for them to know what real fatherhood means. I bet you I can make enough myself to cover every one of those necessities; as for the millions, I’d like to chuck them for quoits off the Battery.’”
For a moment Patsy’s eyes danced; but the next, something tumbled out of her memory and quieted them. “Then why in the name of Saint Anthony did he choose to marry Marjorie Schuyler?”
“That does seem funny, I know, but that’s a totally different side of Billy. You see, all his life he’s been falling in with people who made up to him just for his money, and his father had a confounded way of reminding him that he was bound to be plucked unless he kept his wits sharp and distrusted every one. It made Billy sick, and yet it had its effect. He’s always been mighty shy with girls—reckon his father brought him up on tales of rich chaps and modern Circes. Anyway, when he met Marjorie Schuyler it was different—she had too much money of her own to make his any particular attraction, and he finally gave in that she liked him just for himself. That was a proud day for him, poor old Bill!”