The Main Chance Part 24

"John Saxton, what a beastly a.s.s 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 a.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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. Circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.s 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 cas.h.i.+er 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 cla.s.smates 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 ma.s.s of papers which lay on the large table before him. He put down his gla.s.ses and lay back in his chair wearily.