Over the Pass Part 43

"h.e.l.lo!" Jack sang out; and this to Prather's face after he had turned around in the elevator.

In the second while the elevator man was swinging to the door, Jack and Prather were fairly looking at each other. Prather had seen that Jack wanted to speak to him, even if he had not heard the call. His answer was a smile of mixed recognition and satire. He made a gesture of appreciative understanding of the distinction in their likeness by touching the mole on his cheek with his finger, which was Jack's last glimpse of him before he was shot down into the lower regions of the store.

"He did it neatly!" Jack gasped, with a sense of defeat and chagrin. "And it is plain that he does not care to get acquainted. Perhaps he takes it for granted that I am not friendly and foresaw that I would ask him a lot of questions about Little Rivers that he would not care to answer." At all events, the only way to accept the situation was lightly, his reason insisted. "Having heard about the likeness, possibly he came to the store to have a look at me, and after seeing me felt that he had been libeled!"

But his feelings refused to follow his reason in an amused view.

"I do not like John Prather!" he concluded, as he took the next elevator to the top floor. "Yes, I liked Pete Leddy better at our first meeting. I had rather a man would swear at me than smile in that fas.h.i.+on. It is much more simple."

The incident had had such a besetting and disagreeable effect that Jack would have found it difficult to rid his mind of it if he had not had a more centering and pressing object in prospect in the citadel of the push-b.u.t.tons behind the gla.s.s marked "Private."

John Wingfield, Sr. looked up from his desk in covert watchfulness to detect his son's mood, and he was conscious of a quality of manner that recalled the returning exile's entry into the same room upon his arrival from the West.

"Well, Jack," the father said, with marked cheeriness, "I hear you have been taking a holiday. It's all right, and you will find motoring beats pony riding."

"In some ways," Jack answered; and then he came a step nearer, his hand resting on the edge of the desk, as he looked into his father's eyes with glowing candor.

John Wingfield, Sr.'s eyes s.h.i.+fted to the pushb.u.t.tons and later to a paper on the desk, with which his fingers played gently. He realized instantly that something unusual was on Jack's mind.

"Father," Jack went on, "I want a long talk quite alone with you. When it is over I feel that we shall both know each other better; we can work together in a fuller understanding."

"Yes, Jack," answered the father, cautiously feeling his way with a swift upward glance, which fell again to the paper. "Well, what is it now? Come on!"

"There are a lot of questions I want to ask--family questions."

"Family questions?" The fingers paused in playing with the paper for an instant and went on playing again. The soft hands were as white as the paper. "Family questions, eh? Well, there isn't much to our family except you and I and that old ancestor--and a long talk, you say?"

"Yes. I thought that probably this would be a good time; you could give me an hour now. It might not take that long."

Jack's voice was even and engaging and respectful. But it seemed to fill the room with many echoing whispers.

"I have a very busy day before me," the father said, still without looking up. He was talking to a little pad at one corner of the green blotter which had a list of his appointments. "Your questions are not so imperative that they cannot wait?"

"Then shall it be at dinner?" Jack asked.

"At dinner? No. I have an engagement for dinner."

"Shall you be home early? Shall I wait up for you?" Jack persisted.

"Yes, that's it! Say at nine. I'll make a point of it--in the library at nine!" John Wingfield, Sr.'s hand slipped away from the papers and patted the back of Jack's hand. "And come on with your questions. I will answer every one that I can." He was looking up at Jack now, smilingly and attractively in his frankness. "Every one that I can, from the first John Wingfield right down to the present!"

But the hand that lay on Jack's was cold and its movement nervous and spasmodic.

"Thank you, father. I knew you would. I haven't forgotten your wish that I should bring all my doubts and questions to you," said Jack, happily.

And in an impulse which had the devoutness of a rising hope he took that cold, soft hand in both of his and gave it a shake; and the feel of the son's grip, firm and warm, remained with John Wingfield, Sr. while he stared at the door through which Jack had pa.s.sed out. When he had pulled himself together he asked Mortimer to connect him with Dr. Bennington.

"Doctor, I want a little talk with you to-night before nine," he said.

"Could you dine with me--not at the house--say at the club?

Yes--excellent--and make it at seven. Yes. Good-by!"

x.x.xII

A CRISIS IN THE WINGFIELD LIBRARY

A library atmosphere was missing from the Wingfield library, with its heavy panelling and rows of red and blue morocco backs. Rather the suggestion was of a bastion of privacy, where a man of action might make his plans or take counsel at leisure amid rich and mellow surroundings.

Here, John Wingfield, Sr. had gained points through post-prandial geniality which he could never have won in the presence of the battery of push-b.u.t.tons; here, his most successful conceptions had come to him; here, he had known the greatest moments of his life. He was right in saying that he loved his library; but he hardly loved it for its books.

When he returned to the house shortly before nine from his session with Dr. Bennington, it was with the knowledge that another great moment was in prospect. He took a few turns up and down the room before he rang for the butler to tell Jack that he had come in. Then he placed a chair near the desk, where its occupant would sit facing him. After he sat down he moved the desk lamp, which was the only light in the room, so that its rays fell on the back of the chair and left his own face in shadow--a precaution which he had taken on many other occasions in adroitness of stage management. He drew from the humidor drawer of his desk a box of the long cigars with blunt ends which need no encircling gilt band in praise of their quality.

As Jack entered, the father welcomed him with a warm, paternal smile. And be it remembered that John Wingfield, Sr. could smile most pleasantly, and he knew the value of his smile. Jack answered the smile with one of his own, a little wan, a little subdued, yet enlivening under the glow of his father's evident happiness at seeing him. The father, who had transgressed the rules of longevity by taking a second cigar after dinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son. Jack said that he would "roll one"; he did not care to smoke much. He produced a small package of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftness that was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a single flake. He had not always chosen the "makings" in place of private stock Havanas, but it seemed to suit his mood to-night.

"That is one of the things you learned in the West," the father observed affably, to break the ice.

"I can do them with one hand," Jack answered. "But you are likely to have an overflow--which is all right when you have the whole desert for the litter. Besides, in a library it would have the effect of gallery play, I fear."

He was seated in a way that revealed all the supple lines of his figure.

However relaxed his att.i.tude before his father, it was always suggestive of latent strength, appealing at once to paternal pride and paternal uncertainty as to what course the strength would take. His face under the light of the lamp was boyish and singularly without trace of guile.

The father struck a match and held it to light his son's cigarette; another habit of his which he had found flattering to men who were brought into the library for conference. Jack took a puff slowly and, after a time, another puff, and then dropped the cigarette on the ash receiver as much as to say that he had smoked enough. Something told John Wingfield, Sr. that this was to be a long interview and in no way hurried, as he saw the smile dying on the son's lips and misery coming into the son's eyes.

"These last two days have been pretty poignant for me," Jack began, in a simple, outright fas.h.i.+on; "and only half an hour ago I got this. It was hard to resist taking the first train West." He drew a telegram from his pocket and handed it to his father.

"We want you and though we don't suppose you can come, we simply had to let you know.

"JAMES R. GALWAY."

"It is Greek to me," said the father. "From your Little Rivers friends, I judge."

"Yes. I suppose that we may as well begin with it, as it drove everything else out of my mind for the moment."

John Wingfield, Sr. swung around in his chair, with his face in the shadow. His att.i.tude was that of a companionable listener who is prepared for any kind of news.

"As you will, Jack," he said. "Everything that pertains to you is my interest. Go ahead in your own way."

"It concerns John Prather. I don't know that I have ever told you about him in my talks of Little Rivers."

"John Prather?" The father reflectively sounded the name, the while he studied the spiral of smoke rising from his cigar. "No, I don't think you have mentioned him."

It was Jack's purpose to take his father entirely into his confidence; to reveal his own mind so that there should be nothing of its perplexities which his father did not understand. He might not choose a logical sequence of thought or event, but in the end nothing should be left untold. Indeed, he had not studied how to begin his inquiries. That he had left to take care of itself. His chief solicitude was to keep his mind open and free of bitterness whatever transpired, and it was evident that he was under a great strain.

He told of the coming of John Prather to Little Rivers while he was absent; of the mention of the likeness by his fellow-ranchers; and of the fears entertained by Jim Galway and Mary. When he came to the scene in the store that afternoon it was given in a transparent fulness of detail; while all his changing emotions, from his first glimpse of Prather's profile to the effort to speak with him and the ultimatum of Prather's satirical gesture, were reflected in his features. He was the story-teller, putting his gift to an unpleasant task in illumination of sober fact and not the uses of imagination; and his audience was his father's cheek and ear in the shadow.

"Extraordinary!" John Wingfield, Sr. exclaimed when Jack had finished, glancing around with a shrug. "Naturally, you were irritated. I like to think that only two men have the Wingfield features--the features of the ancestor--yes, only two: you and I!"