Title: The Main Chance
Author: Nicholson, Meredith, 1866-1947
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Main Chance" ***


THE MAIN CHANCE

[Illustration]


THE MAIN CHANCE

BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON

ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRISON FISHER

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS


COPYRIGHT 1903
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

MAY


PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.


TO
E. K. N.

WHO WILL REMEMBER AND UNDERSTAND



CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                           PAGE
      I A NEW MAN IN TOWN                            1

     II WARRICK RARIDAN                             13

    III SWEET PEAS                                  24

     IV AT POINDEXTERS'                             39

      V DEBATABLE QUESTIONS                         53

     VI A SAFE MAN                                  70

    VII WARRY RARIDAN'S INDIGNATION                 82

   VIII TIM MARGRAVE MAKES A CHOICE                 92

     IX PARLEYINGS                                  97

      X A WRECKED CANNA BED                        106

     XI THE KNIGHTS OF MIDAS BALL                  121

    XII A MORNING AT ST. PAUL'S                    136

   XIII BARGAIN AND SALE                           152

    XIV THE GIRL THAT TRIES HARD                   166

     XV AT THE COUNTRY CLUB                        174

    XVI THE LADY AND THE BUNKER                    193

   XVII WARRY'S REPENTANCE                         206

  XVIII FATHER AND DAUGHTER                        213

    XIX A FORECAST AT THE WHIPPLES'                229

     XX ORCHARD LANE                               237

    XXI JAMES WHEATON MAKES A COMPUTATION          241

   XXII AN ANNUAL PASS                             250

  XXIII WILLIAM PORTER RETURNS FROM A JOURNEY      258

   XXIV INTERRUPTED PLANS                          266

    XXV JAMES WHEATON DECLINES AN OFFER            272

   XXVI THE KEY TO A DILEMMA                       279

  XXVII A MEETING BETWEEN GENTLEMEN                289

 XXVIII BROKEN GLASS                               299

   XXIX JOHN SAXTON, RECEIVER                      310

    XXX GREEN CHARTREUSE                           313

   XXXI PUZZLING AUTOGRAPHS                        319

  XXXII CROSSED WIRES                              323

 XXXIII A DISAPPEARANCE                            332

  XXXIV JOHN SAXTON SUGGESTS A CLUE                339

   XXXV SHOTS IN THE DARK                          352

  XXXVI HOME THROUGH THE SNOW                      370

 XXXVII "A PECULIAR BRICK"                         379

XXXVIII OLD PHOTOGRAPHS                            384

  XXXIX "IT IS CRUEL"                              389

     XL SHIFTED BURDENS                            399

    XLI RETROSPECTIVE VANITY                       403

   XLII AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS                 407



THE MAIN CHANCE



CHAPTER I

A NEW MAN IN TOWN


"Well, sir, they say I'm crooked!"

William Porter tipped back his swivel chair and placidly puffed a cigar
as he watched the effect of this declaration on the young man who sat
talking to him.

"That's said of every successful man nowadays, isn't it?" asked John
Saxton.

The president of the Clarkson National Bank ignored the question and
rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, as he waited
for his words to make their full impression upon his visitor.

"They say I'm crooked," he repeated, with a narrowing of the eyes, "but
they don't say it very loud!"

Porter kicked his heels together gently and watched his visitor with
eyes in which there was no trace of humor; but Saxton saw that he was
expected to laugh.

"No, sir;" the banker continued, "they don't say it very loud, and I
guess they don't any of them want to have to prove it. I'm afraid those
Boston friends of yours have given us up as a bad lot," he went on,
waiving the matter of his personal rectitude and returning to the
affairs of his visitor; "and they've sent you out here to get their
money, and I don't blame them. Well, sir; that money's got to come out
in time, but it's going to take time and money to get it."

"I believe they sent me because I had plenty of time," said Saxton,
smiling.

"Well, we want to help you win out," returned Porter. "And now what can
I do to start you off?" he asked briskly. "Have you got a place to stay?
Well, sir, I warn you solemnly against the hotels in this town; but
we've got a fairly decent club up here, and you'd better stay there till
you get acquainted. Been to breakfast? Breakfast on the train? That's
good. Just look over the papers till I get rid of these letters and I'll
be free."

Porter turned to his desk and replaced the eye-glasses which he had
dropped while talking. There was an air of great alertness in his small,
lean figure as he pushed buttons to summon various members of the
clerical force and rapidly dictated terse telegrams and letters to a
stenographer. He continued to smoke, and he shifted constantly the
narrow-brimmed, red-banded straw hat that he wore above his shrewd face.
It was an agreeable face to see, of a type that is common wherever the
North-Irish stock is found in America, and its characteristics were
expressed in his firm, lean jaw and blue eyes, and his reddish hair and
mustache, through which there were streaks of gray. He wore his hair
short, but it was still thick, and he combed it with precision. His
clothes fitted him; he wore a bright cravat, well tied, and his shoes
were carefully polished. Saxton was impressed by the banker's perfect
confidence and ease; it manifested itself in the way he tapped buttons
to call his subordinates, or turned to satisfy the importunities of the
desk-telephone at his elbow.

John Saxton had been sent to Clarkson by the Neponset Trust Company of
Boston to represent the interests of a group of clients who had made
rash investments in several of the Trans-Missouri states. Foreclosure
had, in many instances, resulted in the transfer to themselves of much
town and ranch property which was, in the conditions existing in the
early nineties, an exceedingly slow asset. It was necessary that some
one on the ground should care for these interests. The Clarkson National
Bank had been exercising a general supervision, but, as one of the
investors told his fellow sufferers in Boston, they should have an agent
whom they could call home and abuse, and here was Saxton, a
conscientious and steady fellow, who had some knowledge of the country,
and who, moreover, needed something to do. Saxton's acquaintance with
the West had been gained by a bitter experience of ranching in Wyoming.
A blizzard had destroyed his cattle, and the subsequent depression in
land values in the neighborhood of his ranch had left him encumbered
with a property for which there was no market. His friends had been
correct in the assumption that he needed employment, and he was,
moreover, glad of the chance to get away from home, where the impression
was making headway that he had failed at something in the vague,
non-interest-paying West. When, on his return from Wyoming, it became
necessary for his former acquaintances to identify him to one another,
they said, with varying degrees of kindness, that John had gone broke at
ranching; and if they liked him particularly, they said it was too bad;
if they had not known him well in his fortunate days, they mildly
intimated that a fool and his money found quicker divorce at ranching
than in any other way. Most of Saxton's friends and contemporaries had
made good beginnings at home, and he felt, unnecessarily perhaps, that
his failure made him a marked man among them.

"Now," said Porter presently, scrutinizing a telegram carefully before
signing it, "I'll take you up to the office we've been keeping for your
people, and show you what it looks like. Some of these things are run as
corporations, you understand, and in our state corporations have to
maintain a tangible residence."

"So that the sheriff may find them more easily," added Saxton.

"Well, that's no joke," returned Porter, as they entered the elevator
from the outer hall; "but they don't necessarily have much office
furniture to levy on."

The room proved to be a small one at the top of the building. On the
ground-glass door was inscribed "The Interstate Irrigation Company." The
room contained a safe, a flat-top desk and a few chairs. Several maps
hung on the wall, some of them railroad advertisements, and others were
engineers' charts of ranch lands and irrigation ditches.

"It ain't pretty," said Porter critically, "but if you don't like it you
can move when you get ready. The bank is your landlord, and we don't
charge you much for it. You've doubtless got your inventory of stuff
with you, and here in the safe you'll find the accounts of these
companies, copies of public records relating to them, and so on." As
Porter talked he stood in the middle of the room with his hands in his
pockets, and puffed at a cigar, throwing his head back in an effort to
escape the smoke. He stood with one foot on a chair and pushed his hat
away from his forehead as he continued reflectively: "You're going up
against a pretty tough proposition, young man. You'll hear a hard luck
story wherever you go out here just now; people who owe your friends
money will be mighty sorry they can't pay. Many of the ranch lands your
people own will be worth something after a while. That Colorado
irrigation scheme ought to pan out in time, and I believe it will; but
you've got to nurse all these things. Make your principals let you
alone. Those fellows get in a hurry at the wrong time,--that's my
experience with Eastern investors. Tell them to go to Europe,--get rid
of them for a while, and make them give you a chance to work out their
money for them. They're not the only pebbles." A slight smile seemed to
creep over a small area about the banker's lips, but his cigar only
partly revealed it. His eyes rarely betrayed him, and the monotonous
drawl of his voice was without humorous intention.

"I'll send the combination of the safe up by the boy," he said, moving
toward the door, "and you can get a bird's-eye view of the situation
before lunch. Mr. Wheaton, our cashier, is away to-day, but he's
familiar with these matters and will be glad to help you when he gets
home. He'll be back to-night. When you get stuck call on us. And drop
down about twelve thirty and go up to the club for lunch. Take it easy;
you can't do it all in one day," he added.

"I hope I shan't be a nuisance to you," said the younger man. "I'm
going to fight it out on the best lines I know how,--if it takes several
summers."

"Well, it'll take them all right," said Porter, sententiously.

Left to himself Saxton examined his new quarters, found a feather duster
hanging in a corner and brushed the dirt from the scanty furniture. This
done, he drew a pipe from his pocket, filled it from his tobacco pouch
and sat down by the open window, through which the breeze came cool out
of the great valley; and here he could see, far over the roofs and
spires of the town, the bluffs that marked the broad bed of the tawny
Missouri. He was not as buoyant as his last words to the banker implied.
Here he was, he reflected, a man of good education, as such things go,
who had lost his patrimony in a single venture. He had been sent, partly
out of compassion, he felt, to take charge of investments that were
admitted to be almost hopelessly bad. The salary promised would provide
for him comfortably, and that was about all; anything further would
depend upon himself, the secretary of the Neponset Trust Company had
told him; it would, he felt, depend much more particularly on the making
over by benign powers of the considerable part of the earth's surface in
which his principals' money lay hidden. As his eyes wandered to one of
the office walls, the black trail of a great transcontinental railroad
caught and held his attention. On one of its northern prongs lay the
region of his first defeat.

"Three years of life are up there," he meditated, "and all my good
dollars are scattered along the right of way." Many things came back to
him vividly--how the wind used to howl around the little ranch house,
and how he rode through the snow among his dying cattle in the great
storm that had been his undoing. With his eyes still resting on the map,
he recurred to his early school days and to his four years at Harvard.
There was a burden of heartache in these recollections. Incidents of the
unconscious brutality of playmates came back to him,--the cruel candor
with which they had rejected him from sports in which proficiency, and
not mere strength or zeal, was essential. He had enjoyed at college no
experience of success in any of those ways which mark the undergraduate
for brief authority or fame. He had never been accepted for the crew nor
for the teams that represented the university on diamond or gridiron,
though he had always participated in athletics, and was possessed of
unusual strength. None of the professions had appealed to him, and he
had not heeded his father's wish that he enter the law. The elder
Saxton, who was himself a lawyer of moderate success, died before John's
graduation; he had lost his mother in his youth, and his only remaining
relative was a sister who married before he left college.

A review of these brief and discouraging annals did not hearten him; but
he fell back upon the better mood with which he had begun the morning;
he had a new chance, and he proposed to make the best of it. He put
aside his coat and hat, lighted the pipe which he had been holding in
his hand, and opened his desk. The banker had sent up the combination of
the safe, as he had promised, and Saxton began inspecting its contents
and putting his office in order.

"I'm in for a long stay," he reflected. "Watson and Terrell and those
other fellows are just about reaching Park Street, perhaps with virtuous
thoughts of having given me a job, if they haven't forgotten me. It's
probably a pleasant day in Boston, with the flowers looking their best
in the Gardens; but this is better than my Wyoming pastures, anyhow."
The books and papers began to interest him, and he was soon classifying
the properties that had fallen to his care. He was one of those
fortunate individuals who are endowed with a capacity for complete
absorption in the work at hand,--the frequent possession of persons,
who, like Saxton, enjoy immunity from visits of the alluring
will-o'-the-wisps that beguile geniuses. He was so deeply occupied that
he did not mark the flight of time and was surprised when a boy came
with a message from Porter that he was ready to go to luncheon.

"Yon mustn't overdo the thing, young man," said the banker amiably, as
he closed his desk. "Don't you adopt our Western method of working all
the hours there are. I do it now because my neighbors and customers
would talk about me if I didn't, and say that I had lost my grip in my
old age."

They started up the sloping street, which was intensely hot.

"In my last job I worked twenty hours a day," said Saxton, "and lost
money in spite of it."

"You mean up in Wyoming; the Neponset people wrote me that you were a
reformed cattleman."

"Yes, I was winter-killed at the business." He assumed that Porter would
not care particularly for the details of his failure. Western men are,
he knew, much more tolerant of failure than Eastern men; but he was
relieved to hear the banker drawling on with a comment on Clarkson, its
commercial history and prospects.

At the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Clarkson Chamber of
Commerce, the local boy orator, who made a point of quoting Holy Writ in
his speeches, spoke of Clarkson as "no mean city," just as many another
orator has applied this same apt Pauline phrase to many another
metropolis. The business of Clarkson had to do with primary employments
and needs. The cattle of a thousand hills and of many rough pastures
were gathered here; and here wheat and corn from three states were
assembled. In exchange for these products, Clarkson returned to the
country all of the necessities and some of the luxuries of life. Several
important railway lines had their administrative offices here. Ores were
brought from the Rockies, from Mexico, and even from British Columbia,
to the great smelters whose smoke and fumes hung over the town. Neither
coal, wood nor iron lay near at hand, so that manufacturing was almost
unknown; but the packing-houses and smelters gave employment to many
laborers, drawn in great measure from the Slavonic races.

Varney Street cut through the town at right angles to the river,
bisecting the business district. It then gradually threw off its
commercial aspect until at last it was lined with the homes of most of
Clarkson's wealthiest citizens. An exaggerated estimate of the value of
corner lots had caused many of them to be left vacant; and weeds and
signboards exercised eminent domain between booms. North and south of
Varney Street were other thoroughfares which strove to be equally
fashionable, and here citizens had sometimes built themselves houses
that were, as they said, as good as anything in Varney Street.
Everywhere ragged edges remained; old unpainted frame buildings lingered
in blocks that otherwise contained handsome houses. Sugar-loaf cubes of
clay loomed lonesomely, with houses stranded high on their summits,
where property owners had been too poor to cut down their bits of earth
to conform to new levels. The clay banks were ugly, but they were doomed
to remain until the next high tide of prosperity.

The Clarkson Club stood at the edge of the commercial district, and its
Milwaukee brick walls rose hot and staring in the July sun as Porter and
Saxton approached.

"Here we are," said Porter, leading the way into the wide hall. "We'll
arrange about your business relations later. There's a very bad lunch
ready upstairs, and we'll go against that first."

There were only a few men in the dining-room, seated at a round table.
Porter exchanged salutations with them as he passed on to a small table
at the end of the room. Those who were of his own age called Porter,
"Billy," and he included them all in the careless nod of old
acquaintance. Porter offered Saxton the wine card, which the young man
declined with instinctive knowledge that he was expected to do so. They
took the simple table d'hôte, which was, as Porter had predicted, very
bad. The banker ate little and carried the burden of the conversation.

They went from the table for an inspection of the club, and arranged
with the clerk in the office for a room on the third floor, which Mr.
Saxton was to have, so Porter told the clerk, until he didn't want it
any more.

"It's all right about the rules," he said; "if the house committee kick
about it, send them to me." They stopped in the lounging room, where the
men from the round table were now talking or looking at newspapers.
Porter introduced Saxton to all of them, stating in his humorous way,
with variations in every case, that this was a new man in town; that
victims were scarce in hard times, and that they must make the most of
him. Several of the men who shook hands with Saxton were railroad
officials, but nearly every line of business was represented. All seemed
to wear their business consciously, and Saxton was made aware of their
several employments in one way or another as he stood talking to them.
He felt that their own frankness should elicit a response on his part,
and he stated that he had come to represent the interests of "Eastern
people,"--a phrase which, in that territory, has weight and
significance. This, he thought, should be sufficiently explicit; and he
felt that his interlocutors were probably appraising him with selfish
eyes as a possible customer or client. However, they were very cordial,
and presently he found that they were chaffing one another for his
benefit, and trying to bring him within the arc of their own easy
comradeship.

"If you're going with me," said Porter at his elbow, "you'd better get a
move on you." But the whole group went out together, Porter leaving
Saxton to the others, with that confidence in human friendliness which
is peculiar to the social intercourse of men. They made him feel their
honest wish to consider him one of themselves, making a point of saying
to him, as they dropped out one by one, that they hoped to see him
often. Porter led the way back down Varney Street, smoking meditatively
and carrying his hat in his hand. He said at the bank door: "Now you
make them give you what you want at the club, and if they don't, you
want to raise the everlasting Nick. I've got a house up here on Varney
Street,--come up for dinner to-morrow night and we'll see if we can't
raise a breeze for you. It's hotter than Suez here, and you'd better
take my advice about starting in slow."

He went into the bank, leaving a trail of smoke behind him; and Saxton
took the elevator for his own office.



CHAPTER II

WARRICK RARIDAN


The Clarkson Club was, during most of the day, the loneliest place in
town. Only a few of the sleeping rooms were occupied regularly, and
luncheon was the one incident of the day that drew any considerable
number of men to the dining-room. The antlered heads of moose and elk
were hung in the hall, and colored prints of English hunting scenes and
bad oil portraits traits of several pioneers were scattered through the
reading and lounging rooms. There was a room which was referred to
flatteringly as the library, but its equipment of literature consisted
of an encyclopedia and of novels which had been contributed by members
at times coincident with housecleaning seasons at home. Clarkson
business men who maintained non-resident memberships in Chicago or St.
Louis clubs, said, in excusing the poor patronage of the Clarkson Club,
that Clarkson was not a club town, like Kansas City or Denver, where
there were more unattached men with money to spend.

Saxton was not over-sensitive, but the stiffness and hardness of the
club house were not without their disagreeable impression on him as he
sat at dinner toward the close of his first day in Clarkson. Two of the
men to whom Porter had introduced him at noon proved to be fellow
lodgers, and they exchanged greetings with him from the table where they
sat together. They unsociably read their evening papers as they ate, and
left before he finished. He had lighted a cigar over his coffee, and was
watching the fading colors of a brilliant sunset when a young man
appeared at the door, and after a brief inspection of Saxton's back
walked over to him.

"Aren't you Mr. Saxton? I thought you must be he. My name is Raridan.
Don't let me break in on your meditations," he added, taking the chair
which the waiter drew out for him. "I met Mr. Porter a while ago, and he
adjured me on penalties that I won't name to be good to you. I don't
know whether this is obeying orders,"--he broke off in a laugh,--"that
depends on the point of view." He had produced a cigarette case from his
pocket and rolled a white cylinder between his palms before lighting it.
As the flame leaped from the match, Saxton noted the young man's thin
face, his thick, curling dark hair, his slight mustache, the slenderness
of his fingers. The eyes that lay back of rimless glasses were almost
too fine for a man; but their gentleness and kindliness were charming.

"You are guilty of a very Christian act," Saxton said. "I was just
wondering whether, after the sun had gone down behind that ridge over
there, the world would still be going round."

"The world never stops entirely here," returned Raridan, "but the motion
sometimes gets very slow. Mr. Porter tells me that you're to be one of
us. Let me congratulate us,--and you!"

"I'm not so sure about you," rejoined Saxton. "At my last stopping
place in the West they had a way of getting rid of undesirable members
of the community, and I've never got over being nervous. But that was
Wyoming. I'm sure you're more civilized here."

"Not merely civilized; we are civilization! You see I'm a native, and
devoted to the home sod. My father was one of the first settlers. I
never knew why," he laughed again--it was a pleasant laugh--"but I've
tried to live up to my duties as one of the first Caucasians born in the
county. Some day I'll be exhibited at the State Fair and little children
will look at me with awe and admiration."

"That makes me feel very humble. I'm almost afraid to tell you that I'm
a native of Boston, with a long line of highly undistinguished and
terribly conventional ancestors back of me. My father was never west of
Albany; my mother was never in a sleeping-car. But I'm not a tenderfoot.
I rode the initiating bronco in Wyoming through all the degrees; and a
cowboy once shot at me on his unlucky day."

"Oh, your title's clear. That record gives you all the rights of a
native."

Raridan waved away the waiter who had been hovering near, and who now
went over to the electric switch and threatened them with light.

"That's too good to lose," Raridan said, nodding toward the west in
explanation.

Warrick Raridan was, socially speaking, the most available man in the
Clarkson Blue Book. He was a graduate in law who did not practise, for
he had, unfortunately, been left alone in the world at twenty-six, with
an income that seemed wholly adequate for his immediate or future
needs. He maintained an office, which was fairly well equipped with the
literature of his profession, but this was merely to take away the
reproach of his busier fellow citizens; it was not thought respectable
to be an idler in Clarkson, even on reputable antecedents and
established credit. But Raridan's office was useful otherwise than in
providing its owner with a place for receiving his mail. It was the
rendezvous for a variety of committees to which he was appointed by such
unrelated bodies as the Clarkson Dramatic Club and the Diocesan Board of
Missions of the Episcopal Church. He had never, by any chance, been
pointed to as a model young man, but religious matters interested him
sporadically, and he was referred to facetiously by his friends, when
his punctilious religious observances were mentioned, as a fine type of
the "cheerful Christian." He appeared every Sunday at the cathedral,
which was the fashionable church in Clarkson, where he passed the plate
for the alms and oblations of the well-dressed congregation; and he said
of himself, with conscious humor, that he thought he did it rather well.

He was capable of quixotism of the most whimsical sort. He had, for a
year, taken his meals at a cheap boarding-house in order that he might
maintain two Indian boys in school. He was not at all aggrieved when, at
the end of the first year, they ran away and resumed tribal relations
with their brethren. He chaffed himself about it to his friends.

"It was wrong for me," he would say, "to try to pervert the tastes of
those young savages. I nearly ruined my own digestion to buy them white
man's luxuries; I wore out my old clothes that they might not go naked;
and all they learned was to smoke cigarettes."

It was not enough to say that Warry Raridan could lead a german or tie
an Ascot tie better than any other man on the Missouri River; for he was
also the best informed man in that same strenuous valley concerning the
traditions of the English stage, and was a fairly good actor himself, as
amateurs go. He had an almost fatal cleverness, which made him impatient
of the restraints of college; and he left in his sophomore year owing to
difficulties with the mathematical requirements. Good books had abounded
in his father's house, and he was from boyhood a persistent, though
erratic reader. He threw himself with enthusiasm into the study of the
rise of monastic orders; and from this he changed lightly to the newest
books on psychology. There were many ways in which he could be
entertaining. He had a slight literary gift, which he cultivated for his
own amusement. His humor was fine and keen, and he occasionally wrote
screeds for the local papers, or mailed, apropos of something or
nothing, pleasant jingles to his intimate friends.

No Clarkson hostess felt that a visiting girl had received courteous
attention unless she carried home a portfolio of verses written in her
honor by Warry Raridan. He gave, indeed, an impression of great
frivolity, but there were people who took him seriously, and lawyers who
knew him well said that he might win success in his profession if he
would apply himself. He had once appeared for the people in a suit to
compel the street-railway company to pave certain streets, as provided
by the terms of its franchise, and had gained his point against the best
lawyers in the state. This accomplished, he refused an appointment as
local counsel for a great railway, and with characteristic perverseness
spent the following summer managing an open-air mission for poor
children.

Saxton was greatly amused and entertained by Raridan. Even those of his
fellow townsmen who did not wholly approve Warry Raridan, admitted his
entertaining qualities; and Saxton, who was painfully conscious of his
own shortcomings and knew that he had not usually been considered worth
cultivating, found himself responding with unwonted lightness to
Raridan's inconsequential talk. Few people had ever thought it necessary
to take pains with John Saxton, and he greatly enjoyed the novelty of
this intercourse with a man of his own age who was not a bore. The
bores, as Saxton remembered from his college days, had taken advantage
of his good nature and marked him for their own; and with a keen
realization of this he had often wondered in bitterness whether they did
not classify him correctly.

"I'll wager that if you stay here a year you'll never leave," said
Raridan, as they went downstairs together. "I've been about a good deal,
and know that we who live here miss a lot of comfort and amusement which
go as a matter of course in older towns. But there's a roominess and
expansiveness about things out here that I like, and I believe most men
who strike it early enough like it, and are lonesome for it if they go
away. These people here think I stay because my few business interests
are here. The truth is that I've tried running away, but after I've
spent a week east of the Alleghanies, I'm sated with the fleshpots and
pine for the wilderness. Why, I go to the stockyards now and then just
to see the train-loads of steers come in. I get sensations out of the
rush and drive of all this that I wouldn't take a good deal for."

"I think I understand how you feel about it," said Saxton, looking more
closely at this young man, who was not ashamed to mention his sensations
of sentiment to a stranger. "There were times in Wyoming when Western
life seemed pretty arid, but when I went back to Boston I was homesick
for Cheyenne."

"That's a far cry, from Boston to Cheyenne," said Raridan, laughing. He
began again volubly: "A good deal depends, I suppose, on which end you
cry from. There's a lot of talk these days about the _nouveaux riches_
by people who haven't any more French than that. We are advised by a
fairly competent poet that men may climb on stepping-stones of their
dead selves to higher things; but if they climb on the pickled remains
of the common or garden pig I don't see anything ignoble about it. I'd a
lot rather ascend on a pyramid of Minnehaha Hams than on my dead self,
which I hope to avoid using for step-ladder purposes as long as
possible. The people here are human beings, and they're all good enough
to suit me. I'd as lief be descended from a canvased ham as an Astor
peltry or a Vanderbilt steamboat. And I'm tired of the jokes in the
barber-shop comic weeklies, about the rich Westerners who make a vulgar
display of themselves in New York. If we do it, it's merely because
we're doing in Rome as the Romans do. These same shampoo and hair-cut
humorists are unable to get away from their jests about the homicidal
tendencies of Western barkeepers and the woolliness of the cowboys.
Those anemic commuters down there know no higher joy than a Weber &
Fields matinee or a Rogers Brothers on the Bronx first-night. Sometimes
I feel moved to grow a line of whiskers and add my barbaric yawp to the
long howl of the Populist wolf. But, you know," he added, suddenly
lowering his voice, "I reserve the right to abuse my fellow citizens
when I love them most. I tore Populism to tatters last fall in a few
speeches they let me make in the back counties. Our central committee
hadn't anything to lose out there. That's why they sent me!"

Saxton was walking beside Raridan in the lower hall. He felt an impulse
to express gratitude for his rescue from the loneliness of the twilight;
but Raridan, talking incessantly, and with hands thrust easily into his
trousers' pockets, led the way into the reading-room.

"Hello, Wheaton, I didn't know you were at home," he called to a man who
sat reading a newspaper, and who now rose on seeing a stranger with
Raridan.

"This is Mr. Saxton, Mr. Wheaton."

"Oh, yes," said the man introduced as Wheaton. "I wondered whether I
shouldn't see you here. Mr. Porter told me you had come."

"I've been bringing Mr. Saxton up to date in local history," said
Raridan.

"Chiefly concerning yourself, I suppose," said Wheaton, with a smile
that did not wholly succeed in being amiable.

"It isn't often I get a chance at a brand new man," Raridan ran on.
"I've told the worst about you, so conduct yourself accordingly."

"Mr. Raridan's worst isn't very bad," said Saxton. "From his account of
this town and its people, the place must be paradise and the inhabitants
saints."

Raridan called for cigars, but Wheaton declined them.

"Remarkable fellow," said Raridan, busy with his match. "Paragon among
our business men; exemplary habits, and so forth." He waved the smoking
matchstick to imply virtues in Wheaton which it was unnecessary to
mention.

Wheaton ignored Raridan's chaffing way. He seemed very serious, and had
not much to say. He had just come home, from a tedious trip to the
western part of the state, he said, on an errand for his bank. He was
tall, slim and dark. There was a suggestion of sleepy indifference in
his black eyes, though he had a well-established reputation for energy
and industry. Saxton commented to himself that Wheaton's hands and feet
were smaller than he thought becoming in a man.

"Mr. Porter told me you were quartered here. I hope they can make you
comfortable. I'm personally relieved that you have come. Your Boston
friends were getting very impatient with us. We shall do all in our
power to aid you; but of course Mr. Porter has said all that to you."
His smile was by a movement of the lips, and his eyes did not seem to
participate in it. He did not refer again to possible business relations
with Saxton, but turned the conversation into general channels. They sat
together for an hour, Raridan, as was his way in any company, doing most
of the talking. They seemed to have the club house to themselves. Now
and then one of the negro servants came and looked in upon them
sleepily. A clerk at the desk in the hall read in peace. A party of
young people could be heard entering by the side door set apart for
women; and muffled echoes of their gaiety reached the trio in the
reading-room.

"That's back in the incurables' ward," said Raridan, in explanation to
Saxton.

"It isn't nice of you to speak of the gentler sex in that way,"
admonished Wheaton.

"Oh, there are girls and girls," said Raridan wearily. "It does seem to
me that Mabel Margrave is always hungry. Why can't she do her eating at
home?"

"He's simply jealous," Wheaton remarked to Saxton. "He always acts that
way when he hears a girl in the ladies' dining-room, and doesn't dare go
back and break in on some other fellow's party."

"When you show signs of mental decay, it's time for us to go home,
Wheaton." Raridan held out his hand to Saxton. "I'm glad you're here,
and you may be sure we'll try to make you like us. Wheaton and I live in
a barracks around the corner, with a few other homeless wanderers. An
ill-favored thing,--but our own! I hope to see you there. Don't be
afraid of the Chinaman at the door. My cell is up one flight and to the
right."

"And don't overlook me there," Wheaton interposed. "I suppose we shall
see you down town very often. Mr. Raridan is the only man in Clarkson
who has no visible means of support. The rest of us are pretty busy; but
that doesn't mean that we shan't be glad to see you at the Clarkson
National."

"You see how intensely commercial he is," said Raridan. "He's talking
for the bank, you notice, and not for himself."

"I'm sure he means both." Saxton had followed them to the front door,
where they repeated their good nights; he then climbed slowly to his
room. He had never before met a man so volatile and fanciful as Warrick
Raridan. He felt the warmth and friendliness of Raridan's nature as
people always did; Wheaton seemed cold and dull in comparison. Saxton
unpacked his trunks and distributed his things about the room. His
effects were simple, as befitted a man who was plain of mind and person.
He had collected none of the memorabilia which young men usually have
assembled at twenty-five. The furnishings of his dressing table and desk
were his own purchases, or those of his sister, who was the only woman
that had ever made him gifts. Having emptied his trunks and sent them to
the storeroom above, he seated himself comfortably in a lounging chair
and smoked a final pipe before turning in.



CHAPTER III

SWEET PEAS


When he confided to John Saxton his belief that there were those among
his fellow townsmen who thought him "crooked," William Porter had no
serious idea that such was the case. He had, however, an impression that
the term "crooked" implied a high degree of sagacity and shrewdness. He
knew men in other cities whose methods were, to put it mildly, indirect,
and their names were synonymous with success. It pleased him to think
that he was of their order, and he was rich enough to indulge this
idiosyncrasy without fear of the criticisms of his neighbors. It amused
him to quiz customers of his bank, though he took care not to estrange
them. While his fellow citizens never seriously reflected on his
integrity, yet they did say that "Billy" Porter knew his business; that
he was "on to his job"; or, that to get ahead of him one must "get up
early in the morning". "Billy Porter's luck" was a significant phrase in
Clarkson. Porter had occasionally scored phenomenal successes, until his
legitimate credit as a man of business was reinforced by this
reputation. He believed that he enjoyed the high favor of fortune, and
it lent assurance to his movements.

Porter lived well, as became a first citizen of Clarkson. His house
stood at the summit of a hill near the end of Varney Street, and the
gradual slope leading up to it was a pretty park, whose lawn and
shrubbery showed the intelligent care of a good gardener. The dry air
was still hot as John Saxton climbed the cement walk which wound over
the slope at the proper degree to bring the greatest comfort to
pedestrians. The green of the lawn was grateful to Saxton's eyes, which
dwelt with relief on the fine spray of the rotary sprinklers that hissed
coolly at the end of long lines of hose. Interspersed among the
indigenous scrub-oaks were elms, maples and cedars, and the mottled bark
of white birches showed here and there. The lawn was broken by beds of
cannas, and it was evident that the owner of the place had a taste for
landscape gardening and spent his money generously in cultivating it.
The house itself was of red brick dating from those years in which a
Mansard roof and a tower were thought indispensable in serious domestic
architecture. There was a broad veranda on the river side, accessible
through French windows of the same architectural period.

A maid admitted Saxton and left him to find his own way into the
drawing-room, through which a breeze was blowing pleasantly from across
the valley. The ceilings in the house were high and the hardwood floors
seemed inconsonant with them and had evidently been added at a later
date. A white marble mantel and the grate beneath it were hidden by
palms. Above the mantel was a large mirror framed in heavy gilt. A piano
formed a barricade across the lower end of the room. One wall was
covered with a wonderful old French tapestry depicting a fierce
hand-to-hand battle in which the warriors and their horses were greatly
confused.

Saxton sat in a deep wicker chair, mopping his forehead. He had spent a
busy day, and it was with real satisfaction that he found himself in a
cool house where the atmosphere of comfort and good taste brought ease
to all his senses. He had not expected to find so pleasant a house;
verily, the marks of philistinism were not upon it. It seemed to him
unlikely that Porter maintained solitary state here, and he wondered who
could be the other members of the household. The maid had disappeared
into the silent depths of the house without waiting for his name, and
did not return. His eyes moved again in leisurely fashion to the wall
before him, and to the mirror, which reflected nothing of his immediate
surroundings, but disclosed the shelves and books of a room on the
opposite side of the hall.

He was amusing himself in speculations as to what manner of library a
man like Porter would have, and whether he read anything but the
newspapers, when the shadow of a young woman crept into the mirror; she
stood placing flowers in a vase on a table in the center of the room. He
thought for a moment that a figure from a painting had given a pretty
head and a pair of graceful shoulders to the mirror. In the room where
he sat the frames contained peasants in sabots, generous panels of
Hudson River landscape, a Detaille and an Inness. He changed the
direction of his eyes to inspect again the Brittany girl that stood
looking out over the sea in the manner of Brittany girls in pictures.
The girl in the mirror was not the same; moreover, he could hear her
humming softly; her head moved gracefully; there was no question of her
reality. Her hands had brought a bunch of sweet peas within the mirror's
compass, and were detaching a part of them for the vase by which she
stood. She hummed on in her absorption, bending again, so that Saxton
lost sight of her; then she stood upright, holding the unused flowers as
if uncertain what to do with them. The head flashed out of the mirror,
which reflected again only the library shelves and books. Then he heard
a light step crossing the hall, and the girl, still singing softly to
herself, passed back of him to a little stand which stood by one of the
drawing-room windows. The back of the wicker chair hid him; she was
wholly unconscious that any one was there. The breath of the sweet peas
which she was distributing suddenly sweetened the cool air of the room.
Seeing that the girl did not know of his presence in the house, and that
she would certainly discover him when she turned to go, he rose and
faced her.

"I beg your pardon!"

"Oh!" The sweet peas fell to the floor, and the girl looked anxiously
toward the hall door.

"I beg your pardon," Saxton repeated. "I think--I fear--I wasn't
announced. But I believe that Mr. Porter is expecting me."

"Yes?" The girl looked at John for the first time. He was taking the
situation seriously, and was sincerely sorry for having startled her.
His breadth of shoulders was impressive; he was clad in gray homespun,
and there seemed to be a good deal of it in the room. His smooth-shaven
face was sunburned. She thought he might be an Englishman. He was of the
big blond English type common in the American cattle country.

"Father will be here very soon, I think." She moved toward the door
with dignity, ignoring the fallen flowers, and Saxton stepped forward
and picked them up.

"Allow me." The girl took them from him, a little uncertainly and
guardedly, then returned to the vase and placed the flowers in it.

"Thank you very much," she said. "I think I hear my father now." She
went to the outer door and opened it, inclining her head slightly as she
passed John, who also heard Mr. Porter's voice outside. He was
remonstrating with the gardener about the position of the sprinklers,
which he wished reset in keeping with ideas of his own.

"Well, Evelyn?" he said, as he came up the steps. Saxton could hear the
young woman making an explanation in low tones to her father. He knew,
of course, that she was telling him that some one was waiting, and Mr.
Porter stood suddenly in the door with his hat still on his head.

"Well, this beats me," he began effusively, coming forward and wringing
Saxton's hand. "This beats me! I'm not going to try to explain. I simply
forgot, that's all." He took Saxton's arm and turned him toward the door
where the girl still stood, smiling.

"Evelyn, this is Mr. Saxton. He's come to dine with us. Bless my soul!
but I forgot all about it. See here, Evelyn, you've got to square this
for me," he concluded, and pushed his hat back from his forehead as he
appealed to her.

[Illustration]

She came forward and shook hands with Saxton.

"I don't know how it can be 'squared.' This is only one of father's
lapses, Mr. Saxton. You may be sure he didn't mean to do it."

"No, indeed," declared Porter, "but I'm ashamed of myself. Guess I'm
losing my wits." He waved the young people to seats with his hat, as if
anxious to have the apologies over as quickly as possible. "Positively
no reflection,--no, sir. Why, the last time it happened--"

"A week ago to-night," his daughter interpolated.

"The victim was the lord mayor of somewhere, who was passing through
town, and I asked him and his gang for dinner, and actually didn't
telephone to the house about it until half-past five in the afternoon.
I'm losing my wits, that's all." He continued to paint his social
crimes, while his daughter disappeared to correct his latest error by
having a plate laid for the unannounced guest. When she returned he left
the room, but reappeared at the lower door of the drawing-room, still
holding his hat, and exclaimed sharply: "Evelyn, I'm sure I must have
told you about Mr. Saxton being here when we were talking of the
Poindexter place last night. I told you some one was coming out to take
charge of those things."

"Very well, father," she said patiently, turning toward him. He again
vanished into the hall having, he thought, justified himself before his
guest.

"This is one of our standing jokes, you see, and father feels that he
must defend himself. I was away for so long and father lived down town
until his domestic instinct has suffered."

"But I'm sure he hasn't lost his instinct of hospitality," said Saxton.

"No; but it's his instinct of consideration for the housekeeper that's
blunted." She was still smiling over the incident in a way that had the
effect of including Saxton as a party to the joke, rather than as its
victim. He found himself feeling altogether comfortable and was able to
lead off into a discussion of the heat and of the appearance of the
grounds, which he pronounced charming.

"Oh, that's father's great delight," she said. "I tell him he's far more
interested in the grounds than the house. He's an easy prey to the
compilers of flower catalogues, and people who sell trees go to him
first; then they never need to go any farther. He always buys them out!"

They were touching upon the beneficence of Arbor Day when Porter
returned with an appearance of clean cuffs and without his hat, and
launched into statistics as to the number of trees that had been planted
in the state by school children during the past year. The maid came to
announce dinner, and Porter talked on as he led the way to the
dining-room. As they were taking their seats a boy of twelve took the
place opposite Saxton.

"This is my brother Grant," said Miss Porter. The boy was shy and silent
and looked frail. The efforts of his sister to bring him into the talk
were fruitless. When his father or sister spoke to him it was with an
accented kindness. He would not talk before a stranger; but his face
brightened at the humor of the others.

There was a round table very prettily set with glass candlesticks at the
four plates and a bowl of sweet peas in the center. Porter began a
discussion of some problems relating to improvements and changes in the
grounds, talking directly across to his daughter, as she served the
soup. Her manner with him was very gentle. She added "father" to most of
her sentences in addressing him, and there was a kind of caress in the
word as she spoke it. Her head, whose outlines had seemed graceful to
Saxton as he studied them in the mirror, was now disclosed fully in the
soft candle-light of the table. She had a pretty way of bending forward
when she spoke which was characteristic and quite in keeping with the
frankness of her speech; there was no hint of coquetry or archness about
her. Her eyes, which Saxton had thought blue in the drawing-room, were
now gray by candle-light. She was very like her father; she had his
clear-cut features, though softened and refined, and thoroughly
feminine. His eyes were smaller, and there was a quizzical, furtive play
of humor in them, which hers lacked. William Porter always seemed to be
laughing at you; his daughter laughed with you. You might question the
friendliness of her father's quiet joking sometimes, but there was
nothing equivocal in her smile or speech.

A woman who is not too subservient to fashion may reveal a good deal of
herself in the way she wears her hair. The straight part in Evelyn
Porter's seemed to be akin to her clear, frank eyes, contributing to an
impression of simplicity and directness. The waves came down upon her
forehead and then retreated quickly to each side, as if they had been
conscious intruders there, and were only secure when they found refuge
in the knot that was gathered low behind. There was in her hair that
pretty ripple which men are reluctant to believe is acquired by
processes in which nature has little part. The result in Evelyn's case
was to give the light a better playground, and it caught and brightened
wherever a ripple held it. Her arms were bare from the elbow and there
were suppleness and strength in their firm outlines; her hands were long
and slender and had known vigorous service with racket and driver.

Porter was full of a scheme for planting a line of poplars around some
lots, which, it seemed, he owned in another part of the town; but he
dropped this during a prolonged absence of the waitress from the room,
to ask where the girl had gone and whether there was going to be any
more dinner.

"It's bad enough, child, for us to forget we've got a guest for dinner,
but we needn't rub it in by starving him after he's at the table."

"There is food out there, father, if you'll abide in patience. This is a
new girl and she's pretty green. She let Mr. Saxton in and then forgot
to tell anybody he'd come." She wished to touch on this, without
recurring to the awkward plight in which Saxton had been placed; and
John now seized the chance to minimize it so that the incident might be
closed.

"Oh, it was very flattering to me! She left me alone with an air that
implied my familiar acquaintance with the house. It was much kinder than
asking for credentials."

"You're not hard enough on these people, Evelyn," declared Porter.
"That's something they didn't teach you at college. If you let the
impression get out that you're easy, you'll never make a housekeeper.
Fire them! fire them whenever you find they're no good!" He looked to
Saxton for corroboration, with a severe air, as if this were something
that masculine minds understood but which was beyond the reach of women.

When all were served he grew abstracted as he ate, and Saxton appealed
to his hostess, as one college graduate may appeal to another, along the
line of their college experiences. They had, it appeared, several
acquaintances in common, and Saxon recalled that some of his classmates
had often visited the college in which Miss Porter had been a student;
and a little of the old ache crept into his heart as he remembered the
ways in which the social side of college life had meant so much less to
him than to most of the men he knew; but as she talked freely of her own
experience, he found that her humor was contagious, and he even fell so
far under its spell as to recount anecdotes of his own student life in
which his part had not been heroic. Porter came back occasionally from
the land of his commercial dreams, and they all laughed together at the
climaxes. He presently directed the talk to the cattle business.

"You'd better get Mr. Saxton to tell you how much fun ranching is," he
said, turning to the boy, who at once became interested in Saxton.

"I'm going to be a ranchman," the lad declared. "Father's going to buy
me the Poindexter ranch some day."

"That's one of Mr. Saxton's properties. Maybe he'd trade it to you for a
tin whistle."

"Is it as bad as that?" asked Saxton.

"Just wait until you see it. It's pretty bad."

"The house must have been charming," said Miss Porter.

"And that's about all it was," replied her father.

The dinner ended with a salad. This was not an incident but an event.
The highest note of civilization is struck when a salad is dressed by a
master of the chemistry of gastronomy. The clumsy and unworthy hesitate
in the performance of this sacred rite, and are never sure of their
proportions; the oil refuses intimacy with the vinegar, and sulks and
selfishly creates little yellow isles for itself in the estranging sea
of acid. The salt becomes indissoluble and the paprika is irrecoverable
flotsam. The clove of garlic, always recalcitrant under clumsy handling,
refuses to impart the merest hint of its wild tang, but the visible and
tangible world reeks with it. It was a joy to John Saxton to see the
deftness with which Evelyn Porter performed her miracle; he did not know
much about girls, but he surmised that a girl who composed a salad
dressing with such certainty did many things gracefully and well. There
were no false starts, no "ohs" of regret and appeal, no questions of
quantity. The light struck goldenly on the result as she poured it
finally upon the crisply-curling lettuce leaves which showed discreetly
over the edge of a deep Doulton bowl. It seemed to him high treason that
his host should decline the dressing thus produced by an art which
realized the dreams of alchemy, and should pour vinegar from the cruet
with his own hand upon the helpless leaves.

Porter demanded cigars before the others had finished, and smoked over
his coffee. He was in a hurry to leave, and at the earliest possible
moment led the way to the veranda, picking up his hat as he stepped
blithely along.

It was warmer outside than in, but Porter pretended that it was
pleasanter out of doors, and insisted that there was always a breeze on
the hill at night. He ran on in drawling monologue about the weather
conditions, and how much cooler it was in Clarkson than at the summer
places which people foolishly sought at the expense of home comforts. He
made his shy boy report his experiences of the day. In addressing the
lad he fell into his quizzical manner, but the boy understood it and
yielded to it with the same submission that his father's customers
adopted when they sought a loan and knew that Porter must prod them with
immaterial questions, and irritate them with petty ironies, before he
finally scribbled his initials in the corner of their notes and passed
them over to the discount clerk.

Raridan appeared at the step presently. They all rose as he came up, and
he said to Saxton as he shook hands with him last: "I see you've found
the way to headquarters. All roads lead up to this Alpine height,--and I
fear--I fear--that all roads lead down again," he added, with a doleful
sigh, and laughed. He drew out his cigarettes and began making himself
greatly at home. He assured Mr. Porter, with amiable insolence, that his
veranda chairs were the most uncomfortable ones he knew, and went to
fetch himself a better seat from the hall.

"Mr. Raridan likes to be comfortable," said Miss Porter in his absence.

"But he finds pleasure in making others comfortable, too," Saxton
ventured.

"Oh, he's the very kindest of men," Miss Porter affirmed.

"What a nuisance you are, Warry," said Porter, as the young man fussed
about to find a place for his chair. "We were all very easy here till
you came. Even the breeze has died out."

"Father insists that there has been a breeze," said Miss Porter. "But it
really has gone."

"_Et tu, Brute?_ What we ought to do, Mr. Porter," said Raridan, who had
at last settled himself, "is to organize a company to supply breezes.
'The Clarkson Breeze Company, Limited.' I can see the name on the
factory now, in my mind's eye. We'd get up an ice trust first, then
bring in the ice cream people and make vast fortunes out of it, besides
becoming benefactors of our kind. The ice and the ice cream would pay
for the cold air; our cold air service would bring a clear profit. We'd
guarantee a temperature through the summer months of, say, seventy
degrees."

"Then," Porter drawled, "the next thing would be to get the doctors in,
for a pneumonia branch; and after that the undertakers would demand
admission, and then the tombstone people. You're a bright young man,
Warry. I heard you stringing that Englishman at the club the other day
about your scheme for piping water from the Atlantic Ocean to irrigate
the American desert, and he thought you meant it."

"Then we'll all suffer," Miss Porter declared, "for he'll go home and
put it in a book, and there'll be no end of it."

Raridan was in gay spirits. He had come from a call on a young married
couple who had just gone to housekeeping. He had met there a
notoriously awkward young man, who moved through Clarkson houses leaving
ruin in his wake.

"There ought to be some way of insuring against Whitely," said Raridan,
musingly. "Perhaps a social casualty company could be formed to protect
people from his depredations. You know, Mr. Saxton, they've really had
to cut him off from refreshments at parties,--he was always spilling
salads on the most expensive gowns in town. And these poor young married
things, with their wedding loot huddled about them in their little
parlors! There is a delightful mathematical nicety in the way he sweeps
a tea table with his coat tails. He never leaves enough for a sample.
But this was the worst! You know that polar bear skin that Mamie Shepard
got for a wedding present; well, it makes her house look like a
menagerie. Whitely was backing out--a thing I've begged him never to
try--and got mixed up with the head of that monster; kicked all the
teeth out, started to fall, gathered in the hat rack, broke the glass
out of it, and before Shepard could head him off, he pulled down the
front door shade."

"But Mr. Whitely sings beautifully," urged Miss Porter.

"He'd have to," said Warry, "with those feet."

"You needn't mind what Raridan says," Mr. Porter remarked. "He's very
unreliable."

"The office of social censor is always an ungrateful one," Raridan
returned, dolefully. "But I really don't know what you'd do without me
here."

"I notice that you never give us a chance to try," said Mr. Porter,
dryly.

"That is the unkindest cut; and in the shadow of your own house, too."

Saxton got up to go presently and Raridan rose with him, declaring that
they had been terribly severe and that he could not be left alone with
them.

"I hope you'll overlook that little slip of mine," said Mr. Porter, as
he shook hands with Saxton. "You'd better not tell Raridan about it. It
would be terrible ammunition in his hands."

"And we'll all do better next time," said Miss Porter; "so do come again
to show that you don't treasure it against us."

"I don't know that anything's happened," pleaded John, "except that I've
had a remarkably good time."

"I fear that's more generous than just; but the next time I hope the
maid will do better."

"And next time I hope I shan't frighten you," Saxton went on. Raridan
and Mr. Porter had walked down the long veranda to the steps, and Saxton
and Miss Porter were following.

"Oh, but you didn't!" the girl laughed at him.

"But you dropped the flowers--"

"But you shouldn't have noticed! It wasn't gallant!"

They had reached the others, and Raridan broke in with his good night,
and he and Saxton went down the walk together.

"They seem to have struck up an acquaintance," observed Mr. Porter,
settling himself to a fresh cigar.

"Mr. Saxton is very nice," said Evelyn.

"Oh, he's all right," said her father, easily.



CHAPTER IV

AT POINDEXTER'S


John Saxton trotted his pony through a broken gate into a great yard
that had once been sown in blue grass, and at the center of which lay
the crumbled ruins of a fountain. This was clearly no ordinary
establishment, as he had been warned, and he was uncertain how to hail
it. However, before he could make his presence known, a frowsy man in
corduroy emerged from the great front door and came toward him.

"My name's Saxton, and you must be Snyder."

"Correct," said the man and they shook hands.

"Going to stay a while?"

"A day or two." John threw down the slicker in which he had wrapped a
few articles from his bag at Great River, the nearest railway station.

"I got your letter all right," said Snyder. "Walk in and help yourself."
He led the pony toward the outbuildings, while Saxton filled his pipe
and viewed the pile before him with interest. He had been making a
careful inspection of all the properties that had fallen to his care.
This had necessitated a good deal of traveling. He had begun in Colorado
and worked eastward, going slowly, and getting the best advice
obtainable as to the value of his principals' holdings. Much of their
property was practically worthless. Title had been gained under
foreclosure to vast areas which had no value. A waterworks plant stood
in the prairie where there had once been a Kansas town. The place was
depopulated and the smokestack stood as a monument to blighted hopes.
Ranch houses were inhabited by squatters, who had not been on his books
at all, and who paid no tribute to Boston. He was viewed with suspicion
by these tenants, and on inquiry at the county seats, he found generally
that they were lawless men, and that it would be better for him to let
them alone. It was patent that they would not pay rent, and to eject
them merely in the maintenance of a principle involved useless expense
and violence.

"This certainly beats them all," Saxton muttered aloud.

He had reached in his itinerary what his papers called the Poindexter
property. He had found that the place was famous throughout this part of
the country for the idiosyncrasies of its sometime owners, three young
men who had come out of the East to show how the cattle business should
be managed. They had secured an immense acreage and built a stone ranch
house whose curious architecture imparted to the Platte Valley a touch
of medievalism that was little appreciated by the neighboring cattlemen.
One of the owners, a Philadelphian named Poindexter, who had a weakness
for architecture and had studied the subject briefly at his university,
contributed the buildings and his two associates bought the cattle.
There were one thousand acres of rolling pasture here, much of it lying
along the river, and a practical man could hardly have failed to
succeed; but theft, disease in the herd and inexperience in buying and
selling, had wrought the ranchmen's destruction. Before their money was
exhausted, Poindexter and his associates lived in considerable state,
and entertained the friends who came to see them according to the best
usages of Eastern country life within, and their own mild approximation
of Western life without. Tom Poindexter's preceptor in architecture, an
elderly gentleman with a sense of humor, had found a pleasure which he
hardly dared to express in the medieval tone of the house and buildings.

"All you need, Tom," he said, "to make the thing complete, is a
drawbridge and a moat. The possibilities are great in the light of
modern improvements in such things. An electric drawbridge, operated
solely by switches and buttons, would be worth while." The folly of man
seems to express itself naturally in the habitations which he builds for
himself; the folly of Tom Poindexter had been of huge dimensions and he
had built a fairly permanent monument to it. He and his associates began
with an ambition to give tone to the cattle business, and if novel ideas
could have saved them, they would not have failed. One of their happy
notions was to use Poindexter's coat of arms as a brand, and this was
only abandoned when their foreman declared that no calf so elaborately
marked could live. They finally devised an insignium consisting of the
Greek Omega in a circle of stars.

"There's a remnant of the Poindexter herd out there somewhere," Wheaton
had said to Saxton. "The fellow Snyder, that I put in as a caretaker,
ought to have gathered up the loose cattle by this time; that's what I
told him to do when I put him there."

Saxton turned and looked out over the rolling plain. A few rods away lay
the river, and where it curved nearest the house stood a group of
cottonwoods, like sentinels drawn together for colloquy. Scattered here
and there over the plain were straggling herds. On a far crest of the
rolling pastures a lonely horseman paused, sharply outlined for a moment
against the sky; in another direction, a blur drew his eyes to where a
group of the black Polled Angus cattle grazed, giving the one blot of
deep color to the plain.

Snyder reappeared, and Saxton followed him into the house.

"It isn't haunted or anything like that?" John asked, glancing over the
long hall.

"No. They have a joke about that at Great River. They say the only
reason is that there ain't any idiot ghosts."

There was much in the place to appeal to Saxton's quiet humor. The house
was two stories high and there was a great hall, with an immense
fireplace at one end. The sleeping rooms opened on a gallery above the
hall. An effort had been made to give the house the appearance of
Western wildness by introducing a great abundance of skins of wild
beasts,--a highly dishonest bit of decorating, for they had been bought
in Chicago. How else, indeed, would skins of German boars and Polar
bears be found in a ranch house on the Platte River! Under one wing of
the stairway, which divided to left and right at the center of the hall,
was the dining-room; under the other was the ranch office.

"Those fellows thought a good deal of their stomachs," said Snyder, as
Saxton opened and shut the empty drawers of the sideboard, which had
been built into one end of the western wall of the room, in such a
manner that a pane of glass, instead of a mirror, filled the center. The
intention of this was obviously to utilize the sunset for decorative
purposes, and Saxton chuckled as he comprehended the idea.

"I suppose our mortgage covers the sunset, too," he said. Nearly every
portable thing of value had been removed, and evidently in haste; but
the heavy oak chairs and the table remained. Snyder did his own modest
cooking in the kitchen, which was in great disorder. The floor of the
office was littered with scraps of paper. The original tenants had
evidently made a quick settlement of their business affairs before
leaving. Snyder slept here; his blanket lay in a heap on the long bench
that was built into one side of the room, and a battered valise
otherwise marked it as his lodging place. Saxton viewed the room with
disgust; it was more like a kennel than a bedroom. His foot struck
something on the floor; it was a silver letter-seal bearing the peculiar
Poindexter brand, and he thrust it into his pocket with a laugh.

"My ranching wasn't so bad after all," he muttered.

"What's that?" asked Snyder, who was stolidly following him about.

"Nothing. If you have a pony we'll take a ride around the fences."

They spent the day in the saddle riding over the range. The ridiculous
character of the Poindexter undertaking could not spoil the real value
of the land. There was, Saxton could see, the making here of a great
farming property; he felt his old interest in outdoor life quickening as
he rode back to the house in the evening.

Snyder cooked supper for both of them, while Saxton repaired a decrepit
windmill which had been designed to supply the house with water. He had
formed a poor opinion of the caretaker, who seemed to know nothing of
the property and who had, as far as he could see, no well defined
duties. The man struck him as an odd person for the bank to have chosen
to be the custodian of a ranch property. There was nothing for any one
to do unless the range were again stocked and cattle raising undertaken
as a serious business. Saxton was used to rough men and their ways. He
had a happy faculty of adapting himself to the conversational capacities
of illiterate men, and enjoyed drawing them out and getting their point
of view; but Snyder's was not a visage that inspired confidence. He had
a great shock of black hair and a scraggy beard. He lacked an eye, and
he had a habit of drawing his head around in order to accommodate his
remaining orb to any necessity. He did this with an insinuating kind of
deliberation that became tiresome in a long interview.

"This place is too fancy to be of much use," the man vouchsafed, puffing
at his pipe. "You may find some dude that wants to plant money where
another dude has dug the first hole; but I reckon you'll have a hard
time catching him. A real cattleman wouldn't care for all this house. It
might be made into a stable, but a horse would look ridiculous in here.
You might have a corn crib made out of it; or it would do for a hotel if
you could get dudes to spend the summer here; but I reckon it's a
little hot out here for summer boarders."

"The only real value is in the land," said Saxton. "I'm told there's no
better on the river. The house is a handicap, or would be so regarded by
the kind of men who make money out of cattle. Have you ever tried
rounding up the cattle that strayed through the fences? The Poindexter
crowd must have branded their last calves about two years ago. Assuming
that only a part of them was sold or run off, there ought to be some
two-year-olds still loose in this country and they'd be worth finding."

Snyder took his pipe from his mouth and snorted. "Yer jokin' I guess.
These fellers around here are good fellers, and all that, but I guess
they don't give anything back. I guess we ain't got any cattle coming to
us."

"You think you'd rather not try it?"

"Not much!" was the expressive reply. The fellow smoked slowly, bringing
his eye into position to see how Saxton had taken his answer.

John was refilling his own pipe and did not look up.

"Who've you been reporting to, Snyder?"

"How's that?"

"Who have you been considering yourself responsible to?"

"Well, Jim Wheaton at the Clarkson National hired me, and I reckon I'd
report to him if I reported to anybody. But if you're going to run this
shebang and want to be reported to, I guess I can report to you." He
brought his turret around again and Saxton this time met his eye.

"I want you to report to me," said John quietly. "In the first place I
want the house and the other buildings cleaned out. After that the
fences must be put in shape. And then we'll see if we can't find some of
our cows. You can't tell; we may open up a real ranch here and go into
business."

Snyder was sprawling at his ease in a Morris chair, and had placed his
feet on a barrel. He did not seem interested in the activities hinted
at.

"Well, if you're the boss I'll do it your way. I got along all right
with Wheaton."

He did not say whether he intended to submit to authority or not, and
Saxton dropped the discussion. John rose and found a candle with which
he lighted himself to bed in one of the rooms above. The whole place was
dirty and desolate. The house had never been filled save once, and that
was on the occasion of a housewarming which Poindexter and his fellows
had given when they first took possession. One of their friends had
chartered a private car and had brought out a party of young men and
women, who had enlivened the house for a few days; but since then no
woman had entered the place. In the Poindexter days it had been
carefully kept, but now it was in a sorry plight. There had been a whole
year of neglect and vacancy, in which the house had been used as a
meeting place for the wilder spirits of the neighborhood, who had not
hesitated to carry off whatever pleased their fancy and could be put on
the back of a horse. Saxton chose for himself the least disorderly of
the rooms, in which the furniture was whole, and where there were even a
few books lying about. He determined to leave for Clarkson the following
morning, and formulated in his mind the result of his journey and plans
for the future of the incongruous combination of properties that had
been entrusted to him. He sat for an hour looking out over the moon-lit
valley. He followed the long sweep of the plain, through which he could
see for miles the bright ribbon of the river. A train of cars rumbled
far away, on the iron trail between the two oceans, intensifying the
loneliness of the strange house.

"I seem to find only the lonely places," he said aloud, setting his
teeth hard into his pipe.

In the morning he ate the breakfast of coffee, hard-tack and bacon which
Snyder prepared.

"I guess you want me to hustle things up a little," said Snyder, more
amiably than on the day before. He turned his one eye and his grin on
Saxton, who merely said that matters must take a new turn, and that if a
ranch could be made out of the place there was no better time to begin
than the present. He had not formulated plans for the future, and could
not do so without the consent and approval of his principals; but he
meant to put the property in as good condition as possible without
waiting for instructions. Snyder rode with him to the railway station.

"Give my regards to Mr. Wheaton," he said, as Saxton swung himself into
the train. "You'll find me here at the old stand when you come back."

"A queer customer and undoubtedly a bad lot," was Saxton's reflection.

When Saxton had written out the report of his trip he took it to
Wheaton, to get his suggestions before forwarding it to Boston. He
looked upon the cashier as his predecessor, and wished to avail himself
of Wheaton's knowledge of the local conditions affecting the several
properties that had now passed to his care. Wheaton undoubtedly wished
to be of assistance, and in their discussion of the report, the cashier
made many suggestions of value, of which Saxton was glad to avail
himself.

"As to the Poindexter place," said Saxton finally, "I've been
advertising it for sale in the hope of finding a buyer, but without
results. The people at headquarters can't bother about the details of
these things, but I'm blessed if I can see why we should maintain a
caretaker. There's nothing there to take care of. That house is worse
than useless. I'm going back in a few days to see if I can't coax home
some of the cattle we're entitled to; they must be wandering over the
country,--if they haven't been rustled, and then I suppose we may as
well dispense with Snyder."

He had used the plural pronoun out of courtesy to Wheaton, wishing him
to feel that his sanction was asked in any changes that were made.

"I don't see that there's anything else to do," Wheaton answered. "I've
been to the ranch, and there's little personal property there worth
caring for. That man Snyder came along one day and asked for a job and I
sent him out there thinking he'd keep things in order until the Trust
Company sent its own representative here."

There were times when Wheaton's black eyes contracted curiously, and
this was one of the times.

"I don't like discharging a man that you've employed," Saxton replied.

"Oh, that's all right. You can't keep him if he performs no service.
Don't trouble about him on my account. How soon are you going back
there?"

"Next week some time."

"Traveling about the country isn't much fun," Wheaton said,
sympathetically.

"Oh, I rather like it," replied Saxton, putting on his hat.

Saxton was not surprised when he returned to the ranch to find that
Snyder had made no effort to obey his instructions. He made his visit
unexpectedly, leaving the train at Great River, where he secured a horse
and rode over to the ranch. He reached the house in the middle of the
morning and found the front door bolted and barred on the inside. After
much pounding he succeeded in bringing Snyder to the door, evidently
both surprised and displeased at his interruption.

"Howdy, boss," was the salutation of the frowsy custodian; "I wasn't
feeling just right to-day and was takin' a little nap."

The great hall showed signs of a carousal. The dirt had increased since
Saxton's first appearance. Empty bottles that had been doing service as
candlesticks stood in their greasy shrouds on the table. Saxton sat down
on a keg, which had evidently been recently emptied, and lighted a pipe.
He resolved to make quick work of Snyder.

"How many cattle have you rounded up since I was here?" he demanded.

"Well, to tell the truth," began Snyder, "there ain't been much time for
doing that since you was here."

"No; I suppose you were busy mending fences and cleaning house. Now you
have been drawing forty dollars a month for doing nothing. I'll treat
you better than you deserve and give you ten dollars bonus to get out. I
believe the pony in the corral belongs to you. We'll let it go at that.
Here's your money."

"Well, I guess as Mr. Wheaton hired me, he'd better fire me," the fellow
began, bringing his eye to bear upon Saxton.

"Yes, I spoke to Mr. Wheaton about you. He understands that you're to
go."

"He does, does he?" Snyder replied with a sneer. "He must have forgot
that I had an arrangement with him by the year."

"Well, it's all off," said Saxton, rising. He began throwing open the
windows and doors to let in fresh air, for the place was foul with the
stale fumes of whisky and tobacco.

"Well, I guess I'll have to see Mr. Wheaton," Snyder retorted, finding
that Saxton was paying no further attention to him. He collected his few
belongings, watching in astonishment the violence with which Saxton was
gathering up and disposing of rubbish.

"Going to clean up a little?" he asked, with his leer.

"No, I'm just exercising for fun," replied Saxton. "If you're ready,
you'd better take your pony and skip."

Snyder growled his resentment and moved toward the door with a bundle
under his arm and a saddle and bridle thrown over his shoulder.

"I'll be up town to see Mr. Wheaton in a day or two," he declared, as he
slouched through the door.

"He seems to be more interested in Wheaton than Wheaton is in him,"
observed Saxton to himself.

Saxton spent a week at Great River. He hired a man to repair fences and
put the house in order. He visited several of the large ranch owners and
asked them for aid in picking out the scattered remnants of the
Poindexter herd. Nearly all of them volunteered to help, with the result
that he collected about one hundred cattle and sold them at Great River
for cash. He expected to see or hear of Snyder in the town but the
fellow had disappeared.

The fact was that Snyder had ridden over to the next station beyond
Great River for his spree, that place being to his liking because it was
beyond the jurisdiction of the sheriff whose headquarters were
maintained at Great River,--an official who took his office seriously,
and who had warned Snyder that his latest offense--getting drunk and
smashing a saloon sideboard--must not be repeated. After he had been
satisfactorily drunk for a week and had gambled away such of his fortune
as the saloonkeeper had not acquired in direct course of commerce,
Snyder came to himself sufficiently to send a telegram. Then he sat down
to wait, with something of the ease of spirit with which an honest man
sends forth a sight draft for collection from a town where he is a
stranger, and awaits returns in the full enjoyment of the comforts of
his inn.

On the third day, receiving no message from the outside world, Snyder
sold his pony and took the train for Clarkson.



CHAPTER V

DEBATABLE QUESTIONS


Evelyn Porter had come home in June to take her place as mistress of her
father's house. The fact that she alone of the girls belonging to
families of position in the town had gone to college had set her a
little apart from the others. During her four years at Smith she had
evinced no unusual interest in acquiring knowledge; she was a fair
student only and had been graduated without honors save those which her
class had admiringly bestowed on her. She had entered into social and
athletic diversions with zest and had been much more popular with her
fellow students than with the faculty. She brought home no ambition save
to make her father's home as comfortable as possible. She said to
herself that she would keep up her French and German, and straightway
put books within reach to this end. She had looked with wonder unmixed
with admiration upon the strenuous woman as she had seen her, full of
ambition to remake the world in less than six days; and she dreaded the
type with the dread natural in a girl of twenty-two who has a sound
appetite, a taste in clothes, with money to gratify it, and a liking for
fresh air and sunshine.

She found it pleasant to slip back into the life of the town; and the
girl friends or older women who met her on summer mornings in the
shopping district of Clarkson, remarked to one another and reported to
their sons and husbands, that Evelyn Porter was at home to stay, and
that she was just as cordial and friendly as ever and had no airs. It
pleased Evelyn to find that the clerks in the shops remembered her and
called her by name; and there was something homelike and simple and
characteristic in the way women that met in the shops visited with one
another in these places. She caught their habit of going into Vortini's
for soda water, where she found her acquaintances of all ages sitting at
tables, with their little parcels huddled in their laps, discussing
absentees and the weather. She found, in these encounters, that most of
the people she knew were again agitated, as always at this season,
because Clarkson was no cooler than in previous years; and that the
women were expressing their old reluctance to leave their husbands, who
could not get away for more than two weeks, if at all. Some were already
preparing for Mackinac or Oconomowoc or Wequetonsing, and a few of the
more adventurous for the remoter coasts of New Jersey and Massachusetts.
The same people were discussing these same questions in the same old
spirit, and, when necessary, confessing with delightful frankness their
financial disabilities, in excusing their presence in town at a season
when it was only an indulgence of providence that all the inhabitants
did not perish from the heat.

As a child Evelyn had played in the tower of the house on the hill, and
she now made a den of it. Some of her childish playthings were still
hidden away in the window seat, and stirred freshly the remembrance of
her mother,--her gentleness, her frailty, her interest in the world's
work. She often wondered whether the four years at college had realized
all that her dead mother had hoped for; but she was not morbid, and she
did not brood. She found a pleasure in stealing up to the tower in the
summer nights, and watching the shifting lights of the great railway
yards far down the valley, but at such times she had no romantic
visions. She knew that the fitful bell of the switch engine and the
rumble of wheels symbolized the very practical life of this restless
region in which she had been born. She cherished no delusion that she
was a princess in a tower, waiting for a lover to come riding from east
or west. She had always shared with her companions the young men who
visited her at college. When they sometimes sent her small gifts, she
had shared these also. Warrick Raridan had gone to see her several
times, as an old friend, and he had on these occasions, with
characteristic enterprise, made the most of the opportunity to widen his
acquaintance among Evelyn's friends, to whom she frankly introduced him.

On the day following John Saxton's introduction to the house, Evelyn was
busy pouring oil on rusty places in the domestic machinery, when three
cards were brought up to her bearing unfamiliar names. They belonged,
she imagined, to some of the newer people of the town who had come to
Clarkson during her years from home.

"Mrs. Atherton?" she said inquiringly, pausing before the trio in the
drawing-room.

Two of the ladies looked toward the third, with whom Evelyn shook
hands.

"Miss Morris and Mrs. Wingate," murmured the lady identified as Mrs.
Atherton. They all sat down.

"It's so very nice to know that you are at home again," said Mrs.
Atherton, "although I've not had the pleasure of meeting you before. I
knew your mother very well, many years ago, but I have been away for a
long time and have only recently come back to Clarkson.

"It is very pleasant to be at home again," Evelyn responded.

Mrs. Atherton smiled nervously and looked pointedly at her companions,
evidently expecting them to participate in the conversation. The younger
woman, who had been presented as Miss Morris, sat rigid in a gilt
reception chair. She was of severe aspect and glared at Mrs. Atherton,
who threw herself again into the breach.

"I hope you do not dislike the West?" Mrs. Atherton inquired of Evelyn.

"No, indeed! On the other hand I am very proud of it. You know I am a
native here, and very loyal."

Miss Morris seized this as if it had been her cue, and declared in
severe tones:

"We of the West are fortunate in living away from the artificiality of
the East. There is some freedom here; the star of empire hovers here;
the strength of the nation lies in the rugged but honest people of the
great West, who gave Lincoln to the nation and the nation to Liberty."
There was a glitter of excitement in the woman's eyes, but she spoke in
low monotonous tones. Evelyn thought for a moment that this was
conscious hyperbole, but Miss Morris's aspect of unrelenting severity
undeceived her. Something seemed to be expected of her, and Evelyn said:

"That is all very true, but, you know, they say down East that we are
far too thoroughly persuaded of our greatness and brag too much."

"But," continued Miss Morris, "they are coming to us more and more for
statesmen. Look at literature! See what our western writers are doing!
The most vital books we are now producing are written west of the
Alleghanies!"

"You know Miss Morris is a writer," interrupted Mrs. Atherton. "We
should say Doctor Morris," she continued, with a rising inflection on
the title,--"not an M.D. Miss Morris is a doctor of philosophy."

"Oh," said Evelyn. "What college, Doctor Morris?"

"The University of North Dakota," with emphasis on the university. "I
had intended going to Heidelberg, but felt that we loyal Americans
should patronize home institutions. The choruses of Euripides may ring
as grandly on our Western plains as in Athens itself," she added with
finality. She enunciated with great care and seemed terribly in earnest
to Evelyn, who felt an uncontrollable desire to laugh. But there was,
she now imagined, something back of all this, and she waited patiently
for its unfolding. The dénouement was, she hoped, near at hand, for Miss
Morris moved her eyeglasses higher up on her nose and appeared even more
formidable than before.

"I have heard that great emphasis is laid at Smith on social and
political economy. You must be very anxious to make practical use of
your knowledge," continued Miss Morris.

Evelyn recalled guiltily her cuts in these studies.

"Carlyle or somebody"--she was afraid to quote before a doctor of
philosophy, and thought it wise to give a vague citation--"calls
political economy the dismal science, and I'm afraid I have looked at it
a little bit that way myself." She smiled hopefully, but Miss Morris did
not relax her severity.

"Civic responsibility rests on women as strongly as on men; even more
so," declared Miss Morris.

"Well, I think we ought to do what we can," assented Evelyn.

"Now, our Local Council has been doing a great deal toward improving the
sanitation of Clarkson."

"Oh yes," exclaimed Mrs. Wingate from her corner.

"And we feel that every educated woman in the community should lend her
aid to all the causes of the Local Council."

"Yes?" said Evelyn, rather weakly. She felt that the plot was
thickening. "I really know very little of such things, but--" The "but"
was highly equivocal.

"And we are very anxious to get a representative on the School Board,"
continued Miss Morris. "The election is in November. Has it ever
occurred to you how perfectly absurd it is for men to conduct our
educational affairs when the schools are properly a branch of the home
and should be administered, in part, at least, by women?" She punctuated
her talk so that her commas cut into the air. Mrs. Wingate, the third
and silent lady, approved this more or less inarticulately.

"I know there's a great deal in that," said Evelyn.

"And we, the Executive Committee of the Council, have been directed to
ask you"--Mrs. Wingate and Mrs. Atherton moved nervously in their seats,
but Miss Morris now spoke with more deliberation, and with pedagogic
care of her pronunciation--"to become a candidate for the School Board."

Evelyn felt a cold chill creeping over her, and swallowed hard in an
effort to summon some word to meet this shock.

"Your social position," continued Miss Morris volubly, "and the prestige
which you as a bachelor of arts have brought home from college, make you
a most natural candidate."

"Destiny really seems to be pointing to you," said Mrs. Atherton, with
coaxing sweetness in her tone.

"Oh, but I couldn't think of it!" exclaimed Evelyn, recovering her
courage. "I have had no experience in such matters! Why, that would be
politics!--and I have always felt,--it has seemed to me,--I simply can't
consider it!"

She had gained her composure now. She had been called a bachelor of
arts, and she felt an impulse to laugh.

"Ah! we had expected that it would seem strange to you at first," said
Mrs. Atherton, who appeared to be in charge of the grand strategy of the
call, while Miss Morris carried the rapid firing guns and Mrs. Wingate
lent moral support, as of a shore battery.

Mrs. Atherton had risen.

"We have all set our hearts on it, and you must not decline. Think it
over well, and when you come to the first meeting of the Council in
September, you will, I am sure, be convinced of your duty."

"Yes; a very solemn obligation that wealth and education have laid upon
you," Miss Morris amplified.

"A solemn obligation," echoed Mrs. Wingate.

The three filed out, Miss Morris leading the way, while Mrs. Atherton
lingeringly covered their retreat with a few words that were intended to
convey a knowledge of the summer frivolities then pending.

"I should be very glad to have you come to see me at my rooms," said
Miss Morris, wheeling in her short skirt as she reached the door. "I
have rooms in the Ætna Building."

"Do come and see us, too," murmured the convoy, smiling in relief as
they turned away.

Evelyn sat down in the nearest chair and laughed.

"I wonder whether they think college has made me like that?" she asked
herself.

At dinner she gave her father a humorous account of the interview. Grant
was away dining with a playmate and they were alone. Porter was in one
of his perverse moods, and he began gruffly:

"I should like to know why not! Haven't I spent thousands of dollars on
your education? The lady was right; you are, at least so I have
understood, a bachelor of arts. Why a bachelor I'm sure I don't know--"
He was buttering a bit of bread with deliberation and did not look at
Evelyn, who waited patiently, knowing that he would have his whim out.

"It seems to me," he went on, "a proper recognition of your talents and
education, and also of me, as one of the oldest citizens of Clarkson. I
tell you it is good to get a little recognition once in a while. I have
a painful recollection of having been defeated for School Commissioner
about ten years ago. Now here's a chance for the family to redeem
itself. Of course you accepted the nomination, and after your election
I'll expect you to bring the school funds to my bank, and I'll say to
you now that the directors will do the right thing by you."

He was still avoiding Evelyn's eyes, but his humor was growing impatient
for recognition.

"Now, father!" she pleaded, and they laughed together.

"Father," she said seriously, "I don't want these people here to get an
idea that I'm not an ordinary being."

"That's an astonishing statement," he began, ready for further banter;
but she would not have it.

"There are," she said, "certain things that a woman ought to do, whether
she's educated or not; and I have ideas about that. So you think these
people here are expecting great things of me,--"

"Of course they are, and with reason," said Porter, still anxious to
return to his joke.

"But I do not intend to have it! When I'm forty years old I may change
my mind, but right now I want--"

She hesitated.

"Well, what do you want, child?" he said gently, with the fun gone out
of his voice. They had had their coffee, and she sat with her elbow on
the table and her chin in her hand.

"Why, I'm afraid I want to have a good time," she declared, rising.

"And that's just what I want you to have, child," he said kindly,
putting his arm about her as they went out together.

Evelyn declined the honor offered her by the local council, at long
range, in a note to Doctor Morris, giving no reasons beyond her
unfamiliarity with political and school matters. These she knew would
not be considered adequate by Doctor Morris, but the latter, after
writing a somewhat caustic reply, in which she dwelt upon the new
woman's duties and responsibilities, immediately announced her own
candidacy. The incident was closed as far as Evelyn was concerned and
she was not again approached in the matter.

Her father continued to joke about it, and a few weeks later, when they
were alone, referred to it in a way which she knew by experience was
merely a feint that concealed some serious purpose. Men of Porter's age
are usually clumsy in dealing with their own children, and Porter was no
exception. When he had anything of weight on his mind to discuss with
Evelyn, he brooded over it for several days before attacking her. His
manner with men was easy, and he was known down town as a good bluffer;
but he stood not a little in awe of his daughter.

"I suppose things will be gay here this winter," he said, as they sat
together on the porch.

"About the same old story, I imagine. The people and their ways don't
seem to have changed much."

"You must have some parties yourself. Better start them up early. Get
some of the college girls out, and turn it on strong."

"Well, I shan't want to overdo it. I don't want to be a nuisance to you,
and entertaining isn't as easy as it looks."

"It'll do me good, too," he replied. He fidgeted in his chair and played
with his hat, which, however, he did not remove, but shifted from one
side to the other, smoking his cigar meanwhile without taking it from
his mouth. He rose and walked out to one of his sprinklers which had
been placed too near the walk and kicked it off into the grass. She
watched him with a twinkle in her eyes, and then laughed. "What is it,
father?" she asked, when he came back to the porch.

"What's what?" he replied, with assumed irritation. He knew that he must
now face the music, and grew composed at once.

"Well, it's this,--" with sudden decision.

"Yes, I knew it was something," she said, still laughing and not willing
to make it too easy for him.

"You know the Knights of Midas are quite an institution here--boom the
town, and give a fall festival every year. The idea is to get the
country people in to spend their money. Lots of tom-foolishness about
it,--swords and plumes and that kind of rubbish; but we all have to go
in for it. Local pride and so on."

"Yes; do you want me to join the Knights?"

"No, not precisely. But you see, they have a ball every year in
connection with the festival, with a queen and maids of honor. I guess
you've never seen one of these things, as they have them in October, and
you've always been away at school. Now the committee on entertainment
has been after me to see if you'd be queen of the ball this year--"

"Oh!--" ominously.

"Just hold on a minute." He was wholly at ease now, and assumed the
manner which he had found effective in dealing with obstreperous
customers of his bank. "I'm free to say that I don't like the idea of
this myself particularly. There's a lot of publicity about it and you
know I don't like that--and the newspapers make an awful fuss. But you
see it isn't wise for us"--he laid emphasis on the pronoun--"to set up
to be better than other people. Now", with a twinkle in his eye, "you
turned down this School Board business the other day and said you wanted
to have a good time, just like other girls, and I reckon most of the
girls in town would be tickled at a chance like this--"

"And you want me to do it, father? Is that what you mean? But it must be
perfectly awful,--the crowd and the foolish mummery."

"Well, there's one thing sure, you'll never have to do it a second
time." Porter smiled reassuringly.

"But I haven't said I'd do it once, father."

"I'd like to have you; I'd like it very much, and should appreciate your
doing it. But don't say anything about it." Some callers were coming up
the walk, so the matter was dropped. Porter recurred to the subject
again next day, and Evelyn saw that he wished very much to have her take
part in the carnival, but the idea did not grow pleasanter as she
considered it. It was quite true, as she had told her father, that she
wanted to enjoy herself after the manner of other young women, and
without constant reference to her advantages, as she had heard them
called; but the thought of a public appearance in what she felt to be a
very ridiculous function did not please her. On the other hand, her
father rarely asked anything of her and he would not have made this
request without considering it carefully beforehand.

In her uncertainty she went for advice to Mrs. Whipple, the wife of a
retired army officer, who had been her mother's friend. Mrs. Whipple was
a woman of wide social experience and unusual common sense. She had
settled in her day many of those distressing complications which arise
at military posts in times of national peace. Young officers still came
to her for advice in their love affairs, which she always took
seriously, but not too seriously. Warry Raridan maintained unjustly that
Mrs. Whipple's advice was bad, but that it did the soul good to see how
much joy she got out of giving it. The army had communicated both social
dignity and liveliness to Clarkson, as to many western cities which had
military posts for neighbors. In the old times when civilians were busy
with the struggle for bread and had little opportunity for social
recreation, army men and women had leisure for a punctilious courtesy.
The mule-drawn ambulance was a picturesque feature of the urban
landscape as it bore the army women about the rough streets of the new
cities; it was not elegant, but it was so eminently respectable! There
might be an occasional colonel that was a snob, or a major that drank
too much; or a Mrs. Colonel who was a trifle too conscious of her rights
over her sisters at the Post, or a Mrs. Major whose syntax was
unbearable; but the stars and stripes covered them all, even as they
cover worse people and worse errors in our civil administrators.

It gave Evelyn a pleasant sensation to find herself again in the little
Whipple parlor. The furniture was the same that she remembered of old in
the commandant's house at the fort. It had at last found repose, for the
Whipples' marching days were over. They made an effort to have an Indian
room, where they kept their books, but they refrained from calling the
place a library. On the walls were the headdress of a Sioux chief, and a
few colored photographs of red men; the couch was covered with a Navajo
blanket, and on the floor were wolf and bear skins. When chairs were
needed for callers, the general brought them in from other rooms; he
himself sat in a canvas camp chair, which he said was more comfortable
than any other kind, but which was prone to collapse under a civilian.
The wastepaper-basket by the general's table, and a basket for fire-wood
were of Indian make, dyed in dull shades of red and green.

"My dear child," Mrs. Whipple began, when Evelyn had explained her
errand; "this is a very pretty compliment they're paying you,--don't you
know that?"

"Yes, but I don't want it," declared the girl, with emphasis.

"That is wholly unreasonable. There are girls in Clarkson that could not
afford to take it; the strength of your position is that you can afford
to do it! It's not going to injure you in any way; can't you see that?
Everybody knows all about you,--that you naturally wouldn't want it.
Why, there's that Margrave girl, whose father does something or other in
one of the railways,--she had this honor that is worrying you two years
ago, and her father and all his friends worked hard to get it for her."

Evelyn laughed at her friend's earnestness. "I'm afraid you're trying to
lift this to an impersonal plane, but I'm considering myself in this
matter. I simply don't want to be mixed up in that kind of thing."

"These business men work awfully hard for all of us," Mrs. Whipple
continued. "It seems to me that their daily business contests and
troubles are fiercer than real wars. I'd a lot rather take my chances in
the army than in commercial life,--if I were doing it all over
again,--that is, from the woman's side. The government always gives us
our bread if it can't supply the butter; and if the poor men lose a
fight they are forgiven and we still eat. But in the business battle--"
she shrugged her shoulders to indicate the sorry plight of the
vanquished.

"Yes, I suppose that's all true," Evelyn conceded. "But you mustn't be
so abstract! I really haven't a philosophical mind. I came here to ask
you to tell me how to get out of this, but you seem to be urging me in!"

Mrs. Whipple rallied her forces while she poured the iced tea which a
maid had brought.

"We can't always have our 'ruthers.' Now this looks like a very large
sacrifice of comfort and dignity to you. I'll grant you the discomfort,
but not any loss of dignity. If you were vain and foolish, I'd take your
side, just to protect you, but you have no such weaknesses. You must not
consider at all that girls in Eastern cities don't do such things;
that's because there aren't the things to do. Our great-grandchildren
won't be doing them either. But these carnivals, and things like that,
are necessary evils of our development. Army people like ourselves, who
have always been cared for by a paternal government, can hardly
appreciate the troubles of business people; and a girl like you, who has
always led a carefully sheltered life, with both comforts and luxuries
given her without the asking, must try to appreciate the fact that
everybody is not so fortunate. I don't know whether these affairs are
really of any advantage to the town commercially; I have heard business
men say that they are not; but so long as they have them, the rest of us
have got to submit to the confetti throwers and the country brass bands,
on the theory that it's good for the town."

Mrs. Whipple covered all the ground when she talked. She had daringly
addressed department commanders in this ample fashion when her husband
was only a second lieutenant, and she was not easily driven from her
position.

"But what's good for the town isn't necessarily good for me," pleaded
Evelyn. Her animation was becoming, and Mrs. Whipple was noting the
points of the girl's beauty with delight. "Any other girl's clothes
would look just as sweet to the multitude," Evelyn asserted.

"That's where you are mistaken. If it's a sacrifice, the town is
offering Iphigenia, and only our fairest daughter will do. I'll be
talking fine language in a minute, and one of us will be lost." She
laughed; Mrs. Whipple always laughed at herself at the right moment. She
said it discounted the pleasure other people might have in laughing at
her. "Now Evelyn Porter, you're a nice girl and a sensible one. So far
as you can see you're going to spend your days in this town, and it
isn't a bad place. We preferred to live here after the general retired
because we liked it, and that was when we had the world to choose from.
I've lived in every part of this country, but the people in this region
are simple and honest and wholesome, and they have human hearts in them,
and at my age that counts for a good deal. The general and I were both
born in Massachusetts, where you hear a lot about ancestors and
background; but I've driven over these plains and prairies in an army
ambulance, since before the Civil War, and it hasn't all been fun,
either; I love every mile of the country, and I don't want you, who are
the apple of my eye, to come home with patronizing airs--"

"Not guilty!" exclaimed Evelyn throwing up her hands in protest. "I have
no such ideas and you know it; but you ignore the point. What I can't
see is that there's any question of patriotism in this Knights of Midas
affair, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm not so young as I was. The
queen of the ball should be much younger than I am."

"Well, if you're reduced to that kind of argument, I think we'll have to
call the debate closed. But remember,--you're asked to give only an hour
of your life to please your father, and a great many other people. And
you'll be doing your town a great service, too."

"Well," said Evelyn dolefully, as she got up to go, "this isn't the kind
of counsel I came for. If I'd expected this from you, I'd have taken my
troubles elsewhere." She had risen and stood swinging her parasol back
and forth and regarding the tip of her boot. "You almost make it seem
right."

"You'd better make a note of it as one of those things that are not
pleasant, but necessary. If I thought it would harm you, child, I'd
certainly warn you against it--I'd do that for your mother's sake."

"I like your saying that," said Evelyn, softly.

Mrs. Whipple had been a beauty in the old army days, and was still a
handsome woman. She had retained the slenderness of her girlhood, and
the hot suns and blighting winds of the plains and mountains had dealt
gently with her. She took both of Evelyn's hands at the door, and kissed
her.

"Don't go away hating me, dear. Come up often; and after it's all over,
I'll tell you how good you've been."

"Oh, I'll go to a convent afterward," Evelyn answered; "that is, if I
find that you've really persuaded me!"



CHAPTER VI

A SAFE MAN


James Wheaton was thirty-five years old, and was reckoned among the
solid young business men of Clarkson. He had succeeded far beyond his
expectations and was fairly content with the round of the ladder that he
had reached. He never talked about himself and as he had no intimate
friends it had never been necessary for him to give confidences. His
father had been a harness-maker in a little Ohio town; he and his older
brother were expected to follow the same business; but the brother grew
restless under the threat of enforced apprenticeship and prevailed on
James to run away with him. They became tramps and enjoyed themselves
roaming through the country, until finally they were caught stealing in
a little Illinois village and both were arrested.

James was discharged through the generosity of his brother in taking all
the blame on himself; the older boy was sent to a reformatory alone.
James then went to Chicago, where he sold papers and blacked boots for a
year until he found employment as a train boy, with a company operating
on various lines running out of Chicago. This gave him a wide
acquaintance with western towns, and incidentally with railroads and
railroad men. He grew tired of the road, and obtained at Clarkson a
position in the office of Timothy Margrave, the general manager of the
Transcontinental, which, he had heard, was a great primary school for
ambitious boys.

It was thus that his residence in Clarkson was established. He attended
night school, was assiduous in his duties, and attained in due course
the dignity of a desk at which he took the cards of Margrave's callers,
indexed the letter books and copied figures under the direction of the
chief clerk. After a year, hearing that one of the Clarkson National
Bank's messengers was about to resign, he applied for this place.
Margrave recommended him; the local manager of the news agency vouched
for his integrity, and in due course he wended the streets of Clarkson
with a long bill-book, the outward and visible sign of his position as
messenger. He was steadily promoted in the bank and felt his past
receding farther and farther behind him.

When, at an important hour of his life, Wheaton was promoted to be
paying teller, he was in the receiving teller's cage. He had known that
the more desirable position was vacant and had heard his fellow clerks
speculating as to the possibility of a promotion from among their
number. Thompson, the cashier, had a nephew in the bank; and among the
clerks he was thought to have the best chance. They all knew that the
directors were in session, and several whose tasks for the day were
finished, lingered later than was their wont to see what would happen.
Wheaton kept quietly at his work; but he had an eye on the door of the
directors' room, and an ear that insensibly turned toward the
annunciator by which messengers were called to the board room. It rang
at last, and Wheaton wiped his pen with a little more than his usual
care as he waited for the result of the summons. This was on his
twenty-fifth birthday.

"Mr. Wheaton!" The other clerks looked at one another. The question that
had been uppermost with all of them for a week past was answered.
Thompson's nephew slammed his book shut and carried it into the vault.
Wheaton put aside the balance sheet over which he had been lingering and
went into the directors' room. There had been no note of joy among his
associates. He knew that he was not popular with them; he was not, in
their sense, a good fellow. When they rushed off after hours to the ball
games or horse races, he never joined them. When their books did not
balance he never volunteered to help them. As for himself, he always
balanced, and did not need their help; and they hated him for it. This
was his hour of triumph, but he went to his victory without the cheer of
his comrades.

He heard Mr. Porter's question as to whether he felt qualified to accept
the promotion; and he sat patiently under the inquiries of the others as
to his fitness. It required no great powers of intuition to know that
these old men had already appointed him; that if they had not known to
their own satisfaction that he was the best available man, they would
not be taking advice from him in the matter.

"Sanders leaves on Monday to take another position, and we will put you
in his cage to give you a trial," the president said, finally. Wheaton
expressed his gratitude for this mark of confidence. He was not
troubled by the suggestion of a trial. Porter and Thompson, the cashier,
always spoke of his promotions as "trials." He had never failed thus far
and his self-confidence was not disturbed by the care these men always
took to tie strings to everything they did with a view to easy
withdrawal, if the results were not satisfactory. The position had been
filled and there was nothing more to be said. Thompson, however, always
liked to have a last word.

"Wheaton, your family live here, don't they?"

"No," said Wheaton, smiling his difficult smile, "I haven't any family.
My parents are dead. I came here from Ohio, and board over on the north
side."

"Another Ohio man," said Porter, "you can't keep 'em down." They all
laughed at Porter's joke and Wheaton bowed himself out under cover of
it.

Later, when need arose for creating the position of assistant cashier,
it was natural that the new desk should be assigned to Wheaton. He was
faithful and competent; neither Porter nor Thompson had a son to install
in the bank; and, as they said to each other and to their fellow
directors, Wheaton had two distinguishing qualifications,--he did his
work and he kept his mouth shut.

In the course of time Thompson's health broke down and the doctors
ordered him away to New Mexico, and again there seemed nothing to do but
to promote Wheaton. Thompson wished to sell his stock and resign, but
Porter would not have it so; but when, after two years, it was clear
that the cashier would never again be fit for continuous service in the
bank, Wheaton was duly elected cashier and Thompson was made
vice-president.

Wheaton had now been in Clarkson fifteen years, and he was well aware
that other young men, with influential connections, had not done nearly
so well as he. He treasured no illusions as to his abilities; he did not
think he had a genius for business; but he had demonstrated to his own
satisfaction that such qualities as he possessed,--industry, sobriety
and obedience,--brought results, and with these results he was well
satisfied. He hoped some day to be rich, but he was content to make
haste slowly. He never speculated. He read in the newspapers every day
of men holding responsible positions who embezzled and absconded, but
there was never any question in his mind as between honesty and knavery.
It irritated him when these occurrences were commented on facetiously
before him; he did not relish jokes which carried an implication that he
too might belong to the dubious cashier class; and inquiries as to
whether he would spend his vacation in Canada or, if it were winter, in
Guatemala, were not received in good part, for he had much personal
dignity and little humor. He was counted among the older men of the town
rather than among men of his own age, and he found himself much more at
ease among his seniors. The young men appreciated his good qualities and
respected him; but he felt that he was not one of them; socially, he was
voted very slow, and there was an impression abroad that he was stingy.
Certainly he did not spend his money frivolously, and he never had done
so. Many fathers held him up as an example to their sons, and this
tended further to the creation of a feeling among his contemporaries
that he was lacking in good fellowship.

Raridan knew the personal history of most of his fellow townsmen, and he
was fond of characterizing those whom he particularly liked or disliked,
for the benefit of his friends. He took it upon himself to sketch
Wheaton for John Saxton's benefit in this fashion.

"Jim Wheaton's one of those men who never make mistakes," said Raridan,
with the scorn of a man whose own mistakes do not worry him. "He went
into that bank as a boy, and was first a model messenger, and then a
model clerk; and when they had to have a cashier there was the model
assistant, who had been a model everything else, so they put him in.
There wasn't anybody else for the job; and I guess he's a good man for
it, too. A bank cashier doesn't dare to make mistakes; and as Wheaton is
not of that warm, emotional nature that would lead him to lend money
without getting something substantial to hold before the borrower got
away, he's the model cashier. You've heard of those bank cashiers who
can refuse a loan to a man and send him out of the bank singing happy
chants. Well, Jim isn't that kind. When he turns down a man, the man
doesn't go on his way rejoicing. I don't know how much money Wheaton's
got. He's made something, of course, and Porter would probably sell him
stock up to a certain point. He'll die rich, and nobody, I fancy, will
ever be any gladder because he's favored this little old earth with his
presence."

As a bank clerk the teller's cage had shut Wheaton off from the world.
Young women of social distinction who came sometimes to get checks
cashed, knew him as a kind of automaton, that looked at both sides of
their checks and at themselves, and then passed out coin and paper to
them; they saw him nowhere else, and did not bother themselves about
him. After his promotion to be assistant cashier, he saw the world
closer at hand. He had a desk and could sit down and talk to the men
whom he had studied from the cage for so long. The young women, too,
approached him no longer with checks to be cashed, but with little books
in which they urged him officially and personally to subscribe to
charities. Porter, who was naturally a man of generous impulses, knew
his own weakness and made the cashier the bank's almoner. He was very
sure that Wheaton would be as careful of the bank's money as of his own;
he had taken judicial knowledge of the fact that Wheaton's balance on
the bank's books had shown a marked and steady growth through all the
years of his connection with it.

Wheaton's promotion to the cashiership had come in the spring; and
shortly afterward he had changed his way of living in a few particulars.
He had lodged for years in a boarding house frequented by clerks; a
place where his fellow boarders were, among others, a music teacher, a
milliner and the chief operator of the telephone exchange. He had not
felt above them; their dancing class and occasional theater party had
seemed fine to him. Porter now suggested that Wheaton should be a member
of the Clarkson Club, and Wheaton assented, on the president's
representation that "it would be a good thing for the bank." Vacant
apartments were offered at this time in The Bachelors', as it was
called, and he availed himself of the opportunity to change his place
of residence. He had considered the matter of taking a room at the club,
but this, after reflection, he rejected as unwise. The club was a new
institution in the town, and he was aware that there were conservative
people in Clarkson who looked on it as a den of iniquity,--with what
justification he did not know from personal experience, but he had heard
it referred to in this way at the boarding house table. He knew Raridan
and the others at The Bachelors', but his acquaintance with them was of
a perfunctory business character. When he moved to The Bachelors',
Raridan, who was always punctilious in social matters, formally called
on him in his room, as did also Captain Wheelock, the army officer then
stationed in Clarkson on recruiting service. The others in the house
welcomed him less formally as they chanced to meet him in the hall or on
the stairway; they were busy men who worked long hours and did not
bother themselves about the amenities and graces of life.

His change to The Bachelors' was of importance to Wheaton in many ways.
He saw here, in the intimacies of their common table, men of a higher
social standing than he had known before. Their way of chaffing one
another seemed to him very bright; they mocked at the gods and were not
destroyed. Raridan was a new species and spoke a strange tongue. Raridan
and Wheelock appeared at the table in dinner-coats, and after a few
weeks Wheaton followed their example. Raridan, he knew, dressed whether
he went out or not, and he established his own habit in this particular
with as little delay as possible. The table then balanced, the smelter
manager, the secretary of the terra cotta manufacturing company, and
the traveling passenger agent of the Transcontinental Railroad appearing
in the habiliments which they wore at their respective places of
business, and Raridan, Wheaton and Wheelock in black and white.

The humor of this division was not lost on the traveling passenger
agent, who chaffed the "glad rag" faction, as he called it, until
Raridan took up arms for his own side of the table.

"It may be true, sir, what you say about a division here between the
working and non-working classes; but wit and beauty have from most
ancient times bedecked themselves in robes of purity. A man like
yourself, whose business is to persuade people to ride on the worst
railroad on earth, should properly array himself in sackcloth and ashes,
and not in purple and fine linen, which belong to those who severally
give their thoughts to the,--er--promotion of peace"--indicating
Wheelock--"sound finances," indicating Wheaton, "and--er--in my own
case--"

"Yes, do tell us," said the railroad man, ironically.

"To faith and good works," said Warrick imperturbably.

"And mostly works,--I don't think!" declared Wheelock.

The relations between Porter and Wheaton were strictly of a business
character. This was not by intention on Porter's part. He assumed that
at some time he or Thompson had known all about Wheaton's antecedents;
and after so many years of satisfactory service, during the greater part
of which the bank had been protected against Wheaton, as against all the
rest of the employees, by a bonding company, he accepted the cashier
without any question. Before Evelyn's return he had one day expressed to
Wheaton his satisfaction that he would soon have a home again, and
Wheaton remarked with civil sympathy that Miss Porter must now be "quite
a young lady."

"Oh, yes; you must come up to the house when we get going again," Porter
answered.

Wheaton had seen the inside of few houses in Clarkson. He had a
recollection of having been sent to Porter's several times, while he was
still an errand boy in the bank, to fetch Porter's bag on occasions when
the president had been called away unexpectedly. He remembered Evelyn
Porter as she used to come as a child and sit in the carriage outside
the bank to wait for her father; the Porters stood to him then, and now,
for wealth and power.

Raridan had a contempt for Wheaton's intellectual deficiencies; and
praise of Wheaton's steadiness and success vexed him as having some
sting for himself; but his own amiable impulses got the better of his
prejudices, and he showed Wheaton many kindnesses. When the others at
The Bachelors' nagged Wheaton, it was Raridan who threw himself into the
controversy to take Wheaton's part. He took him to call at some of the
houses he knew best, and though this was a matter of propinquity he knew
nevertheless that he preferred Wheaton to the others in the house.
Wheaton was not noisy nor pretentious and the others were sometimes
both.

Wheaton soon found it easy to do things that he had never thought of
doing before. He became known to the florist and the haberdasher; there
was a little Hambletonian at a certain liveryman's which Warry Raridan
drove a good deal, and he had learned from Warry how pleasant it was to
drive out to the new country club in a runabout instead of using the
street car, which left a margin of plebeian walking at the end of the
line. He had never smoked, but he now made it a point to carry
cigarettes with him. Raridan and many other young men of his
acquaintance always had them; he fancied that the smoking of a cigarette
gave a touch of elegance to a gentleman. Captain Wheelock smoked
cigarettes which bore his own monogram, and as he said that these did
not cost any more than others of the same brand, Wheaton allowed the
captain to order some for him. But while he acquired the superficial
graces, he did not lose his instinctive thrift; he had never attempted
to plunge, even on what his associates at The Bachelors' called "sure
things"; and he was equally incapable of personal extravagances. If he
bought flowers he sent them where they would tell in his favor. If he
had five dollars to give to the _Gazette's_ Ice Fund for the poor, he
considered that when the newspaper printed his name in its list of
acknowledgments, between Timothy Margrave, who gave fifty dollars, and
William Porter, who gave twenty-five, he had received an adequate return
on his investment.

A few days after Evelyn Porter came home, Wheaton followed Raridan to
his room one evening after dinner. Raridan had set The Bachelors' an
example of white flannels for the warm weather, and Wheaton also had
abolished his evening clothes. Raridan's rooms had not yet lost their
novelty for him. The pictures, the statuettes, the books, the broad
couch with its heap of varicolored pillows, the table with its
candelabra, by which Raridan always read certain of the poets,--these
still had their mystery for Wheaton.

"Going out to-night?" he asked with a show of indifference.

"Hadn't thought of it," answered Raridan, who was cutting the pages of a
magazine. "Kick the cat off the couch there, won't you?--it's that
blessed Chinaman's beast. Don't know what a Mongolian is doing with a
cat,--Egyptian bird, isn't it?"

"Don't let me interrupt if you're reading," said Wheaton. "But I thought
some of dropping in at Mr. Porter's. Miss Porter's home now, I believe."

"That's a good idea," said Raridan, who saw what was wanted. He threw
his magazine at the cat and got up and yawned. "Suppose we do go?"

The call had been successfully managed. Miss Porter was very pretty, and
not so young as Wheaton expected to find her. Raridan left him talking
to her and went across to the library, where Mr. Porter was reading his
evening paper. Raridan had a way of wandering about in other people's
houses, which Wheaton envied him. Miss Porter seemed to take his call as
a matter of course, and when her father came out presently and greeted
him casually as if he were a familiar of the house he felt relieved and
gratified.



CHAPTER VII

WARRY RARIDAN'S INDIGNATION


Raridan stayed in town all summer, and he and Saxton saw a good deal of
each other. They drove often to the country club together, and Saxton
became, as people said, another of Warry's enthusiasms. Saxton was no
idler, and he was conscientiously striving to bring order out of chaos
in the interests which had been confided to him. He was annoyed, at
first, when Raridan in his unlimited leisure, began to invade his
office; but as the confidence and ease of real friendship grew between
them he did not scruple to send him away, or to throw him a newspaper
and bid him read and keep still. Raridan was the plaything of many
moods; Saxton was equable and steady. They sought each other with the
old perversity of antipodal natures.

Saxton came in unexpectedly on Raridan at The Bachelors' one evening in
September. The day had been hot with the final fling of summer, but a
thunder shower had cooled the atmosphere, and there stole in pleasantly
the drip, drip, of the rain which was now abating. Heat lightning glowed
in the west with the luminousness so marked in that region.

"It's an infernal, hideous shame," called Raridan fiercely through the
dark, recognizing Saxton's step.

"Thanks! I'm glad I came," said Saxton, cheerfully.

"I'd like to be a cannibal for a few hours," growled Raridan, kicking a
chair toward Saxton without rising from the couch where he lay sprawled.
Saxton went about quietly, lighting the gas, picking up the books and
newspapers which Raridan had evidently cast from him in his rage, and
making a seat for himself by the window.

"I'm not an expert in lunacy, but I'll hear your trouble. Go ahead."

Raridan got up suddenly, his glasses swinging wildly from their cord.

"Put out that light," he commanded savagely; and Saxton did as he was
bidden.

"Do you know what Evelyn Porter's going to do?" demanded Raridan.

"I certainly do not. You seem to want to leave me in the dark; and
that's no joke."

"She's going to be queen of their infernal Knights of Midas ball, that's
what."

"Your language is spirited, I must say. I think we may classify that as
important if true."

"It's an outrage; an infernal damned shame!" Raridan went on.

"Language unbecoming an officer and a gentleman--"

"There's a fine girl, as charming as any girl dare be. She has a father
who doesn't appreciate her;--a good fellow and all that and he wouldn't
hurt her for anything on earth; but he hasn't got any sensibility;
that's the trouble with scores of American fathers. These Western ones
are worse than any others. They break their sons in, whenever they can,
to the same collars they've worn themselves. Their daughters they
usually don't understand at all! They intimidate their wives so that the
poor things don't dare call their souls their own; but the women are the
saving remnant out here. And when a particularly fine one turns up she
ought to be protected from the curse of our infernal commercialism."

He threw himself into a chair and lighted a cigarette.

Saxton laughed silently.

"Isn't this a new responsibility you've taken on? I don't believe these
things are as bad as you make them out to be. The commercial curse is
one of the things you can't dodge these days. It's just as bad in Boston
as it is here; and you find it wherever you find live people who want
bread to eat and cake if they can get it."

"But to visit the curse on a girl,--a fine girl,--"

"A pretty girl,--" Saxton suggested.

"A really charming girl," continued Warrick, with unabated earnestness,
"is a rotten shame."

"I'm afraid you're taking it too seriously," said Saxton. "If Miss
Porter were not a very sensible young woman it would be different. You
don't think for a moment that she would have her head turned--"

"No, sir; not a bit of it; but it's the principle of the thing that I'm
kicking about. This is one of the things that I detest in these Western
towns. It's the inability to escape from their infernal business. On the
face of it their Midas ball is a social event, but at the bottom, it's
merely a business venture. All the business men have got to go in for
it, but it doesn't stop there; they must drag their families in. Evelyn
Porter has got to mix up with the daughters of the plumbers and the
candlestick makers in order that the god of commerce may be satisfied."

"You don't quite grasp the situation," said Saxton. "If you had to get
out among these men who have hard work to do every day you'd have a
different feeling about such things. They've got to make the town go,
and this carnival is one of the ways in which they can stir things up
commercially, and at the same time give pleasure to a whole lot of
people."

"Now look here, you know as well as I do that you can't mix up all sorts
and conditions of men, and particularly women, in this way, without
making a mess of it. A man may introduce the green grocer at the corner,
and all that kind of ruck, to his wife and daughter, but what's the good
of it?"

"Well, what's the good of a democracy anyhow?" demanded Saxton. "I used
to have those ideas, too, when I was younger, but I thought it all over
when I was herding cattle up in Wyoming and I renounced such notions for
all time, even before I went broke. I found when I got back East that I
carried my new convictions with me, and the sight of civilized people
and good food did not change me."

"Well, the girl oughtn't to be sacrificed anyhow," said Warrick,
spitefully.

Saxton bit his pipe hard and grinned.

"Look here, Raridan, I'm afraid it's the girl and not the philosophy of
the thing that's worrying you. Why didn't you tell me it was the girl,
and not the social fabric generally, that you want to defend?"

Both Saxton and Raridan were a good deal at the Porters'. He knew that
Raridan had been a playmate of Evelyn's in their youth, when the elder
Porters and Raridans had been friends and neighbors. There existed
between them the lighthearted camaraderie that young people carry from
youth to maturity, and it had touched Saxton with envy. As a man having
no fixed duties, Raridan sometimes went, in the middle of the hot
mornings, to the Porter hilltop, where it was pleasant to sit and talk
to a pretty girl and look down on the seething caldron below, when every
other man of the community was sweltering at the business of earning his
daily bread.

"You oughtn't to get so violent about these things," Saxton went on to
say. "You will yourself be one of the ornaments of the show, and you
will dance before the throne and be glad of the chance. They have a
king, don't they? You might get the job. Who's going to be king, by the
way?"

"Wheaton, I fancy; the announcement hasn't been made yet."

"Oh," said Saxton, significantly. "Is this a little jealousy? Are we
sorry that we're not to wear the royal robes ourself? Well! well, I
begin to understand!"

"I don't like that either, if you want to know. It all gets back to the
accursed commercial idea. Wheaton's the cashier in Porter's bank. It's
very fitting that the president's daughter and the young and brilliant
cashier should be identified together in a public function like this. No
doubt Wheaton is fixing it up."

"Well, why don't you fix it up? I have been deluding myself with the
idea that you were a person of consequence in this town, yet you admit
that in a mere trifling social matter you are outwitted, or about to be,
by one of these commercial persons you hate so much, or say you do."

He spoke tauntingly, but Raridan was evidently serious in his complaint,
and Saxton turned the talk into other channels. The Chinese servant came
in presently with a card for Raridan.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "it's Bishop Delafield." He plunged downstairs
and returned immediately with a man whose great figure loomed darkly in
the doorway.

Raridan made a light.

"We've been doing the dim, religious act here," he said, after
introducing Saxton. "The lightning out there has been fine."

"You feel that you can't trust me in the dark," said the bishop; "or
perhaps that I won't appreciate the 'dim religious,' as you call it.
Turn down the gas and save my feelings."

Saxton was well acquainted with Warrick's zeal in church matters and was
not surprised to find a church dignitary in his friend's rooms. He had
never met the Bishop of Clarkson before, and he was a little awestruck
at the heroic size of this man who had just given him so masculine a
grasp of the hand and so keen a scrutiny.

The bishop extended his vast bulk in Raridan's easiest chair, and
accepted a cigar from the box which Warry passed to him.

"You've come just in time to save us from fierce contentions," said
Raridan, all amiability once more, while the bishop lighted his cigar.
He was very bald, and his head shone so radiantly that Saxton felt that
he could still see it in the dark after Warrick had turned down the
lights. There was an atmosphere about the man of great physical
strength, and his deep-set eyes under their shaggy brows were quick and
penetrating. Here was a man famous in his church for the energy and
sacrifice which he had brought to the work of a missionary in one of the
great Western dioceses. He had been bereft, in his young manhood, of his
wife and children, and had thereafter offered himself for the roughest
work of his church. He was sixty years old and for twenty years had been
a bishop, first in a vast region of the farther Northwest, where the
diocesan limits were hardly known, and where he had traveled ponyback
and muleback until called to be the Bishop of Clarkson. He was famous as
a preacher, and when he appeared from time to time in the pulpits of
Eastern churches, he swayed men mightily by the vigor and simplicity of
his eloquence. He had, in his younger days, been reckoned a scholar, but
the study of humanity at close hand had superseded long ago his interest
in books and learning. He had a deep, melodious voice and there was
charm and magnetism in him, as many people of many sorts and conditions
knew.

"What's the subject, gentlemen?" he asked, smoking contentedly. "I'm
sure something very serious must be before the house."

"Mr. Raridan has been abusing the commercialism of his neighbors," said
Saxton.

"Saxton's a new-comer, Bishop, and doesn't understand the situation
here as you and I do. You know that I'm the only native that dares to
hold honest opinions. The rest all follow the crowd."

"Reformers always have a hard time of it," said the bishop. "If you're
going to make over your fellowmen, you'll have to get hardened to their
indifference. But what's the matter with things to-night; and what are
you gentlemen doing in town, anyway? Aren't there places to go where
it's cool and where there are pretty girls to enchant you?"

Raridan attacked the bishop about some question of ritual that was
agitating the English Church. It was worse than Greek to Saxton, but
Raridan seemed fully informed about it, and turned up the lights to read
a paragraph from an English church paper which was, he protested, rankly
heretical. The bishop smoked his cigar calmly until Raridan had
finished.

"They tell me," he said, when Raridan had concluded by flinging the
whole matter upon his clerical caller with an air of arraigning the
entire episcopate, "that you're a pretty fair lawyer, Warry, only you
won't work. And I hear occasionally that you're about to embrace the
ministry. Now, just think what a time I'd have with you on my hands! You
couldn't get the water hot enough for me. Isn't he ungracious"--turning
to Saxton--"when I came here for rest and recreation, to put me on trial
for my life? You ought to know, young man, that a bishop can be tried
only by his peers."

Raridan threw down his paper, and rang for the Chinaman.

"When I embrace the ministry under you, Bishop, you may be sure that
I'll be humble enough to be good."

The Chinaman brought a variety of liquids, from which they helped
themselves.

"Don't be afraid of the Scotch, Saxton," said Raridan, "the bishop has
seen the bottle before."

The bishop, who was pouring seltzer on his lemon juice, smiled
tolerantly at Raridan's chatter, with whose temper and quality he had
long been familiar, and addressed himself to Saxton. He liked young men,
and had an agreeable way of drawing them out and making them talk about
themselves. When it was disclosed that Saxton had been in the cattle
business, the bishop showed an intimate knowledge of the range and its
ways.

"You see, the bishop's ridden over most of the cattle country in his
day," explained Raridan.

"And evidently not all in Pullman cars," said Saxton.

"I'm considered a heavy load for a cow pony," said the bishop, smiling
down at his great bulk, "so they used sometimes to find a mule for me."

"How are the Porters?" he asked presently of Raridan.

"Very well, and staying on in the heat with the usual Clarkson
fortitude."

"Porter's one of the men that never rest," said the bishop. "I've known
him ever since I've known the West, and he's taken few vacations in that
time."

"Well, he's showing signs of wear," said Raridan. "He's one of the men
who begin with a small business where they do all the work themselves,
and when the business outgrows them, they never realize that they need
help, or that they can have any. Before they made Wheaton cashier,
Porter carried the whole bank in his head. He's improving a little, and
has a stenographer now; but he's nervous and anxious all the while and
terribly fussy over all he does."

"Wheaton ought to be a great help to him," said the bishop. "He seems a
steady fellow, hard working and industrious."

"Oh, he's all those things," Raridan answered carelessly. "He'll never
steal anybody's money."

The bishop talked directly to Raridan about some work which it seemed
the young man had done for him, and rose to go. He had been in town only
a few hours, after a business journey to New York, and on reaching his
rooms had found a summons calling him to a neighboring jurisdiction, to
perform episcopal functions for a brother bishop who was ill. Saxton and
Warrick went down to the car with him, carrying the battered suit cases
which contained his episcopal robes and personal effects. These cases
showed rough usage; they had been to Canterbury and had found lodging
many nights in the sod houses of the plains.

"How do you like him?" asked Raridan, as the bishop climbed into a
street car headed toward the station.

"He looks like the real thing," said Saxton. "He has a voice and a beard
like a prophet."

"He's a fine character,--one of the people that understand things
without being told. A few men and women in the world have that kind of
instinct. They're put here, I guess, to help those who don't understand
themselves."



CHAPTER VIII

TIMOTHY MARGRAVE MAKES A CHOICE


There was a tradition that no one had ever been black-balled in the
Knights of Midas, so when Timothy Margrave got Wheaton's signature to an
application for membership the cashier was beset by no fear of
rejection. The citizens of Clarkson were indebted to Margrave for many
schemes for booming their town. He lectured his fellow business men
constantly about their lack of enterprise.

"Look at Kansas City," he would say at the club, bending forward
ponderously on his fat knees, "they ain't got half the terminal
facilities that we have, and there ain't any better country around 'em,
but they're bigger than we are and ahead of us because they've got more
hustle than we have; and hustle's what makes a town,--look at Chicago!
But we've got a lot of salt mackerel business men here, so pickled in
their brine of conservatism that they won't do anything. There's Billy
Porter; when we want to raise money to help boom the town, I'm always
dead sure that Billy will cough up, but you've got to show 'im;--tell
'im all about it, and he likes to play with you and guy you and rub it
in before he puts his name down. Now he may be a safe banker and all
that, but I say that there's such a thing as pushing conservatism too
damned far. We're going to be a long time getting over the panic and
we've got to give a strong pull and all pull together if we get in the
procession." His voice rose as he proceeded. "Look at little Sioux City!
busted wide open and knocked over the ropes, but here they come waltzing
up again, as full of sass as a fox terrier with a flea on his tail. Talk
about grit, the time a man wants to show that article's when he's
busted. Any fool can be cheerful on a bull market."

Then he would settle himself back with an air of complacency, as if he
had done all that he could do to arrest decay in the town; if his fellow
citizens failed to rouse themselves it was not his fault. Margrave held
no office in the Knights of Midas, but this was because he had learned
by political experience that it was much simpler to lurk in the
background and manipulate the men he placed in power. It was on this
high principle that he built up the order of the Knights of Midas and
directed its course from the office of the general manager of the
Transcontinental. There was nothing incongruous to him in the annual
ball, which was the only public social manifestation of the
organization. It was he who directed that twenty members be chosen from
the membership list each year, to conduct the purely social functions of
the ball, and that these be taken in alphabetical order. Thus the
Adamses and the Bakers and the Cummingses, who belonged in different
constellations, found themselves in the same orbit. If they were
unacquainted or were enemies of long standing, this did not trouble
Margrave when the fact was brought to his notice. It was time, he said,
that the people of Clarkson got together.

"We may as well get some work out of Jim Wheaton," he remarked to the
grand chief of the Knights of Midas. "He's pretty solemn, but Jim was
solemn when he was a kid and worked for me. Porter and Thompson have
always been too slow for this earth and if we pull Wheaton in, it may
wake up the old chaps so they'll do something besides sit on the fence
and watch the rest of us hustle."

"See here," said Norton, the grand chief, "what's the matter with
shoving him in for the king of the carnival? We've got to make a strong
push this year to give tone to the show socially; that's the only way we
can keep up the town interest. Having these jays come in from the
country won't do any good unless we can hold these eminently respectable
people who think they're Clarkson society."

"You're dead right on that point," said Margrave; "that's a big card
with the jays,--they think they come to town and get right in the push
and are tickled to pay ten dollars a ticket for a taste of high life. I
tell you what we'll do, we'll get Porter to let his daughter appear as
queen of the carnival, and if that ain't a big enough jolly, we can make
Wheaton king. That's what I'd call giving the Clarkson National a run
for its money. If Porter don't double his subscription on the strength
of that--"

He looked at Norton and they both laughed.

A few days later Margrave called on Wheaton at the bank. He was a little
proud of having discovered Wheaton. Since his quondam messenger had
become a bank cashier he had begun to take notice of him.

"I guess we're going to need you to take a star part in the carnival
this year," he said, leading him into the empty directors' room and
looking carefully about to make sure that they were alone. "Yon see,
we've been casting about to find a good representative from among the
younger business men to take the part of king in the carnival. The board
of control are unanimous that you're the man."

"But I've just gone into the Knights,--there are plenty of older
members."

"That's the point! we want new men and you're just the fellow we're
after."

He had been holding his hat in his hand and wiping his brow with his
handkerchief, and he now backed toward the door, saying, without leaving
Wheaton time for further quibble:

"Keep it mum. You understand about that; we always want to jar the
public. We'll put you on to the curves all right."

"I'm sure I'm very much surprised," said Wheaton, "but--"

"Oh, it's all fixed," said Margrave, moving off. "You're the only one
and we never let anybody decline. It would knock all the compliment out
of it, if we let two or three fellows refuse before we caught one that
would accept."

Wheaton went back to his desk, surprised and flattered. Margrave's good
will was worth having. Wheaton had never outgrown the impression he
formed of Margrave when, as a boy, he had indexed letter books and
received callers in the general manager's outer office. He knew that Mr.
Porter was more respectable and stood higher in the community, but there
was something that took hold of even Wheaton's dull imagination in the
bolder achievements of Timothy Margrave, who rolled over the country in
a private car, dictating, when need arose, to the legislatures of a
chain of states, and looming large in the press's discussions of those
combinations and contests of transportation companies which marked the
last years of the nineteenth century. Wheaton had acquired a banker's
habitual distrust of men who offer favors; but as this came on the
personal invitation of one who had no dealings with his bank he could
see no harm in accepting.

Margrave winked at him a few days later when they met at the club.

"The boys are all glad you're going to lead the show, Jim," said the
general manager; and Wheaton experienced a feeling of having fallen into
the larger currents of Clarkson life. Margrave was the man who, more
than any other, made things happen in Clarkson.



CHAPTER IX

PARLEYINGS


Evelyn acted on her father's suggestion that she ask some friends to
visit her, and she summoned two of her classmates to come out for the
carnival. She told Raridan of their coming one evening when they were
alone, and he began propounding inquiries about them with the zealous
interest, half mocking and half earnest, which he always manifested in
girls that crossed his horizon.

"And Miss Warren--is she the one from Dedham Crossing, Connecticut? Yes,
I suppose they will want to go right out to see the Indians. I'll see if
the War Department won't lend us a few from a reservation to show off
with. It's too bad for our guests to be disappointed. And Miss
Marshall--she's from Virginia? It will really be rather amusing to bring
the types together on our rude frontier."

"But you're not to play tricks with these friends of mine, Warrick
Raridan. You are to be very nice to them, but you are not to make too
much of an impression--unless--!"

"I'm afraid Miss Warren's a trifle too serious for human nature's daily
food," he said, complainingly.

"Yes? I remember that she was strong in entomology. She surely knows a
moth from a bumblebee when she sees it."

"Tut! tut! One shouldn't be spiteful. Miss Warren is a nice girl. She
knows where the pussy willows purr first in the harsh Connecticut
spring. She is strong on golden rod and ah-tum leaves; she reads 'Sesame
and Lilies' once a week, and Channing's 'Symphony' hangs in her room in
blue and gold. She's very sweet with her Sunday School class. She shall
be saluted with the Chautauqua salute--thus!" He flourished his
handkerchief at a picture on the wall.

"How brutal! Deliver me from the cynical man! By the way, Warry, I saw
Minnie Metchen in New York this spring, and she asked me all the
questions about you she dared. That really wasn't good of you. She
hadn't been an army girl long--her father was a new paymaster, or
something like that; she wasn't fair game. You were her first, and she
thought you meant it all,--the poems and the flowers and all that kind
of thing. She thought you were very good, too. You remember, I hope,
that you dragged her across town to that colored mission where you were
lay-reading at the time. Now, you mustn't do that any more."

Raridan buried his face in his hands and groaned.

"My sins are more than I can bear. But I'm really disappointed in you.
It isn't good form in this town to remember from one winter to another
what my enthusiasms have been. But, Evelyn--"

His manner changed suddenly and he rose and walked the floor. He was so
full of mockery, and his fun took so many unexpected turns, that Evelyn,
who had known him from his wilful, spoiled childhood, was never sure of
his moods. He seemed very serious as he stood before her with his arms
folded and looked at her. His voice broke a little as he said:

"Evelyn, I don't want you to remember this kind of thing of me. Nobody
takes me seriously; I'm getting tired of it. I'm all kinds of a failure.
I ought to be doing things, like all the other men here. Maybe it's too
late--"

"No, it's never too late to do what we want to do, Warry," she said very
kindly. "But I don't know that you're such a failure." She was still on
guard for some flash of the joke that he was always playing.

"But it's a question with me whether I haven't lost my chance," he
persisted. He sat down, dejectedly. Then he laughed.

"Do you know why I'm like the Juniata River?" he demanded.

"I'm not good at guessing," she answered, wondering whether he was
laying a trap for her.

"Why, Captain Wheelock told somebody that it was because I am very
beautiful and very shallow." He did not laugh with her.

"Those things aren't funny to me any more," he declared, scowling.

"But to be called beautiful--"

"No man is beautiful," he returned savagely. "No man wants to be called
that. It's my eye-glasses, I suppose." He took them off and played with
them. "Maybe they do make me look dudish. I'd wear spectacles if they
didn't cut my ears. Or I might go without and come to a sudden end by
walking over some lonely precipice." He expected her to remonstrate,
but she said:

"Well, I'll promise not to tell the new visitors about you;" as if, of
course, this was what he had been leading up to.

"I don't care anything about them."

"I'm sorry. I had rather counted on you, as the only person here who has
met them,--and an old friend of the family."

He stood up again.

"But I don't want to be your friend--"

"Oh!" She seized and fortified all the strategic positions. "This is
certainly surprising in you, Warrick Raridan, after all the years I've
known you. I didn't expect to be renounced so early." He stood looking
at her quizzically, and too fixedly for her comfort.

"Tragedy doesn't become the Juniata type of beauty. You'd better sit
down." He had been pacing the floor, but now threw himself into a chair.

"That chair," she continued, "is a relic of the Inquisition. If you'll
move those cushions about a little on the divan you'll be a lot more
comfortable."

He mumbled that he didn't want to be comfortable, but obeyed.

"Now, if you'll be good," she went on tranquilly, folding her arms and
looking at him benignantly, "I'll tell you a secret."

He had thrust his hands into his pockets and sat watching her sulkily.

"Well?"

"I'm to be queen of the ball, sir, I'm to be queen of the ball."

"I'm sorry I can't congratulate you," he said grimly. "You have no
business mixing up with their infernal idiocy. I've been expecting to
hear that you'd refused." He grew hot as he went on. "Your father
oughtn't to make you do such a thing."

"Warry!" She sat up straight and bent toward him in an attitude of
remonstrance; "you really mustn't! Why, I'm amazed at you!"

The enormity of the thing, as Raridan saw it, had grown on him since his
talk with Saxton, and he did not relent; but he relaxed his severity for
the moment, to assume an aggrieved air.

"Maybe I'm presuming too far on old acquaintance!" he said gloomily.

"I still have that copy of Aldrich you gave me once,--you remember that
they


     'Met as acquaintances meet,
       Smiling, tranquil-eyed--
     Not even the least little beat
       Of the heart, upon either side!'


But,--should old acquaintance be forgot?" she hummed. He was still a
spoilt boy who had to be coaxed into good humor.

"You know what I mean, Evelyn. I feel a particular interest in having
you start right here, now that you've come home to stay. People will be
surprised to hear of your taking a part like that; they want to take you
seriously. You've been to college--"

"Oh, Warry!" she cried appealingly. "And are you to throw this at me? A
few minutes ago you were complaining that people wouldn't take you
seriously, but I'm afraid they want to take me much too seriously. I
don't like it! In fact, I don't intend to have it!"

"But you don't mean to get down to a level with these girls who've been
ground out of boarding schools, and who don't know anything? The kind
that play badly on the piano, or sing worse, and come home to mix Fifth
Avenue boarding school with Missouri River every-day life!"

"I'm really disappointed in you. I supposed you weren't like the others.
A few days ago some estimable women called here to get me to become a
candidate for school commissioner. They talked beautifully to me. There
was one of them, a Miss Morris--" Raridan extended his arms to Heaven,
as if imploring mercy--"who told me that I was a bachelor of arts and
that all kinds of things were therefore to be expected of me."

"But I don't mean that! It's just that sort of thing I think you ought
to keep free from,--it's this awful publicity; it's making yourself
public property! Women must keep out of such things. School
commissioner!" His spirits were rising again and he laughed aloud.

"Wouldn't you vote for me?"

He stared. "You're not going to--"

"Decidedly not. I want you to understand, and everybody to find out that
I'm a very ordinary being. I hope if I've learned anything in college
it's common sense. I don't feel a bit interested in regulating the
universe, or in getting more rights for women, or in politics of any
kind, any more than every sane woman is interested in such things. About
this carnival and the ball, I don't mind telling you that I dislike it
particularly. But I'm going to do it for two reasons, to be much
franker with you than you deserve; to please father, for whom I can do
very little, and to set at rest this idea about my being a divinely
gifted individual who has come home from college to rub up the universe
with a witch cloth. And now, Warrick Raridan, we will, if you please,
consider the incident closed; and if you are very good you may dance
with me at the ball."

"Oh, the noble king will have first place there."

"Well, if you're the king you can't object," she said. "I'm sure I don't
know who the king's to be--"

"Well, I do--"

"Then you needn't tell me, please. I want to be surprised."

"But he's likely to be somebody you won't care to know under any
circumstances," he persisted. His contempt for the carnival and his rage
at the thought of this girl being publicly identified with Wheaton rose
in him and he grew morose again. Evelyn, seeing another storm,
approaching and wishing to restore his good humor, returned to her
expected guests and her plans for entertaining them.

It must be confessed that in her heart Evelyn was one of those who, in
Raridan's own phrase, did not take him seriously. She had seen more of
him than of any other man. She had a great fondness for him, and she was
glad to find that after her absences he always came to the house as if
there had been no break, and took up their pleasant comradeship where
they had left it. She had speculated not a little as to the violent
flirtations which he carried on so openly, and had wondered whether he
would sometime grow serious in one of them, and what manner of girl
would finally steady him and win him to a real affection. She did not
understand the mood that had swayed him, or that seemed about to sway
him to-night; but a woman's natural instinct in such matters had warned
her that he wanted to change their old attitude toward each other, and
she knew that she did not want to change it. She liked his gentleness,
his humor and his generous impulses. She had seen enough of the world to
know that the qualities which set him apart from most men were rare. His
likings in themselves were unusual, and though they were not sincere
enough for his own good, they constituted an element of charm in him.
His easy susceptibility was amusing; and it was no more marked in
flirtations with girls than in dallyings with books or pictures or
music. He was certainly a delightful companion, almost as satisfactory
to talk to as a bright girl! She felt, though, that there was a real
power in him; she could dramatize him in situations where he would be a
leader of forlorn hopes on battlefields; but she stopped short of loving
him; she had, she told herself, no idea of loving any one now; but
neither did she wish to lose a friend who was so entirely agreeable and
charming. She resolved as they sat talking of perfectly safe matters,
that their old footing must be maintained, and she felt confident that
she could manage this.

"Don't you like John Saxton very much?" he asked, and she felt that the
day was saved when he would talk of another man. "I like him better all
the time."

"Yes; people are saying agreeable things about him. But he's pretty
serious, isn't he?"

"Well, that makes him a good companion for me, you know. Acute gaiety
is diagnosed as my chief trouble," he said, a little bitterly. He was
trying to feel his way back to the talk of an hour ago, but she had
resolved not to have it so.

"It's very nice of you to be kind to him."

"If you mean that I bring him up here, that isn't kindness, it's just
ordinary decent humanity."

He was cheerful again, and he went away assuring her that he would be at
the station to meet the approaching visitors the following afternoon. He
abused himself, as he went down the hill toward the electric lights of
the city, for having permitted Evelyn to defeat him in what he had
intended to say. He stopped on the long viaduct that spanned the railway
tracks and looked moodily down on the lights of the switch targets and
the signal lanterns of the trainmen. Then he turned his eyes toward the
Porter house which stood darkly against the starlit sky among the trees.
As he looked a light flashed suddenly in the tower. He laughed softly to
himself as he turned with a quickened step on his way.

"Maybe it's Evelyn, and maybe it's the cook; but any lady in a tower!
The thought of it doth please me well."



CHAPTER X

A WRECKED CANNA BED


Raridan was at the station to meet Evelyn's guests, as he had promised.
He had established a claim upon their notice on the occasion of one of
his visits to Evelyn at college, and he greeted them with an air of
possession which would have been intolerable in another man. He pressed
Miss Warren for news of the Connecticut nutmeg crop, and hoped that Miss
Marshall had not lost her accent in crossing the Missouri, while he
begged their baggage checks and waved their minor impedimenta into the
hands of the station porters.

Wise men, long ago, abandoned the hope of accounting for college
friendships in either sex, and there was nothing proved in Evelyn's case
by her choice of these young women as her intimate friends. Annie Warren
was as reserved and quiet as Evelyn could be in her soberest moments;
Belle Marshall was as frank and friendly as Evelyn became in her
lightest moods. Evelyn had been the beauty of her class; her two friends
were what is called, by people that wish to be kind, nice looking. Annie
Warren had been the best scholar in her class; Belle Marshall had been
among the poorest; and Evelyn had maintained a happy medium between the
two. And so it fortunately happened that the trio mitigated one
another's imperfections.

Evelyn had summoned her guests at this time principally to have their
support through the carnival. They made light of the perplexities and
difficulties of Evelyn's own participation when she unfolded them; there
would be a lot of fun in it, they thought, and they deemed it, too, a
recognition of Evelyn's fine qualities. They were fresh from college and
they could see nothing in the carnival and the coronation of the
carnival's queen that was inconsistent with a girl's dignity; it ranked
at least with some of the festivals of girl's colleges. The whole matter
presently resolved itself into the question of clothes, and Evelyn's
coronation gown was laid before them and duly praised.

"It is worth while," declared Miss Marshall, "to have a chance to wear
clothes like that just once in your life."

Evelyn had discussed with her father ways and means of entertaining her
guests; he was anxious for her to celebrate her home-coming with a great
deal of entertaining. He preferred large functions, perhaps for the
reason that he could lose himself better in them than in small
gatherings, in which his responsibilities as host could not be dodged.
In a large company he could take one or two of his old friends into a
corner and enjoy a smoke with them. He wished Evelyn to give a lawn
party before the blight of fall came upon his flowers and shrubbery; but
she persuaded him to wait until after the carnival. He still felt a
little guilty about having asked Evelyn to appear in this public way,
but she showed no resentment; she was honestly glad to do anything that
would please him. The ball was near at hand and she proposed that they
give a small dinner in the interval.

"I'll ask Warry and Mr. Saxton." People were already coupling Saxton's
name with Raridan's.

"Oh, yes, that's all right."

"I don't want very many; I'd like to ask the Whipples;" she went on,
with the anxious, far-away look that comes into the eyes of a woman who
is weighing dinner guests or matching fabrics.

"Can't you ask Wheaton?" ventured Mr. Porter cautiously from behind his
paper. Men grow humble in such matters from the long series of
rejections to which they are subjected by the women of their households.

"If you say so," Evelyn assented. "He isn't exciting, but Belle Marshall
can get on with anybody. I'm out of practice and won't try too many.
Mrs. Whipple will help over the hard places."

Finally, however, her party numbered ten, but it seemed to Wheaton a
large assemblage. He had never taken a lady in to dinner before, but he
had studied a book of etiquette, and the chapter on "Dining Out" had
given him a hint of what was expected. It had not, however, supplied him
with a fund of talk, but he was glad to find, when he reached the table,
that the company was so small that talk could be general, and he was
thankful for the shelter made for him by the light banter which followed
the settling of chairs. Saxton went in with Evelyn, who wished to make
amends for his clumsy reception on the occasion of his first appearance
in the house.

"I'm glad you could come to our board once without being snubbed by the
maid," she said to John, when they were seated.

"I came under convoy of Mr. Raridan this time. I find that he is pretty
hard to lose."

"Oh, he's a splendid guide! He declares that there are just as
interesting things to see here in Clarkson as there are in Rome or
Venice. He told Miss Warren this afternoon that it would take him a
month to show her half the sights."

"He certainly makes things interesting. His local history is
delightful."

"Yes; father tells him that he knows nearly everything, but that the
pity is it isn't all true. You see, Warry and I have known each other
always. The Raridans lived very near us, just over the way."

"He has shown me the place; it's on the clay sugar loaf across the
street."

"Isn't it shameful of him not to bring his ancestral home down to the
street level?"

"Oh, he says he'd rather burn the money. It seems that he fought the
assessment as long as he could and has refused to abide by it. He enjoys
fighting it in the courts. It gives him something to do."

"That's like Warry. He can be more steadfast in error than anybody."

Raridan was exchanging chaff with Miss Marshall across the table and
Wheaton was stranded for the moment.

"You must tell us about that Chinaman at your bachelors' house, Mr.
Wheaton. Mr. Raridan has told me many funny stories about him, but I
think he makes up most of them."

"I'd hardly dare repudiate any of Mr. Raridan's stories; but I'll say
that we couldn't get on without the Chinaman. He's a very faithful
fellow."

"But Mr. Raridan says he isn't!" exclaimed Evelyn. "He says that you
bachelors suffer terribly from his mistakes, and that he can't keep any
rice for use at weddings because the Oriental takes it out of his
pockets and makes puddings of it."

"That must be one of Mr. Raridan's jokes," said Wheaton. "We have had no
rice pudding since I went to live at The Bachelors'." Wheaton was
suspicious of Raridan's jokes. He was not always sure that he caught the
point of them. He saw that Saxton, who sat opposite him, got on very
well with Miss Porter, and he was surprised at this; he had thought
Saxton very slow, and yet he seemed to be as much at his ease as
Raridan, who was Wheaton's ideal master of social accomplishment. He was
somewhat dismayed by the array of silver beside his plate, and he found
himself covertly taking his cue from Saxton, who seemed to make his
choice without difficulty. It dawned on him presently that the forks and
spoons were arranged in order; that it was not necessary to exercise any
judgment of selection, and he felt elated to see how easily it was
managed. In his relief he engaged Miss Marshall in a talk about
Richmond. He knew the names of banks and bankers there, from having
looked them up in the bank directories in the course of business. He
liked the Southern girl's vivacity, though he thought Evelyn much
handsomer and more dignified. She asked him whether he played golf,
which had just been introduced into Clarkson, and he was forced to admit
that he did not; and he ventured to add that he had heard it called an
old man's game. When she replied that she shouldn't imagine then that it
would interest him particularly, he felt foolish and could not think of
anything to say in reply. Raridan again claimed Miss Marshall's
attention, and Wheaton was drawn into talk with Evelyn and Saxton.

"Mr. Saxton has never seen one of our carnivals," she said, "and neither
have I. You know I've missed them by being away so much."

"They expect to have a great entertainment this year," said Wheaton. He
was sorry for the secrecy with which the names of the principal
participants were guarded; he would have liked to say something to Miss
Porter about it, but he did not dare, with Saxton listening. Moreover,
he was not sure that she had consented to take part.

"I suppose it's a good deal like amateur theatricals, only on a larger
scale," suggested Saxton.

"That's not taking the carnival in the right spirit," said Evelyn. "The
word amateur is jarring, I think. We must try to imagine that King Midas
really and truly comes floating down the Missouri River on a barge,
supported by his men of magic, and that they are met by a delegation of
the wise men of Clarkson, all properly clad, and escorted to the local
parthenon, or whatever it is called, where the keys of the city are
given to him. I'm sure it's all very plausible."

"But I don't see," said Saxton, "why all the western towns that go in
for these carnivals have to go back to mythology and medieval customs.
Why don't they use something indigenous,--the Indians for instance?"

"They're too recent," Evelyn answered. "The people around here--a good
many of them, at least--were here before the savages had all gone. And
those whose fathers and mothers were scalped might take it as
unpleasantly suggestive if a lot of white men, dressed up as Indians,
paraded themselves through the streets."

"What was that about Indians?" demanded Mr. Porter, who had been busy
exchanging reminiscences with Mrs. Whipple. "Why, there hasn't been an
Indian on the place for twenty years!"

"Oh yes, there has, father," said Evelyn. "It was only five years ago
that there were two in this room. Don't you remember, when Warry had his
hobby for educating Indian youth? He brought those boys up here for
Christmas dinner."

"I remember; and they didn't like turkey," added Mr. Porter. "They were
hungry for their native bear meat."

"It's too bad," said Raridan sorrowfully, "that a man never can live
down his good deeds."

Raridan liked to pretend that Clarkson society had a deep philosophy
which he alone understood. He had fallen into his favorite rôle as a
social sage for the benefit of the strangers, and Mrs. Whipple was
correcting or denying what he said. He had assured the table that the
supreme social test was whether people could walk on their own hardwood
floors and rugs without taking the long slide into eternity. Philistines
could buy hardwood floors, but only the elect could walk on them.

"Society in Clarkson is easily classified," said Raridan readily, as
though he had often given thought to this subject. "There are three
classes of homes in this town, namely, those in which no servants are
kept, those in which two are kept, and those in which the maids wear
caps."

"Warry is going from bad to worse," declared Mrs. Whipple. "I'm sure he
could give in advance the menu of any dinner he's asked to."

"A tax on the memory and not on the imagination," retorted Warry.

Miss Warren was asking Mr. Porter's opinion of local political
conditions which were just then attracting wide-spread attention. Mr.
Porter was expressing his distrust of a leader who had leaped into fame
by a violent arraignment of the rich.

"It wouldn't be so terribly hard for us all to get rich," said Warry. "I
sometimes marvel at the squalor about us. All that a man need do is to
concentrate his attention on one thing, and if he is capable of earning
a dollar a day he can just as easily earn ten thousand a year. Why"--he
continued earnestly, "I knew a fellow in Peoria, who devised a scheme
for building duplicates of some of the architectural wonders of the Old
World in American cities. His plan was to send out a million postal
cards inviting a dollar apiece from a million people. Almost anybody can
give away a dollar and not miss it."

"How did the scheme work?" asked Mr. Porter.

"It wasn't tested," answered Warry. "The doctors in the sanitarium
wouldn't let him out long enough to mail his postal cards."

General Whipple persuaded Miss Marshall to tell a negro story, which she
did delightfully, while the table listened. Southerners are, after all,
the most natural talkers we have and the only ones who can talk freely
of themselves without offense. Her speech was musical, and she told her
story with a nice sense of its dramatic quality. At the climax, after
the laughter had abated, she asked, with an air of surprise at their
pleasure in her tale:

"Didn't you all ever hear that story before?" She was guiltless of final
r's, and her drawl was delicious.

"Oh, Miss Marshall! I _knew_ you'd say it!" Raridan appealed to the
others to be sure of witnesses.

"What are you all laughing at?" demanded the girl, flushing and smiling
about her.

"Oh, you did it twice!"

"I _didn't_ say it, Mr. Raridan," she said, with dignity. "I never said
that after I went North to school."

"Well, Belle," said Evelyn, "I'm heartily ashamed of you. After all we
did in college to break you of it, you are at it again though you've
been only a few months away from us."

"It's hopeless, I'm afraid," said Miss Warren. "You know, Evelyn, she
said 'I-alls' when she first came to college."

They had their coffee on the veranda, where the lights from within made
a pleasant dusk about them. Porter's heart was warm with the joy of
Evelyn's home-coming. She had been away from him so much that he was
realizing for the first time the common experience of fathers, who find
that their daughters have escaped suddenly and inexplicably from
girlhood into womanhood; and yet the girl heart in her had not lost its
freshness nor its thirst for pleasure. She had carried off her little
company charmingly; Porter had enjoyed it himself, and he felt young
again in the presence of youth.

General Whipple had attached himself to one of the couples of young
people that were strolling here and there in the grounds. Porter and
Mrs. Whipple held the veranda alone; both were unconsciously watching
Evelyn and Saxton as they walked back and forth in front of the house,
talking gaily; and Porter smiled at the eagerness and quickness of her
movements. Saxton's deliberateness contrasted oddly with the girl's
light step. Such a girl must marry a man worthy of her; there could be
no question of that; and for the first time the thought of losing her
rose in his heart and numbed it.

Porter's cigar had gone out, a fact to which Mrs. Whipple called his
attention.

"I've heard that it's a great compliment for a man to let his cigar go
out when he's talking to a woman. But I don't believe my chatter was
responsible for it this time." She nodded toward Evelyn, as if she
understood what had been in his thought.

"She's very fine. Both handsome and sensible, and at our age we know how
rare the combination is."

"I shall have to trust you to keep an eye on her. I want her to know the
right people." He spoke between the flashes of the cigar he was
relighting.

"Don't worry about her. You may trust her around the world. Evelyn has
already manifested an interest in my advice," she added, smiling to
herself in the dark,--"and she didn't seem much pleased with it!"

Evelyn and Saxton had met the others, who were coming up from the walks,
and there was a redistribution at the house; it was too beautiful to go
in, they said, and the strolling abroad continued. A great flood of
moonlight poured over the grounds. A breeze stole up from the valley and
made a soothing rustle in the trees. Evelyn rescued Wheaton and Miss
Warren from each other; she sent Raridan away to impart, as he said,
further western lore to the Yankee. She followed, with Wheaton, the arc
which the others were transcribing. A feeling of elation possessed him.
The tide of good fortune was bearing him far, but memory played hide and
seek with him as he walked there talking to Evelyn Porter; he was struck
with the unreality of this new experience. He was afraid of blundering;
of failing to meet even the trifling demands of her careless talk. He
remembered once, in his train-boy days, having pressed upon a pretty
girl one of Miss Braddon's novels; and the girl's scornful rejection of
the book and of himself came back and mocked him. Raridan's merry laugh
rang out suddenly far across the lawn; he had done more with his life
than Raridan would ever do with his; Raridan was a foolish fellow.
Saxton passed them with Miss Marshall; Saxton was dull; he had failed in
the cattle business. James Wheaton was not a town's jester, and he was
not a failure. Evelyn was telling him some of Belle Marshall's pranks at
school.

"She was the greatest cut-up. I suppose she'll never change. I don't
believe we do change so much as the wiseacres pretend, do you?"

She was aware that she had talked a great deal and threw out this line
to him a little desperately; he was proving even more difficult than she
had imagined him. He had been thinking of his mother--forgotten these
many years--who was old even when he left home. He remembered her only
as the dominant figure of the steaming kitchen where she had ministered
with rough kindness and severity to her uncouth brood. His sisters--what
loutish, brawling girls they were, and how they fought over whatever
silly finery they were able to procure for themselves! A faint
flower-scent rose from the soft skirts of the tall young woman beside
him. He hated himself for his memories.

He felt suddenly alarmed by her question, which seemed to aim at the
undercurrent of his own silent thought.

"There are those of us who ought to change," he said.

The others had straggled back toward the veranda and were disappearing
indoors.

"They seem to be going in. We can find our way through the sun-porch; I
suppose it might be called a moon-porch, too," she said, leading the
way.

They heard the sound of the piano through the open windows, and a girl's
voice broke gaily into song.

"It's Belle. She does sing those coon songs wonderfully. Let us wait
here until she finishes this one." The sun-porch opened from the
dining-room. They could see beyond it, into the drawing-room; the singer
was in plain view, sitting at the piano; Raridan stood facing her,
keeping time with an imaginary baton.

A man came unobserved to the glass door of the porch and stood
unsteadily peering in. He was very dirty and balanced himself in that
abandon with which intoxicated men belie Newton's discovery. He had
gained the top step with difficulty; the light from the window blinded
him and for a moment he stood within the inclosure blinking. An ugly
grin spread over his face as he made out the two figures by the window,
and he began a laborious journey toward them. He tried to tiptoe, and
this added further to his embarrassments; but the figures by the window
were intent on the song and did not hear him. He drew slowly nearer; one
more step and he would have concluded his journey. He poised on his toes
before taking it, but the law of gravitation now asserted itself. He
lunged forward heavily, casting himself upon Wheaton, and nearly
knocking him from his feet.

"Jimmy," he blurted in a drunken voice. "Jim-my!"

Evelyn turned quickly and shrank back with a cry. Wheaton was slowly
rallying from the shock of his surprise. He grabbed the man by the arms
and began pushing him toward the door.

"Don't be alarmed," he said over his shoulder to Evelyn, who had shrunk
back against the wall. "I'll manage him."

This, however, was not so easily done. The tramp, as Evelyn supposed him
to be, had been sobered by Wheaton's attack. He clasped his fingers
about Wheaton's throat and planted his feet firmly. He clearly intended
to stand his ground, and he dug his fingers into Wheaton's neck with the
intention of hurting.

[Illustration]

"Father!" cried Evelyn once, but the song was growing noisier toward its
end and the circle about the piano did not hear. She was about to call
again when a heavy step sounded outside on the walk and Bishop Delafield
came swiftly into the porch. He had entered the grounds from the rear
and was walking around the house to the front door.

"Quick! that man there,--I'll call the others!" cried Evelyn, still
shrinking against the wall. Wheaton had been forced to his knees and his
assailant was choking him. But there was no need of other help. The
bishop had already seized the tramp about the body with his great hands,
tearing him from Wheaton's neck. He strode, with the squirming figure in
his grasp, toward an open window at the back of the glass inclosure, and
pushed the man out. There was a great snorting and threshing below. The
hill dipped abruptly away from this side of the house and the man had
fallen several feet, into a flower bed.

"Get away from here," the bishop said, in his deep voice, "and be quick
about it." The man rose and ran swiftly down the slope toward the
street.

The bishop walked back to the window. The others had now hurried out in
response to Evelyn's peremptory calls, and she was telling of the
tramp's visit, while Wheaton received their condolences, and readjusted
his tie. His collar and shirt-front showed signs of contact with dirt.

"It was a tramp," said Evelyn, as the others plied her with questions,
"and he attacked Mr. Wheaton."

"Where's he gone?" demanded Porter, excitedly.

"There he goes," said the bishop, pointing toward the window. "He
smelled horribly of whisky, and I dropped him gently out of the window.
The shock seems to have inspired his legs."

"I'll have the police--," began Porter.

"Oh, he's gone now, Mr. Porter," said Wheaton coolly, as he restored
his tie. "Bishop Delafield disposed of him so vigorously that he'll
hardly come back."

"Yes, let him go," said the bishop, wiping his hands on his
handkerchief. "I'm only afraid, Porter, that I've spoiled your best
canna bed."



CHAPTER XI

THE KNIGHTS OF MIDAS BALL


There were two separate and distinct sides to the annual carnival of the
Knights of Midas. The main object to which the many committees on
arrangements addressed themselves was the assembling in Clarkson of as
many people as could be collected by assiduous advertising and the
granting of special privileges by the railroads. The streets must be
filled, and to fill them and keep them filled it was necessary to
entertain the masses; and this was done by providing what the committee
on publicity and promotion proclaimed to be a monster Pageant of
Industry. The spectacle was not tawdry nor ugly. It did not lack touches
of real beauty. The gaily decked floats, borne over the street car
tracks by trolleys, were like barges from a pageant of the Old World in
the long ago, impelled by mysterious forces. From many floats fireworks
summoned the heavens to behold the splendor and bravery of the parade.
The procession was led by the Knights of Midas, arrayed in yellow robes
and wearing helmets which shone with all the effulgence of bright tin.
There was a series of floats on which Commerce, Agriculture,
Transportation and Manufacturing were embodied and deified in the
persons of sundry young women, posed in appropriate attitudes and lifted
high on uncertain pedestals for the admiration of the multitude. On
other cars men followed strenuously their callings; coopers hammered
hoops upon their barrels; a blacksmith, with an infant forge at his
command, made the sparks fly from his anvil as his float rumbled by. An
enormous steer was held in check by ropes, and surrounded by murderous
giants from the abattoirs; Gambrinus smiled down from a proud height of
kegs on men that bottled beer below. Many brass bands, including a
famous cowboy band from Lone Prairie, and an Indian boy band from a
Wyoming reservation, played the newest and most dashing marches of the
day. Thus were the thrift, the enterprise, the audacity, and the
generosity of the people of Clarkson exemplified.

Such was the first night's entertainment. The crowd which was brought to
town to spend its money certainly was not defrauded. The second night it
was treated to band concerts, a horse-show and other entertainments,
while the Knights of Midas closed the door of their wooden temple upon
all but their chosen guests. These were, of course, expected to pay a
certain sum for their tickets, and the sum was not small. The Knights of
Midas ball was not, it should be said, a cheap affair. Raridan and
Saxton had taken a balcony box for the ball and they asked Evelyn's
guests to share it with them. Raridan still growled to Saxton over what
he called Evelyn's debasement, but he had said nothing more to Evelyn
about it.

"Here's to the deification of Jim Wheaton," he sighed, as he and Saxton
waited for the young ladies in the Porter drawing-room.

Saxton grinned at him unsympathetically.

"Stop sighing like an air-brake. You will be dancing yourself to death
in an hour."

When the two young women came in, Raridan's spirits brightened. Evelyn
was, Miss Marshall declared, "perfectly adorable" in her gown; but the
young men did not see her. She was to go later with her father.

They were early at the hall, whose bareness had been relieved by a gay
show of bunting and flags.

"I will now give you a succinct running account of the first families of
this community as they assemble," Raridan announced, when they had
settled in their chairs. There were no seats on the main floor, as the
ceremonial part of the entertainment was brief, and the greater number
of the spectators stood until it was over. An aisle was kept down the
middle of the hall and on each side the crowd gossiped, while a band
high above played popular airs.

"We're all here," said Raridan, when the band rested. "The butcher, the
baker and the candlestick-maker; also probably some of our cooks. We are
the spectators at one of Nero's matinees; the goodly knights are ready
for combat, and those who have had practice in the adjacent packing
houses have the best chance of winning the victory. There comes Tim
Margrave, one of the merriest of them all, full of Arthurian valor and
as gentle a knight as ever held lance or bought a city council. And
there is the master of our largest and goriest abattoir. That is not a
star on his chest, but a diamond pig, rampant on a field of dress-shirt.
He used to wear it on his watch-chain, but it was too inconspicuous
there--


     'On his breast a five-point star
     Points the way that his kingdoms are.'"


Miss Marshall was scrutinizing the man indicated through her opera
glasses.

"Why, it _is_ a pig!" she declared.

"Of course it is," said Warry, with an aggrieved air. "I hope you don't
think I'd fib about it. Now, the girl over there by the window, with the
young man with the pompadour hair, is Mabel Margrave, whose father you
saw a minute ago. She is looking this way with her lorgnette; but don't
flinch; there's only the plain window glass of our rude western commerce
in it; she handles it awfully well, though."

"And the man coming in who looks like a statesman?" asked Miss Marshall.

"That's Wilkins, the boy orator of the Range. He palpitates with
Ciceronian speech. He's our greatest authority on the demonetization of
wampum. The young man who's talking to him is telling him what hot stuff
he is, and that the speech he made at Tin Cup, Texas, last week on the
'Inequalities of Taxation' is the warmest little speech that has been
made in this country since Patrick Henry died. He's a good
thing,--Wilkins. The Indians back on the reservation, where he goes to
raise the wolf's mournful howl when white people won't listen to him,
call him Young-man-not-afraid-of-his-voice. Our Chinaman calls him Yung
Lung. Quite a character, Wilkins."

"And," Miss Warren inquired, "the grave, handsome man, who must be an
eminent jurist?"

"He does one's laundry," Raridan replied, "and," looking at his cuffs
critically, "he does it rather decently."

"There's another side to this," said Saxton to Miss Warren, while
Raridan babbled on to the pretty Virginian. "These people have had a
terribly hard time of it. They've been through a panic that would have
killed an ordinary community; a good many of the nicest of them have had
to begin over again; and it's uphill work. It isn't so funny when we
consider that these older people have tried their level best to make the
wilderness blossom as the rose, and after they'd made a fine beginning
the desert repossessed it. There's something splendid in their courage."

"Yes, it's hard for us who live on the outside to appreciate it. And
they seem such nice people, too."

"Don't they! They're big-hearted and plucky and generous! Eastern people
don't begin to appreciate the people who do their rough work for them."

The other boxes and the gallery had filled, and the main floor was
crowded, save where the broad aisle had been maintained down the center
from the front door to the stage. A buzz of talk floated over the hall.
The band was silent while its leader peered down upon the floor waiting
his signal. He turned suddenly and the trumpets broke forth into the
notes of a dignified march. All eyes turned to the front of the hall,
where the knights, in their robes, preceded by the grand seneschal,
bearing his staff of office, were emerging slowly from the outer door
into the aisle. When the stage was reached, the procession formed in
long lines, facing inward on the steps, making a path through which the
governors, who were distinguished by scarlet robes, came attending the
person of the king.

"All hail the king!" A crowd of knights in evening dress, who were
honorary members of the organization and had no parts in costume, sent
up the shout.

"Hail to Midas!"

"Isn't he noble and grand?" shouted Raridan in Miss Marshall's ear. A
murmur ran through the hall as Wheaton was recognized; his name was
passed to those who did not know him, and everybody applauded. He was
really imposing in the robes of his kingship. He walked with a fitting
deliberation among his escort. He was conscious of the lights, the
applause, the music, and of the fact that he was the center of it all.
The cheers were subsiding as the party neared the throne.

"I'll wager he's badly frightened," said Raridan to Saxton.

"Don't you think it," declared Saxton, "he looks as cool as a cucumber."

"Oh, he's cool enough," grumbled Raridan.

"You see what envy will do for a man," remarked Saxton to Miss Marshall.
"Mr. Raridan's simply perishing because he isn't there himself. But
what's this?"

The king had reached his throne and faced the audience. All the knights
bowed low; the king returned the salutation while the audience cheered.

"It's like a comic opera," said Miss Marshall.

The supreme knight advanced and handed Wheaton the scepter and there was
renewed applause and cheering.

"Only funnier," said Raridan. "Yell, Saxton, yell!" He rose to his feet
and led his end of the house in cheering. "It makes me think of old
times at football," he declared, sinking back into his chair with an air
of exhaustion, and wiping his face.

The king had seated himself, and expectancy again possessed the hall.
The band struck up another air, and a line of girls in filmy, trailing
gowns was filing in.

"There are the foolish virgins who didn't fill their lamps," said
Raridan; "that's why they have brought bouquets."

"But they ought to have got their gowns at the same place," said Miss
Marshall, who was abetting Raridan in his comments. Miss Warren and
Saxton, on the other side of her, were taking it all more seriously.

"It's really very pretty and impressive," Miss Warren declared, "and not
at all silly as I feared it might be."

"Well, _that_ is very pretty," replied Saxton.

The queen, following her ladies in waiting, had appeared at the door.
There was a pause, a murmur, and then a great burst of applause as those
who were in the secret identified the queen, and those who were not
learned it as Evelyn's name passed from lip to lip. Whatever there was
of absurdity in the scene was dispelled by Evelyn's loveliness and
dignity. Her white gown intensified her fairness, and her long court
train added an illusion of height. She carried her head high, with a
serene air that was habitual. The charm that set her apart from other
girls was in no wise lost in the mock splendor of this ceremony.

"She's as lovely as a bride," murmured Belle Marshall, so low that only
Raridan heard her. Something caught in his throat and he looked steadily
down upon the approaching queen and said nothing. The supreme knight
descended to escort the queen to the dais. The king came down to meet
her and led her to a place beside him, where they turned and faced the
applauding crowd.

The grand chamberlain now stepped forward and read the proclamation of
the Knights of Midas, announcing that the king had reached their city,
and urging upon all subjects the duty of showing strict obedience. He
read a formula to which Evelyn and Wheaton made responses. A page stood
beside the queen holding a crown, which glittered with false brilliants
upon a richly embroidered pillow, and when the king knelt before her,
she placed it upon his head. At this there was more cheering and
handclapping. Saxton glanced toward Raridan as he beat his own hands
together, expecting one of Raridan's gibes at the chamberlain's bombast;
but there was a fierce light in Raridan's eyes that Saxton had never
seen there before. He was staring before him at Evelyn Porter, as she
now sat beside Wheaton on the tawdry throne; his face was white and his
lips were set. Saxton was struck with sorrow for him.

There was a stir throughout the hall. The king and queen were
descending; the floor manager was already manifesting his authority.

"Let's stay here until the grand march is over," said Raridan. He had
partly regained his spirits, and was again pointing out people of
interest on the floor below.

"Now wasn't it magnificent?" he demanded.

"Wasn't Evelyn lovely?" exclaimed the girls in a breath.

"We didn't need this circus to prove it, did we?" asked Raridan
cynically.

"Aren't there any more exercises--is it all over?" cried Miss Marshall.

"Bless us, no!" replied Raridan.

The evolutions of the grand march were now in progress and they stood
watching it.

"They didn't get enough rehearsals for this," said Raridan. "Look at
that mix up!" One of the knights had tripped and stumbled over the skirt
of his robe. "They ought to behead him for that."

"Mr. Raridan's terribly severe," said Saxton. The king and queen,
leading the march, were passing under the box.

"The king really looks scared," remarked Miss Warren.

"Yes; he's rather conscious of his clothes," said Raridan. "His train
rattles him." Evelyn glanced up at them and laughed and nodded.

Before the march broke up into dancing they went down from the gallery.
On the floor, the older people were resolving themselves into lay
figures against the wall. They found Mr. Porter leaning against one of
the rude supports of the gallery, wondering whether he might now escape
to the retirement of the cloak-room to get his hat and cigar. The young
people burst upon him with congratulations.

"You must he dying of pride," exclaimed Miss Marshall.

"Evelyn never looked better," declared Miss Warren. "It was splendid!"

"We are proud to know you, sir," said Raridan, shaking hands.

"I surely came to Clarkson in the right year," said Saxton.

Porter regarded them with the patronizing smile which he kept for those
who praised Evelyn to his face.

"The only thing now," he said, "is to get that girl home before
daylight."

"Oh, the queen gives her own orders," said Raridan. "You'll never be
boss at the Hill any more!" He was bringing up all the unattached men he
knew to present them to the visitors. He never forgot any one, and not
merely the débutantes of other years, but girls that were voted slow in
the brutal court of social opinion, were always sure of rescue at his
hands. Evelyn and Wheaton were bearing down upon them; Evelyn, flushed
and happy, and Wheaton in a glow from the exercise of the march and a
dance with her. There was a fusillade of interjections as many crowded
about with praise of the leading actors. It was all breathless and
incoherent. The crowd was uncomfortably large, and the hall was hot.
Porter found General Whipple and escaped with him to the smoking room.
Young men were everywhere writing their names on elaborate dance cards.

"Save a few for us," Raridan pleaded airily as the men he had introduced
hovered about Evelyn's guests. He made no effort to speak to Evelyn, who
was besieged by a throng that wished to congratulate her or to dance
with her. She gave Saxton her fingers through a rift in the crowd and he
turned again to find himself deserted. Raridan was dancing with Belle
Marshall and Annie Warren nodded to him over the shoulder of a youth who
had waltzed her away. While Saxton waited for the quadrilles to which
his dancing limitations restricted him, he made a circuit of the room.
Mrs. Whipple was holding forth to a group of dowagers but turned from
them to him.

"I'm hardly sure of you without Warry, and this is the first time I've
seen you alone. Of course, you were looking for me!"

"That's what I came for."

"Please say something more like that. I saw you come in, young man; they
are very nice girls, too."

She was trying to remember who had told her that Saxton was stupid.

"How did you like it? This was your first, I think."

"Beautiful! charming! An enchanting entertainment!"

"Is that for you and Warry, too? He always has to approve everything
here."

"Oh, I can't speak for him," John answered; "we don't necessarily always
agree."

"I'll have to find out later, from him. You and Warry appear to be fast
friends, and he talks a great deal. What has he told you about me?"

"He said you were kind to strange young men; but that wasn't
information."

"You'll do, I think. Here comes Warry now."

Raridan came along looking for a country girl whose brother he knew, and
with whom he had engaged the dance which was now in progress.

"I think she's hiding from me," he complained to Mrs. Whipple, "but the
gods are kind; I can talk to you. The general is a generous man." He
regarded critically a great bunch of red roses which she held in her
lap. "That's why the florist didn't have any for me."

"Oh, these are Evelyn's," explained Mrs. Whipple. "She asked me to keep
them for her--the king's gift, you know. I feel highly honored."

"By the king? Impossible! I'll give you something nice to let me drop
them into the alley."

"Is it as bad as that? Well, good luck to you!"

He stood with his hands in his pockets looking musingly out over the
heads of the dancers. Mrs. Whipple eyed him attentively.

"You know you always tell me all of them," she persisted; but he was
following a fair head and a pair of graceful shoulders and ever and anon
a laughing face that flashed into sight and then out of range. His rural
friend's sister loomed before him, in an attitude of dejection against
the wall, and he hastened to her with contrition, and made paradise fly
under her feet.

Saxton was doing his best with the square dances, and had finished a
quadrille with Evelyn, who had thereafter asked him to sit out a round
dance with her; still Raridan did not come near them. He was busy with
Evelyn's guests or immolating himself for the benefit of the country
wallflowers. Supper was served at midnight in an annex of the hall.

"Here's where we forget to be polite," Raridan announced. "If we die in
the struggle I hope you fair young charges will treasure our memories."

The king and queen and the high powers of the knights enjoyed the
distinction of sitting at a table where they were served by waiters,
while the multitude fought for their food.

"If you lose our seats while we're gone," Raridan warned Miss Marshall
and Miss Warren, "you shall have only six olives apiece." He led Saxton
in a descent upon an array of long tables at which men were harpooning
sandwiches and dipping salad. The successful raiders were rewarded by
the waiters with cups of coffee to add to their perils as they bore
their plates away. There was a great clatter and buzz in the room. On
the platform where the distinguished personages of the carnival sat
there was now much laughing.

"Margrave's pretty noisy to-night," observed Raridan, biting into his
sandwich, and sweeping the platform with a comprehensive glance.

"You mustn't forget that this is a carnival," replied Saxton. He had
followed his friend's eyes and knew that it was not the horse-laugh of
Margrave that troubled him, but the vista which disclosed both Wheaton
and Evelyn Porter.

"Mr. Raridan's really not so funny as Evelyn said he was," remarked
Belle Marshall.

"The truth is," Raridan answered, rallying, "that I'm getting old. Miss
Porter remembers only my light-hearted youth."

"Well, let's revive our youth in another food rush," suggested Saxton.
They repeated their tactics of a few minutes before, returning with
ice-cream, which the waiters were cutting from bricks for supplicants
who stood before them in Oliver Twist's favorite attitude.

"Mr. Saxton's a terrible tenderfoot," lamented Raridan, when they
returned from the charge. "He was giving your ice-cream, Miss Warren, to
an old gentleman, who stood horror-struck in the midst of the carnage."

"You'd think we rehearsed our talk," Saxton objected. "He wants me to
tell you that he got the poor old gentleman not only food for all his
relations, but took away other people's chairs for him, as well."

"Lying isn't a lost art, after all," said Raridan.

As they returned to the hall they met a crowd of the nobility who were
descending from their high seats.

"So sorry to have deserted you all evening," said Evelyn to her girl
friends as they came together in a crush at the door; "but the worst is
over." She looked up curiously at Raridan, who seemed purposely to have
turned away to talk to Captain Wheelock, and was commenting ironically
on the management that made such a mob possible. There was only a moment
for any interchange, but she was sure now that Raridan was avoiding her
and it touched her pride.

"I hope you won't forget our dance, Mr. Saxton," she said, struggling to
follow a young man who had come to claim her. Raridan turned again, but
hung protectingly over Miss Marshall, whom the noisy Margrave seemed
bent on crushing. Raridan had not asked Evelyn to dance, though she had
been importuned by every other man she knew, and by a great many others
whom she did not know. As the gay music of a waltz carried her down the
hall with a proud youngster who had been waiting for her, the lightness
of her heart was gone for the moment. She remembered Raridan's curious
mood on the night before her friends came, and his unfriendliness to the
idea of her taking part in the carnival. She was piqued that he had
studiously avoided her to-night. The others must have noticed it. Warry
needed discipline; he had been spoilt and she meant to visit punishment
upon him. She did not care, she told herself; whether Warry Raridan
liked what she did or not.

But something of the glory of the evening had departed. She was really
growing tired, and several of the youths who came for dances were told
that they must sit them out, and she welcomed their chatter, throwing in
her yes and no occasionally merely to impel them on. Wheaton had grown a
little afraid of her after the glow of his royal honors had begun to
fade. It is often so with players in amateur theatricals, who think they
are growing wonderfully well acquainted during rehearsals; but after the
performance is concluded, they are surprised to find how easily they
slip back to the old footing of casual acquaintance. There was a flutter
about Evelyn at the last, when her father made bold to ask her when she
would be ready to go.

"The girls have already gone," he said, replying to her question. When
they were in the carriage together and were rolling homeward, she gave a
sigh of relief.

"Are you glad it's over?" asked her father.

"Yes, I believe I am."

"Well, they all said fine things about you, girl. I guess I've got to be
proud of you." This was his way of saying that he was both proud and
grateful.

As they reached the entrance to the Hill they passed another carriage
just leaving the grounds. Saxton put his head out of the window and
called a cheery good night, and Evelyn waved a hand to him.

"It was Warry and Saxton," said Mr. Porter. "I thought they'd stop to
talk it over."

Evelyn had thought so too, but she did not say so.



CHAPTER XII

A MORNING AT ST. PAUL'S


Wheaton ran away from the livelier spirits of the Knights of Midas, who
urged him to join in a celebration at the club after the ball broke up.
He pleaded the necessity of early rising and went home and to bed,
where, however, he slept little, but lay dreaming over the incidents of
the night, particularly those in which he had figured. Many people had
congratulated him, and while there was an irony in much of this, as if
the whole proceeding were a joke, he had taken it all in the spirit, in
which it had been offered. He felt a trifle anxious as to his reception
at the breakfast table as he dressed, but his mirror gave him
confidence. The night had been an important one for him, and he could
afford to bear with his fellows, who would, he knew, spare him no more
than they spared any one else in their chaff.

They flaunted at him the morning papers with portraits of the king and
queen of the ball bracketed together in double column. He took the
papers from them as he replied to their ironies, and casually inspected
them while the Chinaman brought in his breakfast.

"Didn't expect to see you this morning," said Caldwell, the
Transcontinental agent, stirring his coffee and winking at Brown, the
smelter manager. "You society men are usually shy at breakfast."

Wheaton put down his paper carelessly, and spread his napkin.

"Oh, a king has to eat," said Brown.

"Well," said Wheaton, with an air of relief, "it's worth something to be
alive the morning after."

But they had no sympathy for him.

"Listen to him," said Caldwell derisively, "just as if he didn't wish he
could do it all over again to-night."

"Not for a million dollars," declared Wheaton, shaking his head
dolefully.

"Yes," said Captain Wheelock, "I suppose that show last night bored you
nearly to death."

"I'm always glad to see these fellows sacrifice themselves for the
public good," said Brown. "Wheaton's a martyr now, with a nice pink
halo."

"Well, it doesn't go here," said the army officer severely. "We've got
to take him down a peg if he gets too gay."

"Why, we've already got one sassiety man in the house," said Caldwell,
"and that's hard enough to bear." He referred to Raridan, who was
breakfasting in his room.

They were addressing one another, rather than Wheaton, whose presence
they affected to ignore.

"I suppose there'll be no holding him now," said Caldwell. "It's like
the taste for strong drink, this society business. They never get over
it. It's ruined Raridan; he'd be a good fellow if it wasn't for that."

"Humph! you fellows are envious," said Wheaton, with an effort at
swagger.

"Oh, I don't know!" said Brown, with rising inflection. "I suppose any
of us could do it if we'd put up the money."

"Well," said Wheaton, "if they let you off as cheaply as they did me,
you may call it a bargain."

"Oh, he jewed 'em down," persisted Caldwell, explaining to the others,
"and he has the cheek to boast of it. I'll see that Margrave hears
that."

"Yes, you do that," Wheaton retorted. "Everybody knows that Margrave's
an easy mark." This counted as a palpable hit with Brown and Wheelock.
Margrave was notorious for his hard bargains. Wheaton gathered up his
papers and went out.

"He takes it pretty well," said Caldwell as they heard the door close
after Wheaton. "He ought to make a pretty good fellow in time if he
doesn't get stuck on himself."

"Well, I guess Billy Porter'll take him down if he gets too gay,"
exclaimed Brown.

"Porter may leave it to his daughter to do that," said Caldwell, shaking
out the match with which he had lighted his cigar, and dropping it into
his coffee cup.

"It'll never come to that," returned Brown.

"You never can tell. People were looking wise about it last night," said
Captain Wheelock, who was a purveyor of gossip.

"Don't trouble yourself," volunteered Caldwell, who read the society
items thoroughly every morning and created a social fabric out of them.
"I guess Warry will have something to say to that."

At the bank Wheaton found that the men who came in to transact business
had a knowing nod for him, that implied a common knowledge of matters
which it was not necessary to discuss. A good many who came to his desk
asked him if he was tired. They referred to the carnival ball as a
"push" and said it was "great" with all the emphasis that slang has
imparted to these words.

Porter came down early and enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke. This
in the bank was the outward and visible sign of a "grouch." When he
pressed the button to call one of the messengers, he pushed it long and
hard, so that the boys remarked to one another that the boss had been
out late last night and wasn't feeling good.

Porter did not mention the ball to Wheaton in any way, except when he
threw over to him a memorandum of the bank's subscription to the fund,
remarking: "Send them a check. That's all of that for one year."

Wheaton made no reply, but did as Porter bade him. It was his business
to accommodate himself to the president's moods, and he was very
successful in doing so. A few of the bank's customers made use of him as
a kind of human barometer, telephoning sometimes to ask how the old man
was feeling, and whether it was a good time to approach him. He
attributed the president's reticence this morning to late hours, and was
very careful to answer promptly when Porter spoke to him. He knew that
there would be no recognition by Porter of the fact that he had
participated in a public function the night before; he would have to
gather the glory of it elsewhere. He thought of Evelyn in moments when
his work was not pressing, and wondered whether he could safely ask her
father how she stood the night's gaiety. It occurred to him to pay his
compliments by telephone; Raridan was always telephoning to girls; but
he could not quite put himself in Raridan's place. Warry presumed a good
deal, and was younger; he did many things which Wheaton considered
undignified, though he envied the younger man's ease in carrying them
off.

One of Porter's callers asked how Miss Porter had "stood the racket," as
he phrased it.

"Don't ask me," growled Porter. "Didn't show up for breakfast."

William Porter did not often eat salad at midnight, but when he did it
punished him.

As Wheaton was opening the afternoon mail he was called to the
telephone-box to speak to Mrs. Jordan, a lady whom he had met at the
ball. She was inviting a few friends for dinner the next evening to meet
some guests who were with her for the carnival. She begged that Mr.
Wheaton would pardon the informality of the invitation and come. He
answered that he should be very glad to come; but when he got back to
his desk he realized that he had probably made a mistake; the Jordans
were socially anomalous, and there was nothing to be gained by
cultivating them. However, he consoled himself with the recollection of
one of Raridan's social dicta--that a dinner invitation should never be
declined unless smallpox existed in the house of the hostess. He swayed
between the disposition to consider the Jordans patronizingly and an
honest feeling of gratitude for their invitation, as he bent over his
desk signing drafts.

He found the Jordans very cordial. He was their star, and they made
much of him; he was pleased that they showed him a real deference; when
he spoke at the table, the others paused to listen. He knew the other
young men slightly; one was a clerk in a railway office, and the other
was the assistant manager of the city's largest dry goods house. The
guests were young women from Mrs. Jordan's old home, in Piqua, Ohio.
(Mrs. Jordan always gave the name of the state.) Wheaton realized that
these young women were much easier to get on with than Miss Porter and
other young women he had known latterly; they were more pointedly
interested in pleasing him.

After a few days the carnival seemed to be forgotten; Wheaton's fellows
at The Bachelors' stopped joking him about it. Raridan had never
referred to it at all. On Sunday the newspapers printed a résumé of the
social features of the carnival, and Wheaton read the familiar story,
and all the other social news in the paper, in bed. He noticed with a
twinge an item stating that Mrs. J. Elihu Jordan had entertained at
dinner on Thursday evening for the Misses Sweetser, of Piqua, but was
relieved to find that neither paper printed the names of the guests. The
bachelors were very lazy on Sunday morning, excepting Raridan, who
attended what he called "early church." This practice his fellow-lodgers
accepted in silence as one of his vagaries. That a man should go to
church at seven o'clock and then again at eleven, signified mere
eccentricity to Raridan's fellow-boarders, who were not instructed in
catholic practices, but divided their own Sunday mornings much more
rationally between the barber shop, the post-office and their places of
business.

It was a bright morning; the week just ended had been, in a sense,
epochal, and Wheaton resolved to go to church. It had been his habit to
attend services occasionally, on Sunday evenings, at the People's
Church, whose minister frequently found occasion to preach on topics of
the day or on literary subjects. Doctor Morningstar was the most popular
preacher in Clarkson; the People's Church was filled at all services; on
Sunday evenings it was crowded. Doctor Morningstar's series of lectures
on the Italian Renaissance, illustrated by the stereopticon, and his
even more popular course of lectures on the Victorian novelists, had
appealed to Wheaton and to many; but the People's Church was not
fashionable; he decided to go this morning to St. Paul's, the Episcopal
Cathedral. It was the oldest church in town, and many of the first
families attended there. All fashionable weddings in Clarkson were held
in the cathedral, not because it was popularly supposed to confer a
spiritual benefit upon those who were blessed from its altar, but for
the more excellent reason that the main aisle of this Gothic edifice
gave ample space for the free sweep of bridal trains, and the chancel
lent itself charmingly to the decorative purposes of the florist.

Wheaton found Raridan breakfasting alone, the others of the mess not
having appeared. Raridan's good morning was not very cordial; he had
worn a gloomy air for several days. Whenever Raridan seemed out of
sorts, Caldwell always declared solemnly that Warry had been writing
poetry.

"Going to church as usual?" Wheaton asked amiably.

Every Sunday morning some one asked Raridan this question; he supposed
Wheaton was attempting to be facetious.

"Yes," he answered patiently; and added, as usual, "better go along."

"Don't care if I do," Wheaton replied, carelessly.

Raridan eyed him in surprise.

"Oh! glad to have you."

They walked toward the cathedral together, Wheaton satisfied that his
own hat was as shiny and his frock coat as proper as Raridan's; their
gloves were almost of the same shade. There was a stir in the vestibule
of the cathedral, which many people in their Sunday finery were
entering. Wheaton had never been in an Episcopal church before; it all
seemed very strange to him--the rambling music of the voluntary, the
unfamiliar scenes depicted on the stained glass windows, the soft light
through which he saw well-dressed people coming to their places, and the
scent of flowers and the faint breath of orris from the skirts of women.
The boy choir came in singing a stirring processional that was both
challenge and inspiration. It was like witnessing a little drama: the
procession, the singing, the flutter of surplices as the choir found
their stalls in the dim chancel. Raridan bowed when the processional
cross passed him. Wheaton observed that no one else did so.

A young clergyman began reading the service, and Wheaton followed it in
the prayer book which Raridan handed him with the places marked. He felt
ashamed that the people about him should see that the places had to be
found for him; he wished to have the appearance of being very much at
home. He suddenly caught sight of Evelyn Porter's profile far across the
church, and presently her father and their guests were disclosed. He
soon discovered others that he knew, with surprise that so many men of
unimpeachable position in town were there. Here, then, was a stage of
development that he had not reckoned with; surely it was a very
respectable thing to go to church,--to this church, at least,--on Sunday
mornings. The bewilderment of reading and chanting continued, and he
wondered whether there would be a sermon; at Doctor Morningstar's the
sermon was the main thing. He remembered Captain Wheelock's joke with
Raridan, that "the Episcopal Church had neither politics nor religion;"
but it was at least very aristocratic.

He stood and seated himself many times, bowing his head on the seat in
front of him when the others knelt, and now the great figure of Bishop
Delafield came from somewhere in the depths of the chancel and rose in
the pulpit. The presence of the bishop reminded him unpleasantly of the
Porters' sun-porch and of the disgraceful encounter there. The
congregation resettled themselves in their places with a rustle of
skirts and a rattling of books into the racks. It was not often that the
bishop appeared in his cathedral; he was rarely in his see city on
Sundays; but whenever he preached men listened to him. Wheaton was
relieved to find that there was to be a cessation of the standing up and
sitting down which seemed so complicated.

He now found that he could see the Porter pew easily by turning his head
slightly. The roses in Evelyn's hat were very pretty; he wondered
whether she came every Sunday; he concluded that she did; and he decided
that he should attend hereafter. The bishop had carried no manuscript
into the pulpit with him, and he gave his text from memory, resting one
arm on the pulpit rail. He was an august figure in his robes, and he
seemed to Wheaton, as he looked up at him, to pervade and possess the
place. Wheaton had a vague idea of the episcopal office; bishops were,
he imagined, persons of considerable social distinction; in his notion
of them they ranked with the higher civil lawgivers, and were comparable
to military commandants. In a line with the Porters he could see General
Whipple's white head--all the conditions of exalted respectability were
present.

_And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they
strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, 'For now
the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.'_

_For now the Lord hath made room for us._ The preacher sketched lightly
the primal scene to which his text related. He knew the color and light
of language and made it seem to his hearers that the Asian plain lay
almost at the doors of the cathedral. He reconstructed the simple social
life of the early times, and followed westward the campfires of the
shepherd kings. He built up the modern social and political structure,
with the home as its foundation, before the eyes of the congregation. A
broad democracy and humanity dominated the discourse as it unfolded
itself. The bishop hardly lifted his voice; he did not rant nor make
gestures, but he spoke as one having authority. Wheaton turned uneasily
and looked furtively about. He had not expected anything so earnest as
this; there was a tenseness in the air that oppressed him. What he was
hearing from that quiet old man in the pulpit was without the gloss of
fashion; it was inconsonant with the spirit of the place as he had
conceived it. Doctor Morningstar's discourses on Browning's poetry had
been far more entertaining.

_For now the Lord hath made room for us._ The preacher's voice was even
quieter as he repeated these words. "We are very near the heart of the
world, here at the edge of the great plain. Who of us but feels the
freedom, the ampler ether, the diviner air of these new lands? We hear
over and over that in the West, men may begin again; that here we may
put off our old garments and re-clothe ourselves. We must not too
radically adopt this idea. I am not so sanguine that it is an easy
matter to be transformed and remade; I am not persuaded that geography
enters into heart or mind or soul so that by crossing the older borders
into a new land we obliterate old ties. Here we may dig new wells, but
we shall thirst often, like David, for a drink of water from the well by
the gate of Bethlehem."

Wheaton's mind wandered. It was a pleasure to look about over these
well-groomed people; this was what success meant--access to such
conditions as these. The fragrance of the violets worn by a girl in the
next pew stole over him; it was a far cry to his father's stifling
harness shop in the dull little Ohio town. His hand crept to the pin
which held his tie in place; he could not give just the touch to an
Ascot that Warry Raridan could, but then Warry had practised longer.
The old bishop's voice boomed steadily over the congregation. It caught
and held Wheaton's attention once more.

"It is here that God hath made room for us; but it is not that we may
begin life anew. There is no such thing as beginning life anew; we may
begin again, but we may not obliterate nor ignore the past. Rather we
should turn to it more and more for those teachings of experience which
build character. Here on the Western plains the light and heat of
cloudless skies beat freely upon us; the soul, too, must yield itself to
the sun. The spirit of man was not made for the pit or the garret, but
for the open."

Wheaton stirred restlessly, so that Raridan turned his head and looked
at him. He had been leaning forward, listening intently, and had
suddenly come to himself. He crossed his arms and settled back in his
seat. A man in front of him yawned, and he was grateful to him. But
again his ear caught an insistent phrase.

"Life would be a simple matter if memory did not carry our yesterdays
into our to-days, and if it were as easy as Cain thought it was to cast
aside the past. A man must deal with evil openly and bravely. He must
turn upon himself with reproof the moment he finds that he has been
trampling conscience under his feet. An artisan may slight work in a
dark corner of a house, thinking that it is hidden forever; but I say to
you that we are all builders in the house of life, and that there are no
dark corners where we may safely practise deceit or slight the task God
assigns us. I would leave a word of courage and hope with you.
Christianity is a militant religion; it strengthens those who stand
forth bravely on the battle line, it comforts and helps the
weak-hearted, and it lifts up those who fall. I pray that God may
freshen and renew courage in us--courage not as against the world, but
courage to deal honestly and fairly and openly with ourselves."

The organ was throbbing again; the massive figure had gone from the
pulpit; the people were stirring in their seats. The young minister who
had read the service repeated the offertory sentences, and the voice of
a boy soprano stole tremulously over the congregation. Raridan had left
the pew and was passing the plate. The tinkle of coin reassured Wheaton;
the return to mundane things brought him relief and restored his
confidence. His spirit grew tranquil as he looked about him. The
pleasant and graceful things of life were visible again.

The voice of the bishop rose finally in benediction. The choir marched
out to a hymn of victory; people were talking as they moved through the
aisles to the doors. The organ pealed gaily now; there was light and
cheer in the world after all. At the door Wheaton became separated from
Raridan, and as he stood waiting at the steps Evelyn and her friends
detached themselves from the throng on the sidewalk and got into their
carriage. Mr. Porter, snugly buttoned in his frock coat, and with his
silk hat tipped back from his forehead, stood in the doorway talking to
General Whipple, who was, as usual in crowds, lost from the more agile
comrade of his marches many. Wheaton hastened down to the Porter
carriage, where the smiles and good mornings of the occupants gave him
further benediction. Evelyn and Miss Warren were nearest him; as he
stood talking to them, Belle Marshall espied Raridan across his
shoulders.

"Oh, there's Mr. Raridan!" she cried, but when Wheaton stood aside,
Raridan had already disappeared around the carriage and had come into
view at the opposite window with a general salutation, which included
them all, but Miss Marshall more particularly.

"I'm sure that sermon will do you good, Mr. Raridan," the Virginia girl
drawled. She was one of those young women who flatter men by assuming
that they are very depraved. Even impeccable youngsters are susceptible
to this harmless form of cajolery.

"Oh, I'm always good. Miss Porter can tell you that."

"Don't take my name in vain," said Evelyn, covertly looking at him, but
turning again to Wheaton.

"You see your witness has failed you. Going to church isn't all of being
good."

Wheaton and Evelyn were holding a lively conversation. Evelyn's
animation was for his benefit, Raridan knew, and it enraged him. He had
been ready for peace, but Evelyn had snubbed him. He was, moreover,
standing in the mud in his patent leather shoes while another man
chatted with her in greater dignity from the curb. His chaff with Miss
Marshall lacked its usual teasing quality; he was glad when Mr. Porter
came and took his place in the carriage.

Raridan had little to say as he and Wheaton walked homeward together,
though Wheaton felt in duty bound to express his pleasure in the music
and, a little less heartily, in the sermon. Raridan's mind was on
something else, and Wheaton turned inward to his own thoughts. He was
complacent in his own virtue; he had made the most of the talents God
had given him, and in his Sunday evening lectures Doctor Morningstar had
laid great stress on this; it was the doctor's idea of the preaching
office to make life appear easy, and he filled his church twice every
Sunday with people who were glad to see it that way. As Wheaton walked
beside Raridan he thought of the venerable figure that had leaned out
over the congregation of St. Paul's that morning, and appealed in his
own mind from Bishop Delafield to Doctor Morningstar, and felt that the
bishop was overruled. As he understood Doctor Morningstar's preaching it
dealt chiefly with what the doctor called ideality, and this, as near as
Wheaton could make out, was derived from Ruskin, Emerson and Carlyle,
who were the doctor's favorite authors. The impression which remained
with him of the morning at St. Paul's was not of the rugged old bishop's
sermon, which he had already dismissed, but of the novel exercises in
the chancel, the faint breath of perfumes that were to him the true odor
of sanctity, and what he would have called, if he had defined it, the
high-toned atmosphere of the place. The bishop was only an occasional
visitor in the cathedral; he was old-fashioned and a crank; but no doubt
the regular minister of the congregation preached a cheerfuller idea of
life than his bishop, and more of that amiable conduct which is, as
Doctor Morningstar was forever quoting from a man named Arnold,
three-fourths of life.

When Wheaton reached his room he found an envelope lying on his table,
much soiled, and addressed, in an unformed hand, to himself. It
contained a dirty scrap of paper bearing these words:


     "Jim: I'll be at the Occidental Hotel tonight at 8 o'clock. Don't
     fail to come.

     BILLY."



CHAPTER XIII

BARGAIN AND SALE


That is a disastrous moment in the history of any man in which he
concludes that the problems of life are easy of solution. Life has been
likened by teachers of ethics to a great school, but the comparison is
not wholly apt. As an educational system, life is decidedly not up to
date; the curriculum lacks flexibility, and the list of easy electives
and "snap" courses is discouragingly brief. A reputable poet holds that
"life is a game the soul can play"; but the game, it should be
remembered, is not always so easy as it looks. It could hardly be said
that James Wheaton made the most of all his opportunities, or that he
had mastered circumstances, although his biography as printed in the
daily press on the occasion of his succession to the mock throne of the
Knights of Midas gave this impression with a fine color of truth, and
with no purpose to deceive.

The West makes much of its self-made men, and points to them with pride,
whenever the self-making includes material gain. The god Success is
enthroned on a new Olympus, and all are slaves to him; and when public
teachers thunder at him, his humblest subjects smile at one another, and
say that it is, no doubt, well enough to be reminded of such things
occasionally, but that, after all, nothing succeeds like success. Life
is a series of hazards, and we are all looking for the main chance.

James Wheaton's code of morals was very simple. Honesty he knew to be
the best policy; he had learned this in his harsh youth, but he had no
instinct for the subtler distinctions in matters of conduct. Behind
glass and wire barricades in the bank where he had spent so many of his
thirty-five years, he had known little real contact with men. He knew
the pains and penalties of overdrafts; and life resolved itself into a
formal kind of accountancy where the chief thing was to maintain credit
balances. His transfer from a clerical to an official position had
widened his horizon without giving him the charts with which to sail new
seas. Life had never resolved itself into capital letters in his
meditations; he never indulged in serious speculation about it. It was
hardly even a game for the soul to play with him; if he had been capable
of analyzing his own feelings about it he would have likened it to a
mechanical novelty, whose printed instructions are confusingly obscure,
but with a little fumbling you find the spring, and presto! the wheels
turn and all is very simple.

He tore up the note with irritation and threw it into the waste paper
basket. He called the Chinese servant, who explained that a boy had left
it in the course of the morning and had said nothing about an answer.

The Bachelors' did not usually muster a full table at Sunday dinner. All
Clarkson dined at noon on Sunday, and most of the bachelors were
fortunate enough to be asked out. Wheaton was not frequently a diner
out by reason of his more slender acquaintance; and to-day all were
present, including Raridan, the most fickle of all in his attendance. It
had pleased Wheaton to find that the others had been setting him apart
more and more with Raridan for the daily discipline they dealt one
another. They liked to poke fun at Raridan on the score of what they
called his mad social whirl; there was no resentment about it; they were
themselves of sterner stuff and had no patience with Raridan's
frivolities; and they were within the fact when they assumed that, if
they wished, they could go anywhere that he did. It touched Wheaton's
vanity to find himself a joint target with Raridan for the arrows which
the other bachelors fired at folly.

The table cheer opened to-day with a debate between Caldwell and Captain
Wheelock as to the annual cost to Raridan of the carnation which he
habitually wore in his coat. This, in the usual manner of their froth,
was treated indirectly; the aim was to continue the cross-firing until
the victim was goaded into a scornful rejoinder. Raridan usually evened
matters before he finished with them; but he affected not to be
listening to them now.

"I was reading an article in the Contemporary Review the other day that
set me to thinking," he said casually to Wheaton. "It was an effort to
answer the old question, 'Is stupidity a sin?' You may not recall that a
learned Christian writer--I am not sure but that it was Saint Francis de
Sales,--holds that stupidity is a sin."

The others had stopped, baffled in their debate over the carnation and
were listening to Raridan. They never knew how much amusement he got
out of them; they attributed great learning to him and were never sure
when he began in this way whether he was speaking in an exalted
spiritual mood and from fullness of knowledge, or was merely preparing a
pitfall for them.

Warry continued:

"But while this dictum is very generally accepted among learned
theologians, it has nevertheless led to many amusing discussions among
men of deep learning and piety who have striven to define and analyze
stupidity. It is, however, safe to accept as the consensus of their
opinions these conclusions." He made his own salad dressing, and paused
now with the oil cruet in his hand while he continued to address himself
solely to Wheaton: "Primarily, stupidity is inevitable; in the second
place it is an offense not only to Deity but to man; and thirdly, being
incurable, as"--nodding first toward Wheelock and then toward
Caldwell--"we have daily, even hourly testimony, man is helpless and
cannot prevail against it."

"Now will you be good?" demanded Wheaton gleefully. He had an air of
having connived at Raridan's fling at them.

"Oh, I don't think!" sneered Caldwell. "Don't you get gay! You're not in
this."

"In the name of the saints, Caldwell, do give us a little peace," begged
Raridan.

Wheelock turned his attention to the Chinaman who was serving them, and
abused him, and Wheaton sought to make talk with Raridan, to emphasize
their isolation and superiority to the others.

"That's good music they have at the cathedral," he said.

Brown now took the scent.

"Did you hear that, Wheelock? Well, I'll be damned. See here, Wheaton,
where are you at anyhow? We've been looking on you as one of the sinners
of this house, but if you've joined Raridan's church, I see our finish."

"Don't worry about your finish, Brown. It'll be a scorcher all right,"
said Raridan, "and while you wait your turn you might pass the salt."

There was no common room at The Bachelors', and the men did not meet
except at the table. They loafed in their rooms, and rarely visited one
another. Raridan was the most social among them and lounged in on one or
the other in his easy fashion. They in turn sought him out to deride
him, or to poke among his effects and to ask him why he never had any
interesting books. The books that he was always buying--minor poems and
minor essays, did not tempt them. The presence of _L'Illustrazione
Italiana_ on his table from week to week amused them; they liked to look
at the pictures and they had once gone forth in a body to the peanut
vender at the next corner, to witness a test of Raridan's Italian, about
which they were skeptical. The stormy interview that followed between
Raridan and the Sicilian had been immensely entertaining and had proved
that Raridan could really buy peanuts in a foreign tongue, though the
fine points which he tried to explain to the bachelors touching the
differences in Italian dialects did not interest them. Warry himself was
interested in Italian dialects for that winter only.

Wheaton went to his room and made himself comfortable. He re-read the
Sunday papers through all their supplements, dwelling again on the
events of the carnival. He had saved all the other papers that contained
carnival news, and now brought them out and cut from them all references
to himself. He resolved to open a kind of social scrap book in which to
preserve a record of his social doings. The joint portraits of the king
and queen of the carnival had not been very good; the picture of Evelyn
Porter was a caricature. In Raridan's room he had seen a photograph of
Evelyn as a child; it was very pretty, and Wheaton, too, remembered her
from the days in which she wore her hair down her back and waited in the
carriage at the front door of the bank for her father. She had lived in
a world far removed from him then; but now the chasm had been bridged.
He had heard it said in the last year that Evelyn and Warry were
undoubtedly fated to marry; but others hinted darkly that some Eastern
man would presently appear on the scene.

All this gossip Wheaton turned over in his mind, as he lay on his divan,
with the cuttings from the Clarkson papers in his hands. He remembered a
complaint often heard in Clarkson that there were no eligible men there;
he was not sure just what constituted eligibility, but as he reviewed
the men that went about he could not see that they possessed any
advantages over himself. It occurred to him for the first time that he
was the only unmarried bank cashier in town; and this in itself
conferred a distinction. He was not so secure in his place as he should
like to be; if Thompson died there would undoubtedly be a reorganization
of the bank and the few shares that Porter had sold to him would not
hold the cashiership for him. It might be that Porter's plan was to keep
him in the place until Grant grew up. Again, he reflected, the man who
married Evelyn Porter would become an element to reckon with; and yet if
he were to be that man--

He slept and dreamed that he was king of a great realm and that Evelyn
Porter reigned with him as queen; then he awoke with a start to find
that it was late. He sat up on the couch and gathered together the
newspaper cuttings which had fallen about him. He remembered the
imperative summons which had been left for him during the morning; it
was already six o'clock. Before going out he changed his clothes to a
rough business suit and took a car that bore him rapidly through the
business district and beyond, into the older part of Clarkson. The
locality was very shabby, and when he left the car presently it was to
continue his journey in an ill-lighted street over board walks which
yielded a precarious footing. The Occidental Hotel was in the old part
of town, and had long ago ceased to be what it had once been, the first
hostelry of Clarkson. It had descended to the level of a cheap boarding
house, little patronized except by the rougher element of cattlemen and
by railroad crews that found it convenient to the yards. Over the door a
dim light blinked, and this, it was understood in the neighborhood,
meant not merely an invitation to bed and board but also to the
Occidental bar, which was accessible at all hours of the day and night,
and was open through all the spasms of virtue with which the city
administration was seized from time to time. The door stood open and
Wheaton stepped up to the counter on which a boy sat playing with a cat.

"Is William Snyder stopping here?" he asked.

The boy looked up lazily from his play.

"Are you the gent he's expecting?"

"Very likely. Is he in?"

"Yes, he's number eighteen." He dropped the cat and led Wheaton down a
dark hall which was stale with the odors of cooked vegetables, up a
steep flight of stairs to a landing from which he pointed to an oblong
of light above a door.

"There you are," said the boy. He kicked the door and retreated down the
stairs, leaving Wheaton to obey the summons to enter which was bawled
from within.

William Snyder unfolded his long figure and rose to greet his visitor.

"Well, Jim," he said, putting out his hand. "I hope you're feelin' out
of sight." Wheaton took his hand and said good evening. He threw open
his coat and put down his hat.

"A little fresh air wouldn't hurt you any," he said, tipping himself
back in his chair.

"Well, I guess your own freshness will make up for it," said Snyder.

Wheaton did not smile; he was very cool and master of the situation.

"I came to see what you want, and it had better not be much."

"Oh, you cheer up, Jim," said Snyder with his ugly grin. "I don't know
that you've ever done so much for me. I don't want you to forget that I
did time for you once."

"You'd better not rely on that too much. I was a poor little kid and
all the mischief I ever knew I learned from you. What is it you want
now?"

"Well, Jim, you've seen fit to get me fired from that nice lonesome job
you got me, back in the country."

"I had nothing to do with it. The ranch owners sent a man here to
represent them and I had nothing more to do with it. The fact is I
stretched a point to put you in there. Mr. Saxton has taken the whole
matter of the ranch out of my hands."

"Well, I don't know anything about that," said Snyder contemptuously.
"But that don't make any difference. I'm out, and I don't know but I'm
glad to be out. That was a fool job; about the lonesomest thing I ever
struck. Your friend Saxton didn't seem to take a shine to me; wanted me
to go chasing cattle all over the whole Northwest--"

"He flattered you," said Wheaton, a faint smile drawing at the corners
of his mouth.

"None of that kind of talk," returned Snyder sharply. "Now what you got
to say for yourself?"

"It isn't necessary for me to say anything about myself," said Wheaton
coolly. "What I'm going to say is that you've got to get out of here in
a hurry and stay out."

Snyder leaned back in his chair and recrossed his legs on the table.

"Don't get funny, Jim. Large bodies move slow. It took me a long time to
find you and I don't intend to let go in a hurry."

"I have no more jobs for you; if you stay about here you'll get into
trouble. I was a fool to send you to that ranch. I heard about your
little round with the sheriff, and the gambling you carried on in the
ranch house."

"Well, when you admit you're a fool you're getting on," said Snyder with
a chuckle.

"Now I'm going to make you a fair offer; I'll give you one hundred
dollars to clear out,--go to Mexico or Canada--"

"Or hell or any comfortable place," interrupted Snyder derisively.

"And not come here again," continued Wheaton calmly. "If you do--!"

It was to be a question of bargain and sale, as both men realized.

"Raise your price, Jim," said Snyder. "A hundred wouldn't take me very
far."

"Oh yes, it will; I propose buying your ticket myself."

Snyder laughed his ugly laugh.

"Well, you ain't very complimentary. You'd ought to have invited me to
your party the other night, Jim. I'd like to have seen you doing stunts
as a king. That was the worst,"--he wagged his head and chuckled. "A
king, a real king, and your picture put into the papers along of the
millionaire's daughter,--well, you may damn me!"

"What I'll do," Wheaton went on undisturbed, "is to buy you a ticket to
Spokane to-morrow. I'll meet you here and give you your transportation
and a hundred dollars in cash. Now that's all I'll do for you, and it's
a lot more than you deserve."

"Oh, no it ain't," said Snyder.

"And it's the last I'll ever do."

"Don't be too sure of that. I want five hundred and a regular
allowance, say twenty-five dollars a month."

"I don't intend to fool with you," said Wheaton sharply. He rose and
picked up his hat. "What I offer you is out of pure kindness; we may as
well understand each other. You and I are walking along different lines.
I'd be glad to see you succeed in some honorable business; you're not
too old to begin. I can't have you around here. It's out of the
question--my giving you a pension. I can't do anything of the kind."

His tone gradually softened; he took on an air of patient magnanimity.

Snyder broke in with a sneer.

"Look here, Jim, don't try the goody-goody business on me. You think
you're mighty smooth and you're mighty good and you're gettin' on pretty
fast. Your picture in the papers is mighty handsome, and you looked real
swell in them fine clothes up at the banker's talkin' to that girl."

"That's another thing," said Wheaton, still standing. "I ought to refuse
to do anything for you after that. Getting drunk and attacking me
couldn't possibly do you or me any good. It was sheer luck that you
weren't turned over to the police."

Snyder chuckled.

"That old preacher gave me a pretty hard jar."

"You ought to be jarred. You're no good. You haven't even been
successful in your own particular line of business."

"There ain't nothing against me anywhere," said Snyder, doggedly.

"I have different information," said Wheaton, blandly. "There was the
matter of that post-office robbery in Michigan; attempted bank robbery
in Wisconsin, and a few little things of that sort scattered through the
country, that make a pretty ugly list. But they say you're not very
strong in the profession." He smiled an unpleasant smile.

Snyder drew his feet from the table and jumped up with an oath.

"Look here, Jim, if you ain't playin' square with me--"

"I intend playing more than square with you, but I want you to know that
I'm not afraid of you; I've taken the trouble to look you up. The
Pinkertons have long memories," he said, significantly.

Snyder was visibly impressed, and Wheaton made haste to follow up his
advantage.

"You've got to get away from here, Billy, and be in a hurry about it.
How much money have you?"

"Not a red cent."

"What became of that money Mr. Saxton gave you?"

"Well, to tell the truth I owed a few little bills back at Great River
and I settled up, like any square man would."

"If you told the truth, you'd say you drank up what you hadn't gambled
away." Wheaton moved toward the door.

"At eight to-morrow night."

"Make it two hundred, Jim," whined Snyder.

Wheaton paused in the door; Snyder had followed him. They were the same
height as they stood up together.

"That's too much money to trust you with."

"The more money the farther I can get," pleaded Snyder.

"I'll be here at eight to-morrow evening," said Wheaton, "and you stay
here until I come."

"Give me a dollar on account; I haven't a cent."

"You're better off that way; I want to find you sober to-morrow night."
He went out and closed the door after him.

Two or three men who were sitting in the office below eyed Wheaton
curiously as he went out. The thought that they might recognize him from
his portraits in the papers pleased him.

He retraced his steps from the hotel and boarded a car filled with
people of the laboring class who were returning from an outing in the
suburbs. They were making merry in a strange tongue, and their
boisterous mirth was an offense to him. He was a gentleman of position
returning from an errand of philanthropy, and he remained on the
platform, where the atmosphere was purer than that within, which was
contaminated by the rough young Swedes and their yellow-haired
sweethearts. When he reached The Bachelors' the dozing Chinaman told him
that all the others were out. He went to his room and spent the rest of
the evening reading a novel which he had heard Evelyn Porter mention the
night that he had dined at her house.

The next day he bought a ticket to Spokane, and drew one hundred dollars
from his account in the bank. He went at eight o'clock to the Occidental
to keep his appointment, and found Snyder patiently waiting for him in
the hotel office, holding a shabby valise between his knees.

"You'll have to pay my bill before I take this out," said Snyder
grinning, and Wheaton gave him money and waited while he paid at the
counter. The proprietor recognized Wheaton and nodded to him. Questions
were not asked at the Occidental.

At the railway station Wheaton stepped inside the door and pulled two
sealed envelopes from his pocket. "Here's your ticket, and here's your
money. The ticket's good through to Spokane; and that's your train, the
first one in the shed. Now I want you to understand that this is the
last time, Billy; you've got to work and make your own living. I can't
do anything more for you; and what's more, I won't."

"All right, Jim," said Snyder. "You won't ever lose anything by helping
me along. You're in big luck and it ain't going to hurt you to give me a
little boost now and then."

"This is the last time," said Wheaton, firmly, angry at Snyder's hint
for further assistance.

Snyder put out his hand.

"Good by, Jim," he said.

"Good by, Billy."

Wheaton stood inside the station and watched the man cross the
electric-lighted platform, show his ticket at the gate, and walk to the
train. He still waited, watching the car which the man boarded, until
the train rolled out into the night.



CHAPTER XIV

THE GIRL THAT TRIES HARD


The Girl That Tries Hard was giving a dance at the Country Club. The
Girl That Tries Hard was otherwise Mabel Margrave, wherein lay the only
point of difference between herself and other Girls That Try Hard. There
was hardly room in Clarkson for cliques; and yet one often heard the
expression "Mabel Margrave and her set" and this indicated that Mabel
Margrave had a following and that to some extent she was a leader. She
prided herself on doing things differently, which is what The Girl That
Tries Hard is forever doing everywhere. She was the only girl in the
town that gave dinners at the Clarkson Club; and while these functions
were not necessarily a shock to the Clarkson moral sense, yet the first
of these entertainments, at which Mabel Margrave danced a skirt dance at
the end of the dinner, caused talk in conservative circles. It might be
assumed that Mabel's father and mother could have checked her
exuberance, but the fact was that Mabel's parents wielded little
influence in their own household. Timothy Margrave was busy with his
railroad and his wife was a timid, shrinking person, who viewed her
daughter's social performances with wonder and admiration. It would
have been much better for Mabel if she had not tried so hard, but this
was something that she did not understand, and there was no one to teach
her. She derived an immense pleasure from her father's private car, in
which she had been over most of the United States, and had gone even to
Mexico. In the Margrave household it was always spoken of as "the car."
Its cook and porter were kept on the pay-roll of the company, but when
they were not on active service in the car, one of them drove the
Margrave carriage, and the other opened the Margrave front door.

The Margrave house was one of the handsomest in Clarkson. Margrave had
not coursed in the orbits of luminaries greater than himself without
acquiring wisdom. When he built a house he turned the whole matter over
to a Boston architect with instructions to go ahead just as if a
gentleman had employed him; he did not want a house which his neighbors
could say was exactly what any one would expect of the Margraves.
Clarkson was proud of the Margrave house, which was better than the
Porter house, though it lacked the setting of the Porter grounds. The
architect had done everything; Margrave kept his own hands off and sent
his wife and Mabel abroad to stay until it was ready for occupancy. When
the house was nearly completed Margrave took Warry Raridan up to see it
and displayed with pride a large and handsomely furnished library whose
ample shelves were devoid of books.

"Now, Warry," he said, "I want books for this house and I want 'em
right. I never read any books, and I never expect to, and I guess the
rest of the family ain't very literary, either. I want you to fill
these shelves, and I don't want trash. Are you on?"

The situation appealed to Warry and he had given his best attention to
Margrave's request. He took his time and bought a representative library
in good bindings. As Mrs. Margrave was a Roman Catholic, Warry thought
it well that theological literature should be represented. Mrs.
Margrave's parish priest, dining early at the new home, contemplated the
"libery," as its owner called it, with amazement.

"Ain't they all there, Father Donovan?" asked Margrave. "I hope you like
my selection."

"Couldn't be better," declared the priest, "if I'd picked them myself."
He had taken down a volume of a rare edition of Cornelius a Lapide and
passed his hand over the Latin title page with a scholar's satisfaction.

Mabel had declined to go to the convent which her mother selected for
her; convents were not fashionable; and she herself selected Tyringham
because she had once met a Tyringham graduate who was the most "stylish"
girl she had ever seen. Since her return from school she had found it
convenient to abandon, as far as possible, the church of her baptism.
There had been no other Roman Catholics at her school; the Episcopal
church was the official spiritual channel of Tyringham; and she brought
home a pretty Anglican prayer book, and attended early masses with her
mother only to the end that she might go later to the services of St.
Paul's, to the scandal of Father Donovan, and somewhat to the sneaking
delight of her father. Margrave held that religion of whatever kind was
a matter for women, and that they were entitled to their whim about it.

Tyringham is, it is well known, a place where girls of the proper
instinct and spirit acquire a manner that is everywhere unmistakable.
Mabel had given new grace and impressiveness to Tyringham itself; she
touched nothing that she did not improve, and she came home with an
ambition to give tone to Clarkson society. A great phrase with Mabel was
The Men; this did not mean the _genus homo_ in any philosophical
abstraction, but certain young gentlemen that followed much in her
train. There were a few young women who were much in Mabel's company and
who conscientiously imitated Mabel's ways. All the devices and desires
of Mabel's heart tended toward one consummation, and that was the
destruction of monotony.

Mabel had announced to a few of her cronies that she would show Evelyn
Porter how things were done; and as the Country Club was new, she chose
it as the place for her exhibition. Mabel was two years older than
Evelyn; they had never been more than casually acquainted, and now that
Evelyn's college days were over,--Mabel had "finished" several years
before,--and they were to live in the same town, it seemed expedient to
the older girl to take the initiative, to the end that their respective
positions in the community might be definitely fixed. Evelyn's name
carried far more prestige than Mabel's; the Margraves had not been in
the Clarkson Blue Book at all, until Mabel came home from school and
demonstrated her right to enlistment among the elect.

She dressed herself as sumptuously as she dared for a morning call and
drove the highest trap that Clarkson had ever seen up Porter Hill. The
man beside her was the only correctly liveried adjunct of any Clarkson
stable,--at least this was Mabel's opinion. Whatever people said of
Mabel and her ways, they could not deny that her clothes were good,
though they were usually a trifle pronounced in color and cut. She wore
about her neck a long, thin chain from which dangled a silver heart.
Mabel's was the largest that could be found at any Chicago jeweler's.
Its purpose in Mabel's case was to convey to the curious the impression
that there was a photograph of a young man inside. This was no fraud on
Mabel's part, for she carried in this trinket the photograph of a
popular actor, whose pictures were purchasable anywhere in the country
at twenty-five cents each. While Mabel waited for Evelyn to appear, she
threw open her new driving coat, which forced the season a trifle, and
studied the furnishings of the Porter parlor, criticising them
adversely. She was not clear in her mind whether she should call Evelyn
"Miss Porter" or not. Clarkson people usually said "Evelyn Porter" when
speaking of her. In Mabel's own case they all said "Mabel."

When Evelyn came into the parlor she seemed very tall to Mabel, and
impulse solved the problem of how to address her.

"Good morning, Miss Porter."

She gave her hand to Evelyn, thrusting it out straight before her, yet
hanging back from it archly as if in rebuke of her own forwardness. This
was decidedly Tyringhamesque, and was only one of the many amiable and
useful things she had learned at Miss Alton's school.

Mabel sat up very straight in her chair when she talked, and played
with the silver heart.

"I didn't ask for the others, as it's a wretchedly indecent hour to be
making a call."

"Oh, the girls are up and about," said Evelyn. "I shall be glad--"

"Oh, please don't trouble to call them! I came on an errand. You know
the Country Club has just taken a new lease of life. Have you been out
yet? It's a bit crude"--this phrase was taught as a separate course at
Tyringham--"but there's the making of a lovely place there."

"Yes, I've barely seen it. I went out the other day to look at the golf
course. The golf wave seems to be sweeping the country."

"Do you play?"

"A little; we had a course near the college that we used."

"You college girls are awfully athletic. I'm crazy about golf. I thought
it might be good sport to ask a few girls and some of the men to go to
the club for supper,--we really couldn't have dinner there, you know.
This heavenly weather won't last always. We'll get a drag and Captain
Wheelock will see that I don't drive you into trouble. He's a very safe
whip, you know, if I'm not; and we'll come back in the moonlight. This
includes your guests, of course."

"That will be delightful," said Evelyn. "I'm sure we'll all be glad to
go. I'm anxious to have the girls see as much as possible. I want them
to be favorably impressed, and this will be an event."

When Mabel had taken herself off, Evelyn returned to the tower where
Belle Marshall and Annie Warren awaited her. These young women were
lounging in the low window-seat exchanging reminiscences of college
days.

"It was Mabel Margrave," explained Evelyn. "She's asked us to go
coaching with her to the Country Club and have supper there and I took
the liberty of accepting for you."

"What's she like?" asked Annie.

"Tyringham," said Evelyn succinctly.

"Oh! your words affect me strangely, child," drawled Belle, casting up
her eyes in a pretended imitation of the Tyringham manner.

"How are her _a's_?" asked Annie.

"Broader than the Atlantic. I think she wants to patronize me. She's a
real Tyringham in that she thinks us college women very slow."

"Well, they do have a style," said Belle, sighing. "You can always tell
one of Miss Alton's girls."

"Yes, there's no doubt about that," retorted Annie coolly. She had taken
her education seriously and was disposed to look down upon the product
of fashionable boarding schools.

"Cheer up! The worst is yet to come," declared Evelyn. "You'd better not
encourage the idea here that we are different from young women of any
other sort. I've got to live here! I'm going to be pretty lonely too,
the first thing you know, after you desert me."

"You'll have plenty of chances to root for the college," suggested
Belle. "You won't have anything like the time I'll have. In Virginia we
have traditions that I've got to reconcile myself to, in some way; out
here, you can start even."

"Yes, and we have the Tyringham type, and a few of the convent sort, and
a few of the co-eds to combat."

"Well, there's nothing so radically wrong with the co-eds, is there?"
asked Annie, who believed in education for its own sake.

"Only the ones that want to go in for politics and that sort of thing.
There's a lady--I said lady--doctor of philosophy here in town who
casually invited me to become a candidate for school commissioner a few
weeks ago."

"I'm not sure that you oughtn't to have done it," said Annie, "assuming
that you declined. It would have been a good stroke for alma mater."

"No; that's what it wouldn't have been," said Evelyn seriously. "If you
and I believe that college education is good for women, we'd better
suppress this notion that's abroad in the world that college makes a
woman different. I hold that we're not necessarily unlike our sisters of
the convent, or the Tyringham teach-you-how-to-enter-a-room variety."
Evelyn drew herself up with an oratorical gesture and inflection. "I'm
here to defend my rights as a human being--"

"You will be hit with a pillow in a minute," remarked Belle, rising and
preparing to make her threat good. "Let's talk about what to wear to
Lady Tyringham's party."



CHAPTER XV

AT THE COUNTRY CLUB


To show that she was not limited to her own particular set in her choice
of guests, Mabel had asked Raridan, whom she wished to know better, and
Wheaton, who had danced with her at the carnival ball, to be of her
party. Chaperons were tolerated but not required in Clarkson. For this
reason Mabel had thought it wise to ask Mrs. Whipple, whom she wished to
impress; and as she liked to surprise her fellow citizens, it was worth
while in this instance to yield something to the _convenances_. The
general was too old for such nonsense; but he was willing to sacrifice
his wife, and she went, giving as her excuse for taking "that Margrave
girl's bait," that she was doing it in Evelyn's interest.

The coach rolled with loud yodeling to the Porter door, where there was
much laughing and bantering as the guests settled into their places.
When the locked wheels ground the hillside and the horn was bravely
blown by an admirer of Mabel's from Keokuk, it was clear to every one
that Timothy Margrave's daughter was achieving another triumph. The
young man from Keokuk was zealous with the horn; a four-in-hand was not
often seen in the streets of Clarkson, albeit this same vehicle was
always to be had from the leading liveryman, and town and country turned
admiring eyes on the party as the coach rolled along in the golden haze
of early October. The sun warmed the dry air; and far across the
Missouri flats its light fell mildly upon yellow bluffs where the clay
was exposed in broad surfaces which held the light. The foliage of the
hills beyond the river was lit with color in many places; a shower in
the morning had freshened the green things of earth, giving them a new,
brief lease of life, and there was no dust in the highways. In such a
day the dying year bends benignantly to earth and is fain to loiter in
the ways of youth.

The paint was still fresh in the club house, which was a long bungalow,
set in a clump of cottonwoods. There was an amplitude of veranda, and
the rooms within were roughly furnished in Texas pine. The older people
of the town looked upon the club with some suspicion as something new
and untried. The younger element was just beginning to know the
implements and vocabulary of golf. The first tee was only a few feet
from the veranda, so that a degree of heroism and Christian resignation
was essential in those who began their game under the eyes of a full
gallery. There were the usual members of both sexes who talked a good
deal about their swing without really having any worth mentioning; and
there were others more given to reading the golf news in the golf papers
at the club house, than to playing, to the end that they might discuss
the game volubly without the discomfort of acquiring practical
knowledge.

The walls of the dining-room had not been smoothed or whitened. They
were hung with prints which ranged in subject from golf to Gibson girls.
Mabel had supplemented the meager furnishings of the club pantry with
embellishments from her own house, and had given her own touch to the
table. As her touch carried a certain style, her crystal and silver
shone to good advantage under the lamps which she had substituted for
the bare incandescents of the room. The young man from Keokuk who was,
just then, as the gossips said, "devoted" to Mabel, had supplied a
prodigal array of flowers, ordered by telegraph from Chicago for the
occasion. The table was served by colored men, who had been previously
subsidized by Mabel, in violation of the club rules; and they
accordingly made up in zeal what they lacked in skill.

Mabel talked a great deal about informality, and drove her guests into
the dining-room without any attempt at order, and they found their
name-cards with the surprises and exclamations which usually
characterize that proceeding.

Captain Wheelock sat at the end of the oblong table opposite Mabel, who
placed the man from Keokuk at her right and Raridan at her left. Evelyn
was between Raridan and one of Mabel's "men," who was evidently
impressed by this propinquity. He was the Assistant General Something of
one of the railroads and owned a horse that was known as far away from
home as the Independence, Iowa, track. There was a great deal of talking
back and forth, and Evelyn told herself that it did not much matter that
her guests had fallen into rather poor hands. She was quite sure that
Captain Wheelock, who liked showy girls, would not be much interested
in Annie Warren, who was distinctly not showy. Belle Marshall, with her
drollery, was not likely to be dismayed by Wheaton's years and poverty
of small talk. Belle was not easily abashed, and when the others paused
now and then under the spell of her dialect, which seemed funny when she
did not mean it to be so, she was not distressed. She had grown used to
having people listen to her drawl, and to complimentary speeches from
"you No'the'ne's" on her charming accent. Evelyn found that it was
unnecessary to talk to Raridan; he and Mabel seemed to get on very well
together, and in her pique at him, Evelyn was glad to have it so.

Mabel's supper was bountiful, and Raridan, who thought he knew the
possibilities of the club's cuisine, marveled at the chicken, fried in
Maryland style, and at the shoestring potatoes and flaky rolls, which
marked an advance on anything that the club kitchen had produced before.
There was champagne from the stock which the Margraves carried in their
car, and it foamed and bubbled in the Venetian glasses that Mabel had
brought from home, at a temperature that Mabel herself had regulated.
Captain Wheelock made much of frequently lifting his glass to Mabel in
imaginary toasts. The man from Keokuk drank his champagne with awe; he
had heard that Mabel Margrave was a "tank," and he thought this a
delightful thing to be said of a girl. Mrs. Whipple noted with wonder
Mabel's capacity, while most of the others tried not to be conscious of
it. Mabel grew a little boisterous at times through the dinner, but no
one dared think that it was the champagne. Mrs. Whipple remembered with
satisfaction that she had no son to marry Mabel. There were, she
considered, certain things which one escapes by being childless, and a
bibulous daughter-in-law was one of them.

Attention was arrested for a time by a colloquy between Mrs. Whipple and
Captain Wheelock as to the merits of army girls compared with their
civilian sisters; and the whole table gave heed. Wheelock maintained
that the army girl was the only cosmopolitan type of American girl, and
Mrs. Whipple combated the idea. She took the ground that American girls
are never provincial; that they all wear the same clothes, though, she
admitted, they wore them with a difference; and that the army girl as a
distinct type was a myth.

"My furniture," she said, "has followed the flag as much as anybody's;
but the army girl is only a superstition among fledgling lieutenants. On
my street are people from Maine, Indiana and Georgia. You don't have to
go to the army to find cosmopolitan young women; they are the first
generation after the founders of all this western country. Right here in
the Missouri valley are the real Americans, made by the mingling of
elements from everywhere. Am I stepping on anybody's toes?" she asked,
looking around suddenly.

"Oh, don't mind us," drawled Belle, turning with a mournful air to
Annie.

"We've counting on you to marry and settle amongst us," said Mrs.
Whipple palliatingly.

"Gentlemen!" exclaimed Raridan, looking significantly from one man to
another; "destiny is pointing to us!"

"You're in no danger, Mr. Raridan," Belle flung back at him. "Miss
Warren and I can go back where we came from."

Raridan's rage at Evelyn had spent itself; he was ready for peace. She
had been politely indifferent to him at the table, to the mischievous
joy of Belle Marshall, who had an eye for such little bits of comedy. As
they all stood about after supper in the outer hall, Evelyn chatted with
Wheaton, and continued to be oblivious of Raridan, who watched her over
the shoulder of one of Mabel's particular allies and waited for a
tête-à-tête. Warry had the skill of long practice in such matters; there
were men whom it was difficult to dislodge, but Wheaton was not one of
them. He took advantage of a movement toward benches and chairs to
attach himself to Evelyn and to shunt Wheaton into Belle's company,--a
manoeuver which that young woman understood perfectly and did not enjoy.
There was something so open and casual in Warry's tactics that the
beholder was likely to be misled by them. Evelyn was half disposed to
thwart him; he had been distinctly disagreeable at the ball, and had not
appeared at the house since. She knew what he wanted, and she had no
intention of making his approaches easy. Some of the others moved toward
the verandas, and Warry led the way thither, while he talked on, telling
some bits of news about a common acquaintance from whom he had just
heard. It was cool outside and she sent him for her cape, and then they
walked the length of the long promenade. He paused several times to
point out to her some of the improvements which were to be made in the
grounds the following spring. This also was a part of the game; it
served to interrupt the walk; and he spoke of the guests at the Hill,
and said that it was too bad they had not come when things were
livelier. Then he stood silent for a moment, busy with his cigarette.
Evelyn gathered her golf cape about her, leaned against a pillar and
tapped the floor with her shoe.

"You haven't been particularly attentive to them, have you?" she said.
"I thought you really liked them."

"Of course I like them, but I've been very busy." Warry stared ahead of
him across the dim starlit golf grounds.

"That's very nice," she said, still tapping the floor and looking past
him into the night. "Industry is always an excuse for any one. But, come
to think of it, you were very good in showing them about at the ball. I
appreciate it, I'm sure."

It was of his conduct at the ball that he wished to speak; she knew it,
and tried to make it hard for him.

"See here, Evelyn, you know well enough why I kept away from you that
night. I told you before the ball that I didn't,--well, I didn't like
it! If I hadn't cared a whole lot it wouldn't have made any
difference--but that show was so tawdry and hideous--"

Evelyn readjusted her cape and sat down on the veranda railing.

"Oh, I was tawdry, was I?" she asked, sweetly. "I knew some one would
tell me the real truth about it if I waited."

"I didn't come here to have you make fun of me," he said, bitterly. He
imagined that since the ball he had been suffering a kind of martyrdom.

Evelyn could not help laughing.

"Poor Warry!" she exclaimed in mock sympathy. "What a hard time you
make yourself have! Just listen to Mr. Foster laughing on the other side
of the porch; it must be much cheerfuller over there." Mr. Foster was
the young man from Keokuk; he wore a secret society pin in his cravat,
and Warry hated him particularly.

"What an ass that fellow is!" he blurted, savagely. He had just lighted
a fresh cigarette, and threw away the stump of the discarded one with an
unnecessary exercise of strength.

"But he's cheerful, and has very nice manners!" said Evelyn. Warry was
still looking away from her petulantly. Her attitude toward him just now
was that of an older sister toward a young offending brother. He felt
that the interview lacked dignity on his side, and he swung around
suddenly.

"You know we can't go on this way. You know I wouldn't offend you for
anything in the world,--that if I've been churlish it's simply because I
care a great deal; because it has hurt me to find you getting mixed up
with the wrong people. If you knew what your coming home meant to me,
how much I've been counting on it! and then to find that you wouldn't
meet me on our old friendly basis, and didn't want any suggestions from
me."

He had, almost unconsciously, been expecting her to interrupt him; but
she did not do so, and left him to flounder along as best he could. When
he paused helplessly, she said, still like a forbearing sister:

"I didn't know you could be so tragic, Warry. The first thing I know
you'll be really quarreling with me, and I don't intend to have that.
Why don't you change your tactics and be a good little boy? You've been
spoiled by too much indulgence of late. Now I don't intend to spoil you
a bit. You were terribly rude,--I didn't think you capable of it, and
all because I wouldn't offend my father and his friends and other very
good people, by refusing to take part in the harmless exercises of that
perfectly ridiculous but useful society, the Knights of Midas. That's
all over now; and the sun comes up every morning just as it used to. You
and I live in the same small town and it's too small to quarrel in."

She paused and laughed, seeing how he was swaying between the impulse to
accept her truce and the inclination to parley further. He had been
persuading himself that he loved her, and he had found keen joy in the
misery into which he had worked himself, thinking that there was
something ideal and noble in his attitude. He did not know Evelyn as
well as he thought he did; when she came home he had imagined that all
would go smoothly between them; he had meant to monopolize her, and to
dictate to her when need be. He had assumed that they would meet on a
plane that would be accessible to no other man in Clarkson; and his
conceit was shaken to find that she was disposed to be generously
hospitable toward all. It was this that enraged him particularly against
Wheaton, who stood quite as well with her, he assured himself, as he
did. Her beauty and sweetness seemed to mock him; if he did not love her
now as he thought he did, he at least was deeply appreciative of the
qualities which set her apart from other women.

There are men like Raridan, who are devoid of evil impulse, and who are
swayed and touched by the charm of women through an excess in themselves
of that nicer feeling which we call feminine, usually in depreciation,
as if it were contemptible. But there is something appealing and fine
about it; it is not altogether a weakness; doers of the world's
worthiest tasks have been notable possessors of this quality. Raridan
had a true sense of personal honor, and yet his imagination was strong
enough to play tricks with his conscience. He had argued himself into a
mood of desperate love; he felt that he was swayed by passion; but it
was of jealousy and not of love.

Evelyn walked a little way toward the door and he followed gloomily
along. He called her name and she paused. They were not alone on the
veranda, and she did not want a scene. Raridan began again:

"Why, ever since we were children together I've looked forward to this
time. It always seemed the most natural thing in the world that I should
love you. When you went away to college, I never had any fear that it
would make any difference; when I saw you down there you were always
kind,--"

"Of course I was kind," she interrupted; "and I don't mean to be
anything else now."

"You know what I mean," he urged, though he did not know himself what he
meant. "I had no idea that your going away would make any difference; if
I had dreamed of it, I should have spoken long ago. And when I went to
see you those few times at college--"

"Yes, you came and I was awfully glad to see you, too; but how many
women's colleges have you visited in these four years? There was that
Brooklyn girl you were devoted to at Bryn Mawr; and that pretty little
French Canadian you rushed at Wellesley,--but of course I don't pretend
to know the whole catalogue of them. That was all perfectly proper, you
understand; I'm not complaining--"

"No; I wish you were," he said, bitterly. If he had known it, he was
really enjoying this; there was, perhaps, at the bottom of his heart, a
little vanity which these reminiscences appealed to. He rallied now:

"But you could afford to have me see other girls," he said. "You ought
to know--you should have known all the time that you were the only one
in all the world for me."

"That's a trifle obvious, Warry;" and she laughed. "You're not living up
to your reputation for subtlety of approach."

"Evelyn"--his voice trembled; he was sure now that he was very much in
love; "I tried to tell you before the carnival that the reason I didn't
want you to appear in the ball was that I cared a great deal,--so very
much,--that I love you!"

She stepped back, drawing the cape together at her throat.

"Please, Warry," she said pleadingly, "don't spoil everything by talking
of such things. I wished that we might be the best of friends, but you
insist on spoiling everything."

"Oh, I know," he broke in, "that I spoil things, that I'm a failure--a
ne'er-do-well." It was not love that he was hungry for half so much as
sympathy; they are often identical in such natures as his.

She bent toward him, as she always did when she talked earnestly, and as
frankly as though she were speaking to a girl.

"Warry Raridan, it's exactly as I told you a moment ago. You've been
spoiled, and it shows in a lot of ways. Why, you're positively
childish!" She laughed softly. He had thrust his hands into his pockets
and was feeling foolish. He wanted to make another effort to maintain
his position as a serious lover, but was not equal to it. She went on,
with growing kindness in her tone: "Now, I'll say to you frankly that I
didn't at all like being mixed up in the Knights of Midas ball; if you
had been as wise as I have always thought, you might have known it. You
ought to have shown your interest in me by helping me; but you chose to
take a very ungenerous and unkind attitude about it; you helped to make
it harder for me than it might have been. I relied on you as an old
friend, but you deserted me at your first chance to show that you really
had my interests at heart. If you had cared about me, you certainly
wouldn't have acted so."

"Why, Evelyn, I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world; if I had
understood--"

"But that's the trouble," she interrupted, still very patiently. She saw
that she had struck the right chord in appealing to his chivalry, and in
conceding as much as she had by the reference to their old comradeship.
She had never liked him better than she did now; but she certainly did
not love him.

She had directed the talk safely into tranquil channels, and he was
growing happier, and, if he had known it, relieved besides. He wanted to
be nearer to her than any one else, and he was touched by her
declaration that she had needed him, and that he had failed her.

"But sometime--you will not forget--"

"Oh, sometime! we are not going to bother about that now. Just at
present it's getting too cool for the open air and we must go inside."

"But is it all right? You will pardon my offenses, won't you? And you
won't let any one else--"

"Oh, you must be careful, and very good," she answered lightly, and
gathered up her skirts in her hand. "We must go in, and," she looked
down at him, laughing, "there must be a smile on the face of the tiger!"

A fire of piñon logs, brought from the Colorado hills, blazed in the
wide fireplace at the end of the hall, and Evelyn and Warry joined the
circle which had formed about it.

"Has the moon gone down?" asked Captain Wheelock, as a place was made
for them.

"Not necessarily," said Raridan coolly. "Anybody but you would know that
the moon isn't due yet."

"It was getting cool outside," said Evelyn, finding a seat in the
ingle-nook.

"Oh!" exclaimed the captain significantly, and looking hard at Raridan.
"Poor Mr. Raridan! The weather bureau has hardly reported a single frost
thus far, and yet--and yet!" The others laughed, and Evelyn looked at
him reproachfully.

"You might try the weather conditions yourself," said Raridan easily,
wishing to draw the fire to himself. "But at your age a man must be
careful of the night air."

He and Wheelock abused each other until the others begged them to
desist; then some one attacked the piano and a few couples began to
dance. Mabel was anxious to stimulate the interest of the young man from
Keokuk, who had not thus far manifested sufficient courage to lead her
off for a tête-à-tête. He had proved a little slow, and she sought to
treat him cruelly by seeming very much interested in Raridan, who sat
down to talk to her. Warry was certainly much more distinguished than
any other young man in Clarkson,--a conclusion which was, in her mind,
based on the fact that Warry lived without labor. The pilgrim from
Keokuk was the vice-president of an elevator company, and it seemed to
her much nobler to live on the income of property that had been acquired
by one's ancestors than to be immediately concerned in earning a
livelihood. She and Warry took several turns about the hall to the waltz
which Belle Marshall was playing, and when the music ceased suddenly
they were in a far corner of the room. The chain on which her
heart-pendant hung caught on a button of Raridan's coat as they stopped,
and he took off his glasses to find and loosen the tangle, while she
stood in a kind of triumphant embarrassment, knowing that Evelyn could
see them from her corner by the fire. After the chain had been freed she
led the way to the window seat and sat down with a great show of fatigue
from her dance.

"A girl that wears her heart on a chain is likely to have daws pecking
at it, isn't she?" suggested Raridan, wiping his glasses, and looking
at her with the vagueness of near-sighted eyes. This was, he knew,
somewhat flirtatious; but he could no more help saying such things to
young women than he could help his good looks. The fact that he had a
few moments before been making love to another girl, with what he
believed at the time to be real ardor, did not deter him. Mabel was a
girl, and therefore pretty speeches were to be made to her. She was
unmistakably handsome, and a handsome girl, in particular, deserves a
man's tribute of admiration. Mabel was not, however, used to Raridan's
methods; the men she had known best did not paraphrase Shakspere to her.
But it was very agreeable to be sitting thus with the most eligible and
brilliant young man of Clarkson. Evelyn Porter, she could see, was
entertaining the young man from Keokuk, and the situation pleased her.

"Oh, the chain is strong enough to hold it," she answered, running the
slight strands through her fingers, and looking up archly. Her black
eyes were fine; she exercised a kind of witchery with them.

"Lucky chap--the victim inside," continued Raridan, indicating the
heart.

"Well, that depends on the way you look at it."

"I hope he knows," continued Warry. "It would be a shame for a man to
enjoy that kind of distinction and not know it."

Mabel held the silver heart in one hand and stroked it carefully with
the other. Most of the men she knew would be capable of taking the
heart, even at the cost of a scuffle, and looking into it. She felt safe
with Raridan. The young romantic actor whose picture enjoyed the
distinction of a place in the trinket did not know, of course, and would
have been bored if he had.

"It would hardly be fair to carry his picture around if he didn't know
it, would it?" asked Mabel.

"Of course not," said Warry; "I didn't imagine that you bought it!"

"It wouldn't be nice for you to," said Mabel. The fact that she had
acquired it for twenty-five cents at a local bookstore did not trouble
her.

The music had begun again, but they continued talking, though others
were dancing. Wheaton had joined Evelyn in the ingle-nook; and Evelyn
was aware, without looking, that Mabel was making the most of her
opportunity with Raridan; and she knew, too, that he was not averse to a
bit of by-play with her. She knew that if she really cared for him it
would hurt her to see him thus talking to another girl, but she was
conscious of no pang. Her heart burned with anger for a moment at the
thought that he must think her conquest assured; but this was, she
remembered, "Warry's way," falling back on a phrase that was often
spoken of him. She was a little tired, and experienced a feeling of
relief in sitting here with Wheaton and listening to his commonplace
talk, which could be followed without effort.

Wheaton was finding himself much at ease at Mabel's party, though he
questioned its propriety; he had a great respect for conventions. He was
well aware that there were differences between Evelyn Porter and her
friends, and Miss Margrave and those whom he knew to be her intimates.
Miss Porter was much finer in her instincts and her intelligence; he
would have been puzzled for an explanation of the points of variance,
but he knew that they existed. The young man from Keokuk had moved away
and left him with Evelyn, and it was certainly very pleasant to be
sitting in a quiet corner with a girl whom everybody admired, and who
was, he felt sure, easily the most distinguished girl in town. He had
arrived late, to be sure, in the first social circle of Clarkson, but he
had found the gate open, and he was suffered to enter and make himself
at home just as thoroughly as any other man might--as completely so, for
instance, as Warrick Raridan, who had wealth and the prestige of an old
family behind him.

"I'm sure we shall all get much pleasure out of the Country Club," said
Evelyn, who sat on the low bench between him and the fire.

"Yes, and the house is pretty good, considering the small amount of
money that was put into it."

"Another case where good taste is better than money. We Americans have
been so slow about such things; but now there seems to be widespread
interest in outdoor life." Wheaton knew only vaguely that there was, but
he was learning that it was not necessary to know much about things to
be able to talk of them; so he acquiesced, and they fell to discussing
golf, or at least Evelyn did, with the zeal of the fresh convert.

"I think I'll have to take it up. You make it sound very attractive."

"The Scotch owed us something good," said Evelyn; "they gave us oatmeal
for breakfast, and made life unendurable to that extent. But we can
forgive them if they take us out of doors and get us away from offices
and houses. Our western business men are incorrigible, though. The
farther west you go, the more hours a day men put into business."

Evelyn soon sent Wheaton to bring Mrs. Whipple and Annie Warren, who
were stranded in a corner, and they became spectators of the pranks of
some of the others, who had now gathered about the piano, where Captain
Wheelock had undertaken to lead in the singing of popular airs. The
singers were not taking their efforts very seriously. All knew some of
the words of "Annie Carroll," but none knew all, so that their efforts
were marked by scattering good-will rather than by unanimity of
knowledge. When one lost the words and broke down, they all laughed in
derision. Mabel and Raridan had joined the circle, and Warry entered
into the tentative singing with the spirit he always brought to any
occasion. Mabel, who imported all the new songs from New York, gave
"Don't Throw Snowballs at the Soda-water Man" as a solo, and did it
well--almost too well. Occasionally one of the group at the piano turned
to demand that those who lingered by the fireside join in the singing,
but Wheaton was shy of this hilarity, and was comfortable in his belief
that Evelyn was showing a preference for him in electing to remain
aloof. He did not understand that her evident preference was due to a
feeling that he was older than the rest and too stiff and formal for
their frivolity.

Mrs. Whipple made little effort to talk to Wheaton, though she
occasionally threw out some comment on the singers to Evelyn. Wheaton
did not amuse Mrs. Whipple. He had only lately dawned on her horizon,
and she had already appraised him and filed her impression away in her
memory. He was not, she had determined, a complex character; she knew,
as perfectly as if he had made a full confession of himself to her, his
new ambitions, his increasing conceit and belief in himself. She had
been more successful in preventing marriages than in effecting them, and
she sat watching him with a quizzical expression in her eyes; for there
might be danger in him for this girl, though it had not appeared. But
when her eyes rested on Evelyn she seemed to find an answer that allayed
her fears; Evelyn was hardly a girl that would need guardianship. As the
noise from the group at the piano rose to the crescendo at which it
broke into laughing discord, Evelyn met suddenly the gaze with which
this old friend had been regarding her, and gave back a nod and smile
that were in themselves unconsciously reassuring.

Some one suggested presently that if they were to drive home in the
moonlight they should be going; and the coach soon swung away from the
door into the moon's floodtide. The wind was still, as if in awe of the
lighted world. The town lay far below in a white pool. Mabel again took
the reins, and as the coach rumbled and crunched over the road, light
hearts had recourse to song; but even the singing was subdued, and the
trumpeter's note failed miserably when the horses' hoofs struck smartly
on the streets of the town.



CHAPTER XVI

THE LADY AND THE BUNKER


The afternoon invited the eyes to far, blue horizons, and as Evelyn
stood up and shook loosely in her hand the sand she had taken from the
box, she contemplated the hazy distances with satisfaction before
bending to make her tee. Her visitors had left; Grant had gone east to
school, and she was driven in upon herself for amusement. Her movements
were lithe and swift, and when once the ball had been placed in position
there were only two points of interest for her in the landscape--the
ball itself and the first green. The driver was a part of herself, and
she stepped back and swung it to freshen her memory of its
characteristics. The caddy watched her in silent joy; these were not the
fussy preliminaries that he had been used to in young ladies who played
on the Country Club links; he kept one eye on the player and backed off
down the course. The sleeves of her crimson flannel shirt-waist were
turned up at the wrists; the loose end of her cravat fluttered in the
soft wind, that was like a breath of mid-May. She addressed the ball,
standing but slightly bent above it and glancing swiftly from tee to
target, then swung with the certainty and ease of the natural golf
player. Her first ball was a slice, but it fell seventy-five yards down
the course; she altered her position slightly and tried again, but she
did not hit the ball squarely, and it went bounding over the grass. At
the third attempt her ball was caught fairly and sped straight down the
course at a level not higher than her head. The caddy trotted to where
it lay; it was on a line with the one hundred and fifty yard mark. The
player motioned him to get the other balls. She had begun her game.

The fever was as yet in its incipient stage in Clarkson; players were
few; the greens were poorly kept, and there were bramble patches along
the course which were of material benefit to the golf ball makers. But
it was better than nothing, John Saxton said to himself this bright
October afternoon, as he stood at the first tee, listening to the
cheerful discourse of his caddy, who lingered to study the equipment of
a visitor whom he had not served before.

"Anybody out?" asked John, trying the weight of several drivers.

"Lady," said the boy succinctly. He pointed across the links to where
Evelyn was distinguishable as she doubled back on the course.

"Good player?"

"Great--for a girl," the boy declared. "She's the best lady player
here."

"Maybe we can pick up some points from her game," said Saxton, smiling
at the boy's enthusiasm. He had been very busy and much away from town,
and this was his first day of golf since he had come to Clarkson.
Raridan had declined to accompany him; Raridan was, in fact, at work
just now, having been for a month constant in attendance upon his
office; and Saxton had left him barricaded behind a pile of law books.
Saxton was slow in his golf, as in all things, and he gave a good deal
of study to his form. He played steadily down the course, noting from
time to time the girl that was the only other occupant of the links. She
was playing toward him on the parallel course home, and while he had not
recognized her, he could see that she was a player of skill, and he
paused several times to watch the freedom of her swing and to admire the
pretty picture she made as she followed her ball rapidly and with
evident absorption.

He was taking careful measurement for a difficult approach shot from the
highest grass on the course, when he heard men calling and shouting in
the road which ran by one of the boundary fences of the club property. A
drove of cattle was coming along the road, driven, as Saxton saw, by
several men on horseback. It was a small bunch bound for the city.
Several obstreperous steers showed an inclination to bolt at the
crossroads, but the horsemen brought them back with much yelling and a
great shuffling of hoofs which sent a cloud of dust into the quiet air.
Saxton bent again with his lofter, when his caddy gave a cry.

"Hi! He's making for the gate!"

One of the steers had bolted and plunged down the side road toward the
gate of the club grounds, which stood open through the daytime.

"You'd better trot over there and close the gate," said Saxton, seeing
that the cattle were excited.

The boy ran for the gate, which lay not more than a hundred yards
distant, and the steer which had broken away and been reclaimed with so
much difficulty in the roadway bolted for it at almost the same moment.
Saxton, seeing that a collision was imminent, began trotting toward the
gate himself. The steer could not see the boy who was racing for the
gate from the inside, and boy and beast plunged on toward it.

"Run for the fence," called Saxton.

The boy gained the fence and clambered to the top of it. The steer
reached the gate, and, seeing open fields beyond, bounded in and made
across the golf course at full speed. He dashed past Saxton, who stopped
and watched him, his club still in his hand. The steer seemed pleased to
have gained access to an ampler area, and loped leisurely across the
links. Evelyn, manoeuvering to escape a bunker that lay formidably
before her, had not yet seen the animal and was not aware of the
invasion of the course until her caddy, who, expecting one of her long
plays, had posted himself far ahead, came plunging over the bunker's
ridge with a clatter of bag and clubs. The steer, following him with an
amiable show of interest, paused at the bunker and viewed the boy and
the young woman in the red shirt-waist uneasily. One of the drovers was
in hot pursuit, galloping across the course toward the runaway member of
his herd, lariat in hand. Hearing an enemy in the rear, the steer broke
over the lightly packed barricade, and Evelyn's red shirt-waist proving
the most brilliant object on the horizon, he made toward it at a lively
pace.

The caddy was now in full flight, pulling the strap of Evelyn's bag over
his head and scattering the clubs as he fled. A moment later he had
joined Saxton's caddy on top of the fence and the two boys viewed
current history from that point with absorption. Meanwhile Evelyn was
making no valiant stand. She gave a gasp of dismay and turned and ran,
for the drover was pushing the steer rapidly now, and was getting ready
to cast his lariat. He made a botch of it, however, and at the instant
of the rope's flight, his pony, poorly trained to the business, bucked
and tried to unseat his rider; and the drover swore volubly as he tried
to control him. The pony backed upon a putting green and bucked again,
this time dislodging his rider. Before the dazed drover could recover,
Saxton, who had run up behind him, sprang to the pony's head, and as the
animal settled on all fours again, leaped into the saddle and gathered
up bridle and lariat. The pony suddenly grew tired of making trouble, in
the whimsical way of his kind, and Saxton impelled him at a rapid lope
toward the steer. John was bareheaded and the sleeves of his outing
shirt were rolled to the elbows; he looked more like a polo player than
a cowboy.

Meanwhile Evelyn was running toward a bunker which stood across her
path; it was the only break in the level of the course that offered any
hope of refuge. She could hear the pounding of the steer's hoofs, and
less distinctly the pattering hoofbeat of the pony. She had had a long
run and was breathing hard. The bunker seemed the remotest thing in the
world as she ran down the course; then suddenly it rose a mile high, and
as she scaled its rough slope and sank breathlessly into the sand,
Saxton cast the lariat. With mathematical nicety the looped rope cut the
air and the noose fell about the broad horns of the Texan as his fore
feet struck the bunker. The pony stood with firmly planted hoofs,
supporting the taut rope as steadfastly as a rock. The owner of the pony
came panting up, and another of the drovers who had ridden into the
arena joined them.

"Here's your cow," said Saxton. The steer was, indeed, any one's for the
taking, as he was winded and the spirit had gone out of him. "You won't
need another rope on him; he'll follow the pony."

"You threw that rope all right," said the dismounted drover.

"An old woman taught me with a clothes line," said John, kicking his
feet out of the stirrups; "take your pony."

"Where's that girl?" asked one of the men.

"I guess she's all right," answered Saxton, walking toward the bunker.
"You'd better get your cow out of here; this isn't free range, you
know."

He mounted the bunker with a jump and looked anxiously down into the
sand-pit.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Saxton. You see I'm bunkered. Is it safe to come
out?"

"Is it you, Miss Porter?" said Saxton, jumping down into the sand. "Are
you hurt?"

"No; but I'll not say that I'm not scared." She was still panting from
her long run, and her cheeks were scarlet. She put up her hands to her
hair, which had tumbled loose. "This is really the wild West, after all;
and that was a very pretty throw you made."

"It seemed necessary to do something. But you couldn't have seen it?"

"Another case of woman's curiosity. Perhaps I ought to turn into a
pillar of salt. I peeped! I suppose it was in the hope that I might play
hide and seek with that wild beast as he came over after me, but you
stopped his flight just in time." She had restored her hair as she
talked. "Where is that caddy of mine?"

"Oh, the boys took to the fence to get a better view of the show.
They're coming up now."

Evelyn stood up quickly, and shook her skirt free of sand.

"I need hardly say that I'm greatly obliged to you," she said, giving
him her hand.

Saxton was relieved to find that she took the incident so coolly.

She was laughing; her color was very becoming, and John beamed upon her.
His face was of that blond type which radiates light and flushes into a
kind of sunburn with excitement. There was something very boyish about
John Saxton. The curves of his face were still those of youth; he had
never dared to encourage a mustache or beard, owing to a disinclination
to produce more than was necessary of the soft, silky hair which covered
his head abundantly. He had a straight nose, a firm chin and a brave
showing of square, white teeth. His mouth was his best feature, for it
expressed his good nature and a wish to be pleased,--a wish that shone
also in his blue eyes. John Saxton was determined to like life and
people; and he liked both just now.

"Are you entirely sound? Won't you have witch-hazel, arnica, brandy?"

"Oh, thanks; nothing. I've got my breath again and am all right."

"But they always sprain their ankles."

"Yes, but I'm not a romantic young person. I'll be sorry if that caddy
has lost my best driver."

"He's out on the battlefield now looking for it," said John, indicating
their two caddies, who were gathering up the lost implements.

"I think you're away," John added, musingly.

"Yes; for the club house."

"That's poor golf, to give up just because you're bunkered. And yet my
caddy said you were the greatest."

They walked over the course toward the club house, discussing their
encounter.

"What hole were you playing when the meek-eyed kine invaded the field?"

"Oh, I was doing very badly. I was only at the fourth, and breaking all
my records," said John. "I was glad of a diversion. The gentle
footprints of that steer didn't improve the quality of this course," he
added, looking about. The ground was soft from recent rains, and the
hoofs of the animal had dug into it and marred the turf.

"It's a rule of the club," said Evelyn, "that players must replace their
own divots. That can hardly be enforced against that ferocious beast."

"Hardly; but he was easily master of the game while he remained with
us." The caddies had recovered the scattered equipment of the players,
and were following, discussing the incidents of the busiest quarter of
an hour they had known in their golfing experience.

Evelyn turned suddenly upon John.

"Did I look very foolish?" she demanded.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do, Mr. Saxton. A woman always looks ridiculous when she
runs." She laughed. "I'm sure I must have looked so. But you couldn't
have seen me; you were pretty busy yourself just then."

"Well, of course, if I'm asked about it, I'll have to tell of your
sprinting powers; I'm not sure that you didn't lower a record."

"Oh, you're the hero of the occasion! I cut a sorry figure in it. I
suppose, though, that as the maiden in distress I'll get a little
glory--just a little."

"And your picture in the Sunday papers."

"Horrors, no! But you will appear on your fiery steed swinging the
lasso."

He threw up his hands.

"That would never do! It would ruin my social reputation."

"In Boston?"

"No; down there they'd like it. It would be proof positive of the
woolliness of the West. Golf playing interrupted by a herd of wild
cattle--cowboys, lassoes--Buffalo Bill effects. Down East they're always
looking for Western atmosphere."

"You don't dislike the West very much, do you?" asked Evelyn. "We aren't
so bad, do you think?"

"Dislike it?" John looked at her. He had never liked anything so much as
this place and hour. "I altogether love it," he declared; and then he
was conscious of having used a verb not usual in his vocabulary.

"And so you learned how to do all the cowboy tricks up in Wyoming?"
Evelyn went on. "I wish Annie Warren had seen that!" and she laughed;
it seemed to John that she was always laughing.

"I wasn't very much of a cowboy," John said. "That is, I wasn't very
good at it." He was an honest soul and did not want Evelyn Porter to
think that he was posing as a dramatic and cocksure character. "Roping a
cow is the easiest thing in the business, and then a tame, foolish,
domestic co-bos like that one!"

"Co-bos! If this is likely to happen again they ought to provide a box
of salt at every tee."

When Evelyn had gone into the club house, John gathered the caddies into
a corner and bestowed a dollar on each of them and promised them other
bounty if they maintained silence touching the events of the afternoon
in which he had participated. They and the drovers were the only
witnesses besides the more active participants, and he would have to
take chances with the drovers. Then, having bribed the boys, he also
threatened them. He was walking across the veranda when he met Evelyn,
whose horse he had already called for.

"If you're not driving, I'd be glad to have you share my cart."

"Thanks, very much," said John. "The street car would be rather a heavy
slump after this afternoon's gaiety."

"I spoiled your game and endangered your social reputation; I can hardly
do less."

John thought that she could hardly do more. He had known men whom girls
drove in their traps, but he had never expected to be enrolled in their
class. It was pleasant, just once, not to be walking in the highway and
taking the dust of other people's wheels--pleasant to find himself
tolerated by a pretty girl. She was prettier than any he had ever seen
at class day, or in the grand stands at football games, or on the
observation trains at New London, when he had gone alone, or with a
sober college classmate, to see the boat races.

Deep currents of happiness coursed through him which were not all
because of the October sunlight and the laughing talk of Evelyn Porter.
He had that sensation of pleasure, always a joy to a man of conscience,
which is his self-approval for labor well performed. He had worked
faithfully ever since he had come to Clarkson; he had traveled much,
visiting the properties which the Neponset Trust Company had confided to
his care; and he had already so adjusted them that they earned enough to
pay taxes and expenses. He had effected a few sales, at prices which the
Neponset's clients were glad to accept. He had never been so happy in
his work. He had rather grudgingly taken this afternoon off; but here he
was, laughing with Evelyn Porter over an amusing adventure that had
befallen them, and which, as they talked of it and kept referring to it,
seemed to establish between them a real comradeship. He wondered what
Raridan would say, and he resolved that he would not tell him of the
hasty termination of his golfing; probably Miss Porter would prefer not
to have the incident mentioned. He even thought that he would not tell
Raridan that she had driven him to town. It was not for him to interpose
between Warry Raridan, a man who had brought him the sweetest
friendship he had ever known, and the girl whom fate had clearly
appointed Warry to marry.

As they turned into the main highway leading townward, a trap came
rapidly toward them.

"Miss Margrave's trap," said Evelyn, as they espied it.

The figures were not yet distinguishable, though Mabel's belongings were
always unmistakable.

"Then that must be one of 'The Men'?"

John was angry at himself the moment he had spoken, for as the trap came
nearer there was no doubt of the identity of Mabel's companion. It was
Warry. Evelyn bowed and smiled as they passed. Mabel gave the quick nod
that she was introducing in Clarkson; Saxton and Raridan lifted their
hats.

"Miss Margrave has a lot of style; don't you think so, Mr. Saxton?"

"Apparently, yes; but I don't know her, you know;" and he wondered.

Warry Raridan's days were not all lucky. He had been keeping his office
with great fidelity of late. He had even found a client or two; and he
had determined to rebuke his critics by giving proof of his possession
of those staying qualities which they were always denying him. He had
been hard at work in his office this afternoon, when a note came to him
from Mabel, who begged that he would drive with her to the Country Club.
He had already thought of telephoning to Evelyn to ask her if she would
not go with him, but had dropped the idea when he remembered his new
resolutions; it was for Evelyn that he was at work now. But Mabel was a
friendly soul, and perfectly harmless. It certainly looked very
pleasant outside; the next citation in the authorities he was
consulting,--Sweetbriar _vs._ O'Neill, 84 N. Y., 26,--would lead him
over to the law library, which was a gloomy hole with wretched
ventilation. So he had given himself a vacation, with the best grace and
excuse in the world.



CHAPTER XVII

WARRY'S REPENTANCE


Saxton dined alone at the Clarkson Club, as he usually did, and went
afterward to his office, which he still maintained in the Clarkson
National Building. He had been studying the report of an engineering
expert on a Colorado irrigation scheme and he was trying to master and
correct its weaknesses. As he hung over the blue-prints and the pages of
figures that lay before him, the flashing red wheels of Mabel Margrave's
trap kept interfering; he wished Warry had not turned up just as he had.
He thought he understood why his friend had been so occupied in his
office of late; but whether Warry and Evelyn Porter were engaged or not,
Warry ought to find better use for his talents than in amusing Mabel
Margrave. John lighted his pipe to help with the blue-prints, and while
he drew it into cozy accord with himself, the elevator outside
discharged a passenger; he heard the click of the wire door as the cage
receded, followed by Raridan's quick step in the hall, and Warry broke
in on him. "Well, you're the limit! I'd like to know what you mean by
roosting up here and not staying in your room where a white man can find
you." He stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his top-coat,
and glared at Saxton, who lay back in his chair and bit his pipe. "I
wish by all the gods I could rattle you once and shake you out of your
damned Harvard aplomb!" Raridan did not usually invoke the gods, and he
rarely damned anything or anybody.

"That's a very pretty coat you have on, Mr. Raridan. It must be nice to
be a plutocrat and wear clothes like that."

"The beastly thing doesn't fit," growled Raridan, throwing himself into
a chair. "I don't fit, and my clothes don't fit, and--"

"And you're having a fit. You'd better see a nerve specialist." Warry
was pounding a cigarette on the back of his case.

"I say, Saxton," he said calmly.

"Well! Has Vesuvius subsided?" Saxton sat up in his chair and watched
Raridan breaking matches wastefully in a nervous effort to strike a
light.

"John Saxton, what a beastly ass I am! What a merry-go-round of a fool I
make of myself!" Warry blew a cloud of smoke into the air.

"Yes," said John, pulling away at his pipe.

"As I'm a living man, I had no more intention of driving with that girl
than I had of going up in a balloon and walking back. You know I never
knew her well; I don't want to know her, for that matter; not on your
life!"

"Is this a guessing contest? I suppose I'm the goat. Well, you didn't
care for Miss Margrave's society; is that what you're driving at? She
shan't hear this from me; I'm as safe as a tomb. Moreover, I don't enjoy
her acquaintance. Go ahead now, full speed."

"And it was just my infernal hard luck that I got caught this
afternoon," continued Warry, ignoring him. "Sometimes it seems to me
that I'm predestined and foreordained to do fool things. I've been
working like blue blazes on that washerwoman's suit against the
Transcontinental,--running their switch through her back yard,--and I
had put away all kinds of temptation and was feeling particularly
virtuous; but here came the Margrave nigger with that girl's note, and I
went up the street in long jumps to meet her, and let her drive me all
over town and all over the country, and order me a highball on the
Country Club porch, and generally make an ass of me. I wish you'd do
something to me; hit me with a club, or throw me down the elevator, or
do something equally brutal and coarse that would jar a little of the
folly out of me. Why," he continued, with utter self-contempt, through
which his humor glimmered, "I ought to have turned down Mabel's
invitation as soon as I saw the monogram on her note paper. Three
colors, and letters as big as your hand! My instinctive good taste
falters, old man; it needs restoring and chastening."

"I quite agree with you, sir. But it's more gallant to abuse yourself
than Miss Margrave's stationery--that is, if I am correctly gathering up
the crumbs of your thought. I believe you had reached the highball
incident in your recital. Was it rye or Scotch? This is the day of
realism, and if I'm to give you counsel, or sympathy, or whatever it is
you want, I must know all the petty details."

"Don't be foolish," said Raridan, staring abstractedly; then he bent his
eyes sharply on Saxton.

"See here, John," he said quietly, folding his arms. He had never
before called Saxton by his first name; and the change marked a further
advance of intimacy.

"Yes."

"You know I'm a good deal of a fool and all that sort of thing--"

"Chuck that and go ahead."

"But she means a whole lot to me. You know whom I mean." Saxton knew he
did not mean Mabel Margrave. "You know," Raridan went on, "we were kids
together up there on those hills. We both had our dancing lessons at her
house, and did such stunts as that together."

"Yes," said Saxton.

"I want to work and show that I'm some good. I want to make myself
worthy of her." He got up and walked the floor, while Saxton sat and
watched him.

"I can't talk about it; you understand what I want to do. It has seemed
to me lately that I have more to overcome than I can ever manage. I made
a lot of fuss about that Knights of Midas rot. I ought to have helped
her about that; it was hard for her, but I was too big a fool to know
it, and I made myself ridiculous lecturing her. I forgot that she'd
grown up, and I didn't know she felt as she did about it. I acted as if
I thought she was crazy to pose in that fool show, when I might have
known better. It was downright low of me." He stood at the window
playing with the cord of the shade and looking out over the town. Saxton
walked to the window and stood by him, saying nothing; and after a
moment he put his hand on Raridan's shoulder and turned him round and
grasped Warry's slender fingers in his broad, strong hand.

"I understand how it is, old man. It isn't so bad as you think it is,
I'm sure. It will all come out right, and while we're making confessions
I want to make one too. I feel rather foolish doing it--as if I were in
the game--" and he smiled in the way he had, which brought his humility
and patience and desire to be on good terms with the world into his
face,--"but I want you to know about this afternoon--that--that just
happened--my being with her. You see, I didn't know she was there, and
she had--I guess she had broken her driver or something, and quit, and I
was coming in and she picked me up, and I'm sorry, and--"

Raridan wheeled on him as if he had just caught the drift of his talk.

"Oh, come off! You howling idiot! Don't you talk that way to me again.
Get your hat now and let's get out of this."

"I'm glad you're feeling better," said Saxton, and laughed with real
relief.

John turned out the light, and while they waited for the elevator to
come up for them Warry jingled the coins and keys in his pockets before
he blurted:

"I say, John, I'm an underbred, low person, and am not worthy to be
called thy friend, and you may hate me all you like, but one thing I'd
like to know. Did she say anything about me when you passed us this
afternoon--make any comment or anything? You know I despise myself for
asking, but--"

Saxton laughed quietly.

"Yes, she did; but I don't know that I ought to tell you. It was really
encouraging."

"Well, hurry up."

"She said, 'Miss Margrave has a lot of style; don't you think so?'"

"Is that all?" demanded Raridan, stepping into the car.

"That's all. It wasn't very much; but it was the way she said it; and as
she said it she brushed a fly from the horse with the whip, and she did
it very carefully."

In the corridor below they met Wheaton coming out of the side door of
the bank. He had been at work, he said. Raridan asked him to go with
them to the club for a game of billiards, but he pleaded weariness and
said he was going to bed.

The three men walked up Varney Street together. Those spirits that order
our lives for us must have viewed them with interest as they tramped
through the street. They were men of widely different antecedents and
qualities. Circumstances, in themselves natural and harmless, had
brought them together. The lives of all three were to be influenced by
the weakness of one, and one woman's life was to be profoundly affected
by contact with all of them. It is not ordained for us to know whether
those we touch hands with, and even break bread with, from day to day,
are to bring us good or evil. The electric light reveals nothing in the
sibyl's book which was not disclosed of old to those who pondered the
mysteries by starlight and rushlight.

Wheaton left them at the club door and went on to The Bachelors',
which, was only a step farther up the street.

"How do you like Wheaton by this time?" asked Raridan, as they entered
the club.

"I hardly know how to answer that," Saxton answered. "He's treated me
well enough. It seems to me I'm always trying to find some reason for
not liking him, but I can't put my hand on anything tangible."

"That's the way I feel," said Raridan, hanging up his coat in the
billiard room. "He's a rigid devil, some way. There's no let-go in him.
I guess the law allows us to dislike some people just on general
principles, and Jim likes himself so well that you and I don't matter.
It's your shot."



CHAPTER XVIII

FATHER AND DAUGHTER


The winds of January had no better luck in shaking down the leaves of
the scrub oaks on the Porter hillside than their predecessors of
November and December. The snows came and went on the dull slopes, and
the canna beds were little blots of ruin in the gray stubble. The house
was a place of light and life once more, for Evelyn had obeyed her
father's wish rather than her own inclination in opening its doors for
frequent teas and dinners and once for a large ball. Many people had
entertained for her; she had never been introduced formally, but her
mother's friends made up for this omission; she went out a great deal,
and enjoyed it. Many young men climbed the hill to see her, and many
went to the theater or to dances with her at least once. The number who
came to call diminished by Christmas; but those who still came, and were
identified as frequenters of the house, came oftener.

Warry Raridan had raged at the mob, as he called it, which he seemed
always to find installed in the Porter drawing-room; but he raged
inwardly these days, save as he went explosively to Saxton for comfort;
he had stopped raging at Evelyn. He was at work more steadily than he
had ever been before, and wished the credit for it which people denied
him, to his secret disgust. He had idled too long, or he had too often
before given fitful allegiance to labor. Young women and old, who
expected him to pass tea for them in the afternoons, refused to believe
that he had experienced a change of heart. Those who had bragged of him
abroad, and who now lured the eternal visiting girl to town to behold
him, were chagrined to find that he was difficult to produce, and
mollified their guests by declaring that Warry was getting more fickle
and uncertain as he grew older, or took vengeance by encouraging the
rumor that he and Evelyn Porter were engaged.

Wheaton called at the Porters' often, but he did not go now with Warry
Raridan; he even took some pains to go when Raridan did not. He knew
just how much time to allow himself between The Bachelors' and the
Porter door bell in order to reach the drawing-room at five minutes past
eight. He was now considered one of the men that went out a good deal in
Clarkson; he was invited to many houses, and began to wonder that social
enjoyment was so easy. It seemed long ago that he had been a leading
figure in the ball of the Knights of Midas. Looking back at that
incident he was sensible of its poverty and tawdriness; he had
sacrificed himself for the public good, and the community shared in the
joke of it.

Porter had an amiable way of darting out of the library in the evenings
when he and Evelyn were both at home, to see who came in; not that he
was abnormally curious as to who rang the door bell, though he enjoyed
occasionally a colloquy with a tramp; but he was always on the lookout
for telegrams, of which he received a great many at home, and he
declared in his chaffing note of complaint that the people in the house
were forever hiding them from him. He sometimes brought home bundles of
papers and spent whole evenings digesting them and making computations.
Without realizing that Wheaton was in his house pretty often, he was
glad to know that his cashier came. When he found that Wheaton was in
the drawing-room he usually went over to talk to him in the interim
before Evelyn came down. Sometimes a bit of news in the evening paper
gave him a text.

"I see that they've had a shaking up over at St. Joe. Well, Wigglesworth
never was any good. They ought to have had more sense than to get caught
by him. Well, sir, you remember he was offering his paper up here. We
could have had a barrel of it; but when a man of his credit peddles his
paper away from home, it's a good thing to let alone. When they figure
up Wigglesworth's liabilities they will find that he has paper scattered
all over the Missouri Valley, and I'll bet the Second's stuck. The last
time I saw Wigglesworth he was up at the club one day with Buskirk. He'd
been in to see me the day before. I guessed then that he was looking for
help which they didn't think he was worth at home." And then, with a
chuckle: "Our people," meaning his directors, "think sometimes we're too
conservative, and I reckon I do lose a lot of business for them that
other fellows would take and get out of all right; but I guess we make
more in the long run by being careful. Banking ain't exactly stove
polish or vitalized barley, to put up in pretty packages and advertise
on the billboards."

Wheaton was honestly sympathetic and responsive along these lines. He
admired Porter, although he often felt that the president made mistakes;
yet he, too, believed in conservatism; it was a matter of temperament
rather than principle. This mingling of social and business elements
pleased and flattered Wheaton. He felt that his position in the Porter
bank gave him a double footing in the Porter house. Porter usually
ignored Evelyn's presence while he finished whatever he was saying. Then
he would go back to his chair in the library, where he could hear the
voices across the hall; but he never remained after he had concluded his
own talk with Wheaton.

Sometimes, however, when there were other men in the house, Porter would
come and stand in the door and regard them good-humoredly, and nod to
them amiably, usually with his cigar in his mouth and the evening
newspaper in his hand. When there was a good deal of laughing he would
go over and gaze upon them questioningly and quiz them; but they usually
felt the restraint of his presence. If they repeated to him some story
which had prompted their mirth, he was wont to rebuke them with affected
seriousness, or he would tell them a story of his own. He expected
Evelyn to receive a great deal of attention. He liked to know who her
callers were and where she herself visited, and it pleased him that she
had called on all her mother's old friends, whether they had been to see
her or not. He had a sense of the dignities and proprieties of life, and
he felt his own prestige as a founder of the town; it would have been a
source of grief to him if Evelyn had not taken a leading place among its
young people.

The theater was the one diversion that appealed to him, and he liked to
take Evelyn with him, and wanted her to sit in a box so that he might
show her off to better advantage. He could not understand why she
preferred seats in the orchestra; Timothy Margrave and his daughter
always sat in a box, and young men were forever running in to talk to
Mabel between the acts. Porter thought that this showed a special
deference to the Margrave girl, as he called her, and for her father
too, by implication, and he resented anything that looked like a slight
upon Evelyn. He was afraid that she did not entertain enough, and since
the girls who visited them in the fall had left, he had been insisting
that she must have others come to see her. He had made her tell him
about all the girls she had known in college; his curiosity in such
directions was almost insatiable. He always demanded to know what their
fathers did for a livelihood, and he had been surprised to find that so
many of Evelyn's classmates had been daughters of inconspicuous
families, and that the young women were in many cases fitting themselves
to teach. He had pretty thoroughly catalogued all of Evelyn's college
friends, and he suggested about once a week that she have some of them
out.

Sometimes, after Evelyn's callers had gone, she and her father sat and
talked in the library.

"I don't see what you young people can find to say so much about," he
would say; or: "What was Warry gabbling about so long?"

She always told him what had been talked about, with a careful
frankness, lest he might imagine that the visits of Wheaton or Warry, or
any one else, had a special intention. She crossed over to the library
one night after several callers had left, and found her father more
absorbed than usual in a mass of papers which lay on the large table
before him. He put down his glasses and lay back in his chair wearily.

"Well, girl, is it time to go to bed? Sit down there and tell me the
news."

"There isn't anything worth telling; you know there isn't much
information in the average caller." He yawned and rubbed his eyes and
paid no attention to her answer. He had asked a few days before whether
she cared to go to Chicago to hear the opera, and she had said that she
would go if he would; and he now wished to talk this out with her.

"The Whipples are going over to Chicago for the opera," he ventured.

"But you're not getting ready to back out! You ought to be ashamed of
yourself." She rose and went toward him menacingly, and he put up his
hands as if to ward off her attack.

"But you can have just as much fun with the general as you could with
me."

"No, I can't; and for another thing you need a rest. You never go away
except on business; the fact is, you never get business out of your
mind. Now, let me gather up these things for you." She reached for the
array of balance sheets on his table, and he threw his arms over them
protectingly.

"Please go away! I've spent all evening straightening these things
out." She retreated to her chair, and he began rolling up his papers.

"You'd better go with the Whipples, and Mrs. Whipple will help you do
your shopping. It doesn't seem to me that you have many clothes. You'd
better get some more."

"You can't buy me off that way, father. Either you go or I don't." He
turned toward her again when he had rolled his papers into a packet and
fixed a rubber band around them. She knew, as she usually did after such
approaches, that he wanted to say something in particular.

"You mustn't settle down too soon. You can't always be young, and you
can easily get into a rut here."

"Yes, but I haven't had time yet; I've hardly got settled. I want to get
acquainted at home before I go away. I'm afraid they still look on me as
a pilgrim and a stranger here."

"But they're all nice to you, ain't they?" he demanded sharply.

"They are certainly as kind as can be," she answered. "I haven't a
single complaint. I'm having just the time I wanted to have when I came
home."

"I don't want to lose you too soon, girl." It was half a question. She
wondered whether this could be what he had been leading up to.

"And I don't want you to lose me at all! I didn't come home after all
these years to have you lose me."

"Oh, I don't mean right away," he said. "But sometime--sometime you will
have to go, I suppose."

"I'm certainly not thinking of it." She was laughing and trying to break
his mood; but he was very serious, and took a cigar from his pocket and
put it in his mouth.

"You'll have to go sometime; and when you do, I want the right kind of a
man to have you."

"So do I, father."

"You are old enough to understand that a girl in your position is likely
to be sought by men who may--who may--well, who may be swayed somewhat
by worldly considerations."

"Isn't that a trifle hard on me? I hoped I was a little more attractive
than that, father."

"You know what I mean," he went on. "I guess we can tell that sort when
they come around. I've had an idea that you might choose to marry away
from here; you've been away a good deal; you must have met a good many
young men, brothers of your friends--"

"Yes, I met them, father, and that was all there was to it."

"I shouldn't like you to marry away from here. I've been afraid you
wouldn't like our old town. I guess we fellows that started it like it
better than anybody else does; but I can see how you might not care so
much for it." He waited, and she knew that he wanted her to disavow any
such feeling.

"Why, I've never had any idea of wanting to live anywhere else! I don't
believe I'd be happy away from here. It's home, and it always will be
home. I hope we can stay and keep the old house here--"

She sat forward with her arms on the curved sides of the chair. He did
not heed what she said. Older people have this way with youth when they
are intent on the impression they wish to make and count upon
acquiescence.

"I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for me out of any sense of duty;
the time will come when it will be all right for you to go, and when it
comes I want you to go to a man who's decent and square--" He paused as
if trying to think of desirable attributes. "I don't care whether he's
got much or not, but I like young men who know how to work for a living
and who've got a little common sense. I guess we don't need any dukes or
counts in our family; we've all been honest and decent as far as I know,
and I reckon Americans are good enough for us. I don't know that what
I've got would support one of those French counts more than a week or
two." His eyes brightened as they met hers. The idea of a titled
son-in-law amused him, and Evelyn laughed out merrily. She did not
altogether like the turn of the talk, but she was curious to know what
he was driving at.

"You understand I don't want to appear to dictate," he went on
magnanimously. "I don't believe in that. Nobody knows as well as a girl
whom she wants to marry. Sometimes girls make pretty bad breaks; but I
guess most marriages are happy. Men are not all good, and there are some
mighty foolish women, besides the downright wicked ones. I guess our
young men in Clarkson are as good as there are anywhere. Most of them
have to work, and that's good for them. I guess I appreciate family and
that kind of thing as well as the next man, but it ain't everything." He
was speaking slowly, and when he made a long pause here, Evelyn rose and
went over to the open grate and poked in the ashes for the few
remaining coals. He watched her as she stooped, noting, half
consciously, the fine line of her profile, the ripple of light in her
hair, the girlishness of her slim figure.

"No use of fooling with that fire," he said. She knew that he wished to
say more, and she put the poker in its brass rack and rose and stood by
the mantel.

"At my age, life gets more uncertain every day; I seem to be pretty
sound, but I was sixty-four my last birthday, and if I'd been in the
army they would have kicked me out of my job; but so long as I work for
myself I suppose I'll hang on until I can't stand up in the harness any
more."

"But that's a mistake, father," she put in. "Why shouldn't you take some
rest now? If there's no other way, why not close out your interest in
the bank and take things easier? You ought to travel; you've never been
out of the country, and there are lots of things in Europe that you'd
enjoy; the rest and change would do you a world of good. Can't we go
this summer, and take Grant? It would be nice for us all to go
together."

He shook his head with the deprecating air which men of Porter's type
have for such suggestions. "It would be mighty nice, but I can't do it.
Here's Thompson away, and no telling when he'll be back, and I have
other things besides the bank to look after; more than you know about."
She knew only vaguely what his interests were, for he never mentioned
them to her; he believed that women are incapable of comprehending such
things; and his natural secretiveness was always on guard. He even
entertained a kind of superstition that if he told of anything he was
planning he jeopardized his chances of success.

"No, I guess there ain't going to be any Europe for me just now. But I'd
be glad to have you and Grant go." He had been side-tracked in his talk,
and chewed his cigar while trying to find the way back to the main line.
Then he broke out irrelevantly:

"Warry doesn't seem to settle down. We used to think Warry had great
things in him, but they're mighty slow coming out."

"Well, he's still young," said Evelyn. "It takes a young man a long time
to get a start these days in the professions." Her father looked at her
keenly.

"I'm afraid it isn't lack of opportunity with Warry. If he'd ever get
after anything in real earnest he could make it go; but he seems to fool
away his time." He said this as if he expected Evelyn to continue her
defense, but she said merely:

"It's too bad if he's doing that when he has ability." She walked back
to her chair and sat down. She knew that Warry was really at work, but
she was afraid to show any particular knowledge of him.

"It's one of the queer things to me that young fellows who have every
chance don't seem to get on as well as others who haven't any backing.
Now, all Warry had to do was to stay in his office and attend to
business--or that's all he needed to do three or four years ago, when he
set up to practise; but now everybody's given him up. A man who doesn't
want an opportunity in this world doesn't have to kick it very hard to
get rid of it. Other fellows, who never had any chance, are watching for
the luckier ones to slip back. There are never any lonesome places on
the ladder. Now, there's Wheaton--" He again examined Evelyn's face in
one of those tranquil stares with which he made his most minute scrutiny
of people. "Wheaton ain't a showy fellow like Warry, but he's one of the
sort that make their way because they keep an eye open to the main
chance. Jim came into the bank as a messenger, and I guess he's had
pretty much every job we've got, and he's done them well." He had
lighted his cigar and was talking volubly. "When Thompson played out and
had to go away, we looked around for somebody on the inside who knew the
run of our business to put in there to help me. None of the directors
wanted to come in, and so we pulled Jim out of the paying teller's cage,
and he's just about saved my back. Now, Jim's not so smart, but he's
steady and safe, and that's what counts in business."

He leaned back in his chair and wobbled the cigar in his mouth.

"These young Napoleons of finance are forever chasing off to Canada with
other folks' money; they're too brilliant. I tell 'em down town that it
ain't genius we want in business, it's just ordinary, plain, every-day
talent for getting down early and staying at your job. That's what I
say. There was Smith over at the Drovers' National; he was a clear case
of genius. They thought over there that he was making business by
chasing around the country attending banquets and speaking at bankers'
conventions. I guess Smith's essays were financially sound too, for
Smith knew finance, scientific finance, like a college professor, and
used to come to the clearing-house meetings and talk to beat the band
about what Bagehot said and how the Bank of England did; but all the
time he was spending his Sundays over in Kansas City, drumming up
banking business by playing poker with the gentlemen he expected to get
for his customers. He's running a laundry now on the wrong side of the
Canadian border. Over at the Drovers' they ain't so terribly scientific
now, and their cashier don't have an expense fund to carry him around
the country making connections. Making connections!" he repeated, and
chuckled. He had the conceit of his own wisdom, and while he was always
generous in his dealings with his rivals, and had several times helped
them out of difficulties, he rejoiced in their errors and congratulated
himself on his foresight and caution.

"You oughtn't to laugh at the downfall of other people," said Evelyn;
"it's wicked of you." But she was laughing herself at his enjoyment of
his own joke, and was proud of the qualities which she knew had
contributed to his success. He felt baffled that he had not fully
concluded all he had intended to say about Wheaton and his merits, but
he did not see his way back to the subject, and he rose yawning.

"I guess it's time to go to bed," he said, and he went about turning off
the electric lights by the buttons in the hall. Evelyn went upstairs
ahead of him, and kissed him good night at his door.

"You'd better go to the opera with the Whipples," he called to her over
his shoulder, as he waited for her to reach her own door before turning
off the upper hall light.

"Not a bit of it," she answered through the dark.

The novel with which Evelyn tried to read herself to sleep that night
did not hold her attention, and after her memory had teased her into
impatience, she threw the book down and for a long time lay thinking.
She knew her father so well that she had no doubt of the current of his
thought and his wish to praise James Wheaton and disparage Warry
Raridan, and it troubled her; not because she herself had any
well-defined preferences as between them or in their favor as against
all other men she knew; but it seemed to her that her father had
disclosed his own feeling rather unnecessarily and pointedly.

Suddenly, as she lay thinking and staring at the walls, life took on new
and serious aspects, and she did not want it to be so. Because she had
been so much away from home the provincial idea that every man that
calls on a girl, or takes her to a theater in our free, unchaperoned
way, is a serious suitor had not impressed her. She had expected to come
home and enjoy herself indefinitely, and had idealized a situation in
which she should be the stay of her father through his old age, and the
chum and guide of her brother, in whom the repetition of her mother's
characteristics strongly appealed to her. There had been little trouble
or grief in her life, and now for the first time she saw uncertainties
ahead where a few hours before everything had seemed simple and clear.
She had felt no offense when her father spoke slightingly of Warry
Raridan; she knew that her father really liked him, as every one did,
and she would not have hesitated to say that she admired him greatly,
even in his possession of those traits which betrayed the weaknesses of
his character. She certainly had no thought of him save as a whimsical
and amusing friend, a playmate who had never grown up.

It was true that he had made love to her, or had tried to; but she had
no faith in his sincerity. She had first felt amused, and then a little
sorry, when he had gone to work so earnestly. He took the trouble to
remind her frequently that it was all for her, and she laughed at him
and at the love-making which he was always attempting and which she
always thwarted. Saxton did not come often to the house, but when he
came he exercised his ingenuity to bring Raridan into the talk in the
rare times that they were alone together. She knew why Saxton praised
her friend to her, and it increased her liking for him. It is curious
how a woman's pity goes out to a man; any suggestion of misfortune makes
an excuse for her to clothe him with her compassion. It is as though
Nature, in denying gifts or inflicting punishment, hastened to throw in
compensations. Saxton asked so little, and beamed so radiantly when
given so little; he received kindnesses so shyly, as if, of course, they
could not be meant for him, but it was all right anyway, and he would
move on just as soon as the other fellow came.

As for Wheaton, he was certainly not frivolous, and her father's respect
for him and dependence on him had communicated itself to her. He was so
much older than she; and at twenty-two, thirty-five savors of antiquity;
but he was steady, and steadiness was a trait that she respected. He was
terribly formal, but he was kind and thoughtful; he was even handsome,
or at least so every one said.

She lay dreaming until the clock on the mantel chimed midnight, when
she reached for the novel that had fallen on the coverlet, to put it on
the stand beside her bed. A card which she had been using as a mark fell
from the book; she picked it up and turned it over to see whose it was.
It was John Saxton's.

"Father didn't say anything about him," she said aloud. She thrust the
card back into the book and reached up and snapped out the light.



CHAPTER XIX

A FORECAST AT THE WHIPPLES'


There was a cup of tea at the Whipples' for any one that dropped in at
five o'clock. The general kept a syphon in the icebox, and his wife's
tea, which he loathed, gave him his excuse. He was fond of saying that
an exacting government made it impossible for an army officer to get
acquainted with his wife until after his retirement, and then, he
declared, there was nothing to discuss but the opportunities in life
which they had missed. They talked a great deal to each other about
their neighbors, and about their friends in the army whose lives they
were able to follow through the daily list of transfers in the
newspapers, and the ampler current history of the military establishment
in the Army and Navy Journal. Few men in Clarkson had time for the
general. He found the club an unsocial place, and he preferred his own
battered copies of "Pendennis" and "Henry Esmond" to anything in the
club library. Occasionally when Mrs. Whipple was out for luncheon he
went to the club for midday sustenance, but the other men who hurried
through their forty cents' worth of table d'hôte, talked of matters that
were as alien to him as marine law. It would have suited the general
much better to live in Washington, where others with equally little to
do assembled in force; but his wife would not hear to it. She would not
have her husband, she said, becoming a professional pall bearer, and
this was the occupation of retired officers of the army and navy at the
capital. He submitted to her superior authority, as he always did, and
settled in Clarkson, where one could get much more for one's money than
in Washington.

The general usually remained in the Indian room at the tea hour,
particularly if he liked the talk of the women who appeared, or if they
were good to look at; otherwise he carried his syphon to the
dining-room, where there was a bottle of the same brand of rye whisky
which he kept back of "The Life of Peter the Great" in a book case in
the Indian room. He and Mrs. Whipple had gone to the opera without
Evelyn, and the general was now settling himself to his domestic
routine. He had dodged a woman whose prattle vexed him and whose call
had been prolonged, and having heard the door close upon her, he was
returning to his own preserve with the intention of getting some hot
water from Mrs. Whipple's tea kettle for use in compounding a punch,
when Bishop Delafield came in, bringing a great draft of cold air with
his huge figure. The bishop was a friend of many years' standing. His
sonorous voice filled the room and aided the fire in promoting
cheeriness. Mrs. Whipple brewed her tea, and the general made his
punch,--for two--for it was certainly snowing somewhere in the Diocese
of Clarkson, the bishop said, and he had established his joke with the
general that he might allow himself spirits in bad weather, as a
preventive of the rheumatism which he never had. The three made a cozy
picture as they grouped themselves about the bright hearth. They were
discussing the marriage of an old officer whom they all knew, a man of
Whipple's own age, who had just married a woman much his junior.

"It's easy for us all to philosophize adversely about such things," said
the general, sitting up straight in his camp chair. "I have a good deal
of sympathy with Bixby. He was lonely and his children were all married
and scattered to the four winds. I suppose there's nothing worse than
loneliness."

His wife frowned at him; their friend's long sorrow and his fidelity to
his memories appealed to all the romance in her.

"It's very different," Mrs. Whipple made haste to say, "where there are
children at home. Now there's Mr. Porter; he has Evelyn and Grant."

"But that probably won't last long," said the bishop. "Girls have a way
of leaving home."

"Well, there's nothing imminent?" asked Mrs. Whipple, anxiously.

"Oh, no! And girls that have been educated as she has been are likely to
choose warily, aren't they?"

"Nothing in it," said the general, stirring his glass. "They all go when
they get ready, without notice. Education doesn't change that."

"It strikes me that there aren't many eligible men here," said the
bishop. "To be explicit, just whom shall a girl like Evelyn Porter
marry?" He did not intend this for the general, who was refilling the
glasses, but the general refused to be ignored.

"It's my observation," he began, with an air of having much to impart,
if they would only let him alone, "that in every town the size of this
there are people who are predestined to marry. They fight it as hard as
they can, and dodge their destinies wherever possible; but it's a pretty
sure thing that ultimately they'll hit it off."

"That sounds like a sort of social presbyterianism to me," said the
bishop dryly, "and therefore heretical." He was really interested in
knowing what Mrs. Whipple knew or felt on this subject as it affected
Evelyn Porter. "Now you've been better trained, Mrs. Whipple," he said.

"Well, so far as Evelyn's concerned," she answered, knowing that this
was what the bishop wanted, "I'm not worrying about her. She's a
sensible girl and will take care of herself. I'm not half so much afraid
of destiny as of propinquity. We all know how the bachelor captain goes
down before the sister, or the in-law of some kind, of the colonel of
the regiment."

"That's not propinquity," said the general; "that's ordinary Christian
charity on the captain's part."

"Suppose," said the bishop slowly, "the commandant so to speak, is
really a banker, with a trusted officer, a kind of adjutant at his
elbow; and also a handsome daughter. Assume such a hypothetical case,
and what are you going to do about it?" He drained his glass and put it
down carefully.

"This looks like the appeal direct," answered Mrs. Whipple, laughing and
looking at her husband, who was meditating another punch and feeling for
the scent blindly.

"I don't know about that Mr. Wheaton," said Mrs. Whipple, meeting the
issue squarely. "He doesn't seem amusing to me, but then--I don't know
him!"

"Must one be amusing?" asked the bishop.

"Oh, I mean more than that!" exclaimed Mrs. Whipple. "Don't we always
mean intelligent when we say amusing?"

"Definitions certainly change. We are growing terribly exacting these
days. But," he added, serious again, "Wheaton's a success; he's pointed
to as one of Clarkson's rising men; one of the really self-made."

"Yes; I fancy he never knew Evelyn before the Knights of Midas ball;"
and she sighed, wondering whether she was culpable. She knew that the
bishop meant more than he had said and that this was a kind of warning
to her. She felt guilty, remembering the ball, and the appeal Evelyn had
made to her beforehand. A woman that has enjoyed a long career of
fancied infallibility experiences sorrow when she suddenly questions the
wisdom of her own judgments.

"What's the matter with Warry Raridan?" demanded the general. "He's got
to marry somebody some day; he and Evelyn would make a very proper
match. Wouldn't they?" he pleaded, when his wife and their visitor did
not respond promptly.

"Oh, Warry's well enough," the bishop answered. "But Warry's an
uncertain quantity. He's a fine, clean fellow, with all kinds of
possibilities; but--they're possibilities!"

"Warry's certainly bright enough," said General Whipple.

"His sense of humor is a trifle too keen for every-day use," said the
bishop.

"What's he been up to now?" asked the general.

The bishop laughed quietly to himself.

"It was this way. You know Warry's interest in church matters is
abnormal. The boy really knows a lot of theology for one who has never
studied it. He has, he says, a neat taste in bishops, whatever that
means--" the bishop chuckled softly,--"and whenever one of my brethren
visits me, Warry always lays himself out to give us what he calls a warm
little time. A few days ago I had a letter from the Patriarch of
Alexandria, whom I don't know, in which he set forth that Doctor Warrick
Raridan, of my diocese, had written him proposing a great reunion of
Christendom, based on the Coptic rite. As neither the Roman, the Greek,
nor the Anglican Church afforded a common meeting ground, owing to many
difficulties, the American gentleman had suggested that all might meet
at Alexandria. The Patriarch was delighted. Doctor Raridan had suggested
me as a reference, hence the venerable prelate wished to know my opinion
of the extent of the movement. I suppose Warry did that as a joke on me,
or to get the Patriarch's autograph, I don't know which. I haven't seen
Warry since, but I'm disposed to dust his jacket for him in a fatherly
way when I get hold of him. I don't know why the Patriarch should call
Warry 'Doctor.' He probably assumed that a man who could write as good a
letter as Warry is capable of must be a person of distinction."

"Warry's a gentleman, at any rate," said Mrs. Whipple.

"Which Wheaton isn't; is that the idea?" demanded the general; and then
added: "This Wheaton strikes me as being a wooden kind of fellow. He
acts as if he hadn't been used to things."

"Sh-h! be careful! That's no test of worth on the banks of the
Missouri," said his wife warningly.

"Do you mean to say that Evelyn Porter's chances have been fully
covered?" demanded the general. He liked gossip and hoped the subject
would prove more fruitful.

"There's Mr. Saxton," said his wife. "He seems altogether possible."

"He's the new man, isn't he? He always lifts his hat to me in the
street; an unusual attention in this ill-mannered age."

"Does _he_ act as if he had been used to things?" asked the bishop. He
was still seriously interested in canvassing Evelyn's case.

"He's very nice," Mrs. Whipple said; "but he's not desperately exciting,
as the girls say."

"But then!" The bishop lifted his hands with a despairing gesture, "must
young men be amusing or exciting in these days? Is he honest? Does he
lead a clean life? Has he, as the saying is, an outlook on life?"

"He isn't seeing much of Evelyn, I think," said Mrs. Whipple. "And he's
a great friend of Warry's. They may offset each other."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the general, "I don't see any use in worrying
over Evelyn Porter and her suitors. She'll have plenty of them. And when
she gets good and ready she'll up and marry one of them."

"No girl with at least three possibilities in one town, to say nothing
of dozens she may have elsewhere, need be a subject of commiseration,"
said Mrs. Whipple.

"But," began the bishop slowly, "it might be better to eliminate at
least one."

"Not Warry!" threw in Mrs. Whipple.

"Not Saxton," added the general. "I like him; he's polite and thoughtful
about us old folks."

The bishop had risen, knowing that the climax of a conversation is best
given standing.

"I shouldn't cut out either of them," he said, smiling.



CHAPTER XX

ORCHARD LANE


After the interim of quiet that Lent always brings in Clarkson, the
spring came swiftly. There was a renewal of social activities which ran
from dances and teas into outdoor gatherings. Evelyn had enjoyed to the
full her experience of home. She had plunged into the frivolities of the
town with a zest that was a trifle emphasized through her wish to escape
any charge of being pedantic or literary. She was glad that she had gone
to college, but she did not wish this fact of her life to be the
haunting ghost of her days; and by the end of the winter she felt that
she had pretty effectually laid it.

In June Mr. Porter began discussing summer plans with Evelyn. He
eliminated himself from them; he could not get away, he said. But there
was Grant to be considered. The boy was at school in New Hampshire, and
Evelyn protested that it was not wise to subject him to the intense heat
of a Clarkson summer. The first hot wave sent Porter to bed with a
trifling illness, and his doctor took the opportunity to look him over
and tell him that it was imperative for him to rest. Thompson came home
from Arizona to spend the summer. He and Wheaton were certainly equal to
the care of the bank, so they urged upon Porter, and he finally
yielded. Evelyn found a hotel on the Massachusetts North Shore which
sounded well in the circulars, and her father agreed to it. When they
reached Orchard Lane he liked it better than he had expected; the hotel
was one of those vast caravansaries where all sorts and conditions
assemble; and he was reassured by the click of the telegraph instrument
and the presence of the long distance telephone booth in the office. He
was a cockney of the rankest kind and it dulled the edge of his
isolation to know that he was not entirely cut off from the world. Every
night he sat down with cipher telegrams, and constructed from Thompson's
statistics the day's business in the bank. He received daily from New
York the closing quotations on the shares he was interested in, and as
he walked the long hotel verandas he effected a transmigration of spirit
which put him back in his swivel chair in the Clarkson National.

Evelyn made him drive with her and Grant, and dragged him to the golf
course, where she was the star player, and where Grant was learning the
game.

A college friend of Evelyn's, in one of the near-by cottages, asked her
neighbors to call on the Porters. The fact that the cottagers thus set
the mark of their approval upon the Westerners, gave them distinction at
the hotel. Several men of Porter's age took him to their quieter porches
and found him interesting; they liked his stories, though they hardly
excused his ignorance of whist; in their hearts they accused him of
poker, of which he was guiltless. Incidentally they got a good deal of
information from him touching their Western interests; it was worth
while to know a man that received the crop news ahead of the
newspapers. He liked the praise of Evelyn which was constantly reaching
him; she was the prettiest girl in the place; her golf was certainly
better than any other girl's. When she won a cup in the tournament he
waited anxiously to see what the Boston papers said about it, and he
surreptitiously mailed the cuttings home to the Clarkson _Gazette_.

In August Warry Raridan appeared suddenly and threw himself into the
gaieties of the place for a fortnight. Mr. Porter asked him to sit at
their table and marveled at the way Evelyn snubbed him, even to the
extent of running away for three days with some friends who had a yacht
and who carried her to Newport for a dance. During her absence Warry
made all the other girls about the place happy; they were sure that
"that Miss Porter" was treating him shabbily and their hearts went out
to him. Warry sulked when Evelyn returned and they had an interview
between dances at a Saturday night hop.

He sought again for recognition as a lover; she had not praised the
efforts he had been making to win her approval by diligence at his
office; he took care to call her attention to his changed habits.

"But, Evelyn, I am doing differently. I know that I wasted myself for
years so that I'm a kind of joke and everybody laughs about me. But I
want to know--I want to feel that I'm doing it for you! Don't you know
how that would help me and steady me? Won't you let it be for you?" He
came close to her and stood with his arms folded, but she drew away from
him with a despairing gesture.

"Oh, Warry," she cried, wearily, "you poor, foolish boy! Don't you know
that you must do all things for yourself?"

"Yes," he returned eagerly. "I know that; I understand perfectly; but if
you'd only let me feel that you wanted it--"

"I want you to succeed, but you will never do it for any one, if you
don't do it for yourself."

He went home by an early train next morning to receive Saxton's
consolation and to turn again to his law books. Margrave, on behalf of
the Transcontinental, had offered to compromise the case of the poor
widow whose clothes lines had been interfered with; but Raridan rejected
this tender. He needed something on which to vent his bad spirits, and
he gave his thought to devising means of transferring the widow's cause
to the federal court. The removal of causes from state to federal courts
was, Warry frequently said, one of the best things he did.



CHAPTER XXI

JAMES WHEATON MAKES A COMPUTATION


Porter's vacation was not altogether wasted. As he lounged about and
philosophized to the Bostonians on Western business conditions, his
restless mind took hold of a new project. It was suggested to him by the
inquiries of a Boston banker, who owned a considerable amount of
Clarkson Traction bonds and stock which he was anxious to sell. Porter
gave a discouraging account of the company, whose history he knew
thoroughly. The Traction Company had been organized in the boom days and
its stock had been inflated in keeping with the prevailing spirit of the
time. It was first equipped with the cable system in deference to the
Clarkson hills, but later the company made the introduction of the
trolley an excuse for a reorganization of its finances with an even more
generous inflation. The panic then descended and wrought a diminution of
revenue; the company was unable to make the repairs which constantly
became necessary, and the local management fell into the hands of a
series of corrupt directorates.

There had been much litigation, and some of the Eastern bondholders had
threatened a receivership; but the local stockholders made plausible
excuses for the default of interest when approached amicably, and when
menaced grew insolent and promised trouble if an attempt were made to
deprive them of power. A secretary and a treasurer under one
administration had connived to appropriate a large share of the daily
cash receipts, and before they left the office they destroyed or
concealed the books and records of the company. The effect of this was
to create a mystery as to the distribution of the bonds and the stock.
When Porter came home from his summer vacation, the newspapers were
demanding that steps be taken to declare the Traction franchise forfeit.
But the franchise had been renewed lately and had twenty years to run.
This extension had been procured by the element in control, and the
foreign bondholders, biding their time, were glad to avail themselves of
the political skill of the local officers.

Porter had been casually asked by his Boston friend whether there was
any local market for the stock or bonds; and he had answered that there
was not; that the holders of shares in Clarkson kept what they had
because they could no longer sell to one another and that they were only
waiting for the larger outside bondholders and shareholders to assert
themselves. Porter had ridden down to Boston with his brother banker and
when they parted it was with an understanding that the Bostonian was to
collect for Porter the Clarkson Traction securities that were held by
New England banks, a considerable amount, as Porter knew; and he went
home with a well-formed plan of buying the control of the company. Times
were improving and he had faith in Clarkson's future; he did not believe
in it so noisily as Timothy Margrave did; but he knew the resources of
the tributary country, and he had, what all successful business men must
have, an alert imagination.

It was not necessary for Porter to disclose the fact of his purchases to
the officers of the Traction Company, whom he knew to be corrupt and
vicious; the transfer of ownership on the company's books made no
difference, as the original stock books had been destroyed,--a fact
which had become public property through a legal effort to levy on the
holdings of a shareholder in the interest of a creditor. Moreover, if he
could help it, Porter never told any one about anything he did. He even
had several dummies in whose names he frequently held securities and
real estate. One of these was Peckham, a clerk in the office of Fenton,
Porter's lawyer.

Wheaton had not long been an officer of the bank before he began to be
aware that there was considerable mystery about Porter's outside
transactions. Porter occasionally perused with much interest several
small memorandum books which he kept carefully locked in his desk. The
president often wrote letters with his own hand and copied them himself
after bank hours, in a private letter-book. Wheaton was naturally
curious as to what these outside interests might be. It had piqued him
to find that while he was cashier of the bank he was not consulted in
its larger transactions; and that of Porter's personal affairs he knew
nothing.

One afternoon shortly after Porter's return from the East, Wheaton, who
was waiting for some letters to sign, picked up a bundle of checks from
the desk of one of the individual bookkeepers. They were Porter's
personal checks which had that day been paid and were now being charged
to his private account. Wheaton turned them over mechanically; it was
not very long since he had been an individual bookkeeper himself; he had
entered innumerable checks bearing Porter's name without giving them a
thought. As the slips of paper passed through his fingers, he accounted
for them in one way or another and put them back on the desk, face down,
as a man always does who has been trained as a bank clerk. The last of
them he held and studied. It was a check made payable to Peckham,
Fenton's clerk. The amount was $9,999.00,--too large to be accounted for
as a payment for services; for Peckham was an elderly failure at the law
who ran errands to the courts for Fenton and sometimes took charge of
small collection matters for the bank. Wheaton paid the attorney fees
for the bank; this check had nothing to do with the bank, he was sure.
The check, with its curious combination of figures, puzzled and
fascinated him.

A few days later, in the course of business, he asked Porter what
disposition he should make of an application for a loan from a country
customer. Porter rang for the past correspondence with their client, and
threw several letters to Wheaton for his information. Wheaton read them
and called the stenographer to dictate the answer which Porter had
indicated should be made. He held the client's last letter in his hand,
and in concluding turned it over into the wire basket which stood on his
desk. As it fell face downwards his eye caught some figures on the back,
and he picked it up thinking that they might relate to the letter. The
memorandum was in Porter's large uneven hand and read:


      303
       33
     ----
      909
     909
     ----
     9999


The result of the multiplication was identical with the amount of
Peckham's check. Again the figures held his attention. Local securities
were quoted daily in the newspapers, and he examined the list for that
day. There was no quotation of thirty-three on anything; the nearest
approach was Clarkson Traction Company at thirty-five. The check which
had interested him had been dated three days before, and he looked back
to the quotation list for that date. Traction was given at thirty-three.
Wheaton was pleased by the discovery; it was a fair assumption that
Porter was buying shares of Clarkson Traction; he would hardly be buying
foreign securities through Peckham. The stock had advanced two points
since it had been purchased, and this, too, was interesting. Clearly,
Porter knew what he was about,--he had a reputation for knowing; and if
Clarkson Traction was a good thing for the president to pick up quietly,
why was it not a good thing for the cashier? He waited a day; Traction
went to thirty-six. Then he called after banking hours at the office of
a real estate dealer who also dealt in local stocks and bonds on a small
scale. He chose this man because he was not a customer of the bank, and
had never had any transactions with the bank or with Porter, so far as
Wheaton knew. His name was Burton, and he welcomed Wheaton cordially.
He was alone in his office, and after an interchange of courtesies,
Wheaton came directly to the point of his errand.

"Some friends of mine in the country own a small amount of Traction
stock; they've written me to find out what its prospects are. Of course
in the bank we know in a general way about it, but I suppose you handle
such things and I want to get good advice for my friends."

"Well, the truth is," said Burton, flattered by this appeal, "the bottom
was pretty well gone out of it, but it's sprucing up a little just now.
If the charter's knocked out it is only worth so much a pound as old
paper; but if the right people get hold of it the newspapers will let
up, and there's a big thing in it. How much do your friends own?"

"I don't know exactly," said Wheaton, evenly; "I think not a great deal.
Who are buying just now? I notice that it has been advancing for several
days. Some one seems to be forcing up the price."

"Nobody in particular, that is, nobody that I know of. I asked Billy
Barnes, the secretary, the other day what was going on. He must know who
the certificates are made out to; but he winked and gave me the laugh.
You know Barnes. He don't cough up very easy; and he looks wise when he
doesn't know anything."

"No; Barnes has the reputation of being pretty close-mouthed," replied
Wheaton.

"If your friends want to sell, bring in the shares and I'll see what I
can do with them," said Burton. "The outsiders are sure to act soon.
This spurt right now may have nothing back of it. The town's full of
gossip about the company and it ought to send the price down. Your
friend Porter's a smooth one. He was in once, a long time ago, but he
knew when to get out all right." Wheaton laughed with Burton at this
tribute to Porter's sagacity, but he laughed discreetly. He did not
forget that he was a bank officer and dignity was an essential in the
business, as he understood it.

Within a few days two more checks from Porter to Peckham passed through
the usual channels of the bank. By the simple feat of dividing the
amount of each check by the current quotation on Traction, Wheaton was
able to follow Porter's purchases. The price had remained pretty steady.
Then suddenly it fell to thirty. He wondered what was happening, but the
newspapers, which were continuing their war on the company, readily
attributed it to a lack of confidence in the franchise. Wheaton met the
broker, apparently by chance, but really by intention, in the club one
evening, and remarked casually:

"Traction seems to be off a little?"

"Yes; there's something going on there that I can't make out. I imagine
that the fellows that were buying got tired of stimulating the market,
and have thrown a few bunches back to keep the outsiders guessing."

"Right now might be a good time to get in," suggested Wheaton.

"I should call it a good buy myself. I guess that franchise is all
right. Better pick up a little," he said, tentatively.

"To tell the truth," said Wheaton, choosing his words carefully, "those
out of town people I spoke to you about have written me that they'd
like a little more, if it can be got at the right figure. You might pick
up a hundred shares for me at the current price, if you can."

"How do you want to hold it?"

"Have it made to me," he answered. He had debated whether he should do
this, and he had been unable to devise any method of holding the stock
without letting his own name appear. Porter would not know; Porter was
concealing his own purchases. Wheaton could not see that it made any
difference; he was surely entitled to invest his money as he liked, and
he raised the sum necessary in this case by the sale of some railroad
bonds which he had been holding, and on which he could realize at once
by sending them to the bank's correspondent at Chicago. He might have
sold them at home; Porter would probably have taken them off his hands;
but the president knew that his capital was small, and might have asked
how he intended to reinvest the proceeds.

"Of course this is all confidential," said Wheaton.

"Sure," said Burton.

"And when you get it, telephone me and I'll come up and settle," said
Wheaton.

A few days later Burton sent for Wheaton to come to his office. One
hundred shares had been secured from a ranchman. Wheaton carried the
purchase money in currency to Burton's office; he was as shrewd as
William Porter, and he did not care to have the clerks in the bank
speculating about his checks.

He locked his certificate, when Burton got it for him, in his private
box in the vault, and waited the rebound which he firmly expected in the
price of the stock. His sole idea was to make a profit by the purchase.
He felt perfectly confident that Porter had bought Traction stock with a
definite purpose; he still had no idea who were the principal holders of
Traction stock or bonds, and he was afraid to make inquiry. A man who
was as secretive as Porter probably had confidential sources of
information, and it was not safe to tap Porter's wires. His conscience
was easy as to the method by which he had gained his knowledge of
Porter's purchases; he certainly meant no harm to Porter.



CHAPTER XXII

AN ANNUAL PASS


Timothy Margrave was, in common phrase, a good railroad man. He had
advanced by slow degrees from the incumbency of those lowly manual
offices called jobs, to the performance of those nobler functions known
as positions. Margrave's elevation to the office of third vice-president
and general manager was due to his Pull. This was originally political
but later financial; and he now had both kinds of Pulls. There is no
greater arrogance among us than that of our railway officials; they are
greater tyrants than any that sit in public office. The General
Something or Other is a despot, the records of whose life are written in
tissue manifold; his ideals are established for him by those of his own
order who have been raised to a higher power, which he himself aspires
to reach in due season. Margrave had gone as high as he expected to go
with the corporation whose destinies he had done so much to promote; all
who were below him in the Transcontinental knew that he held their lives
in his hands; all his subordinates, down to the boys who carried long
manila envelopes marked R. R. B. to and from trains called him IT.

Margrave had resolved that the railroad was getting too much out of him
and that he must do more to promote his own fortunes. The directors
were good fellows, and they had certainly treated him well; but it
seemed within the pale of legitimate enterprise for him to broaden his
interests a trifle without in any wise diminishing his zeal for the
Transcontinental. The street railway business was a good business, and
Clarkson Traction appealed to Margrave, moreover, on its political side.
If he reorganized the company and made himself its president he could
greatly fortify and strengthen his Pull. Tim Margrave's Pull was already
of consequence and it would be of great use in this new undertaking;
moreover, it would naturally be augmented by his control of the little
army of Traction employees. He proposed getting some of the Eastern
stockholders of the Transcontinental to help him acquire Traction
holdings sufficient to get control of the company; and, with Margrave,
to decide was to act.

Almost any day, he was told, the Eastern bondholders might pounce down
and put a receiver in charge of the company. Margrave did not understand
receiverships according to High or Beach or any other legal authority;
but according to Margrave they were an excuse for pillage, and it was a
regret of his life that no fat receivership had ever fallen to his lot.
But he was not going into Traction blindly. He wanted to know who else
was interested, that he might avoid complications. William Porter was
the only man in Clarkson who could swing Traction without assistance; he
must not run afoul of Porter. Margrave was a master of the art of
getting information, and he decided, on reflection, that the easiest way
to get information about Porter was to coax it out of Wheaton.

He always called Wheaton "Jim," in remembrance of those early days of
Wheaton's residence in Clarkson when Wheaton had worked in his office.
He had watched Wheaton's rise with interest; he took to himself the
credit of being his discoverer. When Wheaton called on his daughter he
made no comment; he knew nothing to Wheaton's discredit, and he would no
more have thought of criticizing Mabel than of ordering dynamite
substituted for coal in the locomotives of his railroad. When he
concluded that he needed Wheaton, he began playing for him, just as if
the cashier had been a councilman or a member of the legislature or a
large shipper or any other fair prey.

He had unconsciously made a good beginning by making Wheaton the King of
the Carnival; he now resorted to that most insidious and economical form
of bribery known as the annual pass.

One of these pretty bits of pasteboard was at once mailed to Wheaton by
the Second Assistant General Something on Margrave's recommendation.

Wheaton accepted the pass as a tribute to his growing prominence in the
town. He knew that Porter refused railroad passes on practical grounds,
holding that such favors were extended in the hope of reciprocal
compliments, and he believed that a banker was better off without them.
Wheaton, whose vanity had been touched, could see no harm in them. He
had little use for passes as he knew and cared little about traveling,
but he had always envied men who carried their "annuals" in little
brass-bound books made for the purpose. To be sure it was late in the
year and passes were usually sent out in January, but this made the
compliment seem much more direct; the Transcontinental had forgotten
him, and had thought it well to rectify the error between seasons. He
felt that he must not make too much of the railroad's courtesy; he did
not know to which official in particular he was indebted, but he ran
into Margrave one evening at the club and decided to thank him.

"How's traffic?" he asked, as Margrave made room for him on the settee
where he sat reading the evening paper.

"Fair. Anything new?"

"No; it's the same routine with me pretty much all the time."

"I guess that's right. I shouldn't think there was much fun in banking.
You got to keep the public too far away. I like to be up against people
myself."

"Banking is hardly a sociable business," said Wheaton.

"No; a good banker's got to have cold feet, as the fellow said."

"But you railroad people are not considered so very warm," said Wheaton.
"The fellows who want favors seem to think so. By the way, I'm much
obliged to some one for an annual that turned up in my mail the other
day. I don't know who sent it to me,--if it's you--"

"Um?" Margrave affected to have been wandering in his thoughts, but this
was what he was waiting for. "Oh, I guess that was Wilson. I never fool
with the pass business myself; I've got troubles of my own."

"I guess I'll not use it very often," said Wheaton, as if he owed an
apology to the road for accepting it.

"Better come out with me in the car sometime and see the road,"
Margrave suggested, throwing his newspaper on the table.

"I'd like that very much," said Wheaton.

"Where's Thompson now? Old man's pretty well done up, ain't he?"

"He went back to Arizona. He was here at work all summer. He's afraid of
our winters."

"Well, that gives you your chance," said Margrave, affably. "There ain't
any young man in town that's got a better chance than you have, Jim."

"I know that," said Wheaton, humbly.

"You don't go in much on the outside, do you? I suppose you don't have
much time."

"No; I'm held down pretty close; and in a bank you can't go into
everything."

"Well, there's nothing like keeping an eye out. Good things are not so
terribly common these days." Margrave got up and walked the floor once
or twice, apparently in a musing humor, but he really wished to look
into the adjoining room to make sure they were alone.

"I believe," he said, with emphasis on the pronoun, "there's going to be
a good thing for some one in Traction stock. Porter ought to let you in
on that." Margrave didn't know that Porter was in, but he expected to
find out.

"Mr. Porter has a way of keeping things to himself," said Wheaton,
cautiously; yet he was flattered by Margrave's friendliness, and anxious
to make a favorable impression. Vanity is not, as is usually assumed, a
mere incident of character; it is a disease.

"I suppose," said Margrave, "that a man could buy a barrel of that
stuff just now at a low figure."

Wheaton could not resist this opportunity.

"What I have, I got at thirty-one," he answered, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world for him to have Traction stock. This was not
a bank confidence; there was no reason why he should not talk of his own
investments if he wished to do so.

Margrave had reseated himself, and lounged on the settee with a
confidential air that he had found very effective in the committee rooms
at the state capital when it was necessary to deal with a difficult
legislator.

"I suppose Porter must have got in lower than that," he said,
carelessly. "Billy usually gets in on the ground floor." He chuckled to
himself in admiration of the banker's shrewdness. "But a fellow can do
what he pleases when he's got money. Most of us see good things and
can't go into the market after 'em."

"What's your guess as to the turn this Traction business will take?"
asked Wheaton. He had not expected an opportunity to talk to any one of
Margrave's standing on this subject, and he thought he would get some
information while the opportunity offered.

"Don't ask me! If I knew I'd like to get into the game. But, look
here"--he moved his fat body a little nearer to Wheaton--"the way to go
into that thing is to go into it big! I've had my eye on it for a good
while, but I ain't going to touch it unless I can swing it all. Now, you
know Porter, and I know him, and you can bet your last dollar he'll
never be able to handle it. He ain't built for it!" His voice sank to a
whisper. "But if I decide to go in, I've got to get rid of Porter. Me
and Porter can't travel in the same harness. You know that," he added,
pleadingly, as if there were the bitterness of years of controversy in
his relations with Porter.

Wheaton nodded sympathetically.

"Now, I don't know how much he's got"--this in an angry tone, as if
Porter were guilty of some grave offense against him--"and he's so
damned mysterious you can't tell what he's up to. You know how he is;
you can't go to a fellow like that and do business with him, and he
won't play anyhow, unless you play his way."

"Well, I don't know anything about his affairs, of course," said
Wheaton, yet feeling that Margrave's confidences must be reciprocated.
"Just between ourselves,"--he waited for Margrave to nod and grunt in
his solemn way--"he did buy a little some time ago, but no great amount.
It would take a good deal of money to control that company."

"You're dead right, it would; and Porter hasn't any business fooling
with it. You've got to syndicate a thing like that. He's probably got a
tip from some one of his Eastern friends as to what they're going to do,
and he's buying in, when he can, to get next. But say, he hasn't any
Traction bonds, has he?"

Wheaton had already said more than he had intended, and repented now
that he had been drawn into this conversation; but Margrave was bending
toward him with a great air of condescending intimacy. Porter had never
been confidential with him; and it was really Margrave who had given him
his start.

"I don't think so; at least I never knew of it." His mind was on those
checks to Peckham, which clearly represented purchases of stock. Of
course, Porter might have bonds, too, but having gone thus far he did
not like to admit to Margrave how little he really knew of Porter's
doings. Margrave was puffing solemnly at his cigar, and changed the
subject. When he rose to go and stood stamping down his trousers, which
were forever climbing up his fat legs when he sat, Wheaton felt an
impulse to correct any false impressions which he might have given
Margrave; but he was afraid to try this. He would discredit himself with
Margrave by doing so. He had not intended to leave so early, but he
hated to let go of Margrave, and he followed him into the coat room.

"That's all between us--that little matter," said Margrave, as they were
helped into their coats by the sleepy colored boy. Wheaton wanted to say
this himself, but Margrave saved him the trouble.

"Certainly, Mr. Margrave."



CHAPTER XXIII

WILLIAM PORTER RETURNS FROM A JOURNEY


Porter went into Fenton's private office and shut and locked the door
after him. He always did this, and Fenton, who humored his best client's
whims perforce, pushed back the law book which he was reading and
straightened the pens on his blotter.

"I didn't expect you back so soon," he said. Porter looked tired and
there were dark rings under his eyes.

"Short horse soon curried," he remarked, pulling a packet from his
overcoat.

There was something boyish in Porter's mysterious methods, which always
amused Fenton when they did not alarm and exasperate him.

Porter sat down at a long table and the lawyer drew up a chair opposite
him.

"Which way have you been this time?"

"Down in the country," returned Porter, indefinitely.

Fenton laughed and watched his client pulling the rubber bands from his
package.

"What have you there--oats or wheat?"

"What I have here," said Porter, straightening out the crisp papers he
had taken from his bundle, "is a few shares of Clarkson Traction stock."

"Oh!" Fenton picked up a ruler and played with it until Porter had
finished counting and smoothing the stock certificates.

"There you are," said the banker, passing the papers over to Fenton.
"See if they're all right."

Fenton compared the names on the face of the certificates with the
assignments on the back, while Porter watched him and played with a
rubber band.

"The assignments are all straight," said Fenton, finally.

He sat waiting and his silence irritated Porter, who reached across and
took up the certificates again.

"I want to talk to you a little about Traction."

"All right, sir," said Fenton, respectfully.

"I've gone in for that pretty deep this fall."

Fenton nodded gravely. He felt trouble in the air.

"I started in on this down East last summer. Those bonds all went East,
but a lot of the stock was kicked around out here. If I get enough and
reorganize the company I can handle the new securities down East all
right. That's business. Now, I've been gathering in the stock around
here on the quiet. Peckham's been buying some for me, and he's assigned
it in blank. There's no use in getting new shares issued until we're
ready to act, for Barnes and those fellows are not above doing something
nasty if they think they're going to lose their jobs."

"The original stock issue was five thousand shares," said Fenton. "How
much have you?"

"Well, sir," said Porter, "I've got about half and I'm looking for a few
shares more right now."

Fenton picked up his ruler again and beat his knuckles with it. Porter
had expected Fenton to lecture him sharply, but the lawyer was ominously
quiet.

"I'm free to confess," said Fenton, "that I'm sorry you've gone into
this. This isn't the kind of thing that you're in the habit of going
into. I am not much taken with the idea of mixing up in a corporation
that has as disreputable a record as the Traction Company. It's been
mismanaged and robbed until there's not much left for an honest man to
take hold of; they issue no statements; no one of any responsibility has
been connected with it for a long time. The outside stockholders are
scattered all over the country, and most of them have quit trying to
enforce their rights, if they may be said to have any rights. You
remember that the last time they went into court they were knocked out
and I'm free to say that I don't want to have to go into any litigation
against the company."

"Yes, but the franchise is all straight, ain't it?"

"Probably it is all right," admitted the lawyer reluctantly, "but that
isn't the whole story by any manner of means. If it's known that you're
picking up the stock, every fellow that has any will soak you good and
hard before he parts with it. Now, there are the bondholders--"

"Well, what can the bondholders do?" demanded Porter.

"Oh, get a receiver and have a lot of fun. You may expect that at any
time, too. Those Eastern fellows are slow sometimes, but they generally
know what they're about."

"Yes, but if they weren't Eastern fellows--"

"Oh, a bondholder's rights are as good one place as another. Those
suits are usually brought in the name of the trustee in their behalf."

"Now, do you know what I'm going to do?" demanded Porter, settling back
in his chair and placing his feet on Fenton's table. "I'm going to turn
up at the next annual meeting and clean this thing out. You don't think
it's any good; I've got faith in the company and in the town; I believe
it's going to be a good thing. This little gang here that's been running
it has got to go. I've dug up some stock here that everybody thought was
lost. At the last meeting only eight hundred out of five thousand shares
were voted."

Fenton frowned and continued to punish himself with the ruler.

"You beat me! You haven't the slightest idea who the other shareholders
are; the company is thoroughly rotten in all its past history, and here
you go plunging into it up to your eyes. And they say you're the most
conservative banker on the river."

"I guess you don't have to get me out of many scrapes," said Porter,
doggedly.

"When's the annual meeting?" asked Fenton, suddenly.

"It's day after to-morrow--a close call, but I'll make it all right."

Fenton threw down his ruler impatiently.

"Mr. Porter, I want you to remember that I haven't given you any advice
at all in this matter. It's an extra hazardous thing that you're doing.
Now, I don't know anything definitely about it, but--I've got the
impression that Margrave's paralleling your lines in this business."
Porter brought his feet down with a crash.

"Where'd you get that?"

"It's this way," said Fenton, in his quietest tones. "A Baltimore lawyer
that I know wrote me a letter,--I just got it this morning,--asking me
about Margrave's responsibility. It seems that my friend has a client
who owns some of these shares. A good deal of that stock went to
Baltimore and Philadelphia, you may remember. I assume that Margrave is
after it."

"Wire your friend right away not to sell,--" shouted Porter, pounding
the table with his fist.

"I did that this morning, and here's his answer. I got it just before
you came in. Margrave evidently got anxious and wired them to send
certificates with draft through the Drovers' National. They're probably
on the way now." He passed the telegram across to Porter, who put on his
glasses and read it.

"Now," continued Fenton, "I don't know just what this means, but it
looks to me as if Margrave was hot on the track of the trolley company
himself; and Tim Margrave isn't a particularly pleasant fellow to go
into business with, is he?"

"But the bondholders would still have their chance, wouldn't they, even
if he got a majority of the stock?"

"Well, you haven't any bonds, have you? First thing I know you'll be
telling me that you've got a few barrels of them," he added, jokingly.
He could not help laughing at Porter.

Porter took the cigar from his mouth, looked carefully at the lighted
end of it, and said with a casual air, as if he had a particularly
decisive and conclusive statement to make and wished to avail himself of
its dramatic possibilities:

"My dear boy, I've got every blamed bond!"

Fenton sat gazing at him in stupefied wonder.

"Would you mind saying that again?" he said, after a full minute of
silent amazement in which he sat staring at his client, who was blowing
rings of smoke with great equanimity.

"I've got all the bonds, was what I said."

The lawyer walked around the table and put his hand on Porter's
shoulder. He was trying to keep from laughing, like a parent who is
about to rebuke a child and yet laughs at the cause of its offense.
Porter evidently thought that he had done an extremely bright thing.

"As I understand you, you have bought all of the bonds and half of the
stock."

"About half. I'm a little--just a little--short."

"Will you kindly tell me what you wanted with the stock if you had the
bonds?"

"Well, I figured it this way, that the franchise was worth the price I
had to pay for the whole thing, and if I had the stock control I'd save
the fuss of foreclosing. You lawyers always make a lot of rumpus about
those things, and a receivership would prejudice the Eastern market when
I come to reorganize and sell out."

Fenton lay back in his chair and laughed, while Porter looked at him a
little defiantly, with his hat tipped over his eyes and a cigar sticking
in his mouth at an impertinent angle.

"You'd better finish your job and make sure of your majority," said
Fenton. His rage was rising now and he did not urge Porter to remain
when the banker got up to go. He was not at all anxious to defend a
franchise which the local courts, always sensitive to public sentiment,
might set aside.

"I'll see you in the morning first thing," said Porter at the door,
which Fenton opened for him. "I want you to go to the meeting with me
and we'll need a day to get ready."

The lawyer watched his client walk toward the elevator. It occurred to
him that Porter's step was losing its elasticity. While the banker
waited for the elevator car he leaned wearily against the wire screen of
the shaft.

Fenton swore quietly to himself for a few minutes and then sat down with
a copy of the charter of the Clarkson Traction Company before him, and
spent the remainder of the day studying it. He had troubled much over
Porter's secretive ways, and had labored to shatter the dangerous
conceit which had gradually grown up in his client. Porter had, in fact,
a contempt for lawyers, though he leaned on Fenton more than he would
admit. Fenton, on the other hand, was constantly fearful lest his client
should undo himself by his secretive methods. He had difficulty in
getting all the facts out of him even when they were imperatively
required. Once in the trial of a case for Porter, the opposing counsel
made a statement which Fenton rose in full confidence to refute. His
antagonist reaffirmed it, and Fenton, not doubting that he understood
Porter's position thoroughly, appealed to him to deny the charge, fully
expecting to score an effective point before the court. To his
consternation, Porter coolly admitted the truth of the imputation. But
even this incident and Fenton's importunity in every matter that arose
thereafter did not cure Porter of his weakness. He was a difficult
client, who was, as Fenton often said to himself, a good deal harder to
manage in a lawsuit than the trial judge or opposing counsel.

The next morning Fenton was at his office early and sent his boy at once
to ask Mr. Porter to come up. The boy reported that Mr. Porter had not
been at the bank. Fenton went down himself at ten o'clock and found the
president's desk closed.

"Where's the boss?" he demanded.

"Won't be down this morning," said Wheaton. "Miss Porter telephoned that
he wasn't feeling well, but he expected to be down after luncheon."



CHAPTER XXIV

INTERRUPTED PLANS


Porter had wakened that morning with a pain-racked body and the hot
taste of fever in his mouth. He dressed and went downstairs to
breakfast, but left the table and returned to his room to lie down.

"I'll be all right in an hour or so; I guess I've taken cold," he said
to Evelyn. At the end of an hour he was shaking with a chill.

Evelyn left him alone to telephone for the doctor and in her absence he
tried to rise and fainted. He was still lying on the floor when she
returned. When the doctor came he found the household in a panic, and
almost before Porter realized it, he was hazily watching the white cap
of the trained nurse whom the doctor ordered with his medicines.

"Your father has a fever of some sort," he said to Evelyn. "It may be
only a severe attack of malaria; but it's probably typhoid. In any
event, there's nothing to be alarmed about. Mr. Porter has one of the
old-fashioned constitutions," he added, reassuringly, "and there's
nothing to fear for him."

Porter protested all the morning that he would go to his office after
luncheon, but the temperature line on the nurse's chart climbed steadily
upward. He resented the tyranny of the nurse, who moved about the room
with an air of having been there always, and he was impatient under the
efforts of Evelyn to soothe him. The doctor came again at noon. He was
of Porter's age and an old friend; he dealt frankly with his patient
now. Evelyn stood by and listened, adding her own words of pleading and
cheer; and while the doctor gave instructions to the nurse outside, he
relaxed, and let her smooth his pillow and bathe his hot brow.

"This may be my turn--" he began.

"Not by any manner of means, father," she broke in with a lightness she
did not feel. It moved her greatly to see his weakness.

"It's an unfortunate time," he said, "and there's something you must do
for me. I've got to see Wheaton or Fenton. It's very important."

"But you mustn't, father; business can wait until you're well again. It
will be only a few days--"

"You mustn't question what I ask," he went on very steadily. "It's of
great importance," and she knew that he meant it.

"Can't I see them for you?" she asked. He turned his slight lean body
under the covers, and shook his head helplessly on his pillow.

"You see you can't talk, father," she said very gently. "Is there
anything I can say to them for you?"

"Yes," he said weakly, "I want you to give the key to one of my boxes to
Wheaton. Tell him to take out a package--marked Traction--and give it to
Fenton."

Evelyn brought his key ring and he pointed out the key and watched her
slip it from the ring.

"I'll send for Mr. Wheaton at once," she said. "Don't worry any more
about it, father."

"Evelyn!" She had started for the door, but now hurried back to him.

"Don't tell him anything over the telephone; just ask him to come up."
She went out at once that he might be assured, and he turned wearily on
his pillow and slept.

Porter's illness was proclaimed in the first editions of the afternoon
papers, which Wheaton saw at his desk. News gains force by publication,
and when he read the printed statement that the president of the
Clarkson National Bank was confined to his house by illness, he felt
that Porter must really be very sick; and he naturally turned the fact
over in his mind to see how this might affect him. The directors came in
and sat about in the directors' room with their hats on, and Wingate,
the starch manufacturer, who had seen Porter's doctor, pronounced the
president a very sick man and suggested that Thompson, the invalid
vice-president, ought to be notified. The others acquiesced, and they
prepared a telegram to Thompson at Phoenix, suggesting his immediate
return, if possible.

Wheaton sat with them and listened respectfully. When he was first
appointed to his position, he had waited with a kind of awe for the
pronouncements of the directors; but he had acquired a low opinion of
them. He certainly knew more about the affairs of the bank than any of
them except Porter and he knew more than Porter of the details. During
this informal conference of the directors, Wheaton was called to the
telephone, and was cheered by the sound of Evelyn's voice. She asked him
to come up as soon as convenient; she wished to give him a message from
her father, who was very comfortable, she said. After dinner would do;
she knew that he must be very busy. He expressed his sympathy formally,
and went back to the directors with a kindlier feeling toward the world.
There was a consolation for him in the knowledge that Miss Porter must
summon him to her in this way; her father's illness made another tie
between them.

Wingate and the others came out of the directors' room as he put down
the telephone receiver, and they stood talking at his desk. He found a
secret pleasure in being able to answer at once the questions which
Wingate put to him, as to how the discounts were running, and what they
were carrying of county money, and how much government money they had on
hand. Wingate knew no more of banking than he knew of Egyptian
hieroglyphics; but he thought he did, because he had read the national
banking act through and had once met the comptroller of the currency at
dinner. The other directors listened to Wheaton's answers with
admiration. When they got outside Wingate remarked, as they stood at the
front door before dispersing:

"I wish to thunder I could ask Jim Wheaton something just once that he
didn't know. That fellow knows every balance in the bank, and the date
of the maturity of every loan. He's almost too good to be true."

They laughed.

"I guess Jim's all right," said the wholesale dry goods merchant, who
was a good deal impressed with the fact of his directorship.

"Sure," said Wingate. "But you can bet Thompson's lungs will get a lot
better when he gets our telegram." They had no great belief in
Thompson's invalidism. It is one of the drolleries of our American life
that men, particularly in Western cities, never dare to be ill; it is
much nobler and far more convenient to die than to be sick.

Fenton spent the afternoon in court. He intended to call at the Porters'
on his way home, and stopped at the bank before going to his office,
thinking that the banker might be there; but the president's desk was
closed.

"How sick is Mr. Porter?" he asked Wheaton.

"He's pretty sick," said Wheaton. "It's typhoid fever."

Fenton whistled.

"That's what the doctor calls it. I spoke to Miss Porter over the
telephone a few minutes ago, and she did not seem to be alarmed about
her father. He's very strong, you know."

But Fenton was not listening. "See here, Wheaton," he said suddenly, "do
you know anything about Porter's private affairs?"

"Not very much," said Wheaton guardedly.

"I guess you don't and I guess nobody does, worse luck! You know how
morbidly secretive he is, and how he shies off from publicity,--I
suppose you do," he went on a little grimly. He did not like Wheaton
particularly. "Well, he has some Traction stock,--the annual meeting is
held to-morrow and he's got to be represented."

"He never told me of it," said Wheaton, truthfully.

"His shares are probably in his inside pocket, or hid under the bed at
home; but we've got to get them if he has any, and get them quick. If he
has his wits he'll probably try and send word to me. I suppose I
couldn't see him if I went up."

"Miss Porter telephoned me to come,--on some business matter, she said,
and no doubt that's what it is."

"Then I won't go just now, but I'll see you here as soon as you get down
town. I'll be at my office right after dinner." He paused, deliberating.
Fenton was a careful man, who rose to emergencies.

"I'll come directly back here," said Wheaton. "No doubt the papers you
want are in one of Mr. Porter's private boxes."

"Can you get into it to-night?"

"Yes; it's in the vault where we keep the account books, and there's no
time lock."



CHAPTER XXV

JAMES WHEATON DECLINES AN OFFER


Margrave hung up the receiver of his desk telephone with a slam, and
rang a bell for the office boy.

"Call the Clarkson National, and tell Mr. Wheaton to come over,--right
away."

It was late in the afternoon. Wheaton had been unusually busy with
routine work and the directors had taken an hour of his time. He had
turned away from Fenton to answer Margrave's message, and went toward
the Transcontinental office with a feeling of foreboding. He remembered
the place very well; it had hardly changed since the days of his own
brief service there. As he crossed the threshold of the private office,
the sight of Margrave's fat bulk squeezed into a chair that was too
small for him, impressed him unpleasantly; he had come with mixed
feelings, not knowing whether his friendly relations with the railroader
were to be further emphasized, or whether Margrave was about to make
some demand of him. His doubts were quickly dispelled by Margrave, who
turned around fiercely as the door closed.

"Sit down, Wheaton," he said, indicating a chair by his desk. His face
was very red and his stubby mustache seemed stiffer and more wire-like
than ever. He was breathing in the difficult choked manner of fat men
in their rage.

"Now, I want you to tell me something; I want you to answer up fair and
square. I've got to come right down to brass tacks with you and I want
you to tell me the God's truth. How much Traction has Billy Porter got?"

Wheaton grew white, and the lids closed over his eyes sleepily.

"Come out with it," puffed Margrave. "If you've been making a fool of me
I want to know it."

"I don't know what right you've got to ask me such a question," Wheaton
answered coldly.

"No right,--no right!" Margrave panted. "You damned miserable fool, what
do you know or mean by right or wrong either? I can take my medicine as
well as the next man, but when a friend does me up, then I throw up my
hands. Why did you tell me you knew what Porter was doing, and lead me
to think--"

"Mr. Margrave," said Wheaton, "I didn't come here to be abused by you.
If I've done you any injury, I'm not aware of it."

"I guess that's right," said Margrave ironically. "What I want to know
is what you let me think Porter wasn't taking hold of Traction for? You
knew I was going into it. I told you that with the fool idea that you
were a friend of mine. You told me the old man had stopped buying--"

"And when I did I betrayed a confidence," said Wheaton, virtuously. "I
had no business telling you anything of the kind."

"When you told me that," Margrave went on in bitter derision, shaking
his finger in Wheaton's face,--"when you told me that you told me a
damned lie, that's what you did, Jim Wheaton."

"You can't talk to me that way," said Wheaton, sitting up in his chair
resentfully. "When I told you that, I believed it," and he added, with a
second's hesitation, "I still believe it."

"Don't lie any more to me about it. I can take my medicine as well as
the next man, but--" swaying his big head back and forth on his fat
shoulders,--"when a man plays a dirty trick on Tim Margrave, I want him
to know when Margrave finds it out. I never thought it of you, Jim. I've
always treated you as white as I knew how; I've been glad to see you in
my house,--"

"I don't know what you're driving at, but I want you to stop abusing
me," said Wheaton, with more vigor of tone than he had yet manifested.
"I never said a word to you about Mr. Porter in connection with Traction
that I didn't think true. The only mistake I made was in saying anything
to you at all; but I thought you were a friend of mine. If anybody's
been deceived, I'm the one."

Margrave watched him contemptuously.

"Let me ask you something, Jim," he said, dropping his blustering tone.
"Haven't you known all these weeks when I've been seeing you every few
days at the club, and at my own house several times,"--he dwelt on the
second clause as if the breach of hospitality on Wheaton's part had been
the grievous offense,--"haven't you known that the old man was chasing
over the country in his carpet slippers buying all that stock he could
lay his hands on?"

"On my sacred honor, I have not. When we talked of it I knew he had
been buying some, but I thought he'd stopped, as I let you understand.
I'm sorry if you were misled by anything I said."

"Well, that's all over now," said Margrave, in a conciliatory tone. "I'm
in the devil's own hole, Jim. I've been relying on your information; in
fact, I've had it in mind to make you treasurer of the company when we
get reorganized. That ought to show you what a lot of confidence I've
been putting in you all this time that you've been watching me run into
the soup clear up to my chin."

"I'm honestly sorry,"--began Wheaton. "I had no idea you were depending
on me. You ought to have known that I couldn't betray Mr. Porter."

"You ought to be sorry," said Margrave dolefully. "But, look here, Jim,
I don't believe you're going to do me up on this."

"I'm not going to do anybody up; but I don't see what I can do to help
you."

"Well, I do. You gave me to understand that you were buying this stuff
yourself. You still got what you had?"

Margrave knew from the secretary of the company that Wheaton owned one
hundred shares. He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked at
Wheaton appealingly.

"Yes," Wheaton answered reluctantly. He knew now why he had been
summoned.

"Now, how many shares have you, Jim?" with increasing amiability of tone
and manner.

"Just what I bought in the beginning; one hundred shares."

Margrave took a pad from his desk and added one hundred to a short
column of figures. He made the footing and regarded the total with
careless interest before looking up.

"How much do you want for that, Jim?"

"To tell the truth, Mr. Margrave, I don't know that I want to sell it."

"Now, Jim, you ain't going to hold me up on this? You've got me into a
pretty mess, and I hope you're not going to keep on pushing me in."

Wheaton crossed and recrossed his legs. There was Porter and there was
Margrave. To whom did he owe allegiance? He resented the way in which
Margrave had taken him to task; he could not see that he had been
culpable, unless as against Porter. Yet Porter had told him nothing; if
Porter had treated him with a little more frankness, he certainly would
never have mentioned Traction to Margrave.

"What I have wouldn't do you any good," he said finally.

"But it might do me some harm! Now, you don't want these shares, Jim.
You're entitled to a profit, and I'll pay you a fair price."

"I can't do anything to hurt Mr. Porter," said Wheaton. He remembered
just how the drawing-room at the Porters' looked, and the kindness and
frankness of Evelyn Porter's eyes.

"Yes, but you've got a duty to me," he stormed, getting red in the face
again. "You can bet your life that if it hadn't been for you, I'd never
have been in this pickle. Come along now, Jim, I've got a lot of our
railroad people to go in on this. They depend absolutely on my judgment.
I'm a ruined man if I fail to show up at the meeting to-morrow with a
majority of these shares. It won't make any difference to Billy Porter
whether he wins out or not. He's got plenty of irons in the fire. I
don't know as a matter of fact that I need these shares; but I want to
be on the safe side. Does Porter know what you've got?"

Wheaton shook his head.

"Then what's the harm in selling them where you've got a chance, even if
you wasn't under any obligations to me? If you didn't know until I told
you that the old man was still on the hunt for this stuff, I don't see
that you're bound to wait for him to come around and ask you to sell to
him. How much shall I make it for?" He opened a drawer and pulled out
his check-book.

"They tell me Porter's pretty sick," Margrave continued, running the
stubs of the check-book through his thick thumb and forefinger. "Billy
isn't as young as he used to be. Very likely he'll never know you had
any Traction stock," he added significantly. "How much shall I make it
for, Jim?"

Wheaton walked over to the window and looked down into the street, while
Margrave watched him with pen in hand.

"How much shall I make it for?" he asked more sharply.

"You can't make it for anything, Mr. Margrave, and I want to say that
I'm very much disappointed in the way you've tried to get it from me."

Margrave swung around on him with an oath. But Wheaton went on,
speaking carefully.

"I can't imagine that the few shares of stock I hold can be of real
importance in deciding the control of this company. I don't say I won't
give you these shares, but I can't do it now."

Margrave's face grew red and purple as Wheaton walked toward the door.

"Maybe you think you can wring more out of Porter than you can out of
me. But, by God, I'll take this out of you and out of him, too, if I go
broke doing it."



CHAPTER XXVI

THE KEY TO A DILEMMA


Evelyn had telephoned to Mrs. Whipple of her father's illness in terms
which allayed alarm; but when the afternoon paper referred to it
ominously, the good woman set out through the first snowstorm of the
season for the Porter house, carrying her campaign outfit, as the
general called it, in a suit-case. Mrs. Whipple's hopeful equanimity was
very welcome to Evelyn, who suffered as women do when denied the
privilege of ministering to their sick and forced to see their natural
office usurped by others. Mrs. Whipple brought a breath of May into the
atmosphere of the house. She found ways of dulling the edge of Evelyn's
anxiety and idleness; she even found things for Evelyn to do, and busied
herself disposing of inquiries at the door and telephone to save Evelyn
the trouble. In Evelyn's sitting-room Mrs. Whipple talked of clothes and
made it seem a great favor for the girl to drag out several new gowns
for inspection,--a kind of first view, she called it; and she sighed
over them and said they were more perfect than perfect lyrics and would
appeal to a larger audience.

She chose one of the lyrics of black chiffon and lace, with a high
collar and half sleeves and forced Evelyn to put it on; and when they
sat down to dinner together she planned a portrait of Evelyn in the same
gown, which Chase or Sargent must paint. She managed the talk tactfully,
without committing the error of trying to ignore the sick man upstairs.
She made his illness seem incidental merely, and with a bright side, in
that it gave her a chance to spend a few days at the Hill. Then she went
on:

"Warry and Mr. Saxton were at the house last night. It's delightful to
see men so devoted to each other as they are; and it's great fun to hear
them banter each other. I didn't know that Mr. Saxton could be funny,
but in his quiet way he says the drollest things!"

"I thought he was very serious," said Evelyn. "I rarely see him, but
when I do, he flatters me by talking about books. He thinks I'm
literary!"

"I can't imagine it."

Evelyn laughed.

"Oh, thanks! I'm making progress!"

"It's funny," Mrs. Whipple continued, "the way he takes care of Warry.
The general says Mr. Saxton is a Newfoundland and Warry a fox terrier.
Warry's at work again, and I suppose we have Mr. Saxton's influence to
thank."

"A man like that could do a great deal for Warry," said Evelyn. "If
Warry doesn't settle down pretty soon he'll lose his chance." Then, her
father coming into her thoughts, she added irrelevantly: "Mr. Thompson
will probably come home. Mr. Wheaton telephoned that the directors had
wired him."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Whipple, looking at the girl quickly,--"so much
responsibility,--I suppose it would be hardly fair to Mr. Wheaton--"

"I suppose not," said Evelyn.

"It's just the same in business as it is in the army," continued Mrs.
Whipple, who referred everything back to the military establishment.
"The bugle's got to blow every morning whether the colonel's sick or
not. I suppose the bank keeps open just the same. When a thing's once
well started it has a way of running on, whether anybody attends to it
or not."

"But you couldn't get father to believe that," said Evelyn, smiling in
recollection of her father's life-long refutation of this philosophy.

"No indeed," assented Mrs. Whipple. "But in the army there is a good
deal to make a man humble. If he gets transferred from one end of the
land to another, somebody else does the work he has been doing, and
usually you wouldn't know the difference. The individual is really
extinguished; they all sign their reports in exactly the same place, and
one signature is just as good at Washington as another." This was a
favorite line of discourse with Mrs. Whipple; she had reduced her army
experience to a philosophy, which she was fond of presenting on any
occasion.

The maid brought Evelyn a card before they had finished coffee.

"It's Mr. Wheaton," she explained; "I asked him to come. Father was
greatly troubled about some matter which he said must not be neglected.
He wanted me to give the key of his box to Mr. Wheaton,--there are some
papers which it is very necessary for Mr. Fenton to have. It's something
I hadn't heard of before, but it must be important. He's been flighty
this afternoon and has tried to talk about it."

Evelyn had risen and stood by the table with a troubled look on her
face, as if expecting counsel; but she was thinking of the sick man
upstairs and not of his business affairs.

"Yes; don't wait for me," said the older woman, as though it were merely
a question of the girl's excusing herself. When Evelyn had gone, Mrs.
Whipple plied her spoon in her cup long after the single lump of sugar
was dissolved. Mrs. Whipple had a way of disliking people thoroughly
when they did not please her, and she did not like James Wheaton. She
was wondering why, as she sat alone at the table and played with the
spoon.

The maid who admitted Wheaton had let him elect between the drawing room
and the library, and he chose the latter instinctively, as less formal
and more appropriate for an interview based on his dual social and
business relations with the Porters. His slim figure appeared to
advantage in evening clothes; he was no longer afraid of rooms that were
handsome and spacious like this. There was nowadays no more correctly
groomed man in Clarkson than he, though Warry Raridan had remarked to
Wheaton at the Bachelors' that his ties were composed a trifle too
neatly; a tie to be properly done should, Raridan held, leave something
to the imagination. Wheaton heard the swish of Evelyn's skirts in the
hall with a quickening heartbeat. Her black gown intensified her
fairness; he had never seen her in black before, and it gave a new
accent to her beauty as she came toward him.

"It was a great shock to us down town to hear of your father's illness.
He seemed as well as usual yesterday."

"Did you think so? I thought he looked worn when he came home last
evening. He has been working very hard lately."

Wheaton had never seen her so grave. He was sincerely sorry for her
trouble, and he tried to say so. There was something appealing in her
unusual calm; the low tones of her voice were not wasted on him.

"Father asked me to send for you this morning, but he had grown so ill
in a few hours that I took the responsibility of not doing it. The
doctor said emphatically that he must not see people. But something in
particular was on his mind, some papers that Mr. Fenton should have.
They are in his box at the bank, and I was to give you the key to it. It
is something about the Traction Company; no doubt you know of it?"

"Yes," Wheaton assented. It was not necessary for him to say that Mr.
Porter had told him nothing about it.

"You can attend to this easily?"

"Yes, certainly. Mr. Fenton spoke to me about the matter this afternoon.
It is very important and he wished me to report to him as soon as I
found the papers. No doubt they are in your father's box," he said. "He
is always very methodical." He smiled at her reassuringly and rose. She
did not ask him to stay longer, but went to fetch the key.

It was a small, thin bit of steel. Wheaton turned it over in his hand.

"I'll return the key to-morrow, after I've found the papers Mr. Fenton
wants."

"Very well. I hope you will have no difficulty."

He still held the key in his fingers, not knowing whether this was his
dismissal or not.

"There is one thing more, Mr. Wheaton. Father seemed very much troubled
about this Traction matter--"

"Very unnecessarily, I'm sure," said Wheaton soothingly.

"He evidently wished all the papers he has concerning the company to be
given to Mr. Fenton. Now, this probably is of no importance whatever,
but several years ago father gave me some stock in the street railway
company. It came about through a little fun-making between us. We were
talking of railway passes,--you know he never accepts any"--Wheaton
blinked--"and I told him I'd like to have a pass on something, even if
it was only a street car line."

She was smiling in her eagerness that he should understand perfectly.

"And he said he guessed he could fix that by giving me some stock in the
company. I remember that he made light of it when I thanked him, and
said it wasn't so important as it looked. He probably forgot it long
ago. I had forgotten it myself--I never got the pass, either! but I
brought the stock down that Mr. Fenton might have use for it." She went
over to the mantel and picked up a paper, while he watched her; and when
she put it into his hand he turned it over. It was a certificate for one
hundred shares, issued in due form to Evelyn Porter, but was not
assigned.

"It may be important," said Wheaton, regarding the paper thoughtfully.
"Mr. Fenton will know. It couldn't be used without your name on the
back," he said, indicating the place on the certificate.

"Oh, should I sign it?" she asked, in the curious fluttering way in
which many women approach the minor details of business. Wheaton
hesitated; he did not imagine that this block of stock could be of
importance, and yet the tentative business association with Miss Porter
was so pleasant that he yielded to a temptation to prolong it.

"Yes, you might sign it," he said.

Evelyn went to her father's table and wrote her name as Wheaton
indicated.

"A witness is required and I will supply that." And Wheaton sat down at
the table and signed his name beside hers, while she stood opposite him,
the tips of her fingers resting on the table.

"Evelyn Porter" and "James Wheaton." He blotted the names with Porter's
blotter, Evelyn still standing by him, slightly mystified as women often
are by the fact that their signatures have a value. He felt that there
was something intimate in the fact of their signing themselves together
there. He was thrilled by her beauty. The black lace falling from her
elbows made a filmy tracery upon her white arms. Her head was bent
toward him, the shaded lamp cast a glow upon her face and throat, and
her slim, white hands rested on the table so near that he could have
touched them. She bent her gaze upon him gravely; she, too, felt that
his relations with her father made a tie between them; he was older than
the other men who came to see her; she yielded him a respect for his
well-won success. A vague sense of what her father liked in him crept
into her mind in the moment that she stood looking down on him; he was
quiet, deft and sure,--qualities which his smoothly-combed black hair
and immaculate linen seemed to emphasize. She gave, in her ignorance of
business, an exaggerated importance to the trifling transaction which he
had now concluded. He smiled up at her as he put down the pen.

"It isn't as serious as it looks," he said, rising.

"It must be very interesting when you understand it," she answered.

"I'm sorry--so very sorry for your trouble. I hope--if I can serve you
in any way you will not hesitate--"

"You are very kind," she said. Neither moved. They regarded each other
across the table with a serious fixed gaze; the sweet girlish spirit in
her was held by some curious fascinating power in him. He bent toward
her, his hand lightly clenched on the edge of the table.

"I hope there may never be a time when you will not feel free to command
me--in any way." He spoke slowly; his words seemed to bind a chain about
her and she could not move or answer. With a sudden gesture he put out
his hand; it almost touched hers, and she did not shrink away.

"Good evening, Mr. Wheaton!" Mrs. Whipple, handsome and smiling, sent
her greeting from the threshold, and swept into the room; and when she
took his hand she held it for a moment, as an elderly woman may, while
she chid him for his remissness in never coming to call on her.

[Illustration]

On his way down the slope to the car, Wheaton felt in his pocket
several times to be sure of the key. There was something the least bit
uncanny in his possession of it. Yesterday, as he knew well enough,
William Porter would no more have intrusted the key of his private box
to him or to any one else than he would have burned down his house. He
read into his errand a trust on Porter's part that included Porter's
daughter, too; but he got little satisfaction from this. He was only the
most convenient messenger available. His spirits rose and fell as he
debated.

The down-town streets were very quiet when he reached the business
district. He went to the side door of the bank and knocked for the
watchman to admit him. He took off his overcoat and hat and laid them
down carefully on his own desk.

"Going to work to-night, Mr. Wheaton?" asked the watchman.

Wheaton felt that he owed it to the watchman to explain, and he said:

"There are some papers in Mr. Porter's box that I must give to Mr.
Fenton to-night. They are in the old vault." This vault was often opened
at night by the bookkeepers and there was no reason why the cashier
should not enter it when he pleased. The watchman turned up the lights
so that Wheaton could manipulate the combination, and then swung open
the door. Wheaton thanked him and went in. Two keys were necessary to
open all of the boxes; one was common to all and was kept by the bank.
Wheaton easily found it, and then he took from his pocket Porter's key
which supplemented the other. His pulses beat fast as he felt the lock
yield to the thin strip of steel, and in a moment the box lay open
before his eyes. He had flashed on the electric light bulb in the vault
and recognized instantly Porter's inscription "Traction" on a brown
bundle. He then opened his own box and took out his Traction certificate
and carried it with Porter's packet into the directors' room.

He sat playing with the package, which was sealed in green wax with the
plain oval insignium of the bank. The packet was larger than he had
expected it to be; he had no idea of the amount of stock it contained;
and he knew nothing of the bonds. He felt tempted to open it; but
clearly that was not within his instructions. He must deliver it intact
to Fenton, and he would do it instantly. He hesitated, though, and drew
out the certificate which Evelyn had given him and turned the crisp
paper over in his hand. Each of them owned one hundred shares of
Traction stock; he was not thinking of this, but of Evelyn, whose
signature held his eye. It was an angular hand, and she ran her two
names together with a long sweep of the pen.

His thoughts were given a new direction by the noise of a colloquy
between the watchman and some one at the door. He heard his own name
mentioned, and thrusting the certificates into his pocket, he went out
to learn what was the matter.

"Mr. Wheaton," called the watchman, who held the door partly closed on
some one, "Mr. Margrave wishes to see you."

As Wheaton walked toward the watchman, Margrave strode in heavily on the
tile floor of the bank.



CHAPTER XXVII

A MEETING BETWEEN GENTLEMEN


"Hello, Wheaton," said Margrave cheerfully. "I've had the devil's own
time finding you."

He advanced upon Wheaton and shook him warmly by the hand. Then, this
having been for the benefit of the watchman, he said, in a low tone:

"Let's go into the directors' room, Jim, I want to see you."

The main bank room was only dimly lighted, but a cluster of electric
lights burned brilliantly above the directors' mahogany table, around
which were chairs of the Bank of England pattern.

"Have a seat, Mr. Margrave," said Wheaton formally. He had left the door
open, but Margrave closed it carefully. Porter's bundle of papers in its
manila wrapper lay on the table, and Wheaton sat down close to it.

"What you got there, greenbacks?" asked Margrave. "If you were just
leaving for Canada, don't miss the train on my account."

"That isn't funny," said Wheaton, severely.

"Oh, I wouldn't be so damned sensitive," said Margrave, throwing open
his overcoat and placing his hat on the table in front of him. "I guess
you ain't any better than some of the rest of 'em."

"I suppose you didn't come to say that," said Wheaton. He ran his
fingers over the wax seal on the packet. He wished that it were back in
Porter's box.

"We were having a little talk this afternoon, Jim," began Margrave in a
friendly and familiar tone, "about Traction matters. As I remember it,
in our last talk, it was understood that if I needed your little bunch
of Traction shares you'd let me have 'em when the time came. Now our
friend Porter's sick," continued Margrave, watching Wheaton sharply with
his small, keen eyes.

"Yes; he's sick," repeated Wheaton.

"He's pretty damned sick."

"I suppose you mean he is very sick; I don't know that it's so serious.
I was at the house this evening."

"Comforting the daughter, no doubt," with a sneer. "Now, Jim, I'm going
to say something to you and I don't want you to give back any prayer
meeting talk. The chances are that Porter's going to die." He waited a
moment to let the remark sink into Wheaton's consciousness, and then he
went on: "I guess he won't be able to vote his stock to-morrow. I
suppose you've got it or know where it is." He eyed the bundle on which
Wheaton's hand at that moment rested nervously, and Wheaton sat back in
his chair and thrust his hand into his trousers' pockets, looking
unconcernedly at Margrave.

"I want that stock, Jim," said the railroader, quietly, "and I want you
to give it to me to-night."

"Margrave," said Wheaton, and it was the first time he had so addressed
him, "you must be crazy, or a fool."

"Things are going pretty well with you, Jim," Margrave continued, as if
in friendly canvass of Wheaton's future. "You have a good position here;
when the old man's out of the way, you can marry the girl and be
president of the bank. It's dead easy for a smart fellow like you. It
would be too bad for you to spoil such prospects right now, when the
game is all in your own hands, by failing to help a friend in trouble."
Wheaton said nothing and Margrave resumed:

"You're trying to catch on to this damned society business here, and I
want you to do it. I haven't got any objections to your sailing as high
as you can. I know all about you. I gave you your first job when you
came here--"

"I appreciate all that, Mr. Margrave," Wheaton broke in. "You said the
word that got me into the Clarkson National, and I have never forgotten
it."

"Well, I don't want you to forget it. But see here: as long as I
recommended you and stood by you when you were a ratty little train
butcher, and without knowing anything about you except that you were
always on hand and kept your mouth shut, I think you owe something to
me." He bent forward in his chair, which creaked under him as he shifted
his bulk. "One night last fall, just before the Knights of Midas show, a
drunken scamp came into my yard, and made a nasty row. I was about to
turn him over to the police when he began whimpering and said he knew
you. He wasn't doing any particular harm and I gave him a quarter and
told him to get out; but he wanted to talk. He said--" Margrave dropped
his voice and fastened his eyes on Wheaton--"he was a long-lost brother
of yours. He was pretty drunk, but he seemed clear on your family
history, Jim. He said he'd done time once back in Illinois, and got you
out of a scrape. He told me his name was William Wheaton, but that he
had lost it in the shuffle somewhere and was known as Snyder. I gave him
a quarter and started him toward Porter's where I knew you were doing
the society act. I heard afterward that he found you."

Margrave creaked back in his chair and chuckled.

"He was an infernal liar," said Wheaton hotly. "And so you sent that
scamp over there to make a row. I didn't think you would play me a trick
like that." He was betrayed out of his usual calm control and his mouth
twitched.

"Now, Jim," Margrave continued magnanimously, "I don't care a damn about
your family connections. You're all right. You're good enough for me,
you understand, and you're good enough for the Porters. My father was a
butcher and I began life sweeping out the shop, and I guess everybody
knows it; and if they don't like it, they know what they can do."

Wheaton's hand rested again on the packet before him; he had flushed to
the temples, but the color slowly died out of his face. It was very
still in the room, and the watchman could be heard walking across the
tiled lobby outside. A patrol wagon rattled in the street with a great
clang of its gong. Wheaton had moved the brown parcel a little nearer to
the edge of the table; Margrave noticed this and for the first time took
a serious interest in the packet. He was not built for quick evolutions,
but he made what was, for a man of his bulk, a sudden movement around
the table toward Wheaton, who was between him and the door.

"What you got in that paper, Jim?" he asked, puffing from his exertion.

Still Wheaton did not speak, but he picked up the parcel and took a step
toward the door, Margrave advancing upon him.

Wheaton reached the door, holding the package under his arm.

"Don't touch me; don't touch me," he said, hoarsely. Margrave still came
toward him. Wheaton's unengaged hand went nervously to his throat, and
he fumbled at his tie. The sweat came out on his forehead. It was a
curious scene, the tall, dark man in his evening clothes, pitiful in his
agitation, with his back against the door, hugging the bundle under one
arm; and Margrave, in his rough business suit, walking slowly toward
Wheaton, who retreated before him.

"I want that package, Jim."

"Go away! go away!" The sweat shone on Wheaton's forehead in great
drops. "I can't, I can't--you know I can't!"

"You damned coward!" said Margrave, laughing suddenly. "I want that
bundle." He made a gesture and Wheaton dodged and shrank away. Margrave
laughed again; a malicious mirth possessed him. But he grew suddenly
fierce and his fat fingers closed about Wheaton's neck. Wheaton huddled
against the door, holding the brown packet with both hands.

"Drop it! Drop it!" blurted Margrave. He was breathing hard.

A sharp knock at the door against which they struggled caused Margrave
to spring away. He walked down the room several paces with an assumption
of carelessness, and Wheaton, with the bundle still under his arm,
turned the knob of the door.

"Hello, Wheaton!" called Fenton, blinking in the glare of the lights.

"Good evening," said Wheaton.

"How're you, Fenton," said Margrave, carelessly, but mopping his
forehead with his handkerchief.

"Here are your papers," said Wheaton, almost thrusting his parcel into
the lawyer's hands.

"All right," said Fenton, looking curiously from one to the other. And
then he glanced at the package, as if absent-mindedly, and saw that the
seal was unbroken.

"Good night, gentlemen," he said. "Sorry to have disturbed you."

"Hope you're not going to work to-night," said Margrave, solicitously.

"Oh, not very long," said the lawyer.

"Hard on honest men when lawyers work at night," continued Margrave, as
the lawyer walked across the lobby.

"Yes, you railroad people can say that," Fenton flung back at him.

"How much Traction was in that package?" asked Margrave, closing the
door.

"I don't know," said Wheaton, smoothing his tie. The watchman could be
heard closing the outside door on Fenton.

[Illustration]

"No, I don't think you do," returned Margrave. "You'd fixed it pretty
well with Fenton. If he'd only been a minute later I'd have got that
bundle. I didn't realize at first what you had there, Jim, until you
kept fingering it so desperately."

"Now," he said amiably, as if the real business of the evening had just
been reached, "there are those shares you own, Jim. I hope we won't be
interrupted while you're getting them for me."

Wheaton hesitated.

"You get them for me," said Margrave with a change of manner, "quick!"

Wheaton still hesitated.

Margrave picked up his hat.

"I'm going from here to the _Gazette_ office. You know they do what I
tell 'em over there. They'd like a little story about the aristocratic
Wheaton family of Ohio. Porter's girl would like that for breakfast
to-morrow morning."

Wheaton hung between two inclinations, one to make terms with Margrave
and assure his friendship at any hazard, the other to break with him,
let the consequences be what they might. It is one of the impressive
facts of human destiny that the frail barks among us are those which are
sent into the least known seas. Great mariners have made charts and set
warning lights, but the hidden reefs change hourly, and the great
chartographer Experience cannot keep pace with them.

"Hurry up," said Margrave impatiently; "this is my busy night and I
can't wait on you. Dig it up."

Wheaton's hand went slowly to his pocket. As he drew out his own
certificate with nervous fingers, the certificate which Evelyn Porter
had given him an hour before fell upon the table.

"That's the right color," said Margrave, snatching the paper as Wheaton
sprang forward to regain it.

"Not that! not that! That isn't mine!"

Margrave stepped back and swept the face of the certificate with his
eyes.

"Well, this does beat hell! I knew you stood next, Jim," he said
insolently, "but I didn't know that you were on such confidential terms
as all this. And you witnessed the signature. Gosh! How sweet and pretty
it all is!" The paper exhaled the faint odor of sachet, and Margrave
lifted it to his nostrils with a mockery of delight.

"I must have that, Margrave. I will do anything, but I must have
that---- You wouldn't----"

Margrave watched him maliciously, thoroughly enjoying his terror.

"How do you know I wouldn't? Give me the other one, Jim."

Still Wheaton held his own certificate; he believed for a moment that he
could trade the one for the other.

"I'm not going to fool with you much longer, Jim; you either give me
that certificate or I go to the _Gazette_ office as straight as I can
walk. Just sign it in blank, the way the other one is. I'll witness it
all right."

Wheaton wrote while Margrave stood over him, holding ready a blotter
which he applied to Wheaton's signature with unnecessary care.

"I hope this won't cause you any inconvenience with the lady, but you're
undoubtedly a fair liar and you can fix that all right,
particularly"--with a chuckle--"if the old man cashes in."

Wheaton followed Margrave's movements as if under a spell that he could
not shake off. Margrave walked toward the door with an air of
nonchalance, pulling on his gloves.

"I haven't my check-book with me, Jim, but I'll settle for your stock
and Miss Evelyn's, too, after I get things reorganized. It'll be worth
more money then. Please give the young lady my compliments," with
irritating suavity. He stopped, smoothing the backs of his gloves
placidly. "That's all right, Jim, ain't it?" he asked mockingly.

"I hope you're satisfied," said Wheaton weakly. Twice, within a year, he
had felt the fingers of an angry man at his throat and he did not relish
the experience.

"I'm never satisfied," said Margrave, picking up his hat.

Wheaton wished to make a bargain with him, to assure his own immunity;
but he did not know how to accomplish it. Margrave had threatened him,
and he wished to dull the point of the threat, but he was afraid to ask
a promise of him. He said, as Margrave opened the door to go out:

"Do you think Fenton noticed anything?" His tone was so pitiful in its
eagerness that Margrave laughed in his face.

"I don't know, Jim, and I don't give a damn."

Wheaton did not follow him to the door, but Margrave seemed in no hurry
to leave. The watchman went forward to let him out at the side entrance,
and Margrave paused to light a cigar very deliberately and to urge one
on the watchman.

"If he'd only been sure the old man would have died to-night," he
reflected as he walked up the street, "he'd have given me Porter's
shares, easy." He went to his office, entertaining himself with this
pleasant speculation. "If I'd got out of the bank with that package he'd
never dared squeal," he presently concluded.

Timothy Margrave was a fair judge of character.



CHAPTER XXVIII

BROKEN GLASS


John Saxton was a good deal the worse for wear as he swung himself from
a sleeper in the Clarkson station and bolted for a down-town car. Coal
mining is a dirty business, and there are limits to the things that can
be crowded into a suit-case. He had been crawling through four-foot
veins of Kansas coal in the interest of the Neponset Trust Company, and
had been delayed a day longer than he had expected. He continued to be
in a good deal of a hurry after he reached his office, and he kicked
aside the mail which rustled under the door as he opened it, and knelt
hastily before the safe and began rattling the tumblers of the
combination. He pulled out a long envelope and then with more composure
consulted his watch.

It was half-past eight. He took from his memorandum calendar the leaf
for the day; on it he had posted a cutting from a local newspaper
announcing the annual meeting of the stockholders of the Clarkson
Traction Company. The meeting was to be held, so the notice recited,
between the hours of 9 a. m. and 5 p. m. of the second Tuesday of
November, at the general offices of the Company in the city of Clarkson.
The Exchange Building was specified, though the administrative offices
of the Company were on the other side of town. Before setting forth
Saxton examined his papers, which were certificates of stock in the
Clarkson Traction Company. They had been sent to him by a personal
friend in Boston, the trustee of an estate, with instructions to
investigate and report. Having received them just as he was leaving for
Kansas, there had been no opportunity for consulting Porter or Wheaton,
his usual advisers in perplexing matters. Traction stock had advanced
lately, despite newspaper attacks on the company and he hoped to sell
his friend's shares to advantage.

Saxton had never been in the Exchange Building before and he poked about
in the dark upper floors, uncertainly looking for the rooms described in
the advertisement. Another man, also peering about in the hall, ran
against him.

"Beg pardon, but can you tell me----"

"Good morning, Mr. Saxton, are you acquainted in this rookery?" It was
Fenton, who carried a brown parcel under his arm and appeared annoyed.

"No; but I'm learning," John answered. "I'm looking for the offices of
the Traction Company. Its light seems to be hid under a bushel."

"I'm looking for it, too," said Fenton. "Some humorist seems to have
changed the numbers on this floor."

They traversed the halls of several floors in an effort to find the
numbers specified in the notice. Fenton swore in an agreeable tone and
occasionally kicked at a door in his rage. Saxton called to him
presently from a dark corner where he held up a lighted match to read
the number on the transom.

"Here's our number, but there's no name on the door."

Fenton advanced upon the door with long strides, but it did not open as
he grasped the knob. He kicked it sharply, but there was still no
response from within.

"What time is it, Saxton?" he asked over his shoulder, without abating
his pounding or knocking.

Saxton stepped back and peered into his watch.

"Five minutes of nine." He was aware now that something important was in
progress. He did not know Fenton well, but he knew that he was the
attorney for Porter and the Clarkson National, and that he was a serious
character who did not beat on doors unless he had business on the
inside. Fenton now called out loudly, demanding admission. There was a
low sound of voices and a sharp noise of chairs being pushed over an
uncarpeted floor within; but the knob which Fenton still held and shook
did not turn.

On the inside of the door Timothy Margrave and Horton, the president,
Barnes, the secretary, and Percival, the treasurer of the Clarkson
Traction Company, were holding the annual meeting of that corporation,
in conformity with its articles of association, and according to the
duly advertised notice as required by the statutes in such cases made
and provided. They had, however, anticipated the hour slightly; but this
was not, Margrave said, an important matter. His notions of the proper
way of holding business meetings were based on his long experience in
managing ward primaries.

Horton, the president, called the meeting to order. "Well, boys," said
Margrave, "there ain't any use waiting on the other fellows. Business is
business and we might as well get through with it."

"Shall we hear the report of the secretary and treasurer?" the
president asked Margrave deferentially.

"I move that we pass that," said Margrave. He was smoothing out the
certificates of his shares on the table. "I move that we proceed at once
to the election of officers of the company. Is the door locked?"

"Sure," said Barnes, the secretary, but he went over and tried it. "I
guess Porter ain't coming," he said in a tone of regret that was
intended to be facetious, "and he must have forgotten to send proxies."

"I vote twenty-five hundred and ninety-seven shares of the common stock
of this company; you gentlemen haven't more than that, have you?" The
fact was that the three officers present owned only one share each as
their strict legal qualification for holding office.

"I think the minutes ought to show," said the secretary, "that these
were the only shares represented, and that due advertisement was
published according to law, but that owing to the loss of the stock
register, written notice to individual stockholders was given only to
such holders of certificates as disclosed themselves."

"That's all right," said Margrave. "You fix it up, Barnes, and you'd
better get Congreve to see that it's done with the legal frills."
Congreve was the local counsel of Margrave's railroad, and was a man
that could be trusted.

"I move," said Barnes, "that we proceed to the election of officers for
the ensuing year."

"And I move," said Percival, "that the secretary be instructed to cast
the ballot of the stockholders for Timothy Margrave for president."

"Consent," exclaimed Barnes, hurriedly.

Steps could be heard in the outer hall, and Margrave looked at his
watch.

"I move that we adjourn to meet at my office at two o'clock, to conclude
the election of officers."

Some one was shaking the outside door.

"Can't we finish now?" asked Horton, who had been promised the
vice-presidency. He and the other officers were afraid of Margrave, and
were reluctant to have their own elections deferred even for a few
hours.

There was another knock at the door.

"At two o'clock," said Margrave decisively, as the knocking at the door
was renewed. He gathered up his certificates and prepared to leave.

Saxton, standing with Fenton in the dark hall, referred to his watch
again.

"Shall we go in?" he asked.

The lawyer dropped the knob of the door and drew back out of the way.

"It's too bad it's glass," said Saxton, setting his shoulder against the
wooden frame over the lock. The lock held, but the door bent away from
it. He braced his feet and drove his shoulder harder into the corner, at
the same time pressing his hip against the lock. It refused to yield,
but the glass cracked, and finally half of it fell with a crash to the
floor within.

"Don't hurry yourselves, gentlemen," said Fenton, coolly, speaking
through the ragged edges of broken glass. Saxton thrust his hand in to
the catch and opened the door.

"Why, it's only Fenton," called Margrave in a pleasant tone to his
associates, who had effected their exits safely into a rear room.

"It's only Fenton," continued the lawyer, stepping inside, "but I'll
have to trouble you to wait a few minutes."

"Oh, the meeting's adjourned, if that's what you want," said Margrave.

"That won't go down," said Fenton, placing his package on the table.
"You're old enough to know, Margrave, that one man can't hold a
stockholders' meeting behind locked doors in a pigeon roost."

"The meeting was held regular, at the hour and place advertised," said
Margrave with dignity. "A majority of the stockholders were
represented."

"By you, I suppose," said Fenton, who had walked into the room followed
by Saxton.

"By me," said Margrave. He had not taken off his overcoat and he now
began to button it about his portly figure.

"How many shares have you?" asked the lawyer, seating himself on the
edge of the table.

"I suppose you think I'm working a bluff, but I've really got the stuff
this time, Fenton. To be real decent with you I don't mind telling you
that I've got exactly twenty-five hundred and ninety-seven shares of
this stock. I guess that's a majority all right. Now one good turn
deserves another; how much has Porter got? I don't care a damn, but I'd
just like to know." He stood by the table and ostentatiously played with
his certificates to make Fenton's humiliation all the keener. Margrave's
associates stood at the back of the room and watched him admiringly.
Fenton's bundle still lay on the table, and Saxton stood with his hands
in his pockets watching events. There had been no chance for him to
explain to Fenton his reasons for seeking the offices of the Traction
Company and it had pleased Margrave to ignore his presence; Fenton paid
no further attention to him. He wondered at Fenton's forbearance, and
expected the lawyer to demolish Margrave, but Fenton said:

"You are quite right, Margrave. I hold for Mr. Porter exactly
twenty-three hundred and fifty shares."

Margrave nodded patronizingly.

"Just a little under the mark."

"You may make that twenty-four hundred even," said Saxton, "if it will
do you any good."

"I'm still shy," said Fenton. "Our friend clearly has the advantage."

"I suppose if you'd known how near you'd come, you'd have hustled pretty
hard for the others," said Margrave, sympathetically.

"Oh, I don't know!" said Fenton, with the taunting inflection which
gives slang to the phrase. He did not seem greatly disturbed. Saxton
expected him to try to make terms; but the lawyer yawned in a
preoccupied way, before he said:

"So long as the margin's so small, you'd better be decent and hold your
stockholders' meeting according to law and let us in. I'm sure Mr.
Saxton and I would be of great assistance--wise counsel and all that."

Margrave laughed his horse laugh. "You're a pretty good fellow, Fenton,
and I'm sorry we can't do business together."

"Oh, well, if you won't, you won't." Fenton took up his bundle and
turned to the door.

"I suppose you've got large chunks of Traction bonds, too, Margrave.
There's nothing like going in deep in these things."

Margrave winked.

"Bonds be damned. I've been hearing for four years that Traction
bondholders were going to tear up the earth, but I guess those old
frosts down in New England won't foreclose on me. I'll pay 'em their
interest as soon as I get to going and they'll think I'm hot stuff. And
say!" he ejaculated, suddenly, "if Porter's got any of those bonds don't
you get gay with 'em. It's a big thing for the town to have a practical
railroad man like me running the street car lines; and if I can't make
'em pay nobody can."

"You're not conceited or anything, are you, Margrave?"

"By the way, young man," said Margrave, addressing Saxton for the first
time, "we won't charge you anything for breakage to-day, but don't let
it happen again."

Margrave lingered to reassure and instruct his associates as to the
adjourned meeting, and Saxton went out with Fenton.

"That was rather tame," said John, as he and Fenton reached the street
together. "I hoped there would be some fun. These shares belong to a
Boston friend and they're for sale."

"I wonder how Porter came to miss them," said Fenton, grimly. "You'd
better keep them as souvenirs of the occasion. The engraving isn't bad.
I turn up this way." They paused at the corner. He still carried his
bundle and he drew from his pocket now a number of documents in manila
jackets.

"I have a little errand at the Federal Court." They stood by a letter
box and the cars of the Traction Company wheezed and clanged up Varney
Street past them.

"The fact is," he said, "that Mr. Porter owns all of the bonds of the
Traction Company."

Saxton nodded. He understood now why the stockholders' meeting had not
disturbed Fenton.

"This is an ugly mess," the lawyer continued. "It would have suited me
better to control the company through the stock so long as we had so
much, but we didn't quite make it. You're friendly to Mr. Porter, aren't
you?"

"Yes; I don't know how he feels toward me--"

"We can't ask him just now, so we'll take it for granted. The court will
unquestionably appoint a receiver, independent of this morning's
proceedings, and if you don't mind, I'll ask to have you put in
temporarily, or until we can learn Mr. Porter's wishes."

"But--there are other and better men--"

"Very likely; but I particularly wish this."

"There's Mr. Wheaton--isn't he the natural man--in the bank and all
that?" urged Saxton.

"Mr. Wheaton has a very exacting position and it would be unfair to add
to his duties," said the lawyer. "Will you keep where I can find you the
rest of the day?"

"Yes," said John; "I'll be at my office as soon as I hit a tub and a
breakfast. But you can do better," he called after Fenton, who was
walking rapidly toward the post-office building.

Wheaton sat at his desk all the morning hoping that Fenton would drop in
to give him the result of the Traction meeting; but the lawyer did not
appear at the bank. He concluded that there was little chance of
learning of the outcome of the meeting until he saw the afternoon
papers. A dumb terror possessed him as he reflected upon the events of
the past day. It might be that the shares which Margrave had forced from
him would carry the balance of power. He felt keenly the ignominy of his
interview of the night before at the bank; he was sure that if he could
do it over again he would eject Margrave and dare him to do his worst.

He could dramatize himself into a very heroic figure in combating
Margrave. If only Margrave had not seen Snyder! It was long ago that he
and his brother had made acquaintance with crime: that was the merest
slip; it was his only error. It had been kind of William Wheaton to take
the full burden of that theft upon himself; yet he thought with
repugnance of his brother's long career of crime; he detested the
weakness of a man who chose crime and squalor as his portion. He talked
to customers and did his detail work as usual, and went out for luncheon
to a near-by restaurant, as he had done when he was a clerk, making lack
of time an excuse for not going to The Bachelors' or the club. He felt a
sudden impulse to keep very much to himself, as if security lay in doing
so. His confidence returned as he reviewed his relations with Timothy
Margrave. He would demand the two certificates of Margrave whether they
had been used against Porter or not.

Having reached this decision by the time he came in from luncheon he
went to the telephone and called Evelyn to ask her how her father was
and to report his delivery of the papers in her father's box to Mr.
Fenton, as instructed. Evelyn spoke hopefully of her father's illness;
there were no unfavorable symptoms, and everything pointed to his
recovery. It was very sweet to hear her voice in this way; and he went
to his desk comforted.



CHAPTER XXIX

JOHN SAXTON, RECEIVER


At two o'clock Warry Raridan sat on a table in the United States court
room, kicking his heels together and smoking a cigarette. A number of
reporters stood about; the ex-president, the secretary and the treasurer
of the Clarkson Traction Company loafed within the space set apart for
attorneys and played with their hats. The court was sitting in chambers,
and those who waited knew that in the judge's private room something was
happening. The clerk came out presently with his hands full of papers
and affixed the official file mark to them. Raridan was waiting for
Fenton and Saxton and when they appeared together, he went across the
room to meet them.

"How is it?" he asked.

"It's all right," said Fenton. "Saxton has been appointed, pending a
hearing of the case on its merits, which can't be had until Mr. Porter
is out again."

"I knew it was coming," said Raridan, in a low tone to Saxton, "so I
came up to say that I'm glad you're recognized by the powers."

"But it's only temporary," said John. "The little interest I represent
wouldn't justify it, of course. I'm still dazed that Fenton should have
urged my appointment on the court."

"What I'm here for is to go on your bond, old man."

"But Fenton has fixed that,--some of the bank directors."

"All right, John."

Saxton was walking away, but he turned back. Something had gone amiss
with Raridan. Several times in their friendship Saxton had unconsciously
offended him. He saw that Warry was really hurt now.

"I appreciate it, Warry, and it's like you to offer; of course I'd be
glad to have you."

"Well, I hoped I was as good as those other fellows," said Raridan, more
cheerfully; and he went to the clerk's desk and signed the bond.

Margrave came out now with his lawyer, and they were joined by
Margrave's allies of the morning. Margrave stopped to give the reporters
his side of the story. He assured them that this was merely a contest
between two interests for the control of the Traction Company. There had
been a misunderstanding, and until the differences between the two
factions of stockholders could be reconciled, the business of the
company would be managed by a receiver, who was, he said, "friendly to
all parties." The fact was that he had objected strenuously to Saxton's
appointment, but Fenton had insisted on it and the court had paid a good
deal of attention to what Fenton said. Margrave made much to the
reporters of his own election to the presidency, and intimated to them
that the receiver would soon be discharged and that he would assume the
active management of affairs.

The papers that had been filed in the case disclosed a somewhat
different situation, which was fully laid before the public, greatly to
its surprise. It appeared that William Porter owned all the bonds of
the company, and only narrowly missed the stock control. The situation
was thoroughly interesting. A contention between Porter and Margrave was
novel in the history of Clarkson and the press made the most of it. The
_Gazette_, Margrave's paper, proved him to be wholly in the right, and
cited the summary action of the court in appointing an inexperienced man
to the receivership as another proof of the brutal abuse of power by
federal courts.

Margrave had put none of his own money into Traction stock, but had
invested funds belonging to the stockholders of the Transcontinental,
who had every confidence in his sagacity, and who trusted him
implicitly. He advised them of the receivership in terms which led them
to believe that he had brought it about as a part of his own plans. He
maintained an air of mystery and winked knowingly at friends who joked
him about the little _coup_ by which Porter, though sick in bed, had, as
they said, "cleaned him up." He told those who flattered him by twitting
him on this score that he guessed Tim Margrave hadn't lost his grip yet,
and that before he was knocked out, the place of eternal damnation would
have been transformed into a skating rink.



CHAPTER XXX

GREEN CHARTREUSE


There is a common law of character which is greater than the canons. It
fills many volumes of records in the high court of Experience, and we
add to it daily by our instinctive decisions in small matters; but only
the finer natures, highly endowed with discernment, master its
intricacies. The decalogue is a safe guidepost on the great highway of
life; but it does not avail the lost pilgrim who stumbles in remote
by-paths. The spirit is the only arbiter of the nicer distinctions
between right and wrong. James Wheaton did not steal; he would do no
murder; he was not even unusually covetous. If the tests which Destiny
applied to him had related to the great fundamentals of conduct, he
would not have been found wanting; but they were directed against
seemingly unimportant weaknesses, along the lines of his least
resistance to evil.

A week had passed since Saxton's appointment to the receivership and
Wheaton went to and from his work with many misgivings. Several of
Wheaton's friends had confided to him their belief that he ought to have
been appointed receiver instead of Saxton, and there was little that he
could say to this, except that he had no time for it. He had become
nervous and distraught, and was irritable under the jesting of his
associates at The Bachelors'. There was a good deal of joking at their
table for several days after Saxton's appointment over Margrave's
discomfiture, to which Wheaton contributed little. He felt decidedly ill
at ease under it. Thompson, the cashier, had come home, and Wheaton
found his presence irksome.

He had seen Margrave several times at the club since their last
interview at the bank and Margrave had nodded distantly, as if he hardly
remembered Wheaton. Wheaton assumed that sooner or later Margrave would
offer to pay him for his shares of Traction stock. But while the loss of
his own certificate, under all the circumstances, did not trouble him,
Margrave's appropriation of Evelyn Porter's shares was an unpleasant
fact that haunted all his waking hours.

One evening, a week after the receivership incident, he resolved to go
to Margrave and demand, at any hazard, the return of Evelyn's
certificate. The idea seized firm hold upon him, and he set out at once
for Margrave's house. He inquired for Margrave at the door, and the maid
asked him to go into the library. They were entertaining at dinner, she
told him, and he said he would wait. He walked nervously up and down in
the well-appointed library, where Warry Raridan's purchases looked out
at him from the solid mahogany bookcases. He heard the hum of voices
faintly from the dining-room.

He picked up a magazine and tried to read, but the printed pages did not
hold his eyes. He did not know how Margrave would treat him, and he
would have escaped from the house if he had dared. Margrave came in
presently, fat and ugly in his evening clothes. He welcomed Wheaton
noisily and introduced him to his guests, two directors of the
Transcontinental and their wives, who were passing through town on their
way to California.

Mrs. Margrave and Mabel greeted Wheaton cordially. Mabel was dressed to
impress the ladies from New York, and was succeeding. The colored butler
passed coffee and cigars and green chartreuse, and when Wheaton declined
a cigar, Mabel brought him a cigarette from the taboret from which "The
Men" were helped to such trifles. Mrs. Margrave was oppressed by the
presence in her home of so many millions and so much social distinction
as her guests represented, and she contributed only murmurs of assent to
the conversation which Mabel led with ease, discoursing in her most
Tyringhamesque manner of yacht races, horse shows and like matters of
metropolitan interest. Wheaton was glad now that he had come; Margrave's
guests were people worth meeting; he liked the talk, and the chartreuse
gave elegance to the occasion.

Margrave accommodated his heavy frame to the soft indulgence of a huge
leather chair and drained the liqueur from his glass at a gulp.

"Well, gentlemen, I'm glad Mr. Wheaton could drop in to-night. He's a
friend of the road and of ours. If everybody treated the
Transcontinental as well as he does,--well, a good many things would be
different!"

He looked at Wheaton admiringly, and his guests followed his gaze with
polite interest.

"Why, gentlemen," said Margrave, straining forward until his face was
purple, "Wheaton did his level best for me in that Traction deal; yes,
sir, he worked with us on that, and if it hadn't been for that fool
judge we'd have had it all fixed." He leaned back and nodded at Wheaton
benignantly.

Wheaton had merely murmured at intervals during this deliverance. He did
not know what Margrave meant. He moved over by Mrs. Margrave and tried
to make talk with her. As soon as he felt that he could go decently, he
rose and shook hands with the visiting gentlemen and bowed to the
ladies. Margrave took him by the arm with an air of great intimacy and
affection and walked with him to the hall, where he made much of helping
Wheaton into his overcoat.

"I wanted to see you on a business matter," Wheaton began, in a low
tone.

"Oh, yes," said Margrave loudly, "I forgot to mail you that check. I've
been terribly rushed lately; but in time, my boy, in time!"

The people in the library could hardly have failed to hear every word.

"Oh, not that, not that! I mean that other certificate." Wheaton was
trying to drop the conversation to a whispering basis as he drew on his
gloves. Margrave had again taken his arm and was walking with him toward
the front door, talking gustily all the while. He swung the door open
and followed Wheaton out upon the front step.

"A glorious night! glorious!" he ejaculated, puffing from his walk. His
hand wandered up Wheaton's arm until it reached his collar, and after he
had allowed his fingers to grasp this lingeringly, he gave Wheaton a
sudden push forward, still holding his collar, then raised his fat leg
and kicked him from the step.

"Come again, Jim?" he called pleasantly, as he backed within the door
and closed it to return to his guests.

Wheaton reached his room, filled with righteous indignation. He might
have known that a coarse fellow like Margrave cared only for people whom
he could control; and he decided after a night of reflection that he had
acted handsomely in saving Porter's package of securities from Margrave
the night of the encounter at the bank. The more he thought of it, the
more certain he grew that he could, if it became necessary to protect
himself in any way, turn the tables on Margrave. He called Margrave a
scoundrel in his thoughts, and was half persuaded to go at once to
Fenton and explain why Margrave had been at the bank on the night that
Fenton had found him there.

Wheaton continued to call at the Porters' daily to make inquiry for the
head of the house. On some of these occasions he saw Evelyn, but Mrs.
Whipple, whose staying qualities were born of a rigid military sense of
duty, was always there; and he had not seen Evelyn alone since she gave
him her father's key. Other young men, friends of Evelyn, called, he
found, just as he did, to make inquiry about Mr. Porter. Mrs. Whipple
had a way of saying very artlessly, and with a little sigh that carried
weight, that Mr. Raridan was so very kind. Wheaton wanted to be very
kind himself, but he never happened to be about when the servants were
busy and there were important prescriptions to be filled at the
apothecary's.

On the whole he was very miserable and when, one morning, while
Porter's condition was still precarious, he received a letter from
Snyder, postmarked Spokane, declaring that money was immediately
required to support him until he could find work, he closed that issue
finally in a brief letter which was not couched in diplomatic language.
The four days that were necessary for the delivery of this letter had
hardly passed before Wheaton received a telegram sharply demanding a
remittance by wire. This Wheaton did not answer; he had done all that he
intended to do for William Snyder, who was well out of the way, and much
more safely so if he had no money. The correspondence was not at an end,
however, for a threatening letter in Snyder's eccentric orthography
followed, and this, too, Wheaton dropped into his waste paper basket and
dismissed from his mind.



CHAPTER XXXI

PUZZLING AUTOGRAPHS


The affairs of the Traction Company proved to be in a wretched tangle.
Saxton employed an expert accountant to open a set of books for the
company, while he gave his own immediate attention to the physical
condition of the property. The company's service was a byword and a
hissing in the town, and he did what he could to better it, working long
hours, but enjoying the labor. It had been a sudden impulse on Fenton's
part to have Saxton made receiver. In Saxton's first days at Clarkson he
had taken legal advice of Fenton in matters which had already been
placed in the lawyer's hands by the bank; but most of these had long
been closed, and Saxton had latterly gone to Raridan for such legal
assistance as he needed from time to time. Fenton had firmly intended
asking Wheaton's appointment; this seemed to him perfectly natural and
proper in view of Wheaton's position in the bank and his relations with
Porter, which were much less confidential than even Fenton imagined.

Fenton had been disturbed to find Margrave and Wheaton together in the
directors' room the night before the annual meeting of the Traction
stockholders. He could imagine no business that would bring them
together; and the hour and the place were not propitious for forming new
alliances for the bank. Wheaton had appeared agitated as he passed out
the packet of bonds and stocks; and Margrave's efforts at gaiety had
only increased Fenton's suspicions. From every point of view it was
unfortunate that Porter should have fallen ill just at this time; but it
was, on the whole, just as well to take warning from circumstances that
were even slightly suspicious, and he had decided that Wheaton should
not have the receivership. He had not considered Saxton in this
connection until the hour of the Traction meeting; and he had inwardly
debated it until the moment of his decision at the street corner.

He had expected to supervise Saxton's acts, but the receiver had taken
hold of the company's affairs with a zeal and an intelligence which
surprised him. Saxton wasn't so slow as he looked, he said to the
federal judge, who had accepted Saxton wholly on Fenton's
recommendation. Within a fortnight Saxton had improved the service of
the company to the public so markedly that the newspapers praised him.
He reduced the office force to a working basis and installed a cashier
who was warranted not to steal. It appeared that the motormen and
conductors held their positions by paying tribute to certain minor
officers, and Saxton applied heroic treatment to these abuses without
ado.

The motormen and conductors grew used to the big blond in the long gray
ulster who was forever swinging himself aboard the cars and asking them
questions. They affectionately called him "Whiskers," for no obvious
reason, and the report that Saxton had, in one of the power-houses,
filled his pipe with sweepings of tobacco factories known in the trade
as "Trolleyman's Special," had further endeared him to those men whose
pay checks bore his name as receiver. In snow-storms the Traction
Company had usually given up with only a tame struggle, but Saxton
devised a new snow-plow, which he hitched to a trolley and drove with
his own hand over the Traction Company's tracks.

John was cleaning out the desk of the late secretary of the company one
evening while Raridan read a newspaper and waited for him. Warry was
often lonely these days. Saxton was too much engrossed to find time for
frivolity, and Mr. Porter's illness cut sharply in on Warry's visits to
the Hill. The widow's clothes lines were tied in a hard knot in the
federal court, to which he had removed them, and he was resting while he
waited for the Transcontinental to exhaust its usual tactics of delay
and come to trial. On Fenton's suggestion Saxton had intrusted to
Raridan some matters pertaining to the receivership, and these served to
carry Warry over an interval of idleness and restlessness.

"You may hang me!" said Saxton suddenly. He had that day unexpectedly
come upon the long-lost stock records of the company and was now
examining them. Thrust into one of the books were two canceled
certificates.

"It's certainly queer," he said, as Warry went over to his desk. He
spread out one of the certificates which Margrave had taken from Wheaton
the night before the annual meeting. "That's certainly Wheaton's
endorsement all right enough."

Raridan took off his glasses and brought his near-sighted gaze to bear
critically upon the paper.

"There's no doubt about it."

"And look at this, too." Saxton handed him Evelyn Porter's certificate.
Raridan examined it and Evelyn's signature on the back with greater
care. He carried the paper nearer to the light, and scanned it again
while Saxton watched him and smoked his pipe.

"You notice that Wheaton witnessed the signature."

Raridan nodded. Saxton, who knew his friend's moods thoroughly, saw that
he was troubled.

"I can find no plausible explanation of that," said Saxton. "Anybody may
be called on to witness a signature; but I can't explain this." He
opened the stock record and followed the history of the two certificates
from one page to another. It was clear enough that the certificates held
by Evelyn Porter and James Wheaton had been merged into one, which had
been made out in the name of Timothy Margrave, and dated the day before
the annual meeting.

"It doesn't make much difference at present," said Saxton. "When Mr.
Porter comes down town he will undoubtedly go over this whole business
and he can easily explain these matters."

"It makes a lot of difference," said Warry, gloomily.

"We'd better not say anything about this just now--not even to Fenton,"
Saxton suggested. "I'll take these things over to my other office for
safe keeping. Some one may want them badly enough to look for them."

Raridan sat down with his newspaper and pretended to be reading until
Saxton was ready to go.



CHAPTER XXXII

CROSSED WIRES


A great storm came out of the north late in January and beat fiercely
upon Clarkson. It left a burden of snow on the town and was followed by
a week of bitter cold. The sun shone impotently upon the great drifts
which filled the streets; it seemed curiously remote, and ashamed of its
failure to impress the white, dazzling masses. The wires sang their song
of the cold; even the confused wires of the Clarkson Traction Company
lifted up their voices, somewhat to the irritation of John Saxton,
receiver, as he fought the snow banks below and sought to disentangle
the twisted wires above. Upper Varney Street, beyond Porter Hill, was
receiving his attention late one afternoon as the winter sunset burned
red in the west. The iron poles of the trolley wires had been pulled far
over into the street by the blast and the weight of snow; and trolley,
telephone, and electric light wires were a baffling tangle which workmen
were seeking to straighten. Saxton's men had detached their own wires
and were restoring them to the poles. Traffic on the Varney Street line
would, he concluded, be resumed on the morrow; and he gave final
instructions to the foreman of the repair crew and turned toward his
office.

Evelyn Porter, who had come out for the walk she had been taking every
afternoon since the beginning of her father's illness, stopped at the
narrow aisle which had been trampled in the snow-piled sidewalk to watch
an adventurous lineman scale an icy telephone pole. There is a vintage
of the North that is more stimulating than any that comes out of
Southern vineyards. It brings a glow to the cheeks, a sparkle to the
eyes, and a nimbleness to the tongue which no product of the winepress
ever gives. It is a wine that makes the heart leap and the blood tingle.
It is distilled in the great ice-clasped seas of the North, and the pine
and balsam of snowy woods add their quintessence to it; it tickles no
palate but is assimilated directly into the blood of the brave and
strong; it is the wine of youth, of perpetual youth. Evelyn felt the joy
of it to-day, her heart leaped with it,--it was a delight to be abroad
in the pure, cold air. Her coloring was freshly accented. The remote
Scotch grandmother who conferred it upon her, across years of migration,
would have rejoiced in it; where the Irish strain maintained its light
of humor in her blue eyes, the gray mist of the Scotch moors still held
its own. There are women who are dominated by their clothes; but Evelyn
Porter was not one of them. Her dark green skirt might have belonged to
any other girl, but it would not have swayed in just the same way to any
other step; and her toque and cape of sable would have lost their
distinction on any other head and shoulders. Her father's convalescence
was only a matter of time and care; he had withstood the fever better
than the physicians had thought possible, and there was no question of
his restoration to health. It was good to be free of the anxious
strain, and the keen air was like a tonic to her happiness. Saxton
recognized her as he jumped over the drifted snow at the curb to the
path. His face, where it was visible between his cap and collar, was red
from the cold.

"They say freezing to death's an easy way,--but I don't believe I'd
prefer it."

"Oh, it's you, is it? I wondered who the busy man was." She was
interested in the lineman, the points of whose climbers were shaking
down the ice coating of the pole as he ascended.

"Won't you order that man to come down? It isn't nice to make him risk
his life for a wire or two."

"He's not my man," said John, beating his hands together, "he's fixing
telephone wires, and besides, he's not taking any chances."

Evelyn half turned away to continue her walk, still with her eyes on the
lineman.

"Poor fellow; it must be very cold up there."

"Yes, polar expeditions are usually that way."

"Wretched man, to pun about a human life in peril!" The lineman was
sitting on one of the cross beams, and Evelyn started ahead, Saxton
following.

"Is that the overcoat?" she asked, over her shoulder.

"What overcoat?"

"The one that's in the newspapers. Aren't you the man in the gray ulster
who runs the trolleys?"

"I've been too busy to read the papers, so I don't know."

"It might pay you to join a current topics class and learn what's going
on."

"That presupposes a little knowledge. I'd never pass the entrance
exams."

"You needn't be afraid, they probably carry a prep. department."

"My wires are down and the trolley isn't running!"

She laughed, and it was pleasant to hear her, John thought.

"Is that the kind of things you say? They are making you out a
humorist."

"There's no harder lot. Who is this enemy that's undoing me?"

"There's a certain person called Raridan. He's always telling me of the
things you say."

"The villain! I merely lecture him for his good; and so he thought I was
joking!"

They had reached the Porter grounds where the walk had been cleared, and
they stamped the snow from their shoes on the cement pavement and walked
on together. Evelyn dropped her tone of raillery, and John asked about
her father. John had followed Mr. Porter's sickness through Raridan's
reports, and had called at the house only a few times since the banker's
seizure. They entered the gate at the foot of the hill and walked up the
long slope to the door.

"Won't you come in?" she asked.

"I oughtn't to; there's work waiting for me down town."

She sent the maid who let them in for hot water, and threw down her furs
in the hall while it was being brought. The tea table had been moved
into the library during Mrs. Whipple's visit, and Evelyn left John to
revive the fire while she went to speak to her father. Saxton had not
taken off his coat, and when she came back he stood buttoning it as if
he meant to leave.

"It's historic, but not exactly a handsome garment," she said, shaking
the tea caddy.

"You shake the caddy when you can't hit the ball: new rule of golf." He
had buttoned his ulster to the chin, and really intended to go. She
poured the steaming water into the tea-pot, and walked to the fire with
folded arms, shivering.

"Of course, if you prefer your uniform!" She spread her hands to the
flames. Her mood was new to him; he felt suddenly that he knew her
better than ever before; and this having occurred to him as he stood
watching her, he accused himself instantly. He had no right to be there;
no one had any right to be there but Warry Raridan! She had turned
swiftly and was smiling at him. The darkness had fallen suddenly
outside. The maid went about closing blinds and turning on the lights.
He felt, by anticipation, the loneliness that lay for him beyond the
soft glow of this room. This was, after all, only a moment's respite.

Evelyn was back at the tea table. She held a lump of sugar poised above
a cup, and looked at him inquiringly, as though of course he was staying
and wished his tea. He unbuttoned the coat and threw it on a chair.

"One lump, thanks!"

"It was the sandwiches that did it, I'm sure," she said, passing him a
plate of bread and butter.

"I should like to refute your statement, but candor compels me to admit
its truth," he answered. "I just happen to remember that I haven't had
luncheon yet. Excuse me if I take two."

She went to the wall and pushed a button.

"You're a foolish person and I'm going to punish you. Father's beef tea
is ready day and night, and"--she said to the Swedish maid,--"bring some
more hot water and the decanter."

"_J'y suis; j'y reste._ I think I have died and gone to Heaven."

"You don't deserve Heaven. Why didn't you tell me?"

"That I wanted a sandwich? They advised me against it as a kid. We are
taught repression in Massachusetts and I try to live up to my training."

He pronounced beef tea no such deadly drug as it was reported to be, and
he drank it until she was content. He concocted a hot toddy while she
twitted him about his use of the tea-table implements for so ignoble a
use; and she made him talk of his work and of the Traction Company's
affairs.

"Mr. Wheaton has explained about it," she said, "and Warry too. Warry
seems to be very much interested in some work he is doing in connection
with it."

"Yes, he does his work well, too!" said John, with enthusiasm. He had no
right to be there; but being there he could praise his friend. He told
her in detail about some of Warry's work. Warry had, he said, a legal
mind, and knew the philosophy of the law as only the old-time lawyers
did. He rose and replenished the fire and went on talking. Some amusing
incidents had occurred in the adjustment of legal questions relating to
the receivership and he told of them in a way to reflect the greatest
credit on Warry.

"It looks awfully complicated--the receivership and all that. Father has
begun to ask questions, but we don't encourage him."

"I'll have a good deal to explain and apologize for, when he is able to
take a hand," said John.

"I'm sure father will be grateful. Mr. Wheaton and Warry are very
enthusiastic about your work." She laughed out suddenly. "Warry says you
have made two cars go where none had gone before."

"They have a joke down town in refutation of that. They illustrate the
erratic service of the Varney Street line by saying that the cars are
like bananas--short, yellow, and come in bunches."

He walked to the fireplace and took up the poker. "I have been
prodigally generous with Mr. Porter's wood. It burns awfully fast." The
flame had died down to a few uncertain embers which he touched
tentatively with the poker. "When it goes out I'll have to go with it."

"The joke is poor, Mr. Saxton. You can hardly sustain a reputation on
sayings of that sort." She put down her tea cup and went over to the
fire and poked the ashes gravely.

"One might construe those actions in two ways," he said, meditatively,
as if the subject were one of weight. "One cannot tell whether the sibyl
is trying to encourage or to blight the dying flame. Just another poke
in that corner and it will be gone."

Evelyn menaced the ember with the iron rod but did not touch it.

"The lady's position is one of great delicacy," continued John.
"Between her instinct for self defense, and her gracious hospitality,
she wavers. A touch might revive the flame, or it might extinguish it
utterly! She hesitates between two inclinations--"

"Why should you intimate that I hesitate?"

"Her seeming reluctance to apply the poker to the crucial point, speaks
for itself," continued John, solemnly, while Evelyn still hung over the
fitful flame, which was growing fainter and fainter. "She's clearly
afraid of the chance of resuscitating the fire and thereby saving a poor
guest from the cold, hard world."

Evelyn administered a gentle prod; the burnt fragment of wood fell
apart, the flame flared hopefully once and then passed into a wraith of
itself that curled dolorously into the chimney.

"You see you made me do it," said Evelyn, turning on him. He looked at
her very seriously and there was no mirth in his laugh.

"Good night," he said, and came toward her. "I feel like a burnt
sacrifice."

"But you brought it on yourself! I wish, though, you'd stay to dinner.
Sandwiches aren't very filling."

"In wholesale lots they are. Mine were seven; and my strength is as the
strength of ten because the punch was pure."

He had buttoned himself into his ulster, which magnified his tall, broad
figure, and was walking toward the door. His time was now filled with
congenial work, which he was doing well, but still he did not quite lose
that air of injury, of having suffered defeat, which had from the first
touched her in him.

When Grant, who had not returned to school after the Christmas
holidays, came in, she was still standing by the fire. He had been
coasting on the hillside, and was aglow from the exercise.

"I met Mr. Saxton outside and asked him to stay to dinner," said the
boy, helping himself to sandwiches at the tea table.

"I asked him, too," said Evelyn, "but he couldn't stay. I didn't know he
was a friend of yours, Grant."

"Well, he's all right," continued Grant, biting into a fresh sandwich,
and unconsciously adopting one of his father's phrases. "He doesn't guy
me the way Warry does. He talks to me as if I had some sense, and he's
going to let me ride on the trolley plow the next time it snows. He's a
Harvard man. I want to go to Harvard, Evelyn."

The girl laughed.

"You're a funny boy, Grant," she said.



CHAPTER XXXIII

A DISAPPEARANCE


The iron thrall of winter was broken at last. Great winds still blew in
the valley, but their keen edge was dulled. Their errand was not to
destroy now, but to build. Robins and bluejays, coming before the
daffodils dared, looked down from bare boughs upon the receding line of
snow on the Porter hillside. The yellow river had shaken itself free of
ice, and its swollen flood rolled seaward. Porter watched it from his
windows; and early in March he was allowed to take short walks in the
grounds, followed by his Scotch gardener, with whom he planned the
floral campaign of the summer. Indoors he studied the alluring
catalogues of the seedsmen, an annual joy with him.

Grant was still at home. He had not been well, and Evelyn kept him out
of school on the plea that he would help to amuse his father. Porter was
much weakened by his illness, and though he pleaded daily to be allowed
to go to the bank, he submitted to Evelyn's refusal with a tameness that
was new in him. Fenton came several times for short interviews; Thompson
called as an old friend as well as a business associate, but he was
prone to discuss his own health to the exclusion of bank affairs.
Wheaton was often at the house, and Porter preferred his account of
bank matters to Thompson's. Wheaton carried the figures in his head, and
answered questions offhand, while Thompson was helpless without the
statements which he was always having the clerks make for him. Porter
fretted and fumed over Traction matters, though Fenton did his best to
reassure him.

He did not understand why Saxton should have been made receiver; if
Fenton was able to dictate the appointment, why did he ignore Wheaton,
who could have been spared from the bank easily enough when Thompson
returned. Fenton did not tell him the true reason--he was not sure of it
himself--but he urged the fact that Saxton represented certain shares
which were entitled to consideration, and he made much of the danger of
Thompson's breaking down at any moment and having to leave. Porter
dreaded litigation, and wanted to know how soon the receivership could
be terminated and the company reorganized. The only comfort he derived
from the situation was the victory which had been gained over Margrave,
who had repeatedly sent messages to the house asking for an interview
with Porter at the earliest moment possible. The banker's humor had not
been injured by the fever, and he told Evelyn and the doctor that he'd
almost be willing to stay in bed a while longer merely to annoy Tim
Margrave.

"If I'd known I was going to be sick, I guess I wouldn't have tackled
it," he said to Fenton one day, holding up his thin hand to the fire.
The doctors had found his heart weak and had cut off his tobacco, which
he missed sorely. "I might unload as soon as we can rebond and
reorganize."

"That's for you to say," answered the lawyer. "Margrave wanted it, and
no doubt he would be glad to take it off your hands if you care to deal
with him."

"If I was sure I had a dead horse, I guess I'd as lief let Tim curry him
as any man in town; but I don't believe this animal is dead."

"Not much", said the lawyer reassuringly. "Saxton says he's making money
every day, now that nobody is stealing the revenues. He's painting the
open cars and expects to do much better through the summer."

"I guess Saxton doesn't know much about the business," said Porter.

"He knows more than he did. He's all right, that fellow--slow but sure.
He's been a surprise to everybody. He's solid with the men too, they
tell me. I guess there won't be any strikes while he's in charge."

"You'd better get a good man to keep the accounts," Porter suggested.
"Wheaton's pretty keen on such things."

"Oh, that's all fixed. Saxton brought a man out from an Eastern audit
company to run that for him, and he deposits with the bank."

"All right," said Porter, weakly.

Saxton came and talked to him of the receivership several times, and
Porter quizzed him about it in his characteristic vein. Saxton was very
patient under his cross-examination, and reassured the banker by his
manner and his facts. Porter had lost his cocky, jaunty way, and after
the first interview he contented himself with asking how the receipts
were running and how they compared with those of the year previous.
Saxton suggested several times to Fenton that he would relinquish the
receivership, now that Porter was able to nominate some one to his own
liking. The lawyer would not have it so. He believed in Saxton and he
felt sure that when Porter could get about and see what the receiver had
accomplished he would be satisfied. It would be foolish to make a change
until Porter had fully recovered and was able to take hold of Traction
matters in earnest.

Saxton had suddenly become a person of importance in the community. The
public continued to be mystified by the legal stroke which had placed
William Porter virtually in possession of the property; and it naturally
took a deep interest in the court's agent who was managing it so
successfully. Warry Raridan was delighted to find Saxton praised, and he
dealt ironically with those who expressed surprise at Saxton's capacity.
He was glad to be associated with John, and when he could find an
excuse, he liked to visit the power house with him, and to identify
himself in any way possible with his friend's work. During the extreme
cold he paid, from his own pocket for the hot coffee which was handed up
to the motormen along all the lines, and gave it out to the newspapers
that the receiver was doing it. John warned him that this would appear
reckless and injure him with the judge of the court to whom he was
responsible.

Though Porter was not strong enough to resume his business burdens, he
was the better able in his abundant leisure to quibble over domestic and
social matters with an invalid's unreason. He was troubled because
Evelyn would not go out; she had missed practically all the social
gaiety of the winter by reason of his illness, and he wished her to feel
free to leave him when she liked. In his careful reading of the
newspapers he noted the items classified under "The Giddy Throng" and
"Social Clarkson," and it pained him to miss Evelyn's name in the list
of those who "poured," or "assisted," or "were charming" in some
particular raiment. Evelyn was now able to plead Lent as an excuse for
spending her evenings at home, but when he found invitations lying about
as he prowled over the house, he continued to reprove her for declining
them. He had an idea that she would lose prestige by her abstinence; but
she declared that she had adopted a new rule of life, and that
henceforth she would not go anywhere without him.

The doctor now advised a change for Porter, the purpose of which was to
make it impossible for him to return to his work before his complete
recovery. Evelyn and the doctor chose Asheville before they mentioned it
to him, and the plan, of course, included Grant. Mrs. Whipple still
supervised the Porter household at long range, and the general
frequently called alone to help the banker over the hard places in his
convalescence, and to soothe him for the loss of his tobacco, which the
doctors did not promise to restore.

A day had been fixed for their departure, and Mrs. Whipple was reviewing
and approving their plans in the library, as Evelyn and her father and
Grant discussed them.

"We shall probably not see you at home much in the future," Mrs. Whipple
said to Mr. Porter, who lay in invalid ease on a lounge, with a Roman
comforter over his knees. "You'll be sure to become the worst of
gad-abouts--Europe, the far East, and all that."

Porter groaned, knowing that she was mocking him.

"I guess not," he said, emphatically. "I never expect to have any time
for loafing, and you can't teach an old dog new tricks."

"Well, you're going now, anyhow. Don't let this girl get into mischief
while you're away. An invalid father--only a young brother to care for
her and keep the suitors away! Be sure and bring her back without a
trail of encumbrances. Grant," she said, turning to the boy, "you must
protect Evelyn from those Eastern men."

"I'll do my best," the lad answered. "Evelyn doesn't like dudes, and
Warry says all the real men live out West."

"I guess that's right," said Mr. Porter.

She rose, gathering her wrap about her. Grant rose as she did. His
manners were very nice, and he walked into the hall and took up his hat
to go down to the car with Mrs. Whipple. It was dusk, and a man was
going through the grounds lighting the lamps. Mrs. Whipple talked with
her usual vivacity of the New Hampshire school which the boy had
attended, and of the trip he was about to make with his father and
sister. They stood at the curb in front of the Porter gate waiting for
her car. A buggy stopped near them and a man alighted and stood talking
to a companion who remained seated.

"Is this the way to Mr. Porter's stable?" one of the men called to them.

"Yes," Grant answered, as he stepped into the street to signal the car.
The man who had alighted got back into the buggy as if to drive into the
grounds. The street light overhead hissed and then burned brightly above
them. Mrs. Whipple turned and saw one of the men plainly. The car came
to a stop; Grant helped her aboard, and waved his hand to her as she
gained the platform.

At nine o'clock a general alarm was sent out in Clarkson that Grant
Porter had disappeared.



CHAPTER XXXIV

JOHN SAXTON SUGGESTS A CLUE


Wheaton sat in his room at The Bachelors' the next evening, clutching a
copy of a _Gazette_ extra in which a few sentences under long headlines
gave the latest rumor about the mysterious disappearance of Grant
Porter. Within a fortnight he had received several warnings from his
brother marking his itinerary eastward. Snyder was evidently moving with
a fixed purpose; and, as Wheaton had received brief notes from him
couched in phrases of amiable irony, postmarked Denver, and then, within
a few days, Kansas City, he surmised that his brother was traveling on
fast trains and therefore with money in his purse.

He had that morning received a postal card, signed "W. W.," which bore a
few taunting sentences in a handwriting which Wheaton readily
recognized. He did not for an instant question that William Wheaton,
_alias_ Snyder, had abducted Grant Porter, nor did he belittle the
situation thus created as it affected him. He faced it coldly, as was
his way. He ought not to have refused Snyder's appeals, he confessed to
himself; the debt he owed his brother for bearing the whole burden of
their common youthful crime had never been discharged. The bribes and
subterfuges which Wheaton had employed to keep him away from Clarkson
had never been prompted by brotherly gratitude or generosity, but always
by his fear of having so odious a connection made public. This was one
line of reflection; on the other hand, the time for dealing with his
brother in a spirit of tolerant philanthropy was now past. He was face
to face with the crucial moment where concealment involved complicity in
a crime. His duty lay clear before him--his duty to his friends, the
Porters--to the woman whom he knew he loved. Was he equal to it? If
Snyder were caught he would be sure to take revenge on him; and Wheaton
knew that no matter how guiltless he might show himself in the eyes of
the world, his career would be at an end; he could not live in Clarkson;
Evelyn Porter would never see him again.

The _Gazette_ stated that a district telegraph messenger had left at Mr.
Porter's door a note which named the terms on which Grant could be
ransomed. The amount was large,--more money than James Wheaton
possessed; it was not a great deal for William Porter to pay. It had
already occurred to Wheaton that he might pay the ransom himself and
carry the boy home, thus establishing forever a claim upon the Porters.
He quickly dismissed this; the risks of exposure were too great. He
smoked a cigarette as he turned all these matters over in his mind.
Clearly, the best thing to do was to let the climax come. His brother
was a criminal with a record, who would not find it easy to drag him
into the mire. His own career and position in Clarkson were
unassailable. Very likely the boy would be found quickly and the
incident would close with Snyder's sentence to a long imprisonment. By
the time the Chinaman called him to dinner he was able to view the case
calmly. He would face it out no matter what happened; and the more he
thought of it the likelier it seemed that Snyder had overleaped himself
and would soon be where he could no longer be a menace.

He went down to dinner late, in the clothes that he had worn at the bank
all day and thus brought upon himself the banter of Caldwell, the
Transcontinental agent, who sang out as he entered the dining-room door:

"What's the matter, Wheaton? Sold or pawned your other clothes?"

Wheaton smiled wanly.

"Only a little tired," he said.

"Come on now and give us the real truth about the kidnapping," said
Caldwell with cheerful interest. "You'd better watch the bank or the
same gang may carry it off next."

"I guess the bank's safe enough," Wheaton answered. "And I don't know
anything except what I read in the papers." He hoped the others would
not think him indifferent; but they were busy discussing various rumors
and theories as to the route taken by the kidnappers and the amount of
ransom. He threw in his own comment and speculations from time to time.

"Raridan's out chasing them," said Caldwell. "I passed him and Saxton
driving like mad out Merriam Street at noon." The mention of Raridan and
Saxton did not comfort Wheaton. He reflected that they had undoubtedly
been to the Porter house since the alarm had been sounded, and he
wondered whether his own remissness in this regard had been remarked at
the Hill. His fingers were cold as he stirred his coffee; and when he
had finished he hurriedly left the room, and the men who lingered over
their cigars heard the outer door close after him.

He felt easier when he got out into the cool night air. His day at the
bank had been one long horror; but the clang of the cars, the lights in
the streets, gave him contact with life again. He must hasten to offer
his services to the Porters, though he knew that every means of
assistance had been employed, and that there was nothing to do but to
make inquiries. He grew uneasy as his car neared the house, and he
climbed the slope of the hill like one who bears a burden. He had
traversed this walk many times in the past year, in the varying moods of
a lover, who one day walks the heights and is the next plunged into the
depths; and latterly, since his affair with Margrave, he had known moods
of conscience, too, and these returned upon him with forebodings now. If
Porter had not been ill, there would never have been that interview with
Margrave at the bank; and Grant would not have been at home to be
kidnapped. It seemed to him that the troubles of other people rather
than his own errors were bearing down the balance against his happiness.

Evelyn came into the parlor with eyes red from weeping. "Oh, have you no
news?" she cried to him. He had kept on his overcoat and held his hat in
his hand. Her grief stung him; a great wave of tenderness swept over
him, but it was followed by a wave of terror. Evelyn wept as she tried
to tell her story.

"It is dreadful, horrible!" he forced himself to say. "But certainly no
harm can come to the boy. No doubt in a few hours--"

"But he isn't strong and father is still weak--"

She threw herself in a chair and her tears broke forth afresh.

Wheaton stood impotently watching her anguish. It is a new and strange
sensation which a man experiences when for the first time he sees tears
in the eyes of the woman he loves.

Evelyn sprang up suddenly.

"Have you seen Warry?" she asked--"has he come back yet?"

"Nothing had been heard from them when I came up town." He still stood,
watching her pityingly. "I hope you understand how sorry I am--how
dreadful I feel about it." He walked over to her and she thought he
meant to go. She had not heard what he said, but she thought he had been
offering help.

"Oh, thank you! Everything is being done, I know. They will find him
to-night, won't they? They surely must," she pleaded. Her father called
her in his weakened voice to know who was there and she hurried away to
him.

Wheaton's eyes followed her as she went weeping from the room, and he
watched her, feeling that he might never see her again. He felt the
poignancy of this hour's history,--of his having brought upon this house
a hideous wrong. The French clock on the mantel struck seven and then
tinkled the three quarters lingeringly. There were roses in a vase on
the mantel; he had sent them to her the day before. He stood as one
dazed for a minute after she had vanished. He could hear Porter back in
the house somewhere, and Evelyn's voice reassuring him. The musical
stroke of the bell, the scent of the roses, the familiar surroundings of
the room, wrought upon him like a pain. He stared stupidly about, as if
amid a ruin that he had brought upon the place; and then he went out of
the house and down the slope into the street, like a man in a dream.

While Wheaton swayed between fear and hope, the community was athrill
with excitement. The probable fate of the missing boy was the subject of
anxious debate in every home in Clarkson, and the whole country eagerly
awaited further news of the kidnapping. Raridan and Saxton hearing early
of the boy's disappearance had at once placed every known agency at work
to find him. Not satisfied with the local police, they had summoned
detectives from Chicago, and these were already at work. Rewards for the
boy's return were telegraphed in every direction. The only clue was the
slight testimony of Mrs. Whipple. She had told and re-told her story to
detectives and reporters. There was only too little to tell. Grant had
walked with her to the car. She had seen only one of the men that had
driven up to the curb,--the one that had inquired about the entrance to
Mr. Porter's grounds. She remembered that he had moved his head
curiously to one side as he spoke, and there was something unusual about
his eyes which she could not describe. Perhaps he had only one eye; she
did not know.

Every other man in Clarkson had turned detective, and the whole city had
been ransacked. Suspicion fastened itself upon an empty house in a
hollow back of the Porter hill, which had been rented by a stranger a
few days before Grant Porter's disappearance; it was inspected solemnly
by all the detectives but without results.

Raridan and Saxton, acting independently of the authorities in the
confusion and excitement, followed a slight clue that led them far
countryward. They lost the trail completely at a village fifteen miles
away, and after alarming the country drove back to town. Meanwhile
another message had been sent to the father of the boy stating that the
ransom money could be taken by a single messenger to a certain spot in
the country, at midnight, and that within forty-eight hours thereafter
the boy would be returned. He was safe from pursuit, the note stated,
and an ominous hint was dropped that it would be wise to abandon the
idea of procuring the captive's return unharmed without paying the sum
asked. Mr. Porter told the detectives that he would pay the money; but
the proposed meeting was set for the third night after the abduction;
the captors were in no hurry, they wrote. The crime was clearly the work
of daring men, and had been carefully planned with a view to quickening
the anxiety of the family of the stolen boy. And so twenty-four hours
passed.

"This is a queer game," said Raridan, on the second evening, as he and
John discussed the subject again in John's room at the club. "I don't
just make it out. If the money was all these fellows wanted, they could
make a quick touch of it. Mr. Porter's crazy to pay any sum. But they
seem to want to prolong the agony."

"That looks queer," said Saxton. "There may be something back of it;
but Porter hasn't any enemies who would try this kind of thing. There
are business men here who would like to do him up in a trade, but this
is a little out of the usual channels."

Saxton got up and walked the floor.

"Look here, Warry, did you ever know a one-eyed man?"

"I'm afraid not, except the traditional Cyclops."

"It has just occurred to me that I have seen such a man since I came to
this part of the country; but the circumstances were peculiar. This
thing is queerer than ever as I think of it."

"Well?"

"It was back at the Poindexter place when I first went there. A fellow
named Snyder was in charge. He had made a rats' nest of the house, and
resented the idea of doing any work. He seemed to think he was there to
stay. Wheaton had given him the job before I came. I remember that I
asked Wheaton if it made any difference to him what I did with the
fellow. He didn't seem to care and I bounced him. That was two years ago
and I haven't heard of him since."

Raridan drew the smoke of a cigarette into his lungs and blew it out in
a cloud.

"Who's at the Poindexter place now?"

"Nobody; I haven't been there myself for a year or more."

"Is it likely that fellow is at the bottom of this, and that he has made
a break for the ranch house? That must be a good lonesome place out
there."

"Well, it won't take long to find out. The thing to do is to go
ourselves without saying a word to any one."

Saxton looked at his watch.

"It's half past nine. The Rocky Mountain limited leaves at ten o'clock,
and stops at Great River at three in the morning. Poindexter's is about
an hour from the station."

"Let's make a still hunt of it," said Warry. "The detectives are busy on
what may be real clues and this is only a guess."

They rose.

"I can't imagine that fellow Snyder doing anything so dashing as
carrying off a millionaire's son. He didn't look to me as if he had the
nerve."

"It's only a chance, but it's worth trying."

In the lower hall they met Wheaton who was pacing up and down.

"Is there any news?" he asked, with a show of eagerness.

"No. We lost our trail at Rollins," said Raridan. "Have you heard
anything?"

"Nothing so far," Wheaton replied. He uttered the "so far" bravely, as
if he really might be working on clues of his own. His speculations of
one moment were abandoned the next. He was building and destroying and
rebuilding theories and plans of action. He was strong and weak in the
same breath. He envied Raridan and Saxton their air of determined
activity. He resolved to join them, to steady himself by them. He was
struggling between two inclinations: one to show his last threatening
note from Snyder, which was buttoned in his pocket, and boldly confess
that the blow at Porter was also an indirect blow at himself; and on the
other hand he held to a cowardly hope that the boy would yet be
recovered without his name appearing in the matter. He was aware that
all his hopes for the future hung in the balance. He was sure that every
one would soon know of his connection with the kidnapping; and yet he
still tried to convince himself that he was wholly guiltless.

He was afraid of John Saxton; Saxton, he felt, probably knew the part he
had played in the street railway matter. It seemed to him that Saxton
must have told others; probably Saxton had Evelyn's certificate put away
for use when William Porter should be restored to health; but on second
thought he was not sure of this. Saxton might not know after all! This
went through his mind as John and Warry stood talking to him.

"Wheaton," said Saxton, "do you remember that fellow Snyder who was in
charge of the Poindexter place when I came here?"

"What--oh yes!" His hand rose quickly to his carefully tied four-in-hand
and he fingered it nervously.

"You may not remember it, but he had only one eye."

"Yes, that's so," said Wheaton, as if recalling the fact with
difficulty.

"And Mrs. Whipple says there was something wrong about one of the eyes
of the man who accosted her and Grant at Mr. Porter's gate. What became
of that fellow after he left the ranch--have you any idea?" Raridan had
walked away to talk to a group of men in the reading room, leaving
Saxton and Wheaton alone.

"He went West the last I knew of him," Wheaton answered, steadily.

"It has struck me that he might be in this thing. It's only a guess,
but Raridan and I thought we'd run out to the Poindexter ranch and see
if it could possibly be the rendezvous of the kidnappers. It's probably
a fool's errand but it won't take long, and we'll do it unofficially
without saying anything to the authorities." His mind was on the plan
and he looked at his watch and called to Raridan to come.

"I believe I'll go along," said Wheaton, suddenly. "We can be back by
noon to-morrow," he added, conscientiously, remembering his duties at
the bank.

"All right," said Warry. "We're taking bags along in case of
emergencies." A boy came down carrying Saxton's suit-case. Wheaton and
Raridan hurried out together to The Bachelors' to get their own things.
It was a relief to Wheaton to have something to do; it was hardly
possible that Snyder had fled to the ranch house; but in any event he
was glad to get away from Clarkson for a few hours.

As the train drew out of the station Raridan and Saxton left Wheaton and
went to the rear of their sleeper, which was the last, and stood on the
observation platform, watching the receding lights of the city. The day
had been warm for the season; as the air quickened into life with the
movement of the train they sat down, with a feeling of relief, on the
stools which the porter brought them. They had done all that they could
do, and there was nothing now but to wait. The train rattled heavily
through the yards at the edge of town, and the many lights of the city
grew dimmer as they receded. Suddenly Raridan rose and pointed to a
single star that glowed high on a hill.

"It's the light in the tower at the Porters'," he said, bending down to
Saxton, "her light!"

"It's the light of all the valley," said Saxton, rising and putting his
hand on his friend's shoulder. He, too, knew the light!

The train was gathering speed now; the wheels began to croon their
melody of distance; one last curve, and the star of the Hill had been
blotted out.

"It's like a flower in an inaccessible place on a hillside," said
Raridan; and he repeated half aloud some lines of a poem that had lately
haunted him:


     "'Though I be mad, I shall not wake;
     I shall not fall to common sight;
     Only the god himself may take
     This music out of my blood, this glory out of my breath,
     This lift, this rapture, this singing might,
     And love that outlasts death.'"


When they went in, Wheaton was alone in the smoking compartment and they
joined him to discuss their plans for the drive to Poindexter's place.

"We'd better push right on to the ranch house as soon as we get to Great
River," said Saxton. "We're due there at three o'clock. We ought to get
back to take the nine o'clock train home in any event."

"And what's going to happen if we find the man there?" asked Raridan.
"We want the boy and him, too, don't we?"

Wheaton sat with his eyes turned toward the window, which the darkness
made opaque.

"If he's cornered he'll be glad to drop the boy and clear out. But we
want to take him home with us too, don't we, Wheaton?" asked Saxton.

"I should think we'd better make sure of the boy first," Wheaton
answered. "That would be a good night's work."

The porter came to tell them that their berths were ready.

"It's hardly worth while to turn in," said Warry, yawning. "I shudder at
the thought of getting up at three o'clock." "But," he added, "if we're
on the right track, this time to-morrow night they'll probably be
welcoming us home with brass bands and the freedom of the city. Perhaps
they'll have a public meeting at the Board of Trade. Cheer up, Jim;
those detectives will go out of business if we really take the boy
home."

Wheaton smiled wearily; he did not relish Raridan's jesting.

"Will your imagination never rest?" growled Saxton, knocking the ashes
from his pipe.



CHAPTER XXXV

SHOTS IN THE DARK


The night wind of the plain blew cold in their faces as they stepped out
upon the Great River platform. There was a hint of storm in the air and
clouds rode swiftly overhead. The voices of the trainmen and the throb
of the locomotive, resting for its long climb mountainward, broke
strangely upon the silence. A great figure muffled in a long ulster came
down the platform toward the vestibule from which the trio had
descended.

"Hello," called Raridan cheerily, "there's only one like that! Good
morning, Bishop!"

"Good morning, gentlemen," said Bishop Delafield, peering into their
faces. The waiting porter took his bags from him. "Has the boy been
found yet?"

"No."

"I should have gone on home to-night if I had known that. But what are
you doing here?"

Raridan told him in a few words. They were following a slight clue, and
were going over to the old Poindexter place, in the hope of finding
Grant Porter there. Saxton was holding a colloquy with the driver of the
station hack who had come in quest of passengers, and he hurried off
with the man to get a buckboard.

The conductor signaled with his lantern to go ahead, and the engine
answered with a doleful peal of the bell. The porter had gathered up the
bishop's things and waited for him to step aboard.

"Never mind," the bishop said to him; "I won't go to-night." The train
was already moving and the bishop turned to Raridan and Wheaton. "I'll
wait and see what comes of this."

"Very well," said Raridan. "We won't need our bags. We can leave them
with the station agent." Wheaton stepped forward eagerly, glad to have
something to do; he had not slept and was grateful for the cover of
darkness which shut him out from the others.

"Gentlemen with flasks had better take them," said Warry, opening his
bag. "It's a cold morning!"

"Wretchedly intemperate man," said the bishop. "Where's yours, Mr.
Wheaton?"

"I haven't any," Wheaton answered.

When he went into the station, the agent eyed him curiously as he looked
up from his telegraphing and nodded his promise to care for the bags. He
remembered Saxton and Wheaton and supposed that they were going to
Poindexter's on ranch business.

Saxton drove up to the platform with the buckboard.

"All ready," he said, and the three men climbed in, the bishop and
Wheaton in the back seat and Raridan by Saxton, who drove.

"The roads out here are the worst. It's a good thing the ground's
frozen."

"It's a better thing that you know the way," said Raridan. "I'm a lost
child in the wilderness."

"If you lose me, Wheaton can find the way," said Saxton.

They could hear the train puffing far in the distance. Its passage had
not disturbed the sleep of the little village. The lantern of the
station-master flashed in the main street as he picked his way homeward.
Stars could be seen beyond the flying clouds. The road lay between
wire-fenced ranches, and the scattered homes of their owners were
indistinguishable in the darkness of the night. A pair of ponies drew
the buckboard briskly over the hard, rough road.

"How far is it?" asked the bishop.

"Five miles. We can do it in an hour," said Saxton over his shoulder.

"We'll be in Clarkson laughing at the police to-morrow afternoon if we
have good luck," said Raridan. "If we've made a bad guess we'll sneak
home and not tell where we've been."

The road proved to be in better condition than Saxton had expected, and
he kept the ponies at their work with his whip. The rumble of the wagon
rose above the men's voices and they ceased trying to talk. Raridan and
Saxton smoked in silence, lighting one cigar from another. The bishop
rode with his head bowed on his breast, asleep; he had learned the trick
of taking sleep when and where he could.

Wheaton felt the numbing of his hands and feet in the cold night air and
welcomed the discomfort, as a man long used to a particular sensation of
pain welcomes a new one that proves a counter-irritant. He reviewed
again the grounds on which he might have excused himself from taking
this trip. Nothing, he argued, could be more absurd than this adventure
on an errand which might much better have been left to professional
detectives. But it seemed a far cry back to his desk at the bank, and to
the tasks there which he really enjoyed. In a few hours the daily
routine would be in progress. The familiar scenes of the opening passed
before him--the clerks taking their places; the slamming of the big
books upon the desks as they were brought from the vault; the jingle of
coin in the cages as the tellers assorted it and made ready for the
day's business. He saw himself at his desk, the executive officer of the
most substantial institution in Clarkson, his signature carrying the
bank's pledge, his position one of dignity and authority.

But he was on William Porter's service; he pictured himself walking into
the bank from a fruitless quest, but one which would attract attention
to himself. If they found the boy and released him safely, he would
share the thanks and praise which would be the reward of the rescuing
party. He had no idea that Snyder would be captured; and he even planned
to help him escape if he could do so.

They had turned off from the main highway and were well up in the branch
road that ran to the Poindexter place.

"This is right, Wheaton, isn't it?" asked Saxton, drawing up the ponies.

"Yes, this is the ranch road."

They went forward slowly. The clouds were more compactly marshaled now
and the stars were fewer. Suddenly Saxton brought the ponies to a stand
and pointed to a dark pile that loomed ahead of them. The Poindexter
house stood forth somber in the thin starlight.

"Is that the place?" asked the bishop, now wide awake.

"That's it," said Wheaton. "This road ends there. The river's just
beyond the cottonwoods. That first building was Poindexter's barn. It
cost more than the court house of this county."

Saxton gave the reins to Raridan and jumped out. "No more smoking," he
said, throwing away his cigar. "You stay here and I'll reconnoiter a
bit." He walked swiftly toward the great barn which lay between him and
the house. There was no sign of life in the place. He crept through the
barb-wire fence into the corral. He had barred and padlocked the barn
door on his last visit, and he satisfied himself that the fastenings had
not been disturbed. There were no indications that any one had visited
the place. He reasoned that if Snyder had sought the ranch house for a
rendezvous he had not come afoot. Saxton was therefore disappointed to
find the barn door locked and the corral empty; there was little use in
looking further, he concluded; but before joining the others he resolved
to make sure that the house also was empty. It was quite dark and he
walked boldly up to it. The wind had risen and whistled shrilly around
it; a loose blind under the eaves flapped noisily as he drew near. The
great front door was closed; he pushed against it and found it securely
fastened. He had brought with him a key to a rear door, and he started
around the house to try it and to make sure that the house was not
occupied.

At the corner toward the river, glass suddenly crunched under his feet.
The windows were deeply embrasured all over the house, and he could not
determine where the glass had fallen from. The windows were all intact
when he left, he was sure. He drew off his glove and tiptoed to the
nearest panes, ran his fingers over the smooth glass, and instantly
touched a broken edge. As he was feeling the frame to discover the size
of the opening, the low whinny of a horse came distinctly from within.

He stood perfectly quiet, listening, and in a moment heard the stamp of
a hoof on the wooden floor of the hall. He backed off toward the drive
way, which swept around in front of the house, and waited, but all
remained as silent and as dark as before. He ran back through the corral
to the other men, who stood talking beside the blanketed ponies.

"There's something or somebody in the house," he said. He told them of
the broken window and of the sounds he had heard. "Whoever's there has
no business there and we may as well turn him out. I've thought of a
good many schemes for utilizing that house, but the idea of making a
barn of it hadn't occurred to me."

He threw off his overcoat and tossed it into the buckboard.

"I guess that's a good idea, John," said Raridan, following his example.
Wheaton stood muffled in his coat. His teeth were chattering, and he
fumbled at the buttons but kept his coat on, walking toward the house
with the others.

"We may have a horse thief or we may have a kidnapper," said Saxton,
who had taken charge of the party; "but in either case we may as well
take him with his live stock."

"Let us not be rash," said the bishop, following the others. "He may
prove an unruly customer."

"He's probably a dude tramp who rides a horse and has taken a fancy to
Poindexter architecture," said Warry.

"Quiet!" admonished Saxton, who had lighted a lantern, which he
concealed under his coat.

"You two watch the corners of the house," he said, indicating Raridan
and Wheaton; "and you, Bishop, can stand off here, if you will, and
watch for signs of light in the upper windows. The big front doors are
barred on the inside, and my key opens only the back door."

"I'll go with you," said Raridan.

"Not yet, old man. You stay right here and watch until I throw open the
front doors."

"But that's a foolish risk," insisted Raridan. "There may be a dozen men
inside."

"That's all right, Warry. It takes only a minute to cross the hall and
unbar the front doors. There's no risk about it. I'll be out in half a
minute."

Raridan felt that Saxton was taking all the hazards, but he yielded, as
he usually did, when Saxton was decisive, as now.

"Good luck to you, old man!" he said, slapping Saxton on the back. He
patrolled the grass-plot before the house, while Saxton went to the
rear.

The door opened easily, and John stepped into the lower hall. The place
was pitch dark. He remembered the position of the articles of furniture
as he had left them on his last visit, and started across the hall
toward the stairway, using his lantern warily. When half way, he heard
the whinny of a horse which he could not see. A moment later an animal
shrank away from him in the darkness and was still again. Then another
horse whinnied by the window whose broken glass he had found on the
outside. There were, then, two horses, from which he argued that there
were at least two persons in the house. He found the doors and lifted
the heavy bar that held them and drew the bolts at top and bottom. As
the doors swung open slowly Raridan ran up to see if anything was
wanted.

"All right," said Saxton in a low tone. "They're mighty quiet if they're
here. But there's no doubt about the horses. You stay where you are and
I'll explore a little."

Raridan started to follow him, but Saxton pushed him back.

"Watch the door," he said, and walked guardedly into the house again.
The horses stamped fretfully as he went toward the stairway, but all was
quiet above. He felt his way slowly up the stair-rail, whose heavy dust
stuck to his fingers. Having gained the upper hall, he paused to take
fresh bearings. His memory brought back gradually the position of the
rooms. In putting out his hand he touched a picture which swung slightly
on its wire and grated harshly against the rough plaster of the wall. At
the same instant he heard a noise directly in front of him as of some
one moving about in the chamber at the head of the stairs. The knob of a
door was suddenly grasped from within. John waited, crouched down, and
drew his revolver from the side pocket of his coat. The door stuck in
the frame, but being violently shaken, suddenly pulled free. The person
who had opened the door stepped back into the room and scratched a
match.

"Wake up there," called a voice within the room.

Saxton crept softly across the hall, settling the revolver into his hand
ready for use. A man could be heard mumbling and cursing.

"Hurry up, boy, it's time we were out of this."

The owner of the voice now reappeared at the door holding a lantern; he
was pushing some one in front of him. The crisis had come quickly; John
Saxton knew that he had found Grant Porter; and he remembered that he
was there to get the boy whether he caught his abductor or not.

The man was carrying his lantern in his right hand and pushing the boy
toward the staircase with his left. As he came well out of the door,
Saxton sprang up and kicked the lantern from the man's hand. At the same
moment he grabbed the boy by the collar, drew him back and stepped in
front of him. The lantern crashed against the wall opposite and went
rolling down the stairway with its light extinguished. Saxton had
dropped his own lantern and the hall was in darkness.

"Stop where you are, Snyder," said Saxton, "or I'll shoot. I'm John
Saxton; you may remember me." He spoke in steady, even tones.

The lantern, rolling down the stairway, startled the horses, which
stamped restlessly on the floor. The wind whistled dismally outside. He
heard Snyder, as he assumed the man to be, cautiously feeling his way
toward the staircase.

"You may as well stop there," Saxton said, without moving, and holding
the boy to the floor with his left hand. He spoke in sharp, even tones.
"It's all right, Grant," he added in the same key to the boy, who was
crying with fright. "Stay where you are. The house is surrounded,
Snyder," he went on. "You may as well give in."

The man said nothing. He had found the stairway. Suddenly a revolver
flashed and cracked, and the man went leaping down the stairs. The ball
whistled over Saxton's head, and the boy clutched him about the legs. A
bit of plaster, shaken loose by the bullet, fell from the ceiling. The
noise of the revolver roared through the house.

"It's all right, Grant," Saxton said again.

The retreating man slipped and fell at the landing, midway of the
stairs, and as he stumbled to his feet Saxton ran back into the room
from which the fellow had emerged. He threw up the window with a crash
and shouted to the men in the darkness below:

"He's coming! Get out of the way and let him go! The boy's all right!"

He hurried back into the hall where he had left Grant, who crouched
moaning in the dark.

"You stay here a minute, Grant. They won't get you again," he called as
he ran down the steps. One of the horses below was snorting with fright
and making a great clatter with its hoofs. From the sound Saxton knew
that the fleeing man was trying to mount, and as he plunged down the
last half of the stairway, the horse broke through the door with the
man on his back.

"Let him go, Warry," yelled Saxton with all his lungs.

The horse was already across the threshold at a leap, his rider bending
low over the animal's neck to avoid the top of the door. Raridan ran
forward, taking his bearings by sounds.

"Stop!" he shouted. "Come on, Wheaton!" Wheaton was running toward him
at the top of his speed; Raridan sprang in front of the horse and
grabbed at the throat-latch of its bridle. The horse, surprised, and
terrified by the noise, and feeling the rider digging his heels into his
sides, reared, carrying Warry off his feet.

"Let go, you fool," screamed the rider. "Let go, I say!"

"Let him alone," cried Wheaton, now close at hand; but Raridan still
held to the strap at the throat of the plunging horse.

The rider sat up straight on his horse and his revolver barked into the
night twice in sharp succession, the sounds crashing against the house,
and the flashes lighting up the struggling horse and rider, and Raridan,
clutching at the bridle. Raridan's hold loosened at the first shot, and
as the second echoed into the night, the horse leaped free, running
madly down the road, past Bishop Delafield, who was coming rapidly
toward the house. Wheaton and Saxton met in the driveway where Raridan
had fallen. The flying horse could be heard pounding down the hard road.

"Warry, Warry!" called Saxton, on his knees by his friend. "Hold the
lantern," he said to Wheaton. "He's hurt." Raridan said nothing, but lay
very still, moaning.

"Who's hurt?" asked the bishop coming up. Saxton had recovered his own
lantern as he ran from the house. It was still burning and Wheaton
turned up the wick. The three men bent over Raridan, who lay as he had
fallen.

"We must get him inside," said Saxton. "The horse knocked him down."

The bishop bent over and put his arms under Raridan; and gathering him
up as if the prone man had been a child, he carried him slowly toward
the house. Wheaton started ahead with the lantern, but Saxton snatched
it from him and ran through the doors into the hall, and back to the
dining-room.

"Come in here," he called, and the old bishop followed, bearing Raridan
carefully in his great arms. The others helped him to place his burden
on the long table at which, in Poindexter's day, many light-hearted
companies had gathered. They peered down upon him in the lantern light.

"We must get a doctor quick," said Saxton, half turning to go.

"He's badly hurt," said the old man. There was a dark stain on his coat
where Raridan had lain against him. He tore open Raridan's shirt and
thrust his hand underneath; and when he drew it out, shaking his gray
head, it had touched something wet. Wheaton came with a pail of water,
pumped by the windmill into a trough at the rear of the house. He had
broken the thin ice with his hands.

"Go for a doctor," said the bishop, very quietly, nodding to Saxton;
"and go fast."

Wheaton followed Saxton to the hall, where they cut loose the remaining
horse. Saxton flung himself upon it, and the animal sprang into a gallop
at the door. Wheaton watched the horse and rider disappear through the
starlight; he wished that he could go with Saxton. He turned back with
sick terror to the room where Raridan lay white and still; but Wheaton
was as white as he.

The bishop had rolled his overcoat into a support for Warry's head, and
with a wet handkerchief laved his temples. Wheaton stood watching him,
silent, and anxious to serve, but with his powers of initiative frozen
in him.

"Get the flask from his pocket," said the old man; and Wheaton drew near
the table, and with a shudder thrust his hand into the pocket of
Raridan's coat.

"Shall I pour some?" he asked. Raridan had moved his arms slightly and
groaned as Wheaton bent close to him. Wheaton detached the cup from the
bottom of the flask and poured some of the brandy into it. The bishop,
motioning him to stand ready with it, raised Raridan gently, and
together they pressed the silver cup to his lips.

"That will do. I think he swallowed a little," said the bishop. "Bring
wood, if you can," he said, "and make a fire here." Raridan's head was
growing hot under his touch, and he continued to lave it gently with the
wet handkerchief. There was a shed at the back of the house where wood
had been kept in the old days of the Poindexter ascendancy, and Wheaton,
glad of an excuse to get away from the prostrate figure on the long
table, went stumbling through the hall to find this place. There was a
terrible silence in the old house,--a silence that filled all the world,
a silence that could not be broken, it seemed to him, save by some new
thing of dread. There beyond the prairie, day would break soon in the
town where he had striven and failed,--not the failure that proceeds
from lack of opportunity or ability to gain the successes which men
value most, but the failure of a man in self-mastery and courage.

He felt his soul shrivel in the few seconds that he stood at the door
looking across the windy plain,--like a dreamer who turns from his
dreams and welcomes the morning with the hope that his dream may not
prove true. He drew the doors together and turned to go on his errand,
lighting a match to get his bearings, when a sound on the stairway
startled him; there was a figure there--the wan, frightened face of
Grant Porter looked down at him. He had forgotten the boy, whom Saxton
had left in the hall above. Grant shrank back on the stairs, not
recognizing him. It seemed to Wheaton that there was something of
loathing in the boy's movement, and that always afterward people would
shrink from him.

"Is that you, Grant?" he asked. The boy did not answer. "It's all right,
Grant," he added, trying to throw some kindness into his voice. "You'd
better stay upstairs, until--we're ready to go."

The boy turned and stole back up the stairway, and Wheaton, encouraged
by the sound of his own voice, brought wood and kindled it with some
straw in the dining-room fireplace.

"Let us try the brandy again," said the bishop. Again Wheaton poured it,
and they forced a little between the lips of the stricken man. Raridan's
face, as Wheaton touched it with his fingers, was warm; he had expected
to find it cold; he had a feeling that the man lying there must be dead.
If only help would come, Raridan might live! He would accept everything
else, but to be a murderer--to have lured a man to his doom! The bishop
did not speak to him save now and then a word in a low tone, to call
attention to some change in Raridan, or to ask help in moving him. The
dry wood burned brightly in the fireplace and lighted the room. The
bishop asked the time.

"He could hardly go and come in less than two hours," said Wheaton. He
lifted his head.

"They are coming now." The short patter of pony hoofs was heard and he
went into the hall to open the doors. Two horsemen were just turning
into the corral. Saxton had found the one doctor of the village at
home,--a young man trained in an eastern hospital but already used to
long, rough rides over the prairies. The two men threw themselves to the
ground, and let their ponies run loose. Saxton did not speak to Wheaton,
who followed him and the doctor into the house.

"Has he been conscious at all?" asked the doctor.

The bishop shook his head. The doctor was already busy with his
examination, and the three men stood and watched him silently. Saxton
stepped forward and helped, when there was need, to turn the wounded
man and to strip away his clothing. The skilled fingers of the surgeon
worked swiftly, producing shining instruments and sponges as he needed
them, from the blue lining of his pea-jacket. Suddenly he paused and
bent down close to the stricken man's heart. He poured more brandy into
the silver cup and Saxton lifted Warry while the liquor was forced
between his lips. The doctor stood up then and put his finger on
Raridan's wrist. He had not spoken and his face was very grave. Saxton
touched his arm.

"Is there nothing more you can do now?" The doctor shook his head, but
bent again over Raridan, who gave a deep sigh and opened his eyes.

"John," he said in a whisper as he closed them again wearily. The doctor
put Warry's hand down gently, and the others, at a glance from him, drew
nearer.

"John," he repeated. His voice was stronger. The white light of dawn was
struggling now against the flame of the fireplace. John stood on one
side of the table, the doctor on the other. The old bishop's tall figure
rose majestically by the head of the dying man. Wheaton alone hung
aloof, but his eyes were riveted on Warry Raridan's face.

"It was another--another of my foolish chances," said Warry faintly and
slowly, the words coming hard; but all in the room could hear. He looked
from one to another, and seemed to know who the doctor was and why he
was there.

"The boy's safe and well. We got what we came for. Just once--just
once,--I got what I came for. It wasn't fair--in the dark that way--"
His voice failed and the doctor gave him more brandy. He lay very still
for several minutes, with his eyes closed, while the three men stood as
they had been, save that the surgeon now kept his finger on Warry's
wrist.

"I never--quite arrived--quite--arrived," he went on, with his eyes on
the old bishop, as if this were something that he would understand; "but
you must forgive all that." He smiled in a patient, tired way.

"You have been a good man, Warry, there's nothing that can trouble you."

"I was really doing better, wasn't I, John?" he went on, still smiling.
"You had helped,--you two,"--he looked from his young friend to the
older one, with the intentness of his near-sighted gaze. "Tell
them"--his eyes closed and his voice sank until it was almost
inaudible,--"tell them at the hill--Evelyn--the light of all--of
all--the year."

The doctor had put down Warry's wrist and turned away. The dawn-wind
sweeping across the prairie shook the windows in the room and moaned far
away in the lonely house. The bishop's great hand rested gently on the
dying man's head; his voice rose in supplication,--the words coming
slowly, as if he remembered them from a far-off time:

_Unto God's gracious mercy and protection we commit thee._ Saxton
dropped to his knees, and a sob broke from him. _The Lord bless thee,
and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be
gracious unto thee._ The old man's voice was very low, and sank to a
whisper. _The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee
peace, both now and evermore._

No one moved until the doctor put his head down to Warry's heart to
listen. Then Wheaton watched him with fascinated eyes as he gathered up
his instruments, which shone cold and bright in the gray light of the
morning.



CHAPTER XXXVI

HOME THROUGH THE SNOW


There was much to do, and John Saxton had been back and forth twice
between the ranch house and the village before the sun had crept high
into the heavens. The little village had been slow to grasp the fact of
the tragedy at its doors which had already carried its name afar. There
was much to do and yet it was so pitifully little after all! Warry
Raridan was dead, and eager men were scouring the country for his
murderer; but John Saxton sat in the room where Warry had died. It
seemed to John that the end had come of all the world. He sharpened his
grief with self-reproach that he had been a party to an exploit so
foolhardy: they should never have attempted a midnight descent upon an
unknown foe; and yet it was Raridan's own plan.

It was like Warry, too, and the thought turned John's memory into
grooves that time was to deepen. This was the only man who had ever
brought him friendship. The first night at the club in Clarkson, when
Raridan had spoken to him, came back, vivid in all its details. He
recalled with a great ache in his heart their talk there in the summer
twilight; the charm that he had felt first that night, and how Warry had
grown more and more into his life, and brightened it. He could not, in
the fullness of his sorrow, see himself again walking alone the ways
they had known together. Even the town seemed to him in these early
hours an unreal place; it was not possible that it lay only a few hours
distant, with its affairs going on uninterruptedly; nor could he realize
that he would himself take up there the threads of his life that now
seemed so hopelessly broken.

Saxton had ministered to the boy Grant with characteristic kindness.
Grant knew now of Warry's death, and this, with his own sharp
experiences, had unnerved him. He clung to Saxton, and John soothed him
until he slept, in one of the upper chambers.

Wheaton stood suddenly in the door, and beckoned to Saxton, who went out
to him. They had exchanged no words since that moment when the old
bishop's prayer had stilled the room where Warry Raridan died. Through
the events of the morning hours, Wheaton had been merely a spectator of
what was done; Saxton had hardly noticed him, and glancing at Wheaton
now, he was shocked at the look of great age that had come upon him.

"I want to speak to you a minute,--you and Bishop Delafield," said
Wheaton. The bishop was pacing up and down in the outer hall, which had
been quietly cleaned and put in order by men from the village. Wheaton
led the way to the room once used as the ranch office.

"Will you sit down, gentlemen?" He spoke with so much calmness that the
others looked at him curiously. The bishop and Saxton remained standing,
and Wheaton repeated, sharply, "Will you sit down?" The two men sat
down side by side on the leather-covered bench that ran around the room,
and Wheaton stood up before them; and so they met together here, the
three men left of the four who had come to the ranch house in the early
morning.

"I have something to say to you, before you--before we go," he said.
Their silence seemed to confuse him for a moment, but he regained his
composure. He looked from Saxton to the bishop, who nodded, and he went
on:

"The man who killed Warry Raridan was my brother," he said, and waited.

Saxton started slightly; his numbed senses quickened under Wheaton's
words, and in a flash he saw the explanation of many things.

"He was my brother," Wheaton went on quietly. "He had wanted money from
me. I had refused to help him. He carried away Grant Porter thinking to
injure me in that way. It was that, I think, as much as the hope of
getting a large sum for the boy's return."

"But--" began the bishop.

"There are many questions that will occur to you--and to others,"
Wheaton resumed, with an assurance that transformed him for the moment.
He spoke as of events in ages past which had no relation to himself.
"There are many things that might have been different, that would have
been different, if I had not been"--he hesitated and then finished
abruptly--"if I had not been a coward."

A great quiet lay upon the house; the two men remained sitting, and
Wheaton stood before them with his arms crossed, the bishop and Saxton
watching him, and Wheaton looking from one to the other of his
companions. Contempt and anger were rising in John Saxton's heart; but
the old bishop waited calmly; this was not the first time that a
troubled soul had opened its door to him.

"Go on," he said, kindly.

"My brother and I ran away from the little Ohio town where we were born.
Our father was a harness maker. I hated the place. I think I hated my
father and mother." He paused, as we do sometimes when we have suddenly
spoken a thought which we have long carried in our hearts but have never
uttered. The words had elements of surprise for James Wheaton, and he
waited, weighing his words and wishing to deal justly with himself. "My
brother was a bad boy; he had never gone to school, as I had; he had
several times been guilty of petty stealing. I joined him once in a
theft; we were arrested, but he took the blame and was punished, and I
went free. I am not sure that I was any better, or that I am now any
better than he is. But that is the only time I ever stole."

Saxton remembered that Warry had once said of James Wheaton that he
would not steal.

"I wanted to be honest; I tried my best to do right. I never expected to
do as well as I have--I mean in business and things like that. Then
after all the years in which I had not seen anything of my brother he
came into the bank one day as a tramp, begging, and recognized me. At
first I helped him. I sent him here; you will remember the man Snyder
you found here when you came," turning to Saxton. "I knew you would not
keep him. There was nothing else that I could do for him. I had new
ambitions," his voice fell and broke, "there were--there were other
things that meant a great deal to me--I could not have him about. It was
he who assaulted me one night at Mr. Porter's two years ago, when you,"
he turned to the bishop, "came up and drove him away. After that I gave
him money to leave the country and he promised to stay away; but he
began blackmailing me again, and I thought then that I had done enough
for him and refused to help him any more. When Grant Porter disappeared
I knew at once what had happened. He had threatened--but there is
something--something wrong with me!"

These last words broke from him like a cry, and he staggered suddenly
and would have fallen if Saxton had not sprung up and caught him. He
recovered quickly and sat down on the bench.

"Let us drop this now," said Saxton, standing over him; "it's no time--"

"There's something wrong with me," said Wheaton huskily, without
heeding, and Saxton drew back from him. "I was a vain, cowardly fool.
But I did the best I could," he passed his hand over his face, and his
fingers crept nervously to his collar, "but it wasn't any use! It wasn't
any use!" He turned again to the bishop. "I heard you preach a sermon
once. It was about our opportunities. You said we must live in the open.
I had never thought of that before," and he looked at the bishop with a
foolish grin on his face. He stood up suddenly and extended his arms.
"Now I want you to tell me what to do. I want to be punished! This
man's blood is on my hands. I want to be punished!" And he sank to the
floor in a heap, repeating, as if to himself, "I want to be punished!"

There are two great crises in the life of a man. One is that moment of
disclosure when for the first time he recognizes some vital weakness in
his own character. The other comes when, under stress, he submits this
defect to the eyes of another. James Wheaton hardly knew when he had
realized the first, but he was conscious now that he had passed the
second. It had carried him like a high tide to a point of rest; but it
was a point of helplessness, too.

"It isn't for us to punish you," the bishop began, "and I do not see
that you have transgressed any law."

"That is it! that is it! It would be easier! I would to God I had!"
moaned Wheaton. John turned away. James Wheaton's face was not good to
see.

"Yes, it would be easier," the bishop continued. "Man's penalties are
lighter than God's. I can see that in going back to Clarkson many things
will be hard for you--"

"I can't! Oh, I can't!" He still crouched on the floor, with his arms
extended along the bench.

"But that is the manly thing for you. If you have acted a cowardly part,
now is the time for you to change, and you must change on the field of
battle. I can imagine the discomfort of facing your old friends; that
you will suffer keen humiliation; that you may have to begin again; but
you must do it, my friend, if you wish to rise above yourself, and you
may depend upon my help."

The old man had spoken with emphasis, but with great gentleness. He
turned to Saxton, wishing him to speak.

"The bishop is right. You must go back with us, Wheaton." But he did not
say that he would help him. John Saxton neither forgot nor forgave
easily. He did not see in this dark hour what he had to do with James
Wheaton's affairs. But the Bishop of Clarkson went over to James Wheaton
and lifted him up; it was as though he would make the physical act carry
a spiritual aid with it.

"We can talk of this to better purpose when we get home," he said. "You
are broken now and see your future darkly; but I say to you that you can
be restored; there's light and hope ahead for you. If there is any
meaning in my ministry it is that with the help of God a man may come
out of darkness into the light again."

There was a moment's silence. Wheaton sat bent forward on the bench,
with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

"They are waiting for us," said Saxton.


A special train was sent to Great River, and the little party waited for
it on the station platform, surrounded by awed villagers, who stood
silent in the presence of death and a mystery which they but dimly
comprehended. Officers of the law from Clarkson came with the train and
surrounded Bishop Delafield, Wheaton and Saxton as they stood with Grant
Porter by the rude bier of Warry Raridan. The men answered many
questions and the sheriff of the county took the detectives away with
him. Margrave had sent his private car, and the returning party were
huddled in one end of it, save John Saxton, who sat alone with the body
of Warry Raridan. The train was to go back immediately, but it waited
for the west-bound express which followed it and passed the special
here. There was a moment's confusion as the special with its dark burden
was switched into a siding to allow the regular train to pass. Then the
special returned to the main track and began its homeward journey.

John sat with his arms folded, sunk into his greatcoat, and watched the
gray landscape through the snow that was falling fast. The events of the
night seemed like a hideous dream. It was an inconceivable thing that
within a few hours so dire a calamity could have fallen. The very
nearness of the city to which they were bound added to the unreality of
all that had happened. But there the dark burden lay; and the snow fell
upon the gray earth and whitened it, as if to cleanse and remake it and
blot out its dolor and dread. The others left Saxton alone; he was
nearer than they; but late in the afternoon, as they approached the
city, Captain Wheelock came in and touched him on the shoulder; Bishop
Delafield wished to see him. John rose, giving Wheelock his place, and
went back to where the old man sat staring out at the snow. He beckoned
Saxton to sit down by him.

"Where's Wheaton?" the bishop asked.

John looked at him and at the other men who sat in silence about the
car. He went to one of them and repeated the bishop's question, but was
told that Wheaton was not on the train. He had been at the station and
had come aboard the car with the rest; but he must have returned to the
station and been left. John remembered the passing of the west-bound
express, and went back and told the bishop that Wheaton had not come
with them. The old man shook his head and turned again to the window and
the flying panorama of the snowy landscape. John sat by him, and neither
spoke until the train's speed diminished at a crossing on the outskirts
of Clarkson. Then suddenly, hot at heart and with tears of sorrow and
rage in his eyes, Saxton said, so that only the bishop could hear:

"He's a damned coward!"

The Bishop of Clarkson stared steadily out upon the snow with troubled
eyes.



CHAPTER XXXVII

"A PECULIAR BRICK"


It was Fenton who most nearly voiced the public sorrow at the death of
Warrick Raridan. His address at the memorial meeting of the Clarkson Bar
Association surprised the community, which knew Fenton only as a
corporation lawyer who rarely made speeches, even to juries. Fenton put
into words the general appraisement of Warry Raridan--his social grace
and charm, his wit and variety. People who hardly knew that Raridan had
been a lawyer were surprised that the leader of the Clarkson bar dwelt
upon his instinctive grasp of legal questions, "the thoroughness of his
research and the clarity and force with which he presented legal
propositions." Raridan was a lawyer with an imagination, Fenton said,
thus seizing what had been considered a weakness of character and making
it count as an element of strength. Fenton was not given to careless
praise, and what he said of Raridan had much to do with formulating the
opinion that was to pass into Clarkson history. The last few months of
Warry's life had won him this eulogy--the work which he had done for
Evelyn. Fenton had learned to know him well after the appointment of
Saxton as receiver. He had thrown a number of important questions to
Warry to investigate, and he had been amazed at his young lieutenant's
capacity and industry. He did not know that a woman had been the
inspiration of this work; he thought that it proceeded from Saxton's
influence and the pleasure Warry found in labor that brought him near
his friend.

It was not alone Warry's death, but the sharp, tragic manner of it, so
wretchedly inconsonant with his life, that grieved and shocked the
community. But this too had its compensations; for many read into his
life now a recklessness and daring which it had lacked. They spoke of
him as though he had been a young soldier who had fallen at the first
skirmish, without having been tried in battle; all spoke of his promise
and mourned that his life had been harvested before he had finished
sowing. On every hand his good deeds were recounted; many unknown
witnesses rose to tell of acts of generosity and kindness which would
never have been disclosed in his lifetime. Those who had really known
him no longer lamented his erratic habits. They now magnified his
talents; and his whimsical, fanciful ways they attributed to genius.

It was much easier to account for Raridan than to explain Wheaton. Most
of the people of Clarkson did not understand his flight, if he had
neither stolen the bank's money nor killed Warry Raridan. There was a
disposition for a time to reject the story of the tragedy at the
Poindexter ranch house as it had been given out by Bishop Delafield and
John Saxton; but the bishop's word in the matter was final; he was not a
man to conceal the truth. Those who had seen most of Wheaton were the
most puzzled. The men who remained at The Bachelors' were stunned by
the whole affair, but in particular they failed to grasp the curious
phase presented by Wheaton's connection--or lack of connection--with it.
They expected him to return, and even discussed what should be their
attitude toward him if he came back. As the days passed and nothing was
heard, they gradually ceased talking of him; but by silent assent no one
took the seat he had occupied at their table. When presently the
landlord sent Wheaton's things to be stored in the cellar, and new men
appeared in the places of Raridan and Wheaton, they exchanged the oblong
table for a round one, to take away whatever ill luck might follow the
places of the lost members of their board.

The chief shock to William Porter was a shock to his pride. He had
trusted Wheaton as implicitly as he trusted any man, and while his trust
at all times had limitations, he had extended these beyond precedent in
James Wheaton's case. Saxton and Bishop Delafield had gone to him as
soon as possible, with Fenton. It was important for Porter to understand
exactly what had occurred at the Poindexter ranch house. The newspapers
had now announced Wheaton's flight; it was natural that the bank should
fall under suspicion, and that all of Porter's interests should be
jeopardized. A cashier implicated in some way in a murder, and in full
flight for parts unknown, created a situation which could not be
ignored. But Porter met the issue squarely and sanely.

The expert accountants who were put to work on the bank's books made an
absolutely clean report, and the minutest scrutiny of the securities of
the bank proved everything intact. Wheaton had been a master of order
and system. The searching investigation of experts and directors
revealed nothing that was not creditable to the missing cashier.

"Well, sir," said Porter, "you've got me. I guess Jim was crooked some
way, but he didn't do us up. I guess there's nothing we can say against
him."

"His case is unusual," said Fenton. "I think we'd better leave it to the
psychologists."

It was necessary to fill Wheaton's place, and while they were casting
about for a cashier Porter and Thompson received offers from a Chicago
syndicate for their stock in the bank. The offer was advantageous; both
of the founders were old and both were in broken health. They debated
long what they should do. The bank was a child of their own creating;
Porter was particularly loath to part with it; but Evelyn, to whom he
brought the matter in a new spirit of dependence on her, finally
prevailed upon him. They closed with the offer of the syndicate, parting
with the control but remaining in the directorate. Porter had other
interests that required his attention, chief among which was the
Traction Company; and after the bank question had been determined, he
gave himself to a careful study of its affairs.

"I guess this thing ain't so terribly rotten after all," he said one
day, at a conference with Saxton and Fenton. The earnings were steadily
increasing.

"No, it's making a showing now, and unless you want to keep it for a
long run you had better sell it before you get into a strike or a row
with the city authorities or something like that, to spoil it. And I
fancy that Saxton's making a showing that the next fellow can't beat.
One thing's sure," said Fenton, "some extensions and improvements have
got to be made the coming summer, and they will take money."

"Well, we won't make them," Porter declared. "We'll reorganize and bond
and get out."

While the newspapers, and the judge of the court to whom he reported,
praised Saxton, Porter never praised him. It was not his way; but Fenton
took care that Porter should understand fully the value of Saxton's
services. Praise had not often been John Saxton's portion, and he was
not seriously troubled by Porter's apparent indifference. He was not
working for William Porter, he told himself, at times when Porter's
attitude annoyed him; he was working for the United States District
Court; and he went on doing his duty as he saw it. He was, however,
anxious to be relieved, but Fenton begged him to remain through the
reorganization. He liked Saxton and admired his steady persistence.
Together they worked out the problem of the proposed new company, and
managed it with so much tact and self-effacement that Porter believed
all their suggestions to have originated with himself.

"It's simpler that way," said Fenton, speaking to Saxton one day of the
necessity of this method of procedure. "He's a perfect brick, and he'll
like us a lot better if we let him think he's doing all the work."

"He is a brick all right," said John thoughtfully, "but he's a peculiar
brick."



CHAPTER XXXVIII

OLD PHOTOGRAPHS


In the days that followed, John Saxton knew again the heartache and
loneliness which he had known before Warry Raridan came into his life.
He had lost the first real friend he had ever had, and his days were
once more empty of light and cheer. His work still engrossed him, but it
failed to bring him the happiness which he had found in it when he and
Warry discussed its perplexities together. His memory sought its old
ruts again; the hardship and failure of his years in Wyoming were like
fresh wounds. He talked to no one except Bishop Delafield, who had
reasoned him out of his self-indictment for Warry's death. He did not
know that his own part in the recovery of Grant Porter, as Bishop
Delafield described it, was touched with a fine and generous courage,
and he would have resented it if he had known.

Warry was constantly in his thoughts; but he thought much of Evelyn too;
through all the years to come, he told himself, he would remember them
and they would be his ideals. Echoes of the gossip which connected
Warry's name and Evelyn's reached him, and he felt no shock that such
surmises should be afloat. Warry and he had understood each other; they
had talked of Evelyn frequently; Warry had come to him often with the
confidences of a despairing lover, and John had encouraged and consoled
him. He predicted his ultimate success; it had always seemed to him an
inevitable thing that Warry and Evelyn should marry.

Three weeks passed before he saw her, and then he went to her with an
excuse for his visit in his mind and heart. Warry had left a will in
which the bulk of his property--and it was a respectable fortune--was
given for the endowment of a hospital for children. Saxton was named as
executor and as a trustee of the fund thus set apart. Warry had never
mentioned the matter to any one; he had probably never thought of it
very seriously, and John wished to talk to Evelyn about it.

It seemed strange that the Porter drawing-room was the same, when
everything else had changed; he had not been there since the afternoon
when he walked home with Evelyn through the cold. He despised himself
for that now; it was an act of disloyalty to Warry; but he would now be
more loyal to the dead than he had been to the living.

As they talked together he saw no change in her; and he felt himself
wondering what manner of change it was that he had expected to find. He
had heard of people who aged suddenly with grief, but Evelyn was the
same, save for a greater composure, a more subdued note of manner and
voice. She bent forward in her deep interest in what he told her of
Warry's bequest. He wished her help, and asked for it as if it were her
right to give it. Surely no one had a better claim than she, he thought.

"It is so like Warry," she said. "It will be a beautiful memorial, and
there is enough to do it very handsomely."

"He liked things to be done well," said John. He marveled that she could
speak of it so quietly. Failure and grief possessed his eyes, and Evelyn
was conscious of a deepening of the pathos she had always seen and felt
in him, as he sat talking of his dead friend. She pitied him, and was
obedient to his evident wish to talk of Warry.

John spoke of Warry's last photographs, and Evelyn went and brought a
number which he had never seen. Several of them dated back to Warry's
boyhood. They were odd and interesting--boyish pictures which the
spectacles made appear preternaturally old. One of these, that John
liked particularly, Evelyn asked him to take, and his face lighted with
pleasure when she made it plain that she wished him to have it. She told
of some of Warry's pranks in their childhood, and they laughed over them
with guarded mirth.

"It was wonderful that so many kinds of people were fond of Warry," said
Evelyn. "He never tried to please, and yet no man in town ever had so
many friends."

"It's like genius, I suppose," said John. "It's something in people that
wins admiration. No one can define it or explain it. I think, though,"
he added in a lower tone, "I know how it was in my own case. I had
always wanted a friend like him to take me out of myself and help me;
but a man like Warry had never come my way before; and if he had he
would probably have been in a hurry."

He laughed and then was very grave. "But Warry always had time for me."
At his last words he looked up at her and saw tears shining in her eyes.

"Oh, forgive me--forgive me!" he cried. "It must--I know it must hurt
you to talk of him. But I couldn't help it. I thought you must
understand what he meant to me. Dear old Warry!"

He held in his hand the little card photograph she had given him, and he
rose and thrust it into his pocket.

"He was a charming, gentle spirit," said Evelyn. "It will mean a great
deal to us that we knew him. You meant a great deal to him, Mr. Saxton.
You helped him. It was--" She halted, confused, and had evidently
intended to say more. The color suddenly mounted to her face. She did
not offer him her hand which he had stepped forward to take, and he
dropped his own, which he had half extended.

"Good night." Her eyes followed him to the hall.

On his way home--he still lived at the club--John reviewed, sentence by
sentence, his talk with Evelyn. He had not expected her to speak so
frankly of Warry; but, he told himself, it was like her. He touched the
photograph she had given him, and held it up as he passed under an arc
lamp to be sure of it. He was surprised that she had given it to him; he
did not think a girl would give away a rare picture of a dead lover,
which must have a peculiar sacredness for her. Then he was angry with
himself for a thought that criticised her. She had given it to him
because he was Warry's friend!

When he reached his room he put the photograph of Warry on his table and
took another similar card from a drawer. It was the little picture of
Evelyn which he had often seen on Warry's dressing-table. It showed her
standing by a tall chair; her hair hung in long braids. It was very
girlish and quaint; but it was unmistakably Evelyn.

Warry in his will had directed that John should have such of his
personal effects as he might choose; the remainder he was to destroy or
sell. John chose a few of the books that Warry had liked best, and the
picture. He put it down now beside the photograph of Warry. They bore
the name of the same photographer, and had probably been taken in the
same year. He lighted his pipe and tramped back and forth across the
floor, occasionally stopping at his desk to look at the cards carefully.
He had no right to Evelyn Porter's picture, he told himself. He was
taking advantage of his dead friend's kindness to appropriate it. He
would not destroy it; he would give it to some one--to Mrs. Whipple, to
Evelyn herself! Yes, it should be to Evelyn; and having reached this
conclusion, he put the two pictures away together and went to bed.

The next day he was called away unexpectedly to Colorado to close a sale
of the Neponset Trust Company's interest in the irrigation company. The
call came inopportunely, as the plans for the reorganization of the
Traction Company were not yet perfected; but the matter was urgent, and
Fenton told him to go. There was not time, he assured himself, to return
the photograph before leaving, so he carried both the little cards away
with him, with a half-formed intention of sending Evelyn's to her from
Denver; but when he returned to Clarkson he still carried the
photographs in his pocket.



CHAPTER XXXIX

"IT IS CRUEL"


"It is cruel of them to say it!"

Evelyn was at the Whipples'. It was a morning in May. Spring possessed
the valley. The long vistas across the hills were closing as the leaves
crept into the trees again. The windows were open, and the snowy
curtains swayed to the wind. Lilacs again in the Whipples' dooryard
bloomed, and the general's young cherry trees were white with blossoms.
It was not well that any one should be heavy of heart on such a morning,
but Evelyn Porter was not happy. She sat leaning forward with both hands
resting on the ivory ball of her parasol. A querulous note crept into
her voice. It is strange how the heartache to which the face never
yields finds a ready prey in the voice.

"It is cruel of them to say it!"

"But it is natural too, dear," said Mrs. Whipple. "Many people must have
wondered about you and Warry. If it will help any, I will confess that I
wondered a good deal myself. Now you won't mind, will you? It seems
hard, now that he has gone--but before--before, it was not
unreasonable!"

"But the gossip! I don't care for myself, but it is cruel to him, to his
memory, that this should be said. If it had been true; if--if we had
been engaged, it would not be so wretched; but this--oh, it hurts me!"
She lay back in her chair. Her eyes were over-bright; her words ended in
a wail.

Mrs. Whipple felt that Evelyn's view of the matter was absurd. If the
people of Clarkson were trying to read an element of romance into Warry
Raridan's death, they were certainly working no injury to his memory.
Such a view of the matter was fantastic. Evelyn did not know that
another current story coupled her name with that of James Wheaton, who
was spoken of in some quarters, and even guardedly in newspapers outside
of Clarkson, as Raridan's rival for the affections of William Porter's
daughter. Mrs. Whipple had shuddered hourly since the tragedy at
Poindexter's when she remembered how much Wheaton had been about with
Evelyn. He had been with her almost as much as Warry. Mrs. Whipple
recalled the carnival of two years ago with shame. Her heart smote her
as she watched the girl. It was a hideous thing that evil should have
crept so near her life. Wheaton had been a strange species of reptile
among them all.

"Poor dear! You must not take it so!" The silence had grown oppressive.
It was incumbent upon her to comfort the girl if she could.

"It isn't a thing that you can help, child. There's no way of stopping
gossip; and if they persist in saying such things, they will have to say
them, that's all. If you wish--if it will help you any, I will refute it
when I can--I mean among our friends only."

"Oh, no! That would make it worse. Please don't say anything!"

Mrs. Whipple did not accept solicitude for Warry's memory as a
sufficient explanation of Evelyn's troubles; nor was it like Evelyn to
complain of gossip about herself. The girl had naturally felt Warry's
death deeply; she made no secret of her great fondness for him. But if
Evelyn had really cared for Warry with more than a friendly regard, she
would never have come to her in this way. She assumed this hypothesis as
she made irrelevant talk with the girl. Then she thought of Wheaton; if
Wheaton had been the one Evelyn had cared for--if Warry had been the
friend and he the lover! She gave rein for a moment to this idea.
Perhaps Evelyn followed the man now with sympathy--the thought was
repulsive; she rejected it instantly with self-loathing for having
harbored an idea that wronged Evelyn so miserably.

"What father feels is that his mistake in Wheaton argues a great
weakness in himself," Evelyn was saying. She was more tranquil now. Mrs.
Whipple noticed that she spoke Wheaton's name without hesitation; she
had dropped the prefix of respect, as every one had. We have a way of
eliminating it in speaking of men who are markedly good or bad.

"Father takes it very hard. He isn't naturally morbid, but he seems to
feel as if he had been responsible--Grant being back of it all. But we
didn't know those men were going out there--we knew nothing until it was
all over!" The girl spoke as if she too felt the responsibility. "And he
thinks he ought to have known about Wheaton--ought to have seen what
kind of man he was!"

Evelyn's blue foulard was beyond criticism and it matched her parasol
perfectly; the girl had never been prettier. Mrs. Whipple inwardly
apologized for having admitted the thought of Wheaton to her mind.

"We can all accuse ourselves in the same way. To think of it--that he
has actually passed tea in this very room!" Her shrug of loathing was so
real that Evelyn shuddered.

Then Mrs. Whipple laughed, so suddenly that it startled Evelyn.

"It's dreadful! horrible!" Mrs. Whipple continued, "to find that a
person you have really looked upon with liking--perhaps with
admiration--has been all along eaten with a moral leprosy. If it weren't
for poor Warry we should be able to look upon it as a profitable
experience. There aren't many like Wheaton. The bishop thinks we ought
to be lenient in dealing with him--that he was not really so bad; that
he was simply weak--that his weakness was a kind of disease of his moral
nature. But I can't see it that way myself. The man ought not to go
scot-free. He ought to be punished. But it's too intangible and subtle
for the law to take hold of."

Evelyn had picked up her card-case. It was a pretty trifle of silver and
leather; she tapped the handle of her parasol with it. Something had
occurred to Mrs. Whipple when she laughed a moment before, and seeing
that Evelyn was about to rise, she said casually:

"Mr. Saxton doesn't share the bishop's gentle charity toward Wheaton."
She watched Evelyn as she applied the test. The girl did not raise her
eyes at once. She bent over the parasol meditatively, still tapping the
handle with the card-case.

"What does Mr. Saxton say?" Evelyn asked, dropping the trinket into her
lap and looking at her friend vaguely, as people do who ask questions
out of courtesy rather than from honest curiosity.

"Mr. Saxton says that Wheaton's a scoundrel--a damned scoundrel, to be
literal. He told the general so, here, a few nights ago. He seemed very
bitter. You know what close friends he and Warry were!"

"Yes; it was an ideal kind of friendship. They were devoted to each
other," said Evelyn very earnestly; there was a little cry in her voice
as she spoke. It was as though happiness, struggling against sorrow, had
almost gained the mastery.

"It's fine to see that in men. I sometimes think that friendships among
them have a quality that ours lack. I think Mr. Saxton is very lonely. I
wasn't here when he called, but the general saw him. You know the
general likes him particularly."

"Yes."

"You and he both knew and appreciated Warry."

Evelyn had grasped her parasol, and she took up the card-case again.
Mrs. Whipple was half ashamed of herself; but she was also convinced.
She took another step.

"Of course you see him; he must be reaching out to all Warry's friends
in his loneliness."

Mrs. Whipple's powers of analysis were keen, but there were times when
they failed her. She did not know that her question hurt Evelyn Porter;
and she did not know that Evelyn had seen John Saxton but once since the
day they all stood by Warry's grave.

Mrs. Whipple disapproved of herself as she followed Evelyn to the door.
She had no business to pry into the girl's secrets in this way; the
sweep of the foulard touched her, and she sought to placate her
conscience by burying her new-found knowledge under less guilty
information.

Evelyn spoke of the place which her father had bought at Orchard Lane,
on the North Shore, and told Mrs. Whipple that she and the general were
expected to spend a month there.

"You will be away all summer, I suppose. It's fine that your father has
taken the course he has. He might have felt that he must stay at home
closer than ever, to look after his interests."

"It's more for Grant than for himself," said Evelyn; "but he realizes
too that he must take care of himself."

"That's a good deal gained for a Western business man. It's been a
terrible year for you, dear,--your father's illness and these other
things. You need rest."

She took the girl's cheeks in her hands and kissed her, and Evelyn went
out into the spring afternoon and walked homeward over the sloping
streets.

Mrs. Whipple pondered long after Evelyn left. Evelyn was not happy. She
was not mourning a dead lover, nor one whose life was eclipsed in shame;
but another man disturbed her peace, and Mrs. Whipple wondered why. She
was still pondering when the general came in. He had been out to take
the air, and after he had brought his syphon from the ice-box he was
ready to talk.

"Evelyn has been here," said Mrs. Whipple. "She asked us to come to
them for a visit. You know Mr. Porter has bought a place on the North
Shore."

"It sounds like a miracle. Jim Wheaton didn't live in vain if he's
responsible for that."

They debated their invitation, which Mrs. Whipple had already accepted,
she explained, from a sense of duty to Evelyn. The general said he
supposed he would have to go, with a show of reluctance that was wholly
insincere and to which Mrs. Whipple gave no heed. They were asked for
July. They discussed the old friends whom they would probably see while
they were East, until the summer loomed pleasant before them, and then
the talk came back to Evelyn.

"The child doesn't look well," said Mrs. Whipple.

"I shouldn't think she would, with all the row and rumpus they've been
having in their family. Abductions and murders and abscondings at one's
door are not conducive to light-heartedness."

"She's annoyed by all this gossip about her and Warry. She doesn't know
that Wheaton is supposed to have taken more than a friendly interest in
her."

"Well, I wouldn't tell her that, if I were you--if Wheaton didn't."

"Of course he didn't!"

"Well, he didn't then." The syphon hissed into the glass.

"Evelyn and Warry weren't engaged," said Mrs. Whipple. The general held
up the glass and watched the gas bubbling to the top.

"It's just as well that way," he said. "It saves her a lot of
heartache."

"That's what I think," said Mrs. Whipple promptly. In such
conversations as this she usually combated the general's opinions. An
exception to the rule was so noteworthy that he began to pay serious
attention.

"They weren't, but they might have been. Is that it?"

"No. Anything might have been. There's no use speculating about what
can't be now."

"I suppose that's true. Well?"

"Something is troubling Evelyn, and I'll tell you what I think it is. I
think it was Saxton all along."

"I always told you he was a good fellow. He's really shown me some
attentions, and that's more than most of the young men have done, except
Warry. Warry was nice to everybody. But Saxton's alive and hearty and
hasn't skipped for parts unknown. Why is Evelyn mourning?" He shook the
glass until the ice tinkled pleasantly.

"I don't know. Maybe--maybe he doesn't understand!"

"He isn't stupid," said the general, thoughtfully.

"Of course he isn't."

"It may be that he isn't interested--that she doesn't appeal to him.
Such a thing is conceivable."

"No, it isn't! Of course it isn't!"

The general laughed at her scornful rejection of the idea.

"You tell me, then."

"What I think is, that there is some reason--perhaps some point of honor
with him--that keeps him away from her. He was Warry's friend. He was
nearer Warry in his last years than any one. Don't you think that
something of that sort may be the matter?"

The general was greatly amused, and he laughed so that Mrs. Whipple's
own dignity was shaken.

"Amelia," he said, "your analytical powers are too sharp for this world.
You're shaving it down pretty fine, it seems to me. I wish you'd tell me
what you base that on."

"I'm not basing it; but it seems so natural that that should be the
way."

The syphon gurgled harshly and sputtered, and the general put it down
sadly.

"Now that you've solved the riddle in your own mind, how are you going
to proceed? You'd better not try army tactics on a civilian job. Saxton
isn't a second lieutenant, to be regulated by the commandant's wife."

"He's a dear!" declared Mrs. Whipple irrelevantly. "If Evelyn Porter
wants him, she's going to have him."

"Oh, Lord!" The general took up his syphon to carry it back to the case
in the pantry. "He's 'a dear,' is he? Amelia, John Saxton weighs at
least one hundred and eighty pounds. I don't believe I'd call him 'a
dear.' I'd reserve that for slim, elderly persons like me, or young
girls just out of school." He stood swinging the syphon at arm's length.
"Now, if my advice were worth anything, I'd tell you to let these young
people alone. If you've guessed the true inwardness of this matter--as
you probably haven't--they'll come out all right."

"Of course they'll come out all right," she answered, dreamily. The
swinging door in the dining-room fanned upon her answer as the general
strode through into the pantry.

For several weeks following Mrs. Whipple continued to think of Evelyn
and her affairs. Evelyn was not an object of pity, and yet there was a
certain pathos about her. Her position in the town as the daughter of
its wealthiest citizen isolated her, it seemed to Mrs. Whipple. A girl
would be less than human if the experiences to which Evelyn had been
subjected did not make a profound impression upon her. Mrs. Whipple had
seen a good deal of trouble in her day. She felt that Evelyn had learned
too much of life in one lesson; if she could ease the future for her,
she wished to do it. With such hopes as these she occupied herself as
spring waxed old and summer held the land.



CHAPTER XL

SHIFTED BURDENS


Porter insisted that Margrave should not have the Traction Company at
any price, though the general manager of the Transcontinental was
persistent in his offers. As Margrave did not care to deal with Porter,
who was not, he complained, "an easy trader," he negotiated with Fenton
and Saxton. After several weeks of ineffectual effort he concluded that
Fenton and Saxton were almost as difficult. He called Saxton a "stubborn
brute" to Saxton's face; but offered to continue him in a responsible
position with the company if he would help him with the purchase. He
still wanted to control the company for political reasons, but there was
also the fact of his having invested the money of several of his friends
in the Transcontinental directorate, prior to the last annual meeting.

These gentlemen had begun to inquire in a respectful way when Margrave
was going to effect the _coup_ which, he had been assuring them, he had
planned. They had, they were aware, no rights as against the
bondholders; and as Margrave understood this perfectly well, he was very
anxious to buy in the property at receiver's sale for an amount that
would satisfy Porter and his allies, and give him a chance to "square
himself," as he put it. This required additional money, but he was able
to command it from his "people," for the receiver had demonstrated that
the property could be made to pay. While these negotiations were
pending, Saxton and Fenton were able to satisfy their curiosity as to
the relations which had existed between Wheaton and Margrave. Margrave
had no shame in confessing just what had passed between them; he viewed
it all as a joke, and explained, without compunction, exactly the manner
in which he had come by the shares which had belonged to Evelyn Porter
and James Wheaton.

When Saxton came back from Colorado, Porter was ill again, and Fenton
was seriously disposed to accept a price which Margrave's syndicate had
offered. Margrave's position had grown uncomfortable; he had to get
himself and "his people" out of a scrape at any cost. His plight pleased
Fenton, who tried to make Porter see the irony of it; and this view of
it, as much as the high offer, finally prevailed upon him. He saw at
last the futility of securing and managing the property for himself; his
health had become a matter of concern, and Fenton insisted that a street
railway company would prove no easier to manage than a bank.

Porter was, as John had said, "a peculiar brick," and after the final
orders of the court had been made, and Saxton's fees allowed, Porter
sent him a check for five thousand dollars, without comment. Fenton made
him keep it; Porter had done well in Traction and he owed much to John;
but John protested that he preferred being thanked to being tipped; but
the lawyer persuaded him at last that the idiosyncrasies of the rich
ought to be respected.

Porter felt his burdens slipping from him with unexpected satisfaction.
He grew jaunty in his old way as he chid his contemporaries and friends
for holding on; as for himself, he told them, he intended "to die
rested," and he adjusted his affairs so that they would give him little
trouble in the future. The cottage which he had bought on the North
Shore was a place they had all admired the previous summer. Porter had
liked it because there was enough ground to afford the lawn and flower
beds which he cultivated with so much satisfaction at home. The place
was called "Red Gables," and Porter had bought it with its furniture, so
that there was little to do in taking possession but to move in. The
Whipples were their first guests, going to them in mid-July, when they
were fully installed.

The elder Bostonians whom Porter had met the previous summer promptly
renewed their acquaintance with him. He had attained, in their eyes, a
new dignity in becoming a cottager. The previous owner of "Red Gables"
had lately failed in business and they found in the advent of the
Porters a sign of the replenishing of the East from the West, which
interested them philosophically. Porter lacked their own repose, but
they liked to hear him talk. He was amusing and interesting, and they
had already found his prophecies concerning the markets trustworthy. The
ladies of their families heard with horror his views on the Indian
question, which were not romantic, nor touched with the spirit of Boston
philanthropy; but his daughter was lovely, they said, and her accent was
wholly inoffensive.

So the Porters were well received, and Evelyn was glad to find her
father accepting his new leisure so complacently. She and Mrs. Whipple
agreed that he and the general were as handsome and interesting as any
of the elderly Bostonians among their neighbors; and they undoubtedly
were so.



CHAPTER XLI

RETROSPECTIVE VANITY


John Saxton sat in the office of the Traction Company on a hot night in
July. Fenton had just left him. The transfer to the Margrave syndicate
had been effected and John would no more sign himself "John Saxton,
Receiver." His work in Clarkson was at an end. The Neponset Trust
Company had called him to Boston for a conference, which meant, he knew,
a termination of his service with them. He had lately sold the
Poindexter ranch, and so little property remained on the Neponset's
books that it could be cared for from the home office. He had not opened
the afternoon mail. He picked up a letter from the top of the pile and
read:


     SAN FRANCISCO, July 10, 189--.

     My Dear Sir:

     I hesitate about writing you, but there are some things which I
     should like you to understand before I go away. I had fully
     expected to remain with you and Bishop Delafield and to return to
     Clarkson that last morning at Poindexter's. I cannot defend myself
     for having run away; it must have seemed a strange thing to you
     that I did so. I had fully intended acting on the bishop's advice,
     which I knew then, and know now, was good. But when the west-bound
     train came, my courage left me; I could not go back and face the
     people I had known, after what had happened. I told you the truth
     there in the ranch house that night; every word of it was true.
     Maybe I did not make it clear enough how weak I am. I do not know
     why God made me so; I know that I tried to fight it; but I was vain
     and foolish. Things came too easy for me, I guess; at any rate I
     was never worthy of the good fortune that befell me. It seemed to
     me that for two years everything I did was a mistake. I suppose if
     I had been a real criminal, and not merely a coward, I should not
     have entangled myself as I did and brought calamity upon other
     people.

     When I reached here, I found employment with a shipping house. I
     have told my story to one of the firm, who has been kind to me. He
     seems to understand my case, and is giving me a good chance to
     begin over again. I suppose the worst possible things have been
     said about me, and I do not care, except that I hope the people in
     Clarkson will not think I was guilty of any wrong-doing at the
     bank. I read in the newspapers that I had stolen the bank's money,
     and I hope that was corrected. The books must have proved what I
     say. I understand now that what I did was worse than stealing, but
     I should like you and Mr. Porter to know that I not only did not
     take other people's money, but that in my foolish relations with
     Margrave I did not receive a cent for the shares of stock which he
     took from me--neither for my own nor for those of Miss Porter. I
     don't blame Margrave; if I had not been a coward he could not have
     played with me as he did.

     The company is sending me to one of its South American houses. I go
     by steamer to-morrow, and you will not hear from me again. I should
     like you to know that I have neither seen nor heard anything of my
     brother since that night. With best wishes for your own happiness
     and prosperity,

     Yours sincerely,

     JAMES WHEATON.

     JOHN SAXTON, ESQ.


On his way home to the club Saxton stopped at Bishop Delafield's rooms,
and found the bishop, as usual, preparing for flight. Time did not
change Bishop Delafield. He was one of those men who reach sixty, and
never, apparently, pass it. He and Saxton were fast friends now. The
bishop missed Warry out of his life: Warry was always so accessible and
so cheering. John Saxton was not so accessible and he had not Warry's
lightness, but the Bishop of Clarkson liked John Saxton!

The bishop sat with his inevitable hand-baggage by his side and read
Wheaton's letter through.

"How ignorant we are!" he said, folding it. "I sometimes think that we
who try to minister to the needs of the poor in spirit do not even know
the rudiments of our trade. We are pretty helpless with men like
Wheaton. They are apparently strong; they yield to no temptations, so
far as any man knows; they are exemplary characters. I suppose that they
are living little tragedies all the time. The moral coward is more to be
pitied than the open criminal. You know where to find the criminal; but
the moral coward is an unknown quantity. Life is a strange business,
John, and the older I get the less I think I know of it." He sighed and
handed back the letter.

"But he's doing better than we might have expected him to," said Saxton.
"A man's entitled to happiness if he can find it. He undoubtedly chose
the easier part in running away. I can't imagine him coming back here to
face the community after all that had happened."

"I don't know that I can either. Preaching is easier than practising,
and I'm not sure that I gave him the best advice at the ranch house that
morning."

"Well, it was the only thing to do," Saxton answered. "I suppose neither
you nor I was sure he told the truth; it was a situation that was
calculated to make one skeptical. It isn't clear from his letter that
the whole thing has impressed him in any great way. He's anxious to have
us think well of him--a kind of retrospective vanity."

"But his punishment is great. It's not for us to pass on its adequacy. I
must be going, John," and Saxton gathered up the battered cases and went
out to the car with him.

Bishop Delafield always brought Warry back vividly to John, and as they
waited on the corner he remembered his first meeting with the bishop, in
Warry's rooms at The Bachelors'. And that was very long ago!



CHAPTER XLII

AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS


The days that followed brought uncertainty and doubt to the heart and
mind of John Saxton. He had seen Evelyn several times before she left
home, on occasions when he went to the house with Fenton for conferences
with her father. He had intended saying good-by to her, but the Porters
went hurriedly at last and he was not sorry; it was easier that way. But
Mrs. Whipple, who was exercising a motherly supervision over John, had
exacted a promise from him to come to Orchard Lane during the time that
she and the general were to be with the Porters in their new cottage.
When he went East, Saxton settled down at his club in Boston, and
pretended that it was good to be at home again; but he went about with
homesickness gnawing his heart. He had reason to be happy and satisfied
with himself. He had practically concluded the difficult work which he
had been sent to Clarkson to do; he had realized more money from their
assets than the officers of the trust company had expected; and they
held out to him the promise of employment in their Boston office as a
reward. So he walked the familiar streets planning his future anew. He
had succeeded in something at last, and he would stay in Boston,
having, he told himself, earned the right to live there. The assistant
secretaryship of the trust company, which had been mentioned to him,
would be a position of dignity and promise. He had never hoped to do so
well. Moreover, it would be pleasant to be near his sister, who lived at
Worcester. There were only the two of them, and they ought to live near
together.

It is, however, an unpleasant habit of the fates never to suffer us to
debate simple problems long; they must throw in new elements to puzzle
us. While he deferred going to Orchard Lane a new perplexity confronted
him. One of Margrave's "people" came from New York as the representative
of the syndicate that had purchased the Clarkson Traction Company, and
sought an interview. John had met this gentleman at the time the sale
was closed; he was a person of consequence in the financial world, who
came quickly to the point of his errand. He offered John the position of
general manager of the company.

Margrave, it appeared, was not to have full swing after all. He was to
be president, but John's visitor intimated broadly that the position was
to be largely honorary. They had looked into the matter thoroughly in
New York and were anxious that the policy and methods of the
receivership should continue. Mr. Margrave was an invaluable man, said
the New Yorker, but his duties with the railroad company had so
multiplied that he would be unable to give the necessary care to the
street car management. John should have absolute authority. The
syndicate would be greatly disappointed if he declined. A salary was
named which was larger than John had ever dreamed of receiving in any
occupation; and they wished an answer within a few days. John Saxton was
human, and it was not easy to decline a salary of six thousand dollars
for services which he knew he could perform, offered to him by a
gentleman whom people were not in the habit of refusing. He remained
indoors at the club all day, smoking many pipes in a fruitless effort to
reconcile his resolves with his new problems.

The next day he thought he saw it all more clearly. Perhaps, he
reflected, life in Boston would become endurable; there was his sister
to consider, and he owed something to her; she was all he had. He went
out and walked aimlessly through the hot streets, little heeding what he
did. He realized presently that he had gone into a railway office and
asked for a suburban time table. He carried this back to the club, where
the atmosphere of his cool, quiet room soothed him; and he lay down on a
couch and studied the list of Orchard Lane trains. He found that he
could run out almost any hour of the day. He slept and woke refreshed,
with the time table still grasped in his hand. He had been very foolish,
he concluded; it would be a simple matter to go out to Orchard Lane to
call on the Porters and Whipples, and he picked out one of the afternoon
trains and marked it on the folder with a lead pencil. He spent the
evening writing letters,--in particular a letter to the representative
of the Clarkson Traction syndicate, declining the general managership;
and the next afternoon when he went up to Orchard Lane he carried the
letter sealed and stamped in his pocket, as a kind of talisman that
would assure his safety.

It suited his righteous mood that he should find no one at home at Red
Gables but Mr. Porter, who played golf all the morning and slept and
experimented at landscape gardening all the afternoon. He welcomed John
with unwonted cordiality, in the inexplicable way people have of being
friendlier with a fellow townsman away from their common habitat than at
home. He led the way to a cool and cozy corner of the broad veranda,
where Japanese screens made a pleasant nook. The afternoon sea shimmered
beyond the trees; the lawn was tended with urban care. Porter was very
proud of the place and listened with approval to John's praise of it.

"Well, sir; it's cooler than Clarkson."

"A trifle, yes; the efforts of the Clarkson papers to make a summer
resort of the town were never very successful." John's eyes rested on a
wicker table where there were books and a little sewing basket, which it
wrung his heart to see.

"Folks are all off somewhere. The Whipples are in town. Grant's gone
sailing and Evelyn's out visiting or attending a push of some kind up
the shore. But I guess I know when I've got a good thing. You don't
catch me gadding into town when I've got a cool place to sit." He
stretched his short legs comfortably. "I hope you'll smoke a cigar if
you've got one. They've cut mine off, and Evelyn won't let me keep any
around; thinks they'd be too much of a temptation."

"It's just as well to keep away from temptation," said John, not
thinking of cigars. The sight of Porter and the mention of Clarkson
brought his homesickness to an acute stage.

"I suppose our old friend Margrave's enjoying himself running the
Traction Company by this time," continued Porter. "Well, sir; I guess he
can have it. I thought for a while that I wanted it myself, but Fenton
talked me out of it. It will pay, if they run it right; yes, sir; it's a
good thing. But the trouble with Margrave is that he won't play square.
It ain't in him. He's so crooked that they'll never find a coffin for
him,--no, sir; not in stock; I guess it'll tax the manufacturer to his
full capacity to fit Tim. But he seems to have those Transcontinental
people on the string, and they're smart fellows, too. I reckon
Margrave's a handy man for them. They used to say _I_ was crooked,"--he
twirled his straw hat, and changed the position of his legs; "but I
guess that for pure sinuosity I was never in Tim Margrave's class. Well,
Tim's a good enough fellow when all's said and done!"

"They say of him that he always stands by his friends," said John. "And
that's a good deal."

"That's right. It's a whole lot," Porter assented.

There were some details connected with the final transfer of the
Traction Company to Margrave's syndicate which Porter had not fully
understood, or which Fenton had purposely kept from him; and he pressed
John for new light on these matters. John answered or parried as he
thought wisest. He was surprised to find how completely Porter had freed
himself from business; the sometime banker talked of Clarkson affairs
with an accentuation of the past tense, as if to wave them all away as
far as possible. Events in themselves did not interest him particularly;
but he took a mildly patronizing tone in philosophizing about them. He
drew from John the fact that most of the property of the Neponset Trust
Company in the Trans-Missouri region had been sold.

"That's good. I guess you've done pretty well for them, Saxton. But I
hope we shan't lose you from Clarkson. We need young men out there; and
I guess we've got as good a town as there is anywhere west of Chicago."

"I'm sure of that," said John; and he rose to go.

"I'm sorry the rest of them are not here," said Mr. Porter. "Evelyn
ought to have been home before this. But you must come again. Come out
and try the golf course and have dinner with us any time. I'm playing a
little myself this summer. Evelyn and Grant can outdrive me all right;
but they're not in it with me on putting. I'm one of the warmest putters
on the links. You can find the shore path this way." He led John to an
exit at the rear of the house, where there was an old apple orchard.
"After you pass the lighthouse you come to a road that leads right into
the village."

John left his greetings for the rest of the household and turned away.
It had all happened much more easily than he had expected. He had burned
all his bridges behind him now; he would mail his letter in the village;
not that it would be delivered any sooner, but because it fell in with
his spirit of renunciation that it should go hence with the Orchard Lane
postmark.

He took it from his pocket and carried it in his hand. He found the walk
very pleasant, with the rough shore of the bay on one hand and pretty
villas on the other. Orchard Lane was not wholly a fiction of
nomenclature. There were veritable lanes that survived the coming of
fashion and wealth, and spoke of simpler times on these northern shores.
The path was not altogether straight, but described a tortuous line past
the lighthouse which crouched on a point of the bay. There was a train
at six o'clock; it was now five and he loitered along, stopping often to
look out upon the sea. A group of people was gathered about a tea table
on the sloping lawn in front of one of the houses. The colors of the
women's dresses were bright against the dark green. It was a gay
company; their laughter floated out to him mockingly. He wondered
whether Evelyn was there, as he passed on, beating the rocky path with
his stick.

Evelyn was not there; but her destination was that particular lawn and
its tea table. Turning a fresh bend in the path he came upon her. He had
had no thought of seeing her; yet she was coming down the path toward
him, her picture hat framed in the dome of a blue parasol. He had
renounced her for all time, and he should greet her guardedly; but the
blood was singing in his temples and throbbing in his finger tips at the
sight of her.

"This is too bad!" she exclaimed, as they met. "I hope you can come back
to the house."

She walked straight up to him and gave him her hand in her quick, frank
way.

"I'm sorry, but I must go in to town on this next train," he answered.
He turned in the path and walked along beside her.

"This happened to be one of our scattering days, for all except father."

"We had a nice talk, he and I. Your place is charming."

They descended the shore path until they came to the villa where the tea
drinkers were assembled.

"Don't let me detain you. I'm sure you were going to join these lotus
eaters."

"I don't believe they need me," she answered, evasively. "They seem
pretty busy. But if you're hungry--or thirsty, I can get something for
you there." They passed the gate, walking slowly along. He knew that he
ought to urge her to stop, and that he must hurry on to catch his train;
but it was too sweet to be near her; this was the last time and it was
his own!

"I seem to remember your tea drinking ways," she said. "You use only
sugar and the hot water."

"But that was in the winter," he responded. He wished she had not
referred to that afternoon, when he had been weak, just as he was
proving weak now. A yacht was steaming slowly into the bay. It was a
pretty, white plaything and they paused and commended its good qualities
with the easy certainty of superficial knowledge. They walked on,
passing the lighthouse, and slowly nearing the entrance to Red Gables.
She led the talk easily and her light-heartedness added to his
depression; every step he took was an error; but he would leave her at
the gate when they came to it and go on to the village and his train.
She paused abruptly and looked across a meadow which lay between them
and the Red Gables orchard.

"I really believe it's a cow; yes, it is a cow," she declared, with
quiet conviction.

"I thought it was a yacht. Was I as dull as that?" he demanded.

"Be it far from me to say; but I was getting a little breathless. Even
the professional monologuists in the vaudeville have to rest."

He was not in a humor for frivolous conversation; but she had never been
so gay. He had committed himself to general chaos and yet she was
smiling amid the ruin of the world.

"I don't believe there are any letter boxes along here," she continued,
looking straight ahead. He remembered his letter; he was stupidly
carrying it in his hand; his fingers were cramped from their clutch upon
it. It was not easy to resist her mood, and he now laughed in spite of
himself.

"I'm disappointed. I thought they had all the necessities of a
successful summer resort here,--even mails."

"Rather poor, don't you think? I suppose you were carrying the letter to
get an opening for that."

They paused and John held open the little gate in the stone wall. He was
grave again, and something of his seriousness communicated itself to
her. Clearly, he thought, this was the parting of the ways. He had not
relaxed his hold upon the letter; it was a straw at which he clutched
for support.

"Won't you come in? There are plenty of trains and we'd like you to dine
with us."

A great wave of loneliness and yearning swept over him. Her invitation
seemed to create new and limitless distances that stretched between
them. In fumbling with the latch of the gate he had dropped his letter.
The wind caught and carried it out into the grass.

He went soberly after it and picked it up. There was a dogged
resignation in his step as he walked slowly across the grass. While he
was securing the bit of paper, she sat down on a rustic bench and waited
for him.

"The fates don't agree with you about the letter, Mr. Saxton. You were
looking for a letter box and they tried to thwart you."

"I'm not superstitious," said John, smiling a little.

"One needn't be,--to act on the direct hints of Providence."

She sat at comfortable ease on the bench, holding her parasol across her
lap. There was room for two, and John sat down.

"Suppose it were a check on an overdrawn account; would Providence
intervene to prevent an overdraft?"

"That's a commercial hypothesis; I think we should be above such
considerations." Then they were silent. John bent forward with his
elbows on his knees, playing with his stick and still holding the
letter. The wind came up out of the sea and blew in their faces. The
brass mountings of the yacht shone resplendent in the slanting rays of
the lowering sun. It was very calm and restful in the orchard. Two
robins came and inspected them, and then flew away to one of the gnarled
old trees to gossip about them.

"It happens to be important," said John, indicating the letter.

[Illustration]

"Oh, pardon me!" with real contrition. It was not her way to flirt with
a young man over a letter. John held up the envelope so that she saw the
superscription. She knew the name very well. It was constantly in the
newspapers, and the owner of it had dined once at her father's house.

"He's the head of the syndicate that has bought the Traction Company. He
has asked me to stay in Clarkson and run the street cars."

"That's very nice. But merit gets rewarded sometimes."

"But I have refused the offer," he said quietly. He had not intended to
tell her; but it was doubtless just as well; and it would alter nothing.
"My work in Clarkson is finished," he went on. "Warry's affairs will
make it necessary for me to go back from time to time, but it will not
be home again."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought you were to be of us. But I suppose
there is a greater difference between the East and the West than any one
can understand who has not known both." They regarded each other
gravely, as if this were, of course, the whole matter at issue.

"I can't go back,--it's too much; I can't do it," he said wearily.

"I know how it must be,--this last year and Warry! It was all so
terrible--for all of us." She was looking away; the wind had freshened;
the yacht's pennant stood out against the blue sky.

John rose and looked down at her. It was natural that she should include
herself with him in a common grief for the man who had been his friend
and whom she had loved. She had always been kind to him; her kindness
stung him now, for he knew that it was because of Warry; and a resolve
woke in him suddenly. He would not suffer her kindness under a false
pretense; he could at least be honest with her.

"I can't go back, because he is not there; and because--because you are
there! You don't know,--you should never know, but I was disloyal to
Warry from the first. I let him talk to me from day to day of you; I let
him tell me that he loved you; I never let him know--I never meant any
one to know--" He ceased speaking; she was very still and did not look
at him. "It was base of me," he went on. "I would gladly have died for
him if he had lived; but now that he is dead I can betray him. I hate
myself worse than you can hate me. I know how I must wound and shock
you--"

"Oh, no!" she moaned.

But he went on; he would spare himself nothing.

"It is hideous--it was cowardly of me to come here."

His hands were clenched and his face twitched with pain. "Oh, if he had
lived! If he had lived!"

She rose now and looked at him with an infinite pity. This is one of
God's unreckoned gifts to man,--the gift of pity that He has made the
great secret of a woman's eyes. Evelyn's were gray now, like the stretch
of sea beyond her, where a mist was creeping shoreward over the blue
water.

"If he had lived," she said very softly, looking away through the
sun-dappled aisles of the orchard, "if he had lived--it would have been
the same, John."

But he did not understand. His name as she spoke it rang strange in his
ears. The letter had fallen to the ground and lay in the grass between
them; he half stooped to pick it up, not knowing what he did.

She walked away through the orchard path, which suddenly became to him
a path of gold that stretched into paradise; and he sprang after her
with a great fear in his heart lest some barrier might descend and shut
her out forever.

"Evelyn! Evelyn!"

It was not a voice that called her; it was a spirit, long held in
thrall, that had shaken free and become a name.

       *       *       *       *       *

A LIST _of_ IMPORTANT FICTION

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY


_It is fresh and spontaneous, having nothing of that wooden quality
which is becoming associated with the term "historical novel."_

HEARTS COURAGEOUS

By HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES

"Hearts Courageous" is made of new material, a picturesque yet delicate
style, good plot and very dramatic situations. The best in the book are
the defence of George Washington by the Marquis; the duel between the
English officer and the Marquis; and Patrick Henry flinging the brand of
war into the assembly of the burgesses of Virginia.

Williamsburg, Virginia, the country round about, and the life led in
that locality just before the Revolution, form an attractive setting for
the action of the story.

With six illustrations by A. B. Wenzell

12mo. Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

THE GREAT NOVEL OF THE YEAR

THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE

_How the star of good fortune rose and set and rose again, by a woman's
grace, for one John Law, of Lauriston_

A novel by EMERSON HOUGH

Emerson Hough has written one of the best novels that has come out of
America in many a day. It is an exciting story, with the literary touch
on every page.--JEANNETTE L. GILDER, of _The Critic_.

In "The Mississippi Bubble" Emerson Hough has taken John Law and certain
known events in his career, and about them he has woven a web of romance
full of brilliant coloring and cunning work. It proves conclusively that
Mr. Hough is a novelist of no ordinary quality.--_The Brooklyn Eagle._

As a novel embodying a wonderful period in the growth of America "The
Mississippi Bubble" is of intense interest. As a love story it is rarely
and beautifully told. John Law, as drawn in this novel, is a great
character, cool, debonair, audacious, he is an Admirable Crichton in his
personality, and a Napoleon in his far-reaching wisdom.--_The Chicago
American._

The Illustrations by Henry Hutt

12mo, 452 pages, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

YOUTH, SPLENDOR AND TRAGEDY

FRANCEZKA

By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

There is no character in fiction more lovable and appealing than is
Francezka. Miss Seawell has told a story of youth, splendor and tragedy
with an art which links it with summer dreams, which drowns the somber
in the picturesque, which makes pain and vice a stage wonder.

The book is marked by the same sparkle and cleverness of the author's
earlier work, to which is added a dignity and force which makes it most
noteworthy.

"Here is a novel that not only provides the reader with a succession of
sprightly adventures, but furnishes a narrative brilliant, witty and
clever. The period is the first half of that most fascinating,
picturesque and epoch-making century, the eighteenth. Francezka is a
winsome heroine. The story has light and shadow and high spirits,
tempered with the gay, mocking, debonair philosophy of the
time."--_Brooklyn Times._

Charmingly illustrated by Harrison Fisher

Bound in green and white and gold

12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50


The Bobbs Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

A BRILLIANT AND SERIOUS NOVEL

CHILDREN OF DESTINY

By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

Author of Francezka and The Sprightly Romance of Marsac.

One of Miss Seawell's most brilliant and serious works is this novel of
Old Virginia. One lives again the patrician elegance of those mannerly
times with all their freedom and all their limitations. In the midst of
those quiet people--some rich in worldly goods, all rich in their birth
and station--is born a man with the unrest of genius. Miss Seawell's
powerful delineations of this man's character, her charming presentation
of the old days, her sprightly humor, playing on the foibles of these
early nineteenth century aristocrats, the tenderness and beautiful love
of her heroine, show her as a brilliant writer and deep thinker. In none
of her other books is her art so true and her touch so poised.

With six Illustrations by A. B. Wenzell and a Cover in Blue and Gold.

12mo, Cloth, Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

A SPLENDIDLY VITAL NARRATION

THE MASTER OF APPLEBY

_A romance of the Carolinas_

By FRANCIS LYNDE

Viewed either as a delightful entertainment or as a skilful and finished
piece of literary art, this is easily one of the most important of
recent novels. One can not read a dozen pages without realizing that the
author has mastered the magic of the story-teller's art. After the dozen
pages the author is forgotten in his creations.

It is rare, indeed, that characters in fiction live and love, suffer and
fight, grasp and renounce in so human a fashion as in this splendidly
vital narration.

With pictures by T. de Thulstrup

12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

WHAT BOOK BY A NEW AUTHOR HAS RECEIVED SUCH PRAISE?

WHAT MANNER OF MAN

By EDNA KENTON

The novel, "What Manner of Man," is a study of what is commonly known as
the "artistic temperament," and a novel so far above the average level
of merit as to cause even tired reviewers to sit up and take hope once
more.--_New York Times._

It will certainly stand out as one of the most notable novels of the
year.--_Philadelphia Press._

It does not need a trained critical faculty to recognize that this book
is something more than clever.--_N. Y. Commercial._

Note should be made of the literary charm and value of the work, and
likewise of its eminently readable quality, considered purely as a
romance.--_Philadelphia Record._

Literary distinction is stamped on every page, and the author's insight
into the human heart gives promise of a brilliant future.--_Chicago
Record-Herald._

The whole book is full of dramatic force. The author is an unusual
thinker and observer, and has a rare gift for creative
literature.--_Philadelphia Evening Telegraph._

"What Manner of Man" is a study and a creation.--_N. Y. World._

12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

DIFFERENT AND DELIGHTFUL

UNDER THE ROSE

A Story of the Loves of a Duke and a Jester

By FREDERIC S. ISHAM

Author of The Strollers

In "Under the Rose" Mr. Isham has written a most entertaining book--the
plot is unique; the style is graceful and clever; the whole story is
pervaded by a spirit of sunshine and good humor, and the ending is a
happy one. Mr. Christy's pictures mark a distinct step forward in
illustrative art. There is only one way, and it is an entertaining one,
to find out what is "Under the Rose"--read it.

"No one will take up 'Under the Rose' and lay it down before completion;
many will even return to it for a repeated reading"--_Book News._

"Mr. Isham tells all of his fanciful, romantic tale delightfully. The
reader who loves romance, intrigue and adventure, love-seasoned, will
find it here."--_The Lamp._

With Illustrations in Six Colors by Howard Chandler Christy
12mo, Cloth, Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

A NEW NOTE IN FICTION

THE STROLLERS

By FREDERIC S. ISHAM

"The Strollers" is a novel of much merit.

The scenes are laid in that picturesque and interesting period of
American life--the last of the stage coach days--the days of the
strolling player.

The author, Frederic S. Isham, gives a delightful and accurate account
of a troop of players making a circuit in the wilderness from New York
to New Orleans, travelling by stage, carrying one wagon load of scenery,
playing in town halls, taverns, barns or whatnot.

"The Strollers" is a new note in fiction.

With eight illustrations by Harrison Fisher

12mo. Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

"NOTHING BUT PRAISE"

LAZARRE

By MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD

Glorified by a beautiful love story.--_Chicago Tribune._

We feel quite justified in predicting a wide-spread and prolonged
popularity for this latest comer into the ranks of historical
fiction.--_The N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._

After all the material for the story had been collected a year was
required for the writing of it. It is an historical romance of the
better sort, with stirring situations, good bits of character drawing
and a satisfactory knowledge of the tone and atmosphere of the period
involved.--_N. Y. Herald._

Lazarre, is no less a person than the Dauphin, Louis XVII. of France,
and a right royal hero he makes. A prince who, for the sake of his lady,
scorns perils in two hemispheres, facing the wrath of kings in Europe
and the bullets of savages in America; who at the last spurns a kingdom
that he may wed her freely--here is one to redeem the sins of even those
who "never learn and never forget."--_Philadelphia North American._

With six Illustrations by André Castaigne

12 mo. Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

"THE MERRIEST NOVEL OF MANY, MANY MOONS"

MY LADY PEGGY GOES TO TOWN

By FRANCES AYMAR MATHEWS

The Daintiest and Most Delightful Book of the Season.

A heroine almost too charming to be true is Peggy, and it were a
churlish reader who is not, at the end of the first chapter, prostrate
before her red slippers.--_Washington Post._

To make a comparison would be to rank "My Lady Peggy" with "Monsieur
Beaucaire" in points of attraction, and to applaud as heartily as that
delicate romance, this picture of the days "When patches nestled o'er
sweet lips at chocolate times."--_N. Y. Mail and Express._

12 mo. Beautifully illustrated and bound.

Price, $1.25 net


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

A VIVACIOUS ROMANCE OF REVOLUTIONARY DAYS

ALICE _of_ OLD VINCENNES

By MAURICE THOMPSON

_The Atlanta Constitution says_:

"Mr. Thompson, whose delightful writings in prose and verse have made
his reputation national, has achieved his master stroke of genius in
this historical novel of revolutionary days in the West."

_The Denver Daily News says:_:

"There are three great chapters of fiction: Scott's tournament on Ashby
field, General Wallace's chariot race, and now Maurice Thompson's duel
scene and the raising of Alice's flag over old Fort Vincennes."

_The Chicago Record-Herald says_:

"More original than 'Richard Carvel,' more cohesive than 'To Have and To
Hold,' more vital than 'Janice Meredith,' such is Maurice Thompson's
superb American romance, 'Alice of Old Vincennes.' It is, in addition,
more artistic and spontaneous than any of its rivals."

VIRGINIA HARNED EDITION

12mo, with six Illustrations by F. C. Yohn, and a Frontispiece in Color
by Howard Chandler Christy. Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

A STORY BY THE "MARCH KING"

THE FIFTH STRING

By JOHN PHILIP SOUSA

The "March King" has written much in a musical way, but "The Fifth
String" is his first published story. In the choice of his subject, as
the title indicates, Mr. Sousa has remained faithful to his art; and the
great public, that has learned to love him for the marches he has made,
will be as delighted with his pen as with his baton.

"The Fifth String" has a strong and clearly defined plot which shows in
its treatment the author's artistically sensitive temperament and his
tremendous dramatic power. It is a story of a marvelous violin, of a
wonderful love and of a strange temptation.

A cover, especially designed, and six full-page illustrations by Howard
Chandler Christy, serve to give the distinguishing decorative
embellishments that this first book by Mr. Sousa so richly deserves.

With Pictures by Howard Chandler Christy

12mo. Price, $1.25


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

A GOOD DETECTIVE STORY

THE FILIGREE BALL

By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN

Author of "The Leavenworth Case"

This is something more than a mere detective story; it is a thrilling
romance--a romance of mystery and crime where a shrewd detective helps
to solve the mystery. The plot is a novel and intricate one, carefully
worked out. There are constant accessions to the main mystery, so that
the reader can not possibly imagine the conclusion. The story is
clean-cut and wholesome, with a quality that might be called manly. The
characters are depicted so as to make a living impression. Cora Tuttle
is a fine creation, and the flash of love which she gives the hero is
wonderfully well done. Unlike many mystery stories The Filigree Ball is
not disappointing at the end. The characters most liked but longest
suspected are proved not only guiltless, but above suspicion. It is a
story to be read with a rush and at a sitting, for no one can put it
down until the mystery is solved.

Illustrated by C. M. Relyea.

12mo, Cloth, Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

A VIVID WESTERN STORY OF LOVE AND POLITICS

THE 13TH DISTRICT

By BRAND WHITLOCK

This is a story of high order. By its scope and strength it deserves to
be spoken of as a novel--and that word has been very much abused by
hanging it to any old thing. It is a wonderfully good and interesting
account of the workings of politics from before the primaries on through
election, with a splendid love story also woven into it.

One would think for instance, that it would be impossible to give an
account of a "primary" and keep it interesting; it is natural to suppose
a writer would become entangled with the dull routine of it all, but he
does not, he makes it interesting. He shows the tricks, the heat, the
passion, the tumult; the weariness and stubborness of a dead lock. The
descriptions of society life in the book are equally good.

12mo. Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

       *       *       *       *       *

THE TRIUMPH OF FORGIVENESS

THE LOOM OF LIFE

By CHARLES FREDERIC GOSS

Author of "The Redemption of David Corson."

In "The Loom of Life" Dr. Goss has written a powerful book, filled with
the poetry and tragedy of life. It tells a novel and impressive story in
a style marked by a charming felicity of expression.

The story, which has an epic broadness and strength, is of a young girl
who revenges a wrong done to her with life-long persecution. Finally,
however, she is forced to realize that on earth peace and happiness can
be obtained only by forgiveness.

"Mr. Goss' splendid powers have been demonstrated afresh. This book
alone is strong enough, big enough, important enough, enough suggestive
and informing, to make a reputation for any one.

"He has already a large audience created by his earlier book, 'The
Redemption of David Corson.' The new book will at once find favorable
and eager readers."--_The Living Church._

12mo, cloth. Price, $1.50


The Bobbs-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Main Chance" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.