“Hello!” said Bartley, one day after the autumn had brought back all the summer wanderers to the city, “I haven't seen you for a month of Sundays.” He had Ricker by the hand, and he pulled him into a doorway to be a little out of the rush on the crowded pavement, while they chatted.
“That's because I can't afford to go to the White Mountains, and swell round at the aristocratic summer resorts like some people,” returned Ricker. “I'm a horny-handed son of toil, myself.”
“Pshaw!” said Bartley. “Who isn't? I've been here hard at it, except for three days at one time and live at another.”
“Well, all I can say is that I saw in the Record personals, that Mr. Hubbard, of the Events, was spending the summer months with his father-in-law, Judge Gaylord, among the spurs of the White Mountains. I supposed you wrote it yourself. You're full of ideas about journalism.”
“Oh, come! I wouldn't work that joke any more. Look here, Ricker, I'll tell you what I want. I want you to dine with me.”
“Dines people!” said Ricker, in an awestricken aside.
“No,—I mean business! You Ve never seen my kid yet: and you've never seen my house. I want you to come. We've all got back, and we're in nice running order. What day are you disengaged?”
“Let me see,” said Ricker, thoughtfully. “So many engagements! Wait! I could squeeze your dinner in some time next month, Hubbard.”
“All right. But suppose we say next Sunday. Six is the hour.”
“Six? Oh, I can't dine in the middle of the forenoon that way! Make it later!”
“Well, we'll say one P.M., then. I know your dinner hour. We shall expect you.”
“Better not, till I come.” Bartley knew that this was Ricker's way of accepting, and he said nothing, but he answered his next question with easy joviality. “How are you making it with old Witherby?”
“Oh, hand over hand! Witherby and I were formed for each other. By, by!”
“No, hold on! Why don't you come to the club any more?”
“We-e-ll! The club isn't what it used to be,” said Bartley, confidentially.
“Why, of course! It isn't just the thing for a gentleman moving in the select circles of Clover Street, as you do; but why not come, sometimes, in the character of distinguished guest, and encourage your humble friends? I was talking with a lot of the fellows about you the other night.”
“Were they abusing me?”
“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 associates were now the most raffish set on the press, or the green hands; and something had brought this to pass in less than two years. Ricker had believed that it was Witherby; at the club he had contended that it was Bartley's association 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 superstition might interpret as papa and mamma. She had passed that stage in which a man regards his child with despair; she had passed 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 embarrassed 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, embarrassed 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 embarrassment 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 thelastman 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 cassimere 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 shaggy 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 assent 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-analysis 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 passed 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. “Ialwaysdo. 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 screwing my courage up, as old Macbeth says,—or Ritchloo,Idon't know which it was,—and at last Ididget 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 feltbad. 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; Ihadn'tbeen 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 wassmart. 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 glass 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 Japan 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. You're a smart fellow, Bart, and you're a good fellow. You're a generous fellow.” Kinney's voice shook with emotion.
Bartley, having lifted his wet and flushed face, managed to say: “Oh, there's nothing mean aboutme, Kinney,” as he felt blindly for the beer bottles, which he shook in succession with an evident surprise at finding them empty.
“You've acted like a brother to me, Bartley Hubbard,” continued Kinney, “and I sha'n't forget it in a hurry. I guess it would about broke my heart, if you hadn't taken it just the way you did to-night. I should like to see the man that didn't use you well, or the woman, either!” said Kinney, with vague defiance. “Thoughtheydon't seem to have done so bad by you,” he added, in recognition of Marcia's merit. “I should saythatwas the biggest part of your luck She's a lady, sir, every inch of her. Mighty different stripe from that Montreal woman that cut up so that night.”
“Oh, Mrs. Macallister wasn't such a scamp, after all,” said Bartley, with magnanimity.
“Well, sir,youcan say so. I ain't going to be too strict with agirl; but I like to see a married womanactlike a married woman. Now, I don't think you'd catch Mrs. Hubbard flirting with a young fellow the way that woman went on with you that night?” Bartley grinned. “Well, sir, you're getting along and you're happy.”
“Perfect clam,” said Bartley.
“Such a position as you've got,—such a house, such a wife,andsuch a baby! Well,” said Kinney, rising, “it's a little too much forme.”
“Want to go to bed?” asked Bartley.
“Yes, I guess I better turn in,” returned Kinney, despairingly.
“Show you the way.”
Bartley tripped up stairs with Kinney's bag, which they had left standing in the hall, while Kinney creaked carefully after him; and so led the way to the guest-chamber, and turned up the gaslight, which had been left burning low.
Kinney stood erect, dwarfing the room, and looked round on the pink chintzing, and soft carpet, and white coverleted bed, and lace-hooded dressing-mirror, with meek veneration. “Well, I swear!” He said no more, but sat hopelessly down, and began to pull off his boots.
He was in the same humble mood the next morning, when, having got up inordinately early, he was found trying to fix his mind on a newspaper by Bartley, who came down late to the Sunday breakfast, and led his guest into the dining-room. Marcia, in a bewitching morning-gown, was already there, having put the daintier touches to the meal herself; and the baby, in a fresh white dress, was there tied into its arm-chair with a napkin, and beating on the table with a spoon. Bartley's nonchalance amidst all this impressed Kinney with a yet more poignant sense of his superiority, and almost deprived him of the powers of speech. When after breakfast Bartley took him out to Cambridge on the horse-cars, and showed him the College buildings, and Memorial Hall, and the Washington Elm, and Mount Auburn, Kinney fell into such a cowed and broken condition, that something had to be specially done to put him in repair against Ricker's coming to dinner. Marcia luckily thought of asking him if he would like to see her kitchen. In this region Kinney found himself at home, and praised its neat perfection with professional intelligence. Bartley followed them round with Flavia on his arm, and put in a jocose word here and there, when he saw Kinney about to fall a prey to his respect for Marcia, and so kept him going till Ricker rang. He contrived to give Ricker a hint of the sort of man he had on his hands, and by their joint effort they had Kinney talking about himself at dinner before he knew what he was about. He could not help talking well upon this theme, and he had them so vividly interested, as he poured out adventure after adventure in his strange career, that Bartley began to be proud of him.
“Well, sir,” said Ricker, when he came to a pause, “you've lived a romance.”
“Yes,” replied Kinney, looking at Bartley for his approval, “and I've always thought that, if I ever got run clean ashore, high and dry, I'd make a stagger to write it out and do something with it. Do you suppose I could?”
“I promise to take it for the Sunday edition of the Chronicle Abstract, whenever you get it ready,” said Ricker.
Bartley laid his hand on his friend's arm. “It's bought up, old fellow. That narrative—'Confessions of an Average American'—belongs to the Events.”
They had their laugh at this, and then Ricker said to Kinney: “But look here, my friend! What's to prevent our interviewing you on this little personal history of yours, and using your material any way we like? It seems to me that you've put your head in the lion's mouth.”
“Oh, I'm amongst gentlemen,” said Kinney, with an innocent swagger. “I understand that.”
“Well, I don't know about it,” said Ricker. “Hubbard, here, is used to all sorts of hard names; but I've never had that epithet applied to me before.”
Kinney doubled himself up over the side of his chair in recognition of Ricker's joke; and when Bartley rose and asked him if he would come into the parlor and have a cigar, he said, with a wink, no, he guessed he would stay with the ladies. He waited with great mystery till the folding-doors were closed, and Bartley had stopped peeping through the crevice between them, and then he began to disengage from his watch-chain the golden nugget, shaped to a rude sphere, which hung there. This done, he asked if he might put it on the little necklace—a christening gift from Mrs. Halleck—which the baby had on, to see how it looked. It looked very well, like an old Romanbolla, though neither Kinney nor Marcia knew it. “Guess we'll let it stay there,” he suggested, timidly.
“Mr. Kinney!” cried Marcia, in amaze, “I can't let you!”
“Oh,donow, ma'am!” pleaded the big fellow, simply. “If you knew how much good it does me, you would. Why, it's been like heaven to me to get into such a home as this for a day,—it has indeed.”
“Like heaven?” said Marcia, turning pale. “Oh, my!”
“Well, I don't mean any harm. What I mean is, I've knocked about the world so much, and never had any home of my own, that to see folks as happy as you be makes me happier than I've been since I don't know when. Now, you let it stay. It was the first piece of gold I picked up in Californy when I went out there in '50, and it's about the last; I didn't have very good luck. Well, of course! I know I ain't fit to give it; but I want to do it. I think Bartley's about the greatest fellow and he's the best fellow this world can show. That's the way I feel about him. And I want to do it. Sho! the thing wa'n't no use to me!”
Marcia always gave her maid off all work Sunday afternoon, and she would not trespass upon her rule because she had guests that day. Except for the confusion to which Kinney's unexpected gift had put her, she would have waited for him to join the others before she began to clear away the dinner; but now she mechanically began, and Kinney, to whom these domestic occupations were a second nature, joined her in the work, equally absent-minded in the fervor of his petition.
Bartley suddenly flung open the doors. “My dear, Mr. Ricker says he must be go—” He discovered Marcia with the dish of potatoes in her hand, and Kinney in the act of carrying off the platter of turkey. “Look here, Ricker!”
Kinney came to himself, and, opening his mouth above the platter wide enough to swallow the remains of the turkey, slapped his leg with the hand that he released for the purpose, and shouted, “The ruling passion, Bartley, the ruling passion!”
The men roared; but Marcia, even while she took in the situation, did not see anything so ridiculous in it as they. She smiled a little in sympathy with their mirth, and then said, with a look and tone which he had not seen or heard in her since the day of their picnic at Equity, “Come, see what Mr. Kinney has given baby, Bartley.”
They sat up talking Kinney over after he was gone; but even at ten o'clock Bartley said he should not go to bed; he felt like writing.
Bartley lived well now. He felt that he could afford it, on fifty dollars a week; and yet somehow he had always a sheaf of unpaid bills on hand. Rent was so much, the butcher so much, the grocer so much; these were the great outlays, and he knew just what they were; but the sum total was always much larger than he expected. At a pinch, he borrowed; but he did not let Marcia know of this, for she would have starved herself to pay the debt; what was worse, she would have wished him to starve with her. He kept the purse, and he kept the accounts; he was master in his house, and he meant to be so.
The pinch always seemed to come in the matter of clothes, and then Marcia gave up whatever she wanted, and said she must make the old things do. Bartley hated this; in his position he must dress well, and, as there was nothing mean about him, he wished Marcia to dress well to. Just at this time he had set his heart on her having a certain sacque which they had noticed in a certain window one day when they were on Washington Street together. He surprised her a week later by bringing the sacque home to her, and he surprised himself with a seal-skin cap which he had long coveted: it was coming winter, now, and for half a dozen days of the season he would really need the cap. There would be many days when it would be comfortable, and many others when it would be tolerable, and he looked so handsome in it that Marcia herself could not quite feel that it was an extravagance. She asked him how they could afford both of the things at once, but he answered with easy mystery that he had provided the funds; and she went gayly round with him to call on the Hallecks that evening and show off her sacque. It was so stylish and pretty that it won her a compliment from Ben Halleck, which she noticed because it was the first compliment, or anything like it, that he had ever paid her. She repeated it to Bartley. “He said that I looked like a Hungarian princess that he saw in Vienna.”
“Well, I suppose it has a hussar kind of look with that fur trimming and that broad braid. Did anybody say anything about my cap?” asked Bartley with burlesque eagerness.
“Oh, poor Bartley!” she cried in laughing triumph. “I don't believe any of them noticed it; and you kept twirling it round in your hands all the time to make them look.”
“Yes, I did my level best,” said Bartley.
They had a jolly time about that. Marcia was proud of her sacque; when she took it off and held it up by the loop in the neck, so as to realize its prettiness, she said she should make it last three winters at least; and she leaned over and gave Bartley a sweet kiss of gratitude and affection, and told him not to try to make up for it by extra work, but to help her scrimp for it.
“I'd rather do the extra work,” he protested. In fact he already had the extra work done. It was something that he felt he had the right to sell outside of the Events, and he carried his manuscript to Ricker and offered it to him for his Sunday edition.
Ricker read the title and ran his eye down the first slip, and then glanced quickly at Hubbard. “You don't mean it?”
“Yes I do,” said Bartley. “Why not?”
“I thought he was going to use the material himself some time.”
Bartley laughed. “He use the material! Why, he can't write, any more than a hen; he can make tracks on paper, but nobody would print 'em, much less buy 'em. I know him, he's all right. It wouldn't hurt the material for his purpose, any way; and he'll be tickled to death when he sees it. If he ever does. Look here, Ricker!” added Bartley, with a touch of anger at the hesitation in his friend's face, “if you're going to spring any conscientious scruples on me, I prefer to offer my manuscript elsewhere. I give you the first chance at it; but it needn't go begging. Do you suppose I'd do this if I didn't understand the man, and know just how he'd take it?”
“Why, of course, Hubbard! I beg your pardon. If you say it's all right, I am bound to be satisfied. What do you want for it?”
“Fifty dollars.”
“That's a good deal, isn't it?”
“Yes, it is. But I can't afford to do a dishonorable thing for less money,” said Bartley, with a wink.
The next Sunday, when Marcia came home from church, she went into the parlor a moment to speak to Bartley before she ran upstairs to the baby. He was writing, and she put her left hand on his back while with her right she held her sacque slung over her shoulder by the loop, and leaned forward with a wandering eye on the papers that strewed the table. In that attitude he felt her pause and grow absorbed, and then rigid; her light caress tightened into a grip. “Why, how base! How shameful! That man shall never enter my doors again! Why, it's stealing!”
“What's the matter? What are you talking about?” Bartley looked up with a frown of preparation.
“This!” cried Marcia, snatching up the Chronicle-Abstract, at which she had been looking. “Haven't you seen it? Here's Mr. Kinney's life all written out! And when he said that he was going to keep it and write it out himself. That thief has stolen it!”
“Look out how you talk,” said Bartley. “Kinney's an old fool, and he never could have written it out in the world—”
“That makes no difference. He said that he told the things because he knew he was among gentlemen. A great gentleman Mr. Ricker is! And I thought he was so nice!” The tears sprang to her eyes, which flashed again. “I want you to break off with him. Bartley; I don't want you to have anything to do with such athief! And I shall be proud to tell everybody that you've broken off with himbecausehe was a thief. Oh, Bartley—”
“Hold your tongue!” shouted her husband.
“Iwon'thold my tongue! And if you defend—”
“Don't you say a word against Ricker. It's all right, I tell you. You don't understand such things. You don't know what you're talking about. I—I—I wrote the thing myself.”
He could face her, but she could not face him. There was a subsidence in her proud attitude, as if her physical strength had snapped with her breaking spirit.
“There's no theft about it.” Bartley went on. “Kinney would never write it out, and if he did, I've put the material in better shape for him here than he could ever have given it. Six weeks from now nobody will remember a word of it; and he could tell the same things right over again, and they would be just as good as new.” He went on to argue the point.
She seemed not to have listened to him. When he stopped, she said, in a quiet, passionless voice, “I suppose you wrote it to get money for this sacque.”
“Yes; I did,” replied Bartley.
She dropped it on the floor at his feet. “I shall never wear it again,” she said in the same tone, and a little sigh escaped her.
“Use your pleasure about that,” said Bartley, sitting down to his writing again, as she turned and left the room.
She went upstairs and came down immediately, with the gold nugget, which she had wrenched from the baby's necklace, and laid it on the paper before him. “Perhaps you would like to spend it for tivoli beer,” she suggested. “Flavia shall not wear it.”
“I'll get it fitted on to my watch-chain.” Bartley slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
The sacque still lay on the floor at his feet; he pulled his chair a little forward and put his feet on it. He feigned to write awhile longer, and then he folded up his papers, and went out, leaving Marcia to make her Sunday dinner alone. When he came home late at night, he found the sacque where she had dropped it, and with a curse he picked it up and hung it on the hat-rack in the hall.
He slept in the guest-chamber, and at times during the night the child cried in Marcia's room and waked him; and then he thought he heard a sound of sobbing which was not the child's. In the morning, when he came down to breakfast, Marcia met him with swollen eyes.
“Bartley,” she said tremulously, “I wish you would tell me how you felt justified in writing out Mr. Kinney's life in that way.”
“My dear,” said Bartley, with perfect amiability, for he had slept off his anger, and he really felt sorry to see her so unhappy, “I would tell you almost anything you want on any other subject; but I think we had better remand that one to the safety of silence, and go upon the general supposition that I know what I'm about.”
“I can't, Bartley!”
“Can't you? Well, that's a pity.” He pulled his chair to the breakfast-table. “It seems to me that girl's imagination always fails her on Mondays. Can she never give us anything but hash and corn-bread when she's going to wash? However, the coffee's good. I supposeyoumade it?”
“Bartley!” persisted Marcia, “I want to believe in everything you do,—I want to be proud of it—”
“That will be difficult,” suggested Bartley, with an air of thoughtful impartiality, “for the wife of a newspaper man.”
“No, no! It needn't be! It mustn't be! If you will only tell me—” She stopped, as if she feared to repeat her offence.
Bartley leaned back in his chair and looked at her intense face with a smile. “Tell you that in some way I had Kinney's authority to use his facts? Well, I should have done that yesterday if you had let me. In the first place, Kinney's the most helpless ass in the world. He could never have used his own facts. In the second place, there was hardly anything in his rigmarole the other day that he hadn't told me down there in the lumber camp, with full authority to use it in any way I liked; and I don't see how he could revoke that authority. That's the way I reasoned about it.”
“I see,—I see!” said Marcia, with humble eagerness.
“Well, that's all there is about it. What I've done can't hurt Kinney. If he ever does want to write his old facts out, he'll be glad to take my report of them, and—spoil it,” said Bartley, ending with a laugh.
“And if—if there had been anything wrong about it,” said Marcia, anxious to justify him to herself, “Mr. Ricker would have told you so when you offered him the article.”
“I don't think Mr. Ricker would have ventured on any impertinence with me,” said Bartley, with grandeur. But he lapsed into his wonted, easy way of taking everything. “What are you driving at, Marsh? I don't care particularly for what happened yesterday. We've had rows enough before, and I dare say we shall have them again. You gave me a bad quarter of an hour, and you gave yourself”—he looked at her tear-stained eyes—“a bad night, apparently. That's all there is about it.”
“Oh, no, that isn't all! It isn't like the other quarrels we've had. When I think how I've felt toward you ever since, itscaresme. There can't be anything sacred in our marriage unless we trust each other in everything.”
“Well,Ihaven't done any of the mistrusting,” said Bartley, with humorous lightness. “But isn't sacred rather a strong word to use in regard to our marriage, anyway?”
“Why—why—what do you mean, Bartley? We were married by a minister.”
“Well, yes, by what was left of one,” said Bartley. “He couldn't seem to shake himself together sufficiently to ask for the proof that we had declared our intention to get married.”
Marcia looked mystified. “Don't you remember his saying there was something else, and my suggesting to him that it was the fee?”
Marcia turned white. “Father said the certificate was all right—”
“Oh, he asked to see it, did he? He is a prudent old gentleman. Well, it is all right.”
“And what difference did it make about our not proving that we had declared our intention?” asked Marcia, as if only partly reassured.
“No difference to us; and only a difference of sixty dollars fine to him, if it was ever found out.”
“And you let the poor old man run that risk?”
“Well, you see, it couldn't be helped. We hadn't declared our intention, and the lady seemed very anxious to be married. You needn't be troubled. We are married, right and tight enough; but I don't know that there's anythingsacredabout it.”
“No,” Marcia wailed out, “its tainted with fraud from the beginning.”
“If you like to say so,” Bartley assented, putting his napkin into its ring.
Marcia hid her face in her arms on the table; the baby left off drumming with its spoon, and began to cry.
Witherby was reading the Sunday edition of the Chronicle-Abstract, when Bartley got down to the Events office; and he cleared his throat with a premonitory cough as his assistant swung easily into the room. “Good morning, Mr. Hubbard,” he said. “There is quite an interesting article in yesterday's Chronicle-Abstract. Have you seen it?”
“Yes,” said Bartley. “What article?”
“This Confessions of an Average American.” Witherby held out the paper, where Bartley's article, vividly head-lined and sub-headed, filled half a page. “What is the reasonwecannot have something of this kind?”
“Well, I don't know,” Bartley began.
“Have you any idea who wrote this?”
“Oh, yes, I wrote it.”
Witherby had the task before him of transmuting an expression of rather low cunning into one of wounded confidence, mingled with high-minded surprise. “I thought it had your ear-marks, Mr. Hubbard: but I preferred not to believe it till I heard the fact from your own lips. I supposed that our contract covered such contributions as this.”
“I wrote it out of time, and on Sunday night. You pay me by the week, and all that I do throughout the week belongs to you. The next day after that Sunday I did a full day's work on the Events. I don't see what you have to complain of. You told me when I began that you would not expect more than a certain amount of work from me. Have I ever done less?”
“No, but—”
“Haven't I always done more?”
“Yes, I have never complained of the amount of work. But upon this theory of yours, what you did in your summer vacation would not belong to the Events, or what you did on legal holidays.”
“I never have any summer vacation or holidays, legal or illegal. Even when I was down at Equity last summer I sent you something for the paper every day.”
This was true, and Witherby could not gainsay it. “Very well, sir. If this is to be your interpretation of our understanding for the future, I shall wish to revise our contract,” he said pompously.
“You can tear it up if you like,” returned Bartley. “I dare say Ricker would jump at a little study of the true inwardness of counting-room journalism. Unless you insist upon having it for the Events.” Bartley gave a chuckle of enjoyment as he sat down at his desk; Witherby rose and stalked away.
He returned in half an hour and said, with an air of frank concession, touched with personal grief: “Mr. Hubbard, I can see how, from your point of view, you were perfectly justifiable in selling your article to the Chronicle-Abstract. My point of view is different, but I shall not insist upon it; and I wish to withdraw—and—and apologize for—any hasty expressions I may have used.”
“All right,” said Bartley, with a wicked grin. He had triumphed; but his triumph was one to leave some men with an uneasy feeling, and there was not altogether a pleasant taste in Bartley's mouth. After that his position in the Events office was whatever he chose to make it, but he did not abuse his ascendency, and he even made a point of increased deference towards Witherby. Many courtesies passed between them; each took some trouble to show the other that he had no ill feeling.
Three or four weeks later Bartley received a letter with an Illinois postmark which gave him a disagreeable sensation, at first, for he knew it must be from Kinney. But the letter was so amusingly characteristic, so helplessly ill-spelled and ill-constructed, that he could not help laughing. Kinney gave an account of his travels to the mining town, and of his present situation and future prospects; he was full of affectionate messages and inquiries for Bartley's family, and he said he should never forget that Sunday he had passed with them. In a postscript he added: “They copied that String of lies into our paper, here, out of the Chron.-Ab. It was pretty well done, but if your friend Mr. Ricker done it, I'me not goen to Insult him soon again by calling him a gentleman.”
This laconic reference to the matter in a postscript was delicious to Bartley; he seemed to hear Kinney saying the words, and imagined his air of ineffective sarcasm. He carried the letter about with him, and the first time he saw Ricker he showed it to him. Ricker read it without appearing greatly diverted; when he came to the postscript he flushed, and demanded, “What have you done about it?”
“Oh, I haven't done anything. It wasn't necessary. You see, now, what Kinney could have done with his facts if we had left them to him. It would have been a wicked waste of material I thought the sight of some of his literature would help you wash up your uncleanly scruples on that point.”
“How long have you had this letter?” pursued Ricker.
“Idon't know. A week or ten days.”
Ricker folded it up and returned it to him. “Mr. Hubbard,” he said, “the next time we meet, will you do me the favor to cut my acquaintance?”
Bartley stared at him; he thought he must be joking. “Why, Ricker, what's the matter? I didn't suppose you'd care anything about old Kinney. I thought it would amuse you. Why, confound it! I'd just as soon write out and tell him that I did the thing.” He began to be angry. “But I can cut your acquaintance fast enough, or any man's, if you're really on your ear!”
“I'm on my ear,” said Ricker. He left Bartley standing where they had met.
It was peculiarly unfortunate, for Bartley had occasion within that week to ask Ricker's advice, and he was debarred from doing so by this absurd displeasure. Since their recent perfect understanding, Witherby had slighted no opportunity to cement their friendship, and to attach Bartley more and more firmly to the Events. He now offered him some of the Events stock on extremely advantageous terms, with the avowed purpose of attaching him to the paper. There seemed nothing covert in this, and Bartley had never heard any doubts of the prosperity of the Events, but he would have especially liked to have Ricker's mind upon this offer of stock. Witherby had urged him not to pay for the whole outright, but to accept a somewhat lower salary, and trust to his dividends to make up the difference. The shares had paid fifteen per cent the year before, and Bartley could judge for himself of the present chances from that showing. Witherby advised him to borrow only fifteen hundred dollars on the three thousand of stock which he offered him, and to pay up the balance in three years by dropping five hundred a year from his salary. It was certainly a flattering proposal; and under his breath, where Bartley still did most of his blaspheming, he cursed Ricker for an old fool; and resolved to close with Witherby on his own responsibility. After he had done so he told Marcia of the step he had taken.
Since their last quarrel there had been an alienation in her behavior toward him, different from any former resentment. She was submissive and quiescent; she looked carefully after his comfort, and was perfect in her housekeeping; but she held aloof from him somehow, and left him to a solitude in her presence in which he fancied, if he did not divine, her contempt. But in this matter of common interest, something of their community of feeling revived; they met on a lower level, but they met, for the moment, and Marcia joined eagerly in the discussion of ways and means.
The notion of dropping five hundred from his salary delighted her, because they must now cut down their expenses as much; and she had long grieved over their expenses without being able to make Bartley agree to their reduction. She went upstairs at once and gave the little nurse-maid a week's warning; she told the maid of all work that she must take three dollars a week hereafter instead of four, or else find another place; she mentally forewent new spring dresses for herself and the baby, and arranged to do herself all of the wash she had been putting out; she put a note in the mouth of the can at the back door, telling the milkman to leave only two quarts in future; and she came radiantly back to tell Bartley that she had saved half of the lost five hundred a year already. But her countenance fell. “Why, where are you to get the other fifteen hundred dollars, Bartley?”
“Oh, I Ve thought of that,” said Bartley, laughing at her swift alternations of triumph and despair. “You trust to me for that.”
“You're not—not going to ask father for it?” she faltered.
“Not very much,” said Bartley, as he took his hat to go out.
He meant to make a raise out of Ben Halleck, as he phrased it to himself. He knew that Halleck had plenty of money; he could make the stock itself over to him as security; he did not see why Halleck should hesitate. But when he entered Halleck's room, having asked Cyrus to show him directly there, Halleck gave a start which seemed ominous to Bartley. He had scarcely the heart to open his business, and Halleck listened with changing color, and something only too like the embarrassment of a man who intends a refusal. He would not look Bartley in the face, and when Bartley had made an end he sat for a time without speaking. At last he said with a quick sigh, as if at the close of an internal conflict, “I will lend you the money!”
Bartley's heart gave a bound, and he broke out into an immense laugh of relief, and clapped Halleck on the shoulder. “You looked deucedly as it' youwouldn't, old man! By George, you had on such a dismal, hang-dog expression that I didn't know butyou'dcome to borrow money ofme, and I'd made up my mind not to let you have it! But I'm everlastingly obliged to you, Halleck, and I promise you that you won't regret it.”
“I shall have to speak to my father about this,” said Halleck, responding coldly to Bartley's robust pressure of his hand.
“Of course,—of course.”
“How soon shall you want the money?”
“Well, the sooner the better, now. Bring the check round—can't you?—to-morrow night,—and take dinner with us, you and Olive; and we'll celebrate a little. I know it will please Marcia when she finds out who my hard-hearted creditor is!”
“Well,” assented Halleck with a smile so ghastly that Bartley noticed it even in his joy.
“Curse me,” he said to himself, “if ever I saw a man so ashamed of doing a good action!”