The Second Generation Part 21

"You have made it doubly hard for me," Janet went on. "Your writing me to stay away because there was doubt about Arthur's material future--oh, mother, how could that make any difference? If I had not been feeling so done, and if father hadn't been looking to me to keep him company, I'd surely have gone. For I hate to have my motive misunderstood."

"He has worked on her soft-heartedness and inexperience," thought Mrs.

Whitney, in a panic.

"And when Arthur came to-day," the girl continued, "I was ready to fly to him." She looked tragic. "And even when he repulsed me--"

"_Repulsed_ you!" exclaimed Mrs. Whitney. She laughed disagreeably. "He's subtler than I thought."

"Even when he repulsed me," pursued Janet, "with his sordid way of looking at everything, still I tried to cling to him, to shut my eyes."

Mrs. Whitney vented an audible sigh of relief. "Then you didn't let him deceive you!"

"He shattered my last illusion," said Janet, in a mournful voice.

"Mother, I simply _couldn't_ believe in him, in the purity of his love. I had to give him up."

Mrs. Whitney put her arms round her daughter and kissed her soothingly again and again. "Don't grieve, dear," she said. "Think how much better it is that you should have found him out now than when it was too late."

And Janet shuddered.

Ross dropped in at the house in the Lake Drive the next morning on his way East from the Howlands. As soon as he was alone with his mother, he asked, "How about Janet and Arthur?"

Mrs. Whitney put on her exalted expression. "I'm glad you said nothing before Janet," said she. "The child is so sensitive, and Arthur has given her a terrible shock. Men are so coa.r.s.e; they do not appreciate the delicateness of a refined woman. In this case, however, it was most fortunate. She was able to see into his true nature."

"Then she's broken it off? That's good."

"Be careful what you say to her," his mother hastened to warn him. "You might upset her mind again. She's so afraid of being misunderstood."

"She needn't be," replied Ross dryly.

And when he looked in on Janet in her sitting room to say good-by, he began with a satirical, "Congratulations, Jenny."

Jenny looked at him with wondering eyes. She was drooping like a sunless flower and was reading poetry out of a beautifully bound volume. "What is it, Ross?" she asked.

"On shaking Artie so smoothly. Trust you to do the right thing at the right time, and in the right way. You're a beauty, Jen, and no mistake,"

laughed Ross. "I never saw your like. You really must marry a t.i.tle--Madame la d.u.c.h.esse! And n.o.body's on to you but me. You aren't even on to yourself!"

Janet drew up haughtily and swept into her bedroom, closing the door with _almost_ coa.r.s.e emphasis.

CHAPTER XII

ARTHUR FALLS AMONG LAWYERS

Arthur ended his far from orderly retreat at the Auditorium, and in the sitting room of his suite there set about re-forming his lines, with some vague idea of making another attack later in the day--one less timid and blundering. "I'd better not have gone near her," said he disgustedly.

"How could a man win when he feels beaten before he begins?" He was not now hazed by Janet's beauty and her voice like bells in evening quiet, and her mystic ideas. Youth, rarely wise in action, is often wise in thought; and Arthur, having a reasoning apparatus that worked uncommonly well when he set it in motion and did not interfere with it, was soon seeing his situation as a whole much as it was--ugly, mocking, hopeless.

"Maybe Janet knows the real reason why she's acting this way, maybe she don't," thought he, with the disposition of the inexperienced to give the benefit of even imaginary doubt. "No matter; the fact is, it's all up between us." This finality, unexpectedly staring at him, gave him a shock. "Why," he muttered, "she really has thrown me over! All her talk was a blind--a trick." And, further exhibiting his youth in holding the individual responsible for the system of which the individual is merely a victim, usually a pitiable victim, he went to the opposite extreme and fell to denouncing her--cold-hearted and mercenary like her mother, a coward as well as a hypocrite--for, if she had had any of the bravery of self-respect, wouldn't she have been frank with him? He reviewed her in the flooding new light upon her character, this light that revealed her as mercilessly as flash of night-watchman's lantern on guilty, shrinking form. "She--Why, she always _was_ a fakir!" he exclaimed, stupefied by the revelation of his own lack of discernment, he who had prided himself on his acuteness, especially as to women. "From childhood up, she has always made herself comfortable, no matter who was put out; she has gotten whatever she wanted, always pretending to be unselfish, always making it look as if the other person were in the wrong." There he started up in the rate of the hoodwinked, at the recollection of an incident of the previous summer--how she had been most gracious to a young French n.o.bleman, in America in search of a wife; how anybody but "spiritual" Janet would have been accused of outrageous flirting--no, not accused, but convicted. He recalled a vague story which he had set down to envious gossip--a story that the Frenchman had departed on learning that Charles Whitney had not yet reached the stage of fas.h.i.+onable education at which the American father appreciates t.i.tles and begins to listen without losing his temper when the subject of settlements is broached. He remembered now that Janet had been low-spirited for some time after the Frenchman took himself and t.i.tle and eloquent eyes and "soulful, stimulating conversation" to another market. "What a d.a.m.n fool I've been!" Arthur all but shouted at his own image in a mirror which by chance was opposite him. A glance, and his eyes s.h.i.+fted; somehow, it gave him no pleasure, but the reverse, to see that handsome face and well-set-up, well-dressed figure.

"She was marrying me for money," he went on, when he had once more seated himself, legs crossed and cigarette going reflectively. The idea seemed new to him--that people with money could marry for money, just as a capitalist goes only where he hopes to increase his capital. But on examining it more closely, he was surprised to find that it was not new at all. "What am I so virtuous about?" said he. "Wasn't _I_ after money, too? If our circ.u.mstances were reversed, what would _I_ be doing?" He could find but one honest answer. "No doubt I'd be trying to get out of it, and if I didn't, it'd be because I couldn't see or make a way." To his abnormally sensitized nerves the whole business began to exude a distinct, nauseating odor. "Rotten--that's the G.o.d's truth," thought he.

"Father was right!"

But there he drew back; he must be careful not to let anger sweep him into conceding too much. "No--life's got to be lived as the world dictates," he hastened to add. "I see now why father did it, but he went too far. He forgot my rights. The money is mine. And, by G.o.d, I'll get it!" And again he started up; and again he was caught and put out of countenance by his own image in the mirror. He turned away, shamefaced, but sullenly resolute.

Base? He couldn't deny it. But he was desperate; also, he had been too long accustomed to grabbing things to which his conscience told him he had doubtful right or none. "It's mine. I've been cheated out of it. I'll get it. Besides--" His mind suddenly cleared of the shadow of shame--"I owe it to mother and Del to make the fight. They've been cheated, too.

Because they're too soft-hearted and too reverent of father's memory, is that any reason, any excuse, for my s.h.i.+rking my duty by them? If father were here to speak, I know he'd approve." Before him rose the frightful look in his father's eyes in the earlier stage of that second and last illness. "_That's_ what the look meant!" he cried, now completely justified. "He recovered his reason. He wanted to undo the mischief that old sneak Hargrave had drawn him into!"

The case was complete: His father had been insane when he made the will, had repented afterward, but had been unable to unmake it; his only son Arthur Ranger, now head of the family, owed it to the family's future and to its two helpless and oversentimental women to right the wrong. A complete case, a clear case, a solemn mandate. Interest and duty were synonymous--as always to ingenious minds.

He lost no time in setting about this newly discovered high task of love and justice. Within twenty minutes he was closeted with Dawson of the great law firm, Mitch.e.l.l, Dawson, Vance & Bischoffsheimer, who had had the best seats on all the fattest stranded carca.s.ses of the Middle West for a decade--that is, ever since Bischoffsheimer joined the firm and taught its intellects how on a vast scale to transubstantiate technically legal knowledge into technically legal wealth. Dawson--lean and keen, tough and brown of skin, and so carelessly dressed that he looked as if he slept in his clothes--listened with the sympathetic, unwandering attention which men give only him who comes telling where and how they can make money. The young man ended his story, all in a glow of enthusiasm for his exalted motives and of satisfaction with his eloquence in presenting them; then came the shrewd and thorough cross-examination which, he believed, strengthened every point he had made.

"On your showing," was Dawson's cautious verdict, "you seem to have a case. But you must not forget that judges and juries have a deep prejudice against breaking wills. They're usually fathers themselves, and guard the will as the parent's strongest weapon in keeping the children in order after they're too old for the strap or the bed slat, as the case may be. Undue influence or mental infirmity must be mighty clearly proven. Even then the court may decide to let the will stand, on general principles. Your mother and sister, of course, join you?"

"I--I hope so," hesitated Arthur. "I'm not sure." More self-possessedly: "You know how it is with women--with _ladies_--how they shrink from notoriety."

"No, I can't say I do," said Dawson dryly. "Ladies need money even more than women do, and so they'll usually go the limit, and beyond, to get it. However, a.s.suming that for some reason or other, your mother and sister won't help, at least they won't oppose?"

"My sister is engaged to the son of Dr. Hargrave," said Arthur uneasily.

"That's good--excellent!" exclaimed Dawson, rubbing his gaunt, beard-discolored jaw vigorously.

"But--he--Theodore Hargrave is a sentimental, unpractical chap."

"So are we all--but not in money matters."

"He's an exception, I'm afraid," said Arthur. "Really--I think it's almost certain he'll try to influence her to take sides against me. And my mother was very bitter when I spoke of contest. But, as I've shown you, my case is quite apart from what they may or may not do."

"Um--um," grunted Dawson. He threw himself back in his chair; to aid him in thinking, he twisted the only remaining crown-lock of his gray-black hair, and slowly drew his thin lips from his big sallow teeth, and as slowly returned them to place. "Obviously," he said at length, "the doctor is the crucial witness. We must see to it that"--a significant grin--"that the other side does not attach him. We must antic.i.p.ate them by attaching him to us. I'll see what can be done--legitimately, you understand. Perhaps you may have to engage additional counsel--some such firm as, say, Humperd.i.n.k & Grafter. Often, in cases nowadays, there is detail work of an important character that lawyers of our standing couldn't think of undertaking. But, of course, we work in harmony with such other counsel as our client sees fit to engage."

"Certainly; I understand," said Arthur, with a knowing, "man-of-the-world" nod. His cause being good and its triumph necessary, he must not be squeamish about any alliances it might be necessary to make as a means to that triumph, where the world was so wicked. "Then, you undertake the case."

"We will look into it," Dawson corrected. "You appreciate that the litigation will be somewhat expensive?"

Arthur reddened. No, he hadn't thought of that! Whenever he had wanted anything, he had ordered it, and had let the bill go to his father; whenever he had wanted money, he had sent to his father for it, and had got it. Dawson's question made the reality of his position--moneyless, resourceless, friendless--burst over him like a waterspout. Dawson saw and understood; but it was not his cue to lessen that sense of helplessness.

At last Arthur sufficiently shook off his stupor to say: "Unless I win the contest, I shan't have any resources beyond the five thousand I get under the will, and a thousand or so I have in bank at Saint X--and what little I could realize from my personal odds and ends. Isn't there some way the thing could be arranged?"

"There is the method of getting a lawyer to take a case on contingent fee," said Dawson. "That is, the lawyer gets a certain per cent of what he wins, and nothing if he loses. But _we_ don't make such arrangements.

They are regarded as almost unprofessional; I couldn't honestly recommend any lawyer who would. But, let me see--um--urn--" Dawson was reflecting again, with an ostentation which might have roused the suspicions of a less guileless person than Arthur Ranger at twenty-five. "You could, perhaps, give us a retainer of say, a thousand in cash?"

"Yes," said Arthur, relieved. He thought he saw light ahead.

"Then we could take your note for say, five thousand--due in eighteen months. You could renew it, if your victory was by any chance delayed beyond that time."