A Modern Instance Part 47

"They were speaking the truth about you, and I stopped them. I told them that sort of thing wouldn't do. Why, you're getting fat!"

"You're behind the times, Kicker," said Bartley. "I began to get fat six months ago. I don't wonder the Chronicle Abstract is running down on your hands. Come round and try my tivoli on Sunday. That's what gives a man girth, my boy." He tapped Ricker lightly on his hollow waistcoat, and left him with a wave of his hand.

Ricker leaned out of the doorway and followed him down the street with a troubled eye. He had taken stock in Bartley, as the saying is, and his heart misgave him that he should lose on the investment; he could not have sold out to any of their friends for twenty cents on the dollar. Nothing that any one could lay his finger on had happened, and yet there had been a general loss of confidence in that particular stock. Ricker himself had lost confidence in it, and when he lightly mentioned that talk at the club, with a lot of the fellows, he had a serious wish to get at Bartley some time, and see what it was that was beginning to make people mistrust him.

The fellows who liked him at first and wished him well, and believed in his talent, had mostly dropped him. Bartley's a.s.sociates were now the most raffish set on the press, or the green hands; and something had brought this to pa.s.s in less than two years. Ricker had believed that it was Witherby; at the club he had contended that it was Bartley's a.s.sociation with Witherby that made people doubtful of him. As for those ideas that Bartley had advanced in their discussion of journalism, he had considered it all mere young man's nonsense that Bartley would outgrow. But now, as he looked at Bartley's back, he had his misgivings; it struck him as the back of a degenerate man, and that increasing bulk seemed not to represent an increase of wholesome substance, but a corky, buoyant tissue, materially responsive to some sort of moral dry-rot.

Bartley pushed on to the Events office in a blithe humor. Witherby had recently advanced his salary; he was giving him fifty dollars a week now; and Bartley had made himself necessary in more ways than one. He was not only readily serviceable, but since he had volunteered to write those advertising articles for an advance of pay, he was in possession of business facts that could be made very uncomfortable to Witherby in the event of a disagreement. Witherby not only paid him well, but treated him well; he even suffered Bartley to bully him a little, and let him foresee the day when he must be recognized as the real editor of the Events.

At home everything went on smoothly. The baby was well and growing fast; she was beginning to explode airy bubbles on her pretty lips that a fond superst.i.tion might interpret as papa and mamma. She had pa.s.sed that stage in which a man regards his child with despair; she had pa.s.sed out of slippery and evasive doughiness into a firm tangibility that made it some pleasure to hold her.

Bartley liked to take her on his lap, to feel the spring of her little legs, as she tried to rise on her feet; he liked to have her stretch out her arms to him from her mother's embrace. The innocent tenderness which he experienced at these moments was satisfactory proof to him that he was a very good fellow, if not a good man. When he spent an evening at home, with Flavia in his lap for half an hour after dinner, he felt so domestic that he seemed to himself to be spending all his evenings at home now. Once or twice it had happened, when the housemaid was out, that he went to the door with the baby on his arm, and answered the ring of Olive and Ben Halleck, or of Olive and one or both of the intermediary sisters.

The Hallecks were the only people at all apt to call in the evening, and Bartley ran so little chance of meeting any one else, when he opened the door with Flavia on his arm, that probably he would not have thought it worth while to put her down, even if he had not rather enjoyed meeting them in that domestic phase. He had not only long felt how intensely Olive disliked him, but he had observed that somehow it embarra.s.sed Ben Halleck to see him in his character of devoted young father. At those times he used to rally his old friend upon getting married, and laughed at the confusion to which the joke put him. He said more than once afterwards, that he did not see what fun Ben Halleck got out of coming there; it must bore even such a dull fellow as he was to sit a whole evening like that and not say twenty words. "Perhaps he's livelier when I'm not here, though," he suggested. "I always did seem to throw a wet blanket on Ben Halleck." He did not at all begrudge Halleck's having a better time in his absence if he could.

One night when the bell rung Bartley rose, and saying, "I wonder which of the tribe it is this time," went to the door. But when he opened it, instead of hearing the well-known voices, Marcia listened through a hesitating silence, which ended in a loud laugh from without, and a cry from her husband of "Well, I swear! Why, you infamous old scoundrel, come in out of the wet!" There ensued, amidst Bartley's voluble greetings, a noise of shy shuffling about in the hall, as of a man not perfectly master of his footing under social pressure, a sound of husky, embarra.s.sed whispering, a dispute about doffing an overcoat, and question as to the disposition of a hat, and then Bartley reappeared, driving before him the lank, long figure of a man who blinked in the flash of gaslight, as Bartley turned it all up in the chandelier overhead, and rubbed his immense hands in cruel embarra.s.sment at the beauty of Marcia, set like a jewel in the pretty comfort of the little parlor.

"Mr. Kinney, Mrs. Hubbard," said Bartley; and having accomplished the introduction, he hit Kinney a thwack between the shoulders with the flat of his hand that drove him stumbling across Marcia's footstool into the seat on the sofa to which she had pointed him. "You old fool, where did you come from?"

The refined warmth of Bartley's welcome seemed to make Kinney feel at home, in spite of his trepidations at Marcia's presence. He bobbed his head forward, and stretched his mouth wide, in one of his vast, silent laughs.

"Better ask where I'm goin' to."

"Well, I'll ask that, if it'll be any accommodation. Where you going?"

"Illinois."

"For a divorce?"

"Try again."

"To get married?"

"Maybe, after I've made my pile." Kinney's eyes wandered about the room, and took in its evidences of prosperity, with simple, unenvious admiration; he ended with a furtive glimpse of Marcia, who seemed to be a climax of good luck, too dazzling for contemplation; he withdrew his glance from her as if hurt by her splendor, and became serious.

"Well, you're the _last_ man I ever expected to see again," said Bartley, sitting down with the baby in his lap, and contemplating Kinney with deliberation. Kinney was dressed in a long frock-coat of cheap diagonals, black ca.s.simere pantaloons, a blue necktie, and a celluloid collar. He had evidently had one of his encounters with a cheap clothier, in which the Jew had triumphed; but he had not yet visited a barber, and his hair and beard were as s.h.a.ggy as they were in the logging-camp; his hands and face were as brown as leather. "But I'm as glad," Bartley added, "as if you had telegraphed you were coming. Of course, you're going to put up with us." He had observed Kinney's awe of Marcia, and he added this touch to let Kinney see that he was master in his house, and lord even of that radiant presence.

Kinney started in real distress. "Oh, no! I couldn't do it! I've got all my things round at the Quincy House."

"Trunk or bag?" asked Bartley.

"Well, it's a bag; but--"

"All right. We'll step round and get it together. I generally take a little stroll out, after dinner," said Bartley, tranquilly.

Kinney was beginning again, when Marcia, who had been stealing some covert looks at him under her eye lashes, while she put together the sewing she was at work on, preparatory to going upstairs with the baby, joined Bartley in his invitation.

"You wont make us the least trouble, Mr. Kinney," she said. "The guest-chamber is all ready, and we shall be glad to have you stay."

Kinney must have felt the note of sincerity in her words. He hesitated, and Bartley clinched his tacit a.s.sent with a quotation: "'The chief ornament of a house is the guests who frequent it.' Who says that?"

Kinney's little blue eyes twinkled. "Old Emerson."

"Well, I agree with him. We don't care anything about your company, Kinney; but we want you for decorative purposes."

Kinney opened his mouth for another noiseless laugh, and said, "Well, fix it to suit yourselves."

"I'll carry her up for you," said Bartley to Marcia, who was stooping forward to take the baby from him, "if Mr. Kinney will excuse us a moment."

"All right," said Kinney.

Bartley ventured upon this bold move, because he had found that it was always best to have things out with Marcia at once, and, if she was going to take his hospitality to Kinney in bad part, he wanted to get through the trouble. "That was very nice of you, Marcia," he said, when they were in their own room. "My invitation rather slipped out, and I didn't know how you would like it."

"Oh, I'm very glad to have him stay. I never forget about his wanting to lend you money that time," said Marcia, opening the baby's crib.

"You're a mighty good fellow, Marcia!" cried Bartley, kissing her over the top of the baby's head as she took it from him. "And I'm not half good enough for you. You never forget a benefit. Nor an injury either," he added, with a laugh. "And I'm afraid that I forget one about as easily as the other."

Marcia's eyes suffused themselves at this touch of self-a.n.a.lysis which, coming from Bartley, had its sadness; but she said nothing, and he was eager to escape and get back to their guest. He told her he should go out with Kinney, and that she was not to sit up, for they might be out late.

In his pride, he took Kinney down to the Events office, and unlocked it, and lit the gas, so as to show him the editorial rooms; and then he pa.s.sed him into one of the theatres, where they saw part of an Offenbach opera; after that they went to the Parker House, and had a New York stew. Kinney said he must be off by the Sunday-night train, and Bartley thought it well to concentrate as many dazzling effects upon him as he could in the single evening at his disposal. He only regretted that it was not the club night, for he would have liked to take Kinney round, and show him some of the fellows.

"But never mind," he said. "I'm going to have one of them dine with us to-morrow, and you'll see about the best of the lot."

"Well, sir," observed Kinney, when they had got back into Bartley's parlor, and he was again drinking in its prettiness in the subdued light of the shaded argand burner, "I hain't seen anything yet that suits me much better than this."

"It isn't bad," said Bartley. He had got up a plate of crackers and two bottles of tivoli, and was opening the first. He offered the beaded goblet to Kinney.

"Thank you," said Kinney. "Not any. I never do."

Bartley quaffed half of it in tolerant content. "I _always_ do. Find it takes my nerves down at the end of a hard week's work. Well, now, tell me some thing about yourself. What are you going to do in Illinois?"

"Well, sir, I've got a friend out there that's got a coal mine, and he thinks he can work me in somehow. I guess he can: I've tried pretty much everything. Why don't you come out there and start a newspaper? We've got a town that's bound to grow."

It amused Bartley to hear Kinney bragging already of a town that he had never seen. He winked a good-natured disdain over the rim of the goblet which he tilted on his lips. "And give up my chances here?" he said, as he set the goblet down.

"Well, that's so!" said Kinney, responding to the sense of the wink. "I'll tell you what, Bartley, I didn't know as you'd speak to me when I rung your bell to-night. But thinks I to myself, 'Dumn it! look here! He can't more'n slam the door in your face, anyway. And you've hankered after him so long,--go and take your chances, you old buzzard!' And so I got your address at the Events office pretty early this morning; and I went round all day s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g my courage up, as old Macbeth says,--or Ritchloo, _I_ don't know which it was,--and at last I _did_ get myself so that I toed the mark like a little man."

Bartley laughed so that he could hardly get the cork out of the second bottle.

"You see," said Kinney, leaning forward, and taking Bartley's plump, soft knee between his thumb and forefinger, "I felt awfully about the way we parted that night. I felt _bad_. I hadn't acted well, just to my own mind, and it cut me to have you refuse my money; it cut me all the worse because I saw that you was partly right; I _hadn't_ been quite fair with you. But I always did admire you, and you know it. Some them little things you used to get off in the old Free Press--well, I could see 't you was _smart_. And I liked you; and it kind o' hurt me when I thought you'd been makin' fun o'

me to that woman. Well, I could see 't I was a dumned old fool, afterwards.

And I always wanted to tell you so. And I always did hope that I should be able to offer you that money again, twice over, and get you to take it just to show that you didn't bear malice." Bartley looked up, with quickened interest. "But I can't do it now, sir," added Kinney.

"Why, what's happened?" asked Bartley, in a disappointed tone, pouring out his second gla.s.s from his second bottle.

"Well, sir," said Kinney, with a certain reluctance, "I undertook to provision the camp on spec, last winter, and--well, you know, I always run a little on food for the brain,"--Bartley broke into a reminiscent cackle, and Kinney smiled forlornly,--"and thinks I, 'Dumn it, I'll give 'em the real thing, every time.' And I got hold of a health-food circular; and I sent on for a half a dozen barrels of their crackers and half a dozen of their flour, and a lot of cracked cocoa, and I put the camp on a health-food basis. I calculated to bring those fellows out in the spring physically vigorous and mentally enlightened. But my goodness! After the first bakin' o' that flour and the first round o' them crackers, it was all up! Fellows got so mad that I suppose if I hadn't gone back to doughnuts, and sody biscuits, and j.a.pan tea, they'd 'a' burnt the camp down. Of course I yielded. But it ruined me, Bartley; it bu'st me."

Bartley dropped his arms upon the table, and, hiding his face upon them, laughed and laughed again.

"Well, sir," said Kinney, with sad satisfaction, "I'm glad to see that you don't need any money from me." He had been taking another survey of the parlor and the dining-room beyond. "I don't know as I ever saw anybody much better fixed. I should say that you was a success; and you deserve it.